The looked out over the view towards Paris. Avenue Charles de Gaulle cut a line directly towards the Arc de Triomphe. The Eiffel Tower, over to the right, seemed to reach out of the greenery of the Bois de Boulogne. Almost directly below them, the Seine sparkled in the sunshine.
Brodzski smiled, he was pleased with himself, no, he was delighted. This was what he deserved, it was natural, and the only pity was that it had come a little bit late in life for him.
He looked at Axelmann and Ennis, competent men who respected him, and knew how to carry out his instructions without bothering him with the details.
He did the thinking. He determined the grand lines, provided the imagination, they simply implemented his ideas. He was the great architect, surveying the world from the thirty-fifth floor of the Tour Fiat.
‘What do you think Mr Brodzski?’ asked Axelmann.
‘Very good, excellent, when do we move in?’ said Brodzski approvingly.
‘We can move in at the end of next month, to be exact the first of June, five weeks from now.’
‘Have you already signed?’
‘No, not without consulting you.’
‘Let’s get it done then, see if we can move in earlier.’
The new office space covered a bit more than seven hundred square meters, one complete floors of the tower, in the business district of La Defense. It was a prestigious location. Brodzski had decided to relocate Papcon’s office, as part of his plan to upgrade their image, so that it corresponded with his ambitions for the company and himself, as one of the outstanding leaders in the French engineering industry for forest industries.
His success in Cambodia had filled the company’s bank account. He had a full order book for contracts, feasibility studies and various reports for a number of foreign governments for their industrial projects, reforestation and market studies.
He was riding the crest of the wave, carried along by his own success, although many of his friends and even his detractors whispered that he should retire whilst the going was good. However, Brodzski was a gambler, in more ways than could be imagined. He wanted recognition, a constant challenge, he needed to prove and prove again, that he was equal to the best or even better.
Brodzski had always felt handicapped by his origins, a deep down resentment. He had been born in Casablanca, the son of a military engineer, where he spent his childhood. During his early youth he had lived in the South of France, in the garrison town of Draguignan in Provence.
As a boy, he had not been of a very strong nature. In the uncertainties and the political climate of the thirties, he had felt rejected by his classmates. His family was Jewish. As a result, he had become by circumstances introverted, and had centred his interest on his studies. He obtained brilliant results, and gained entry into the illustrious Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, where he qualified as an engineer in the late spring of 1940.
He was conscripted into the army and was captured by the Nazis during the debacle in 1940, then transported to a camp in Germany as a prisoner of war.
Because of his Jewish origins, he had no choice but to escape. After a courageous flight through occupied France, he arrived in Bordeaux during the early winter of 1941. To his stupefaction his ex-commandant, to whom he had reported, refused to assist him and even went as far as recommending that he turn himself in to the Nazis. For the rest of his life he bore a burning resentment for the way in which he had been abandoned by the establishment. He was a Jew and would always remain a Jew.
He spent the following three years in non-occupied Vichy France, then when the Nazis took occupied the rest of the country he went into hiding and joined the resistance, where he stood out for his courage and daring plans.
After the war he created his own engineering consulting firm in the fifties and seeing the pressing need for paper in the emerging third world as the European colonies gained their independence. By his originality and willingness to take risks in new markets, he made a name for himself building industries in exotic and distant India, Thailand and Indonesia.
A brilliant engineer, he paid little attention to banks and accountants. He rarely accepted advice; he was incapable of self-restraint and regularly overstepped the financial capacity of his company, leading to strained relations with his backers. By the time he formed Papcon he already had four bankruptcies behind him.
With Papcon, he applied the hard earned lessons of the past by listening to his banker, Philippe de Berne, on whose insistence Chris Axelmann joined the company as Financial Director. Axelmann guided him through the world of financial management and banking, providing a steadying influence on Brodzski.
Axelmann was also a Jew, it was difficult to say if this was the reason, but Brodzski had a total trust in him, some people even said that Brodzski saw him as a son in-law and his successor.
‘What’s the rent?’ Brodzski asked Axelmann. He posed the question with a hint of embarrassment and annoyance. He detested questions on money matters, but he felt obliged to show an interest in the subject.
‘They’re asking a million a year, that’s excluding charges of course.’
‘Can we afford it?’ asked Brodzski. This time looking indecisive and a little anxious.
Axelmann laughed; ‘No, but the Barito consortium can!’
That pleased Brodzski; he was never fond of looking at reality in the face and was reassured when Axelmann went through the charade of pretending that it was not Papcon who would foot the bill.
Brodzski’s real skill and natural talent, lay in his ability to convince those that were drawn to him, believe that he was capable of realising their dreams, opening the door to a world, where business was easy and fortunes were to be made without the implications that went with more mundane affairs.
They lunched at Jarasse on avenue de Madrid, one of his favourite restaurants Brodzski felt that they should celebrate their decision. They discussed furniture and decorations for the new office. They talked about the success of the Cambodia business; the last shipment was due to leave at the end of that same month.
Every thing had gone like clockwork and the last contractual payment would be made. It would bring in forty million dollars of which eight million would go directly into Papcon’s reserves. That would cover their operating costs for the next eighteen months or so.
After lunch, Brodzski excused himself, and took a taxi towards Boulevard St Germain near the Latin Quarter. It was Thursday afternoon; he had his weekly appointment at an establishment that he had frequented for twenty years. There he indulged his fantasies, which had lately consisted of a long afternoon sleep, after a bottle of champagne and a moment of pleasure.
He often liked to explain to his friends and staff, that when a man was no longer interested in women then he was finished; perhaps it was his own self-justification.
Axelmann was equally pleased. However, he did not lose sight of the fact that the new offices, and the cost of the small but expensive organisation, were becoming increasingly heavy.
Brodzski’s spending had increased significantly over the last year. He enjoyed the princely right to first class all the way, the frequency of his trips increasing as the duration and effectiveness decreased.
That in itself was not important but it was the luxurious life style he had adopted, there was the Jaguar and chauffeur, the maids, the summer house on the coast, the gardener, the champagne, his daughters and their expensive whims, not forgetting his many friends and relatives who were taken on as consultants for exorbitant fees.
Papcon’s real income came from its major contracts. The consultancy work just covered a little more than its costs; it was mere window dressing complained Axelmann. He was not fooled by the highflying ideas of Papcon’s engineers.
The commissions for the Finnish defence contracts had been finally paid. They were banked in Singapore, reserved for their investment in Barito. The money was placed in deposits that were theoretically secure, controlled by the signatures of either Ennis or Axelmann as stipulated by the agreement with Finntech, out of the reach of Brodzski’s whim. The funds were necessary to prime the pump as the Finns said, when they got to the phase when the company was constituted as mill owner. In the worse case, it would be their personal insurance policy.
It was over two years since Papcon had signed the Cambodian contract, it would be another year before they could hope sign the Barito contract. He considered his principle task was to very carefully manage their resources. Certainly it was the consortium that was footing Papcon’s bills-for the moment-but that could not go on eternally.