Bullion Cubed

By R.Z. Sheppard

THE BILLION DOLLAR SURE THING by PAUL E. ERDMAN 248 pages. Scribners. $6.95.

The realities of the international monetary system not only outstrip fiction but have lately outrun journalism as well. What the confused layman needs is a clear explanation of the subject, adequately spiced to hedge against his devalued attention span. Paul Erdman, a 41-year-old American economist and failed Swiss banker, offers just that in a novel written while the author was being detained in jail.

Most topical novels smell of old newspaper clippings and rubber cement by the time they hit the book racks. The Billion Dollar Sure Thing is so topical that up until the U.S. edition went into press, Erdman was revising the price of gold in his story to keep pace with the market.

Erdman's plot may well be a contingency plan at the White House. The novel's unnamed President is wrestling with a financial situation not unlike the one now facing the U.S. The world has lost faith in the dollar, which is no longer convertible into gold. But business is business, and the Common Market countries and Japan secretly plan to take advantage of the naked dollar by making their own currencies convertible into gold at a set price. As the Secretary of the Treasury says, this would put the dollar "in about the same class as the Polish zl/oty."

What to do? Fortunately, a U.S. economic spy gets wind of the foreign scheme, giving the President time to plan a counterstrike. He will beat the Common Market and the Japanese at their own game by making the dollar once again gold-convertible with a price of $125 an ounce. The President reasons (as did Franklin Roosevelt in 1934 when he set gold at $35 an ounce) that by fixing the price of gold higher than anyone at the time imagines it could go, he will force speculators to buy dollars. (Price-fixed gold does not increase in value, while dollars would at least earn interest.) The President's plan, of course, is supposed to be top secret. But in order to prevent financial chaos -- a massive dumping of dollars for gold that would be redeemable at $125 -- the Swiss head of the regulatory Bank for International Settlements must be notified.

Slick coincidence here comes to the aid of Erdman's plot. A leading Swiss banker spots the American Secretary of the Treasury and the man from B.I.S.

huddled intently over a fire-engine-red folder in a London restaurant. He needs some inside information to bail him out of some bad decisions back home in Basel, and has the red folder stolen. So, by degrees, the fiscal pot thickens. Needless to say, the surprise ending of Erdman's financial thriller belongs in the reviewer's equivalent of a numbered Swiss bank account.

For an economist whose previously published book was a Common Market study entitled Die Europueische Wirt-schaftgemeinschaft und die Drittlaen-der, Erdman has a remarkable talent for storytelling. His side trips into Swiss prisons and legal institutions, Arab money-changing procedures and the financial mazes involved in "straddles" and "short positions" barely distract from the novel's suspense.

"I probably would not have written the novel had I not been in jail," says Erdman. In 1970, he and other officials of the United California Bank in Basel, Switzerland, found themselves in one of the city's 17th century dungeons. The bank had collapsed after losing more than $30 million speculating in cocoa futures, and the books had been doctored to hide the losses.

There is no habeas corpus law in Switzerland. Erdman was held for ten months without being charged with any crime before he was able to raise a bail set at nearly 1,000,000 Swiss francs. The Swiss have also attached his property and bank accounts. After he was sent to jail, he had to fall back on some formidable intellectual assets. In addition to having a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Basel, he has studied philosophy with Karl Jaspers and is a scholar of ancient Greek.

Erdman, who grew up in the Midwest, exudes a boyish enthusiasm. He seems to be an irrepressible doer. Be fore leaving jail, he had not only writ ten the novel but revamped the prison library system and persuaded the war den to paint the cells in cheerful col ors. His own accommodations were not unpleasant. He had television, radio, all the books he wanted -- and a typewriter.

He could send out for restaurant meals and his Swiss wife Helly brought him wine from his own cellar.

After getting out of jail, he took Helly and their two daughters to England and began planning two more novels:

one about the collapse of the silver market in 1969, the other about finance and the underworld in the Caribbean.

They will be written in the U.S. Erdman has just moved to a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Why come back to inflation and the strong likelihood of a further devalued dollar? "America," says Erdman, "is due for a spiritual renewal. Viet Nam, Watergate, all these things have had a great purging effect.

The country seems to be moving away from much of its materialism, while Europe and Japan are becoming more like we used to be." With owlish reasons and bullish sentiments, Erdman thinks the U.S. will be a far better place to live in during the '70s. He even believes Europeans will vacation in Florida be cause the water there is cleaner than the Mediterranean.

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