Getting Even

By R.Z. Sheppard

WORLDLY GOODS

by Michael Korda

Random House; 353 pages; $14.95

In the publishing business, it is always Springtime for Hitler. As Mussolini shows, the Fhuerer is ubiquitous, a major character or a necessary evil hovering off-page. Few authors should understand this better than Michael Korda. When he is not exploiting national anxieties with such books as Success! or Power! or Male Chauvinism! or winning readers with anecdotes about his triumphant Hungarian relatives (Charmed Lives), he is editor in chief at Simon & Schuster.

So it is no surprise to find Hitler making a guest appearance in Korda's first novel, a tale of success, power, male chauvinism, Hungarians and even a little American publishing. His Fhuerer unexpectedly drops in for lunch at Hermann Goring's, expounds the virtues of vegetarianism and overcomes the Reich Marshal and his companions with a blitzkrieg of uncontrolled flatulence.

This is a touch of Mel Brooks rather than Ernst Lubitsch, though elsewhere Korda exhibits a considerable talent for imitating the sophisticated innuendoes of that German-born film maker. Worldly Goods is, in fact, a trove of mimicked styles. Beyond its undeniable entertainment qualities, the book can be read as a clinic on what publishers call a page-turner. The author-editor goes one step further and ensures subliminal product identification, with his name centered at the top of every other page.

This display is no coverup. Worldly Goods is a strong story, well told and undoubtedly well edited, about unspeakable betrayal and cold-blooded revenge. As its title suggests, there is a premium on getting, spending and preserving wealth and status. Characters talk in nine and even ten figures. A New York City mistress is taken to Paris for lunch and Cuernavaca for a sunbath. Markets are rigged by big shots who are never out of contact with their intercontinental flunkies; one even has a telephone in his refrigerator in case he gets a call while "taking" a snack.

Korda's hero commands respect, if not affection. He is a cunning, low-profile zillionaire named Paul Foster, who, as Paul Gruenwald, member of one of prewar Hungary's richest families, survived the Holocaust. Gruenwalds were not supposed to go to slave-labor camps. The family's Jewish bloodlines had been thinned by generations of intermarriage and Roman Catholic conversion. As leading bankers and industrialists, they had powerful friends, including Goering, through whom they sold uranium ore for Hitler's atomic-bomb research. But in the end the family's assets were too tempting, their enemies too envious, Adolf Eichmann too literal-minded and a Gruenwald too treacherous. He is an uncle who makes a business deal with the Germans and then double-crosses them and his family by escaping to Switzerland. His relatives are left to their fates at the hands of the SS.

How Paul Foster gets even 30 years after the war is an elaborate illustration of the proverb, "Revenge is a dish best eaten cold." Another maxim is also amply illustrated: "Living well is the best revenge." Korda piles on the evidence: the world's classiest hotels and hideaways, jewelry, yachts, beautiful bodies, quail eggs, caviar, champagne and even an ex-Nazi's recipe for lobster-roe sauce. Parts of this novel seem to have been catered rather than written.

Other parts demonstrate solid research, a cultivated prose style and a disciplined instinct for balanced structure and dramatic narrative. Deep emotions, noble sentiments and moral passion are not part of Korda's kit. There is a weight limit on the bestseller list, and an author cannot be faulted for choosing to travel light. But the historical burden of Worldly Goods needs to be handled with more than the dominant impression that life is cash flow and one can never step into the same cash flow twice. --By R.Z. Sheppard

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