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„Help yourself, we are meant for the common good - already paid for.“ In the officers‘ mess, where von Stierlitz I finally finish up, there are large pails filled with Russian beluga caviar, from which people are eating with tablespoons. It is a time when the sturgeon in the Caspian Sea still had not encountered major ecological problems. In other words - good times - tough just at the edge before the fish species STURGEON from the Caspian sea, which are living fossils, would come to the verge of extinction due to reduction of reproduction grounds, overfishing and water pollution by pesticides, heavy metals and oil products. Bad times for connoisseurs would be ahead.
Then at last we tie up at the mole in Piraeus the mood is excellent, and von Stierlitz and I take our leave from the ship, wishing it good voyages at all times, and have hostesses on our arms, partly to stabiles us and also to show us the way back to the hotel. After all, we are strangers, and so we are led as far as our bedrooms. I vaguely remember the tall girl that came to my room she had a cool lazy voice and heavy accent of some sort. A becoming end to the sea trials.
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For the next evening a big reception was scheduled at the Intercontinental Hotel, at which Katsourakis was to present his ambitious plans. Over 300 guests were invited. Katsourakis was talked about as Greece’s new Onassis, behind concealing hands - a rising star. At midday von Stierlitz, myself, and the insurance manager of Katsourakis decided to eat in the Marine Club of Piraeus. We had to kill the day in a stylish manner and I was somewhat tense about the reception as my sub-consciousness told me, that I was to be pulled in the limelight in one or the other way and I had problems to conceal my excitement. Was I up to the role I was supposed to play — the role of a "Leading underwriter" in my young age, I asked myself before I downed a Gin and Tonic and then another one.
+++++The Marine Club is a venerable institution - members only - where the upper echelons of the shipping trade get together, or with our foreign business partners, at midday. The Club is on the third floor of Akti Miaouli, with a spectacular view over the harbour of Piraeus. On the walls there are maritime works of art and the enameled emblems of the most important shipping companies from the past and the present. At the entrance, on a mahogany table, lies an open book on the life and deeds of Aristotle Onassis, the son of a rich broker, Socrates Onassis from Smyrna, born in the Ottoman Empire, who through strength of will, unscrupulousness, and marriage rose to be the most important ship-owner of Greece in his time. His family however shadowed by tragedy as could be followed in the rainbow press. He had been a frequent guest in the Marine Club, and he had died only a few years earlier -
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