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We went back to the hotel to take a shower and dress for the evening. At about 9 p.m. we got a ring from the reception that a gentleman named Captain Schulz was waiting for us. Schulz was a short slim man of about fifty with mottled grey hair and a cultivated mustache. He originated from Lübeck, but that could no longer be heard in his accent. The twenty years with AIG had given him a strong American accent. He knew Peter Behring (whose superior he was) and to my surprise he also knew about the assurance office Weyrauch in Hamburg. He could place Harry Weyrauch. My knowledge of shipping broke the ice, and at dinner at Smith & Wollensky in Greenwich Village we spoke of spectacular shipping accidents, the oceans and their meteorological peculiarities, salvage jobs, and other such things. Schulz had been at sea for ten years and had a captain’s license. John, who was not really at home in that area, followed the conversation with an expression of genuine and untiring interest, a characteristic he had made his own in the years as a Lloyd’s broker. The client must always have the feeling that there was something unique to his stories, from which important knowledge could be gained. We ended the evening with a number of Manhattan Cocktails at HARRYS NEW YORK BAR, as Schulz thought, this would be a befitting environment for his guests. The next morning we had an appointment at 10 a.m. at the AIG headquarters at 70 Pine Street in Lower Manhattan. An imposing skyscraper of the second generation in art deco style, built in 1932, with a striking silhouette with many playful architectonic specialties and an imposing spire that soared up into the sky like an upraised finger. 70, PINE STREET, was a Landmark Building, in its time it had been the tallest building in New York, 67 floors. An architectural work of art with aesthetic details of which the journalist Alexander Nazaryan wrote many years later in Newsweek:
"I am in love with a cougar. She is an octogenarian, an old-fashioned Dame who won't be cowed by younger rivals adorned in flashier vestments. She has lost some lustre, true, but she is about to regain it.
And when she does, you will understand, why I gaze longingly at her
from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, as tourists jostle to take
Pictures of lesser beauties that have long been stripped of any mystery."
Entry to the building was through a massive portal with copper doors artistically decorated with mystical ornaments of Egyptian motifs. When I stood before the door, the thought came to me suddenly of a connection with freemasonry; the symbolism was unmistakable.
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