by Warren Adler
"Or Emma," he said.
"The arteries must be hardening," she said, through pursed lips. There was some truth in that. The doctor had been quite candid. The mind will play tricks, he had told them both.
"Forgive me," he said.
They had always been like two peas in a pod. Even as children, Wolfgang felt his isolation from them. Perhaps that was why he chose to go in a completely opposite direction, as far as possible from them, with an iron curtain between.
"Helga is probably dead," he said as Karla resumed her seat. They both knew that could hardly be true. The money was still being sent and received.
"It could be someone else cashing the checks," the Baron said.
"It is possible."
"But not likely?"
The sound of the elevator alerted them. The iron gate trembled, echoing beyond the door. The Baron with a great effort moved higher in the chair as Karla went to answer the knock.
Albert embraced her, and when he disengaged, the Baron watched him stride across the room, filled again with pleasure at the sight of him, tall, lean. No sign of the soft plumpishness of his mother that afflicted Rudi. He had grace, a style. One could sense the lithe body beneath the well fitting clothes. His light brown hair was cut carefully along the ear line, and the part was a perfect line across the sidewise length of the head, softly waving as the strands moved into a slight curl at the back. Only the eyes were Helga's, sea blue, especially when the light was brightest, like now.
"Father," Albert came to the chair and grasped the Baron's hand. When he had disengaged, Albert stood over him, watching. His disappointment at his father's condition could not be masked.
"He looks quite good, don't you think?" Karla signaled. The Baron smiled thinly at the comment.
"Under your care, how could he be otherwise, Aunt Karla." It was the obligatory recognition of the bond.
"Have you seen anyone?" the Baron asked.
"The twins," he shrugged with confirming disdain. "They are growing up."
Albert sat down near his aunt and accepted a cup of tea, which he sipped, balancing it with steady fingers. The Baron watched his son's hands, then looked downward at his own, grown knobby and arthritic.
"You've brought a friend," Karla mused. There was a hawklike quality about her, her nose was high and straight and her eyes were set deep.
"Company," Albert said with an air of casual dismissal, telling the full story.
"We have a great deal to talk about, Albert," the Baron said.
"We always have," Albert said, lowering his eyes into the teacup. The Baron watched him silently for a long time.
"Von Kassels are always adaptable to the changing time," the Baron began, knowing that it was repetitive, the old litany. He had never considered such repetition redundant. It was necessary, a duty, a prayer to be recited over and over again. What the von Kassels meant, was the essential business. Beyond wealth. All alien matters were simply not germane.
"Of course," Albert replied. Could he sense the rebuke?
"Rudi came to me," the Baron said, relieved at last. It was a matter to be transmitted only face to face. They both knew that.
"Perhaps, subconsciously, I suspected that, Father."
"I listened to him very carefully."
"Of course. I never really believed he would sit still for my explanation of the refusal."
"Well then. You know it must be resolved."
"Of course."
The Baron faltered for a moment, wondering whether he would have the strength to go on. He looked at his son, trying to pierce the high forehead, into the fine mind.
"I told him he was right in coming to me," Charles began.
The Baron shook his head, waiting to compose himself. If only this illness had not intruded. When he was younger, he would simply command, and the family order would be obeyed. Later, when the boys had grown, he had eschewed command for persuasion. Only Siegfried had refused to respond. Now even this power was growing weak, like a candle's flame in diminishing air.
"I condoned his telling me," the Baron said, beginning again.
Albert's blue eyes flickered briefly, concentrating on his father's face.
"I'm prepared to accept what comes," the son said. "I told Rudi he was mad and I have no illusions about the possible consequences. It had to be said." Albert stood up and walked to the window. One could see he had not completely articulated the thought. The Baron respected the interruption, waiting.
"It is wrong," Albert said, turning. The words were terse, coming with conviction.
"Wrong?" The Baron was confused, although the idea confirmed the accusation. He might have understood "unwise," "imprudent," "dangerous." But "wrong?"
"We could be putting the means to Armageddon in the hands of madmen," Albert said.
"That is not our affair."
"Even von Kassels are human. Some responsibility must be accepted," Albert responded. The Baron detected an air of resignation. "We do not act in a vacuum."
"That's not the point."
"Then what is?" There was an edge of irritation in his tone.
"We broker arms, not morality," the Baron said, tamping his anger. "Rudi is concerned that you are losing your perspective." He had wanted to say "courage," but he could not bring himself to admit that.
"Perhaps. From his point of view."
"I told him we would put it on the table, that we would all consider it. The others as well."
"Since when are we getting so democratic, Father. You can just order Rudi to do it. And that would be that."
"But I would rather persuade you." The Baron felt his son's eyes, Helga's, probing, exploring his face.
"You can order me."
"And if I did? Would you obey?"
Again Albert turned away. The Baron felt the beginning of exhaustion. The brief confrontation had tired him again. Surely he is not like my father, the old man thought, another bad seed. Had the von Kassel strength and purpose skipped another generation?
"I'm not sure, Father."
"Not sure?" It was Karla who responded now, looking at her nephew as if he were a stranger. Albert turned to his aunt.
"Somewhere in this business there is a line beyond which even the devil himself wouldn't go." He appeared to be trying to inject a lighter note.
"What is this talk of the devil?" the Baron asked.
"We'll talk of it tomorrow with the others."
The Baron's strength left him. Was he ready to dismiss his favorite son, the von Kassel hope? There were still matters to resolve—the future of the family to assure, to preserve, as he had done. Out of his will had come the recreation of the von Kassels. He. shivered, feeling the icy current of death pass through his failing body.
"So we will all be together tonight," Albert said pleasantly, the words the beginning of his departure. He reached out for his father's hand. The Baron grasped Albert's again, husbanding its warmth.
"Cocktails precisely at seven. Dinner at eight," Karla said.
"Lovely," Albert said, bending to acknowledge the old hand's pressure. Then he straightened and turned to his aunt, bowing his head.
The Baron watched him go, studying the straight back moving gracefully, so unlike Rudi's. Then, he was staring at the closed door, feeling his helplessness. Was it merely another aberration of a diminishing life? He sighed and shook his head.
"Perhaps he will change his mind," Karla said. There could never be freedom from her watchful eye. Actually, he knew, he did not want her to see this gesture of doubt. Now he had to respond. There could be no dissimulation between them.
"I'm not sure," he said, tapping lightly on the blanket she had wrapped around his legs. He looked at his sister, the aged face burnished now, reminding him of their grandfather, an image which came back to him now. The face had been severe, the eyes also deep set, capable of glowing with anger and hatred. He had never seen love there. Only duty! Although the bitterest wrath had always been reserved for his own father. The
family is everything. Über Alles! The words had been speared into their minds.
"How would he have judged him?" Charles asked. In his mind the real Baron had always been his grandfather, his father's father. Once he had seen him kill a perceived enemy with his bare hands, gnarled fists crushing the man's skull. He had been a boy of ten, but he helped throw the man into a pit of lime. He would never have dared to ask why. Nor had there been the barest tremor of remorse. It was then that he learned that the von Kassels were a law unto themselves.
"Beyond the von Kassels there is nothing," his grandfather had intoned. It was the gauntlet thrown down, the spike embedded in his own brain.
They sat in silence for a long time, the unanswered question between them. The light changed as the sun grew higher and the Baron's head tipped onto his chest.
CHAPTER 3
Siegfried von Kassel sipped the imperfect martini, taking comfort only in the observation of the rectory's vaulted ceiling with the delicate ribbing that plumed from the pillars.
"Like music set in stone," he said aloud, although the words were meant for himself alone. Heather stood beside him, her British face fixed in that aloof horsey way, which he detested.
"Quite interesting," she agreed. He looked at her with a flash of annoyance, as if she had intruded on some sacred moment of inner reflection. The reunion made them both edgy.
The rectory, once the chapel of the Old Order, was now the dining room. A portion had been set aside for the cocktail gathering, divided by a gold flecked rope on silver stanchions, separating the T-shaped table around which the von Kassels would dine, as always, in the ritual way. Waiters passed drinks on silver trays while a string trio played.
Because he was outside the family business, neither he nor Heather was in social demand by the family.
As the eldest, he might have held center stage in such a setting. But he had already made peace with his rejection and had passed the Rubicon from rebellion to tolerance.
It was all an absurdity, he had decided long ago. All this mumbo jumbo about blood ties, the pseudomystique of carrying all this feudal nonsense into the twentieth century. Not to mention the moral monstrosity of being in the business of brokering weapons. He had, of course, relegated the moral issue to some sanitized Siberia, rarely alluding to the matter. It was, he knew, his Achilles' Heel to enjoy all the fruits of this activity while despising its source.
He was pushing forty now and his anger at his own hypocrisy was subject to occasional acute attacks assuaged sometimes by either witty sarcasm's or cruel barbs directed at others. He hoped the indisposition would be dormant during this reunion, although he knew that was unlikely. The Baron was definitely dying and it would be impolitic to be nasty at this precarious time. In his father's eyes, he was more eccentric than a traitor.
Downing the martini, he left the olive and put the empty glass on the passed tray, replacing it with a full one. Heather looked at him sternly.
"You won't get soused?" she said, hissing the words through a fixed smile aimed at cousin Adolph, who was waddling toward them.
"How then to endure," he answered, forcing his teeth to show.
"Siegfried, dear Siegfried," Adolph fawned, kissing Heather on both cheeks.
"And how is Asia?" Siegfried asked, noting that Adolph's face had dissolved into a soft puddle of flesh. You've become a pudding, he wanted to say.
"Blood hot." He grabbed Siegfried's upper arm and brought his scented face close to Siegfried's ear.
"They are fucking themselves to death," he chuckled. "But it is good for business. Soon all governments will encourage riots just to eliminate the population growth." He laughed, a silly revolting high-pitched sing-song which hinted at his sexual preferences. When he had recovered, he moved away to greet Rudi and his wife Mimi.
"She looks like a painted witch," Heather whispered watching her sister-in-law. Siegfried nodded. Despite her German antecedents, Mimi had become thoroughly Latinized, her eyes heavily mascara'd in the fashion of Latin women. She wore diamond earrings and a ruby and emerald necklace that stretched over her ample bosom. The twins in crisp crinoline dresses played tag along the golden rope. They had already overturned a stanchion, which had made a loud noise falling on the stone floor, startling them all. Rudi had scolded them.
"When the Baron comes down you are not to make a sound, not a sound."
After the rebuke, Rudi turned and the twins stuck out their tongues and made faces at his broad soft back.
The drive from Amsterdam had been devised more as a punishment for Heather, merely to string out the time, so that she would have to miss the annual meet at Bath. Ordinarily, she would have put teeth behind her protest by refusing to accompany him. But she dared not so close to a reunion. She had, at least, a fair portion of good practical British common sense. If he became too riled, he would be truly awful at the reunion, which could be dangerous to their security, her horses, the country house, the stables and their ample staff of servants.
The alcohol was already beginning to blunt the edge of his tension, sharpening, he imagined, his powers of observation. Always, after the second martini he could feel the wings of his intellect flap. His mind, he imagined, became a camera, the lens capturing details that, sober, might have escaped his view.
He could, for example, feel tremors of expectation as each new participant arrived at the high arched entrance, captured in a kind of medieval time warp, since beside the entrance were two standing "Knights" in full regalia, their shields emblazoned with the ubiquitous Teutonic symbols. Eyes would shift swiftly. The drone of conversation would diminish perceptibly. Then the assemblage, having satisfied the brief curiosity, would return to its original pursuits.
The most telling detail, observed when Siegfried reached this state, was the sense of time. Reunions normally were held at three-year intervals, and this reunion held six months early was an aberration, providing the gathering with an unusual sense of tension. But the aging process was still visible and the perceptible changes in others made him wonder why he did not see these changes in himself.
His brother Rudi was running to fat, the red glow in the face deepening, the hairline receding despite his efforts at covering the patches with a new hairdo. His wife, Mimi, was expanding, balloonlike, into the conventional matriarchal posture of a Latin oligarch, gluttonous and arrogant. And the other von Kassels fawning and scraping. Each tried to outdo the other in ingratiation. One could see the transparency of their approach in little things. Cousin Frederick would click his heels and bow in the old manner when greeting the brothers. With Albert, who had not yet arrived, as if the protocol demanded a later entrance for the favorite son, he would bend deeper; the click would be louder. And greeting the Baron and his aunt would engender an explosive snap and bow as if his spine were cracking.
Cousin Wilhelm, who lived in Zurich, seemed to have redesigned his body and that of his wife to fit the gnomic description of his calling. He was a master of currency manipulation, an essential aspect of the family business. Cousin Klaus provided further amusements. Although he had thick European features, he affected the mannerisms of the enigmatic Indian, perhaps a guru, a logical oddment since he had lived in India for more than forty years. A broad smile, enigmatic he hoped, never left his face, even in anger, an emotion he had reason to express since his present wife was given to adulterous meanderings. Siegfried, winking at her, had firsthand knowledge of such activities and she had amused him during past reunions.
The silver tray passed again and he reached for another martini, replacing the empty glass.
"Must you?" Heather asked, her lips curled in annoyance.
"I must," he responded with exaggerated ceremony, a sure sign, even to himself, that the alcohol was being absorbed too swiftly. He made a mental note to slow down.
There was a brief ripple in the conversation. Eyes shifted to the arched entrance. Albert stood there briefly with Dawn, the latter gracefully posed in an off-one-shoulder white Galanos, her
tanned skin glistening in the chandeliered lights.
"Smashing," Siegfried whistled, watching Albert accept the admiration of the assembled guests. Frederick's heel click echoed in the vaulted ceilings, and the others crowded about him. The Golden Knight, Siegfried thought, not without a tinge of jealousy, although he adored his younger brother. He had always been grateful for having been spared spending his early years with Albert. Jealousy might have consumed him. He watched as Albert guided Dawn through the admiring family circle to where he and Heather were standing, deliberate nonparticipants in the family small talk.
"So good seeing you again, Siegfried," Dawn said, offering her cheek, obviously grateful for a familiar face. They had met in New York during one of Siegfried's frequent visits. He felt the skin's softness, breathing the lovely delicate scent of her. Property of the Golden Knight, he thought, sensing warning signals as his body responded with spontaneity. Albert kissed Heather and Siegfried introduced her to Dawn.
The amenities over, Siegfried turned to his younger brother, watching him survey the people in the room.
"Same old freaks," he observed.
"I understand we have an addition to the cast," Albert said.
Siegfried brightened.
"Yes. A new face. Uncle Wolfgang's woman and the issue thereof. I felt bad about his dying. It was comforting always to have a sheep blacker than myself."
"Why do you suppose she's come?" Albert asked idly.
"That's academic. The question is why have they let her come." He sighed. "Enigmas within enigmas."
"Mustn't jump to conclusions," Albert said.
"The obvious is the obvious." Siegfried hesitated. "Like you and Dawn."
"A perfect example of faulty interpretations."
"Well then, you aren't playing fair."
"I know," Albert replied. Siegfried caught the implication. So the Dawn episode is ending, he observed. Albert seemed harassed, his mind elsewhere.
"You've seen the old man?" Siegfried asked, changing the subject.
"Yes."
"Messy business. Dying. I thought he would live forever. He's taking it like some kind of insult. Von Kassels do not expire easily. Even this reunion. Six months off schedule. Everything must be disrupted for the passage. I'd prefer a simple hail and farewell myself."