by Warren Adler
Pacing the room, energized now beyond the possibility of sleep, he felt a compelling need to be with Olga, as if something between them was unsaid. Picking up the telephone, he waited for a sound. The sleepy-voiced night clerk answered indifferently. He asked for Olga von Kassel's room. There were odd clicking sounds of the old system, then a ring. She answered quickly.
"Can I see you?" He did not introduce himself. Had he assumed too much?
"Now?" He felt the thump of his heart. Had she expected his call? Was she waiting?
"Please."
"But it is late..." Her protest seemed perfunctory. Had he engaged her? "Can you?" He noted the delicacy.
"Yes." There was a long pause.
"I suppose the boy will be all right."
"I'm sure," he said selfishly.
"Well, not for too long."
"No," he promised. "I wanted to talk."
"Where?" she asked.
His mind reconstructed the courtyard.
"Near the tennis courts. In ten minutes..."
Doubts. He had felt them begin before, a tiny whitecap, one of many on the distant plateau of ocean.
And yet he had weathered them before, since his childhood. He remembered his first days of the boarding school in Massachusetts, faced with the barrier of language and youth. He was eight and his peers were unmerciful in their taunting him for his thick German accent, later for his English malapropisms. As now, the doubts were never of the enemies, physical or human, only of his own courage.
His outer skin, his armor, projected such a different aspect, the strong, handsome, confident, fearless, courageous, young von Kassel, who ran an arms empire of staggering proportions. Staggering was the word others used. To him it was merely complex and enormous. He was not staggered by it because it was so cleverly organized, so efficient. He could be proud of himself on that score. The Baron had rebuilt the old family business on, at best, a makeshift foundation, acknowledging that it was, indeed, his youngest son who brought it together with amazing qualities, von Kassel qualities. Albert had been proud and cocky at his achievement, had enjoyed the besting of brother Rudi. Even as children, visiting with the Baron during their school vacations, Rudi was always defeated having expended the most energy with the least amount of success. Siegfried, on the other hand, always disqualified himself from competition. No amount of browbeating from them, even from the Baron, could get him to compete. Siegfried knew he engendered disgust in his father and embarrassment in his brothers. He had grown into a charming rogue. The Baron blamed it on the British and their effete schools.
"Thank goodness the British don't count for anything anymore," the old Baron would say, usually in connection with any discussion of Siegfried. The old man always expressed his pride in having sent his two younger sons to the Americas, Albert to the States, Rudi to Argentina.
"I saw Germany falling," he had explained. "It was not the first time I was involved in the end of a chapter. It was simply another catastrophic wrenching of the old order. There would be hard times ahead. One could not depend on Germany as a growth environment."
Like the Rothschilds. Sending sons everywhere. "Perhaps the von Kassels picked up a splash of Yiddish blood during the Holy Land crusades," Siegfried had said on numerous occasions.
Albert's sense of doubt had grown stronger as he grew older. He felt like a stranger in his own family, and the realization that he no longer loved Dawn only added to his alienation. Was he doomed to bounce between new women, like some vampire picking up sustenance by draining the emotional blood of his victims?
Reaching the lobby level, he walked swiftly through the deserted corridor to a side entrance. Muted voices and soft violin music came from a distance, punctuated by a sporadic burst of drunken laughter. Outside the air was clear, filled with the perfume of sleeping plants. He moved quickly beyond the puddle of light thrown by the entrance lamps, proceeding over the gravel path to the darkened tennis courts, where he paused, looking back on the castle sprinkled with flickering window lights, an odd gothic caricature, like an abandoned movie set.
He was so absorbed in his own thoughts, he had not heard her footsteps approach, only her voice emerging out of the light.
"I went the wrong way," Olga said. He saw the outline of her face, sharply etched in the moonlit night. She had wrapped herself in a shawl. "They are still carousing in the bar."
"My brother?"
"Yes. And the fat one."
"Adolph."
He waited, testing her tact. But she was silent.
"Did they see you?"
"I looked in. But I'm not sure." She paused again as if an explanation was required. He felt compelled to oblige, knowing she had also seen Dawn there.
"We had words," he said. He moved beside her and they began to walk the path that skirted the tennis courts.
"The air is wonderful here," she said, ignoring the confession. He heard the force of her lungs' intake. "Moscow is also getting polluted."
"So it's true even in the brave new world?" he asked, rhetorically.
"He reminded me of Wolfgang. Your father," she said.
"Was my uncle that serious?"
"Extremely. In a way they are three peas in a pod. Your aunt, Wolfgang, your father."
"Wolfgang was the oldest." Albert instantly regretted the remark. But the obscene image of her with the ancient wrecked man must have been lying on the surface of his mind. Am I jealous?
"He was good to me," she said, responding quickly, as if the remark needed an apology.
"I didn't mean to imply..." he began, but she interrupted him.
"He was fifty years my senior. By any standard it was an absurdity. He shared his flat with my family for nearly thirty years. Since before I was born. I thought he was my uncle." She laughed. Was she mocking him? Why the compulsion to tell? Perhaps she too wanted to start clean.
"I knew all the von Kassel stories before I was able to read. He would sit for hours and tell us about his early life in Estonia, cursing the decadence and brutality of his family. It was as if he had always the need to work himself up to his hate, like restoking old ashes. You were all monsters, the lot of you. Brutes. Killers. Acquisitive. Greedy. Obsessed with perpetuation."
"And did tonight's activities reaffirm his opinion?"
Olga paused momentarily, a sigh escaping her lips.
"It is not easy to transfer hate," she answered. "Observing through my own eyes, I thought the spectacle fascinating. The family obsession has quite a bit of raw power. To the end, Wolfgang could not get it out of his system. It seemed the dominant theme of his life." She hesitated and he felt she wanted to say more. After a moment she went on. "He made me promise to come. A death promise. Never, I had decided. After all that venom, why should I expose myself and my son to such monsters. I had been with him to Estonia. I know your history, perhaps better than you. Merchants of death, Wolfgang called you. Evil incarnate."
"Then why did you change your mind?"
She shrugged and was silent, stopping suddenly to face him in the dark. He could not see her eyes, lost in the shadow of her brow.
"I'm not sure," she said, starting to walk again.
"The amazing thing is that they let you leave." He remembered Mimi's earlier accusation.
"Now there is a question easily answered," she said with a smile in her voice. "They let out only the ones they trust the most. Wolfgang was an editor in an important publishing house. We were both members of the Party. The bureaucratic machine moves slightly faster when one has those credentials."
"I hadn't realized your dedication," Albert said.
"I didn't say that."
"A Party member? The assumption is there. Perhaps you are even an agent."
"An agent?" There seemed an inadvertent quiver in her voice.
"Or whatever."
"And I am infiltrating the ring of the sinister and mysterious von Kassels?"
"There is some logic in it. We are in a business that interests them. The
y are, you know, a party to our commerce. We sell their products."
"Then you should be on your guard."
"I am," he paused. "More than you think."
They were moving beyond the tennis courts now, continuing the path which apparently ran through the flower gardens. The perfume in the air thickened.
"How delicious," Olga said. By now, his humor had changed. He was angry with himself for probing her as if he were a detective. Suddenly she stopped, her eyes searching his face.
"He asked me to come. Go to them, he said. Show them Aleksandr. See for yourself. The boy is, after all, a von Kassel. Never doubt the power of the blood myth, he said. On my part, I came here detesting you all. The history of your family is a moral nightmare."
"So the Reds now debate morality."
"No one can defend the indefensible," she said calmly. He had expected her to snap at him. "Besides I am more an opportunist than an idealogue."
"Then you're not a dedicated Red?" he asked.
"I'm not a dedicated anything."
The idea rolled in his mind like a lozenge spurting its juices. It was precisely that quality of dedication that he doubted in himself.
"Well then," he said after a long pause, but could think of nothing else to say. They had slowed their pace as the path turned and they were headed back in the direction of the castle. Along the edge of the path he saw a bench. The wood felt damp and, pausing, he wiped it with his handkerchief and they sat down. The moon, like a bloated fruit, was rising high over the tower now. Faintly, in a distant echo, musical sounds floated over the courtyard.
"They are still at it," Olga observed.
"My brother has been known to remain drunk during an entire reunion."
There was a long silence as they listened to the sounds of the night, audible against the faint music.
"Reunion," she whispered. "Reunion. How I envy you that."
"Envy?"
"No matter what, there is the comfort of belonging. At least you are an entity. My family is gone."
"And the great family of the Soviets? Surely there is some consolation in belonging to that."
"I tell myself that every day. Somehow it leaves something out. Ideology. Patriotism. The bond seems contrived somehow. One seems to want more."
Perhaps that was what drew him to her. She envied exactly the thing which he could not find. Her closeness stirred him and he felt his growing excitement, the attraction articulated.
"But it's your family as well," Albert assured her. "You have every right to share in its largesse." He had meant it sincerely, but he felt her stiffen.
"So they've sent you to probe my real motives," she said, suddenly defensive. Her attitude confused him.
"I don't understand."
"You think I have come for money."
"It doesn't matter. I hadn't..."
"You think I would ever accept one cent of the von Kassel blood money."
"Now you're being noble," he snapped. He could not believe that she could be so far off the mark.
"Noble?"
"We don't spill the blood. The weapons are manufactured by precious governments like your own, a little band of small men really, trying to control as many people as they can."
"I'm not justifying them either. I am not happy with conditions."
"Then what makes us so evil? We deal in a commodity, for which there is an exceeding demand."
"It never troubles you."
"I didn't say that."
Of course it troubled him. How explicit must he be? Why couldn't she see into his heart?
"Well then." Olga turned to him. "If they hadn't sent you to probe, then why did you ask me here? Surely not to argue."
"Frankly, I've had enough argument for one night." She understood the reference instantly.
"Fair enough," she said. "At least that I can understand." Pausing, he felt her soften. "She is quite lovely, though. Will you marry her?"
"No."
"Everyone assumed that she was being exhibited as the future Baroness Albert von Kassel. I overheard them."
"Sorry to disappoint everyone." Albert was annoyed now. "I didn't ask you here to discuss my relationship with Dawn." His voice, which up to now had been modulated barely above a whisper, rose. "I asked you here to get to know you better. At the dinner, when we danced..." He felt his tongue tangle. "I felt we could be close."
In the darkness, he sensed her eyes searching his face. Embarrassed, he looked toward the castle, its looming bulk silhouetted against the moonlight. Lights still burned in some of the rooms. The brief combativeness somehow bonded their kinship. There were only the two of them, alone under the vast arc of the sky, on top of this ancient mountain. The sense of aloneness seemed complete. This was why he had asked her, he thought. To find this.
"Did you love my uncle?" he asked. Was it the compelling image of her husband and her together that had made him irritable?
"Love?" She seemed amused. "I was eighteen. He was sixty-six. That is not exactly the stuff of romantic stories."
"Now I really am prying." But he wanted to know. She must have sensed that, as she continued. So he was not alone in his need for self-justification.
"Both my parents had died. We would get the flat to ourselves. It was sound economically. He protected me. He was good to me. I was a good and faithful wife. And I had his child."
"He did not move you?" The question had popped out. He was losing all sense of discipline.
"So that's why you never married," she mocked. "You have a heavy emotional requirement. One would think a man so successful would be more calculating. I think I have found your Achilles' heel." She smiled broadly, her teeth capturing the light of the faltering moon. He watched her lips, moved toward them, but hesitated and moved away. A light flickered briefly in a castle window, plunging the entire front façade into darkness.
"Apparently, you had no requirements in that direction," he said, testing the observation.
"All right then," she said. "Marrying Wolfgang was a practical consideration. We are, above all, a pragmatic people. I had my job. I am a translator."
"But marriage?"
"He wanted a child," she chuckled. "At first I was amused. I must admit I had no desire for children. None at all. Besides, I thought it impossible at his age, which proved my utter ignorance of biology." The ensuing silence illustrated her sense of personal delicacy. Although he detested the image she released, he was flattered by the intimacy.
"The conception was not the only miracle," Olga said crisply. "Suddenly I had something to love, something that I owned, that was mine. You have got to live in a society like ours to know how important that is. Wolfgang was, of course, ecstatic. A son. A von Kassel."
"But he hated us."
"I wonder," she mused. "Perhaps he hated himself."
"He was staking a claim."
"That as well."
"The old fox," Albert said.
"You can't blame him for that," she sighed. "Without him, you would all have been ended in 1919. Talk about obsessions. All his life, he had wondered why he had saved the family."
"Saved us?"
Was she mocking him, he wondered? The night of the fire had always been the centerpiece of the von Kassels' recent history. The hanging of his grandfather. The saving of his father's life by Petya, the nursemaid. Their flight to the forest.
"Burning your house was not enough. They were determined to kill your family. Wolfgang painted a frightening picture of their thirst for revenge. In the end, he prevailed. He resigned his leadership in the Estonian Party and went off to Russia. He was able to exploit internal strife within the Party. They were ready to hunt your father and the others down and kill them like dogs. He traded his leadership for their lives. They let them live. A few days later the Estonian nationalists took power. And the von Kassels were able to rebuild."
"They never told me."
"The family does not know."
"Why didn't he tell them?"
"I had better go. Aleksandr rises early."
They started to walk again along the gravelled path. In the clear air, he heard the throaty laughter of a woman. Dawn. Then silence as they hurried toward the palace entrance. Pausing under the light, Albert turned toward her.
"Thank you," he said.
"For what?"
"For being honest."
She smiled. "It was you who wanted to talk."
He wanted to hold her in his arms, but held back. Looking into her eyes, he saw a mirror of his own doubt.
"Perhaps it is an endless river."
She looked at him for a long moment, a probing puzzled investigation. Then she turned and went into the lobby. Watching her disappear, he remained motionless long after she had gone.
Endless river! They were his father's words.
CHAPTER 8
Siegfried sat in the little bar just off the lobby. Once it had been a small chapel and the arched windows had been carefully embellished with stained glass, crude, repetitive depictions of a naked Christ on the cross under a floating halo. At some moment during the castle's conversion to a hotel, before the Baron had bought it, some malevolent historian of the ancient Order made the decision to put Christ in the bar room. It had not in any way inhibited alcoholic diversions and many a toast had been offered in its direction.
He had been feeling alternately edgy, exhilarated, nervous and tranquil throughout the evening. Now he was being reflective, sipping and sniffing his brandy from a deep ballooned glass, assembling and reassembling the images of the evening in his mind.
Dawn had amused him, so obviously using him as a device to upset the indifferent Albert. Apparently his brother's interests lay elsewhere, in the direction of the enigmatic Olga. He laughed into his glass. He would be happy to be Dawn's instrument. It would considerably lighten the burden of this insufferable reunion. Any diversion was welcome.