Blood Ties

by Warren Adler

  The shock of it had jarred him. He had, he knew, always felt the void, the missing mother. Childish yearnings, screams in the night, loneliness, a missing link. The Baron had been the father. There was never a question about that. The father! Once, he had questioned why he could never feel any warmth for his father, and that had set him on a journey of cross-purposes. He had even consciously rejected his blood by refusing to replicate himself. At last he knew the reasons. He was another man's son. Not a von Kassel at all. Where then was his elation? And his real father?

  The room seemed suddenly damp and he realized that his shirt was soaked through. Taking it off, he replaced it, feeling the chill against his skin. If only he could summon ridicule again, the old sardonic pose, the quiver of barbed wit, the self-mocking irony. As the moment stretched and the light changed in the room, he realized he could not stay another minute alone.

  * * *

  Siegfried needed to tell someone. It was the kind of information that bloated the gut. Yet he found it impossible to find the courage to tell his brothers. Not yet. Not now.

  The idea of Dawn had popped into his mind as he had turned and seen Albert talking quietly with Olga on the bench, oblivious to the trauma that would soon descend on all of them. He moved quickly to the suite she shared with Albert.

  "God," she said as she opened the door, sluggish with sleep. The suite was a mess. He followed her into the bedroom. Squinting into the mirror, she put a brush through her hair, her flesh and her flimsy clinging nightgown moving in tandem, the lack of modesty validating their previous intimacy. Slipping into a satin dressing gown, she acknowledged his presence again. "You look like hell."

  Following her into the sitting room, he watched as she poured coffee from a silver pitcher on a heated stand. She had felt its surface first, wrung her hand as the heat pained, then poured the liquid into a saucerless cup. "Want some?"

  "A drink maybe." His eyes found the liquor table and he poured himself a whiskey.

  "Hair of the dog," she said, raising her cup as she looked out of the window. What she saw cast a shadow of anger over her features. "He could have at least spared me that." She shrugged, slipping into depression. She turned away and fell heavily into the couch. "If you're here for a rematch, I'm not in the mood." She must have realized her nastiness. "Pay no attention, Siegfried. I feel so goddamned empty." She paused. "As soon as I pull myself together, I'm splitting. I have had quite enough of the von Kassels."

  "We may not be what we seem," he said slowly.

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "I've got to tell somebody," he said, feeling foolish. "Have you got a mother?" His tongue sounded thick.

  "Jesus, Siegfried. No riddles today." She watched him and shook her head. "Are you drunk?"

  "A little." He paused. "Yes, as a matter of fact. It must have sneaked up on me." He put down his glass. "The point is that I have just seen and talked with my mother ... or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Someone who purports to be."

  "Your mother's been dead for years. Even I know that. Everybody knows that." She had, he noted, decided to be patient with him, humor him. Looking toward the window, she shook her head. Her mind was elsewhere.

  "I just saw her. She talked to me."

  "You are drunk."

  "I wish I was hallucinating. Really, Dawn. I talked to her." The story spilled out, drawing her interest. As he spoke, he felt his hands shake and, at times, his voice cracked.

  "Take it easy," she said. He felt his strength ebb and sat down.

  "I suppose I should be relieved," he said when he had finished.

  "And you believe her?" Dawn asked.

  "Would you?"

  "Nothing surprises me about you people," she sighed.

  "I feel nothing," Siegfried said suddenly, tasting a backwash of held-in salt tears. "I was in the same room with her. And I felt nothing. I didn't want to believe her. Even now ... I hope she is a fraud. The von Kassels are always coming up with long lost relatives. Fortune hunters."

  "Perhaps she is."

  "And where is she now?"

  "She says she has gone to tell the Baron."

  "Well that should shake things up a bit." She smirked, slapping her thighs. "So you're all bastards," she mumbled.

  Had he expected compassion? Understanding? She turned now and stared at him coldly, enjoying the spectacle of his anguish.

  "So the myth is all bullshit."

  He had lived his life in conflict with it, protesting it. Now the foil was gone and he confronted his own emptiness.

  "I must stop her," he decided, moving toward the door. But his legs felt shaky and Dawn's voice made him pause.

  "You think you can deprive her of her moment?"

  Closing the door behind him, he could still hear her mocking laughter ringing in his ears.

  CHAPTER 12

  Albert walked swiftly, passing through the great stone gate, moving beside the road that the big Daimler had traversed the day before. The road inclined downward and his legs moved fast. When tense, his body demanded activity.

  Perhaps if he had slept better, Albert thought, he might have been more persuasive. It irritated him that he had not articulated his rejection of the plutonium deal with more convincing power. Rudi's arguments were far more compelling. In a way, he too felt some odd pride in his bumbling brother's emergence as a stronger figure than they had all reckoned.

  Dawn had come into their suite soon after he had got into bed. He had feigned sleep, dreading a confrontation. Besides, she was most certainly drunk, especially if she had been carousing with Siegfried. Or more. He wished he was asleep. Once he had believed that she was necessary to his life, that he had discovered what was essential, the completeness that love brought. Love?

  He knew she was hovering over the bed watching him.

  "So you were with her," she said quietly. Ignoring her, he strained his lids to keep them shut.

  "I saw you," she said, her voice rising. When he did not respond, she leaned over and shook him violently.

  "You could at least have spared my pride." He felt only pity for her now.

  "We talked," he said finally.

  "So I no longer am needed," she said bitterly. It was true. No answer was required.

  "I'm leaving tomorrow," she said.

  In the dark he nodded. He wondered if she had seen the gesture.

  "Tomorrow," she repeated.

  "Yes," he said. "That is the best course."

  Through the ensuing silence, he could hear her breathing.

  "You are a sonofabitch."

  He wanted to explain about the end of love, to talk about the good times. The past. She no longer mattered. It was painful knowledge. Why could she not go quietly? No explanation from him could assuage her pain.

  "I let your brother have me," she said, her voice breaking. "But at least I kept it in the family. Goddamned von Kassels."

  He was not moved. Jealousy. All sense of possession had died. He wished it could be graceful, an elegant parting. But she did not really know how long ago it had disappeared, how long he had dissimulated.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. Tears had run down her cheeks.

  "I'm sorry, Dawn."

  "You shit," she screamed.

  "What can I say?"

  "Nothing. Say nothing. Just get me out of here."

  He could not tell how long she had berated him. Then she had, out of exhaustion, lay beside him. She must have cried herself to sleep. Patience, he urged himself, thinking of Olga. The void had already been filled. But for how long this time?

  Albert's legs carried him swiftly down the incline. If only this thing with Dawn did not come simultaneously with the other complications of his life. His mind roared back to the issue of the plutonium.

  "We are never responsible," his father had intoned. If his father had doubts, there had never been the remotest hint. "If one von Kassel had faltered, where would we be?" This indifference to consequences was the adhesive that
bonded the myth. How dare he question that? Sooner or later the substance would find its way into irresponsible hands. Was that really a moral question? That was fear. How presumptuous to imagine that he was so high-minded. He was a hypocrite like the rest of them.

  When he began to perspire heavily, he stopped, rested briefly, then proceeded back to the castle. But thoughts of Dawn persisted. She, too, had charged the ramparts of the von Kassel obsession.

  "But why?" she had asked.

  "Why what?"

  "Why arms? There are a hundred other ways. Banking. Real estate. You are rich enough, clever enough to do anything. Why this?"

  She had brooded over it, broadening the theme as they grew closer until it became the Greek chorus of their affair. He had long given up its justification to her, but had listened patiently, the arguments of little concern. Perhaps it was that that had killed it in him, the stubborn probings of his inner life, moving mental furniture that had once been carefully placed.

  "If you think that I am a pariah and what I do disgusts you, then why are you with me?"

  "Because I love you," she had replied.

  Once, in the midst of a coupling, she might have come to the heart of it. Albert was in her, his phallus heavy with the blood of his desire. He mocked it now, but then he was gorging himself, filling her with himself, and she was responding in white heat. Then she stopped suddenly, her body abruptly calmed.

  "What is it?" he had whispered.

  "Why are all those weapons shaped like cocks?"

  "Not now, Dawn."

  "But I am close to the truth," she had said.

  "Not now." Quickly, she had picked up the rhythm of their intercourse again. But what she had said triggered some malevolence in him and when she was at the point of greatest tension, he moved his pelvis, uncoupling.

  "Please," she gasped.

  "You need something?"

  "Please."

  "What do you need?"

  "Your cock. Please. In me," she whimpered.

  "Say weapon," he chided, cool now, sure of his manhood.

  "Weapon," she cried. "Don't do this."

  "Just a little lesson in power," he whispered, bringing his body down again, finding the sheath, feeling her suck him into her, writhing in the anguish of her need. She spent herself in a series of furious explosions.

  "Not power. Simply proving your manhood. Silly macho. There is a meanness about it. You only defeated yourself." She had patted his limp phallus. "See?"

  Coming through the gate again, Albert saw Olga sitting on a bench. She was alone, a figure in reflective repose and he watched her silently for a long moment, wondering if their mutual searching could lead to the same treasure. Finally, she had sensed his presence.

  "You look flushed," she said. She had been expressionless, inward-looking. Now her face brightened and she smiled broadly. For me? he wondered.

  "I've been walking. And I'm in lousy shape."

  She looked fresh and clean in the morning air, the sunlight flattering her skin.

  "And Aleksandr?"

  "Somewhere," she said, looking about her. "He was playing with the twins."

  "So they are becoming friendly," he said, sitting down beside her.

  "So it seems."

  Her loveliness dispelled his anxieties, lifting his spirits.

  "Dawn's going home today," he said, revealing what thoughts were on the top of his mind. She said nothing and turned her face away. "It is the best course ... for both of us."

  "That's too bad," Olga said, continuing to avoid his eyes.

  "At least it is honest," he said firmly.

  "Yes. I recall. It is one of your passions."

  Again, he detected the underlying belligerency, the odd sense of ambivalence and conflict.

  "It confuses you?" he asked gently, as if the question were posed to him as well.

  "Of course."

  "Me as well," he confessed.

  Her lips puckered in a gesture of disbelief.

  "You? Really Albert. You're teasing. You. The heir apparent. That borders on rebellion." She looked at him closely. "I had a hint of that last night. Is it a pose? Or do I misunderstand?"

  "I'm not sure. If you mean: Is the justification for the family business becoming increasingly difficult for me? The answer is yes."

  "Last night you were an advocate. You were defending it." Her eyes narrowed. "Or are you making fun of me?"

  "In a way, we're both objects of some amusement."

  "You're talking in riddles."

  "Look at you. The wife of a man who spoke against us all his life. Then suddenly, with his body barely tucked away, you appear on the scene. On the one hand you rage against our moral decadence, profess your repugnance at the naure of our business, and on the other you tell me that you have come to search for a sense of family, the von Kassel blood bond. Love and hate. Wolfgang's affliction. You can't really have it both ways, you know."

  "I never said I wanted it either way." Her cheeks had flushed. He was pushing it too far, he decided, but he could not stop himself.

  "Then what the hell are you here for?" He was, he knew, challenging himself. He had stunned her. Angrily, she stood up. Reaching out, he took her arm and forced her down again.

  "I understand it, because I feel it myself."

  "How could you?" she said between clenched teeth. "You are..." Pausing, she searched for words.

  "I know what I am," he began, wanting at last to confront his own hypocrisy, to tell her of his own self-loathing, but then they heard the boy's scream. She rose in panic and ran in the direction of the sound. Following, he moved swiftly into the woods. The screams grew louder, more repetitive.

  They found Aleksandr, ashen and frightened, floundering in a stream, waist high, too petrified to move. He had obviously been traversing a small bridge and had fallen through the rotted wood. Albert broke a branch from a nearby tree and, instructing the boy to hold on to one end, pulled him out of the water. The danger had been more from panic than drowning. Olga gathered him in her arms soothing him with kisses.

  "I used to play here as a kid," Albert said, remembering that a DANGER sign had been there. While Olga continued to comfort the boy, he poked around in the bushes. Someone had uprooted the sign and flung it out of sight. Replacing it, he banged it into the ground with a rock.

  "Where are the twins?" Albert asked the distraught boy. He shrugged, indicating his innocence of their whereabouts, although he pointed to the other side of the stream.

  "I'd better take him up," Olga said, leading the boy away by the hand.

  Albert watched their figures recede. At that moment, he would have gladly changed places with Aleksandr.

  The sight of the twins and their overpainted mother increased his irritation.

  "Who moved the sign?" he snapped at the twins, ignoring Mimi's hostile look. The twins huddled closer to the ample figure as her chubby arms embraced them.

  "I said who moved the sign." His eyes searched their identical faces. Inger and Ingrid. Rudi's furtive eyes peered back, indicating their transparent joint guilt.

  "Go on to lunch, children," Mimi said suddenly, and the two girls swiftly disappeared into the rectory.

  "They removed the danger sign from the little bridge. The boy might have been killed. He was lucky."

  "Come now, Albert. Let's not overdramatize a harmless childhood prank."

  "They should be punished."

  "My. How your attachment has clouded your judgment." The sarcasm was heavy.

  "They probably reacted to your venomous paranoia. You can't keep mouthing off and expect the kids to be neutral."

  It was obvious that he had struck the right chord. She flushed with anger and he braced himself for her onslaught.

  "She has no business here, except to hurt us."

  "Hurt us?"

  "I tell you she is a KGB agent."

  "And if she is?"

  She looked at him with contempt. "Rudi is right, you know. You have lost yo
ur balls."

  He was ready to say more, but Adolph had come up behind them. Seeing him, Mimi sneered with disdain and stormed into the rectory. Albert was thankful that a scene had been averted.

  "They are getting cocky, don't you think, cousin?" Adolph whispered, placing himself close enough for Albert to get the full measure of his cologne. Then he placed a chubby hand on his arm and whispered in Albert's ear.

  "There is more to this than meets the eye, cousin."

  Adolph was given to cryptic implications. To him, most people had sinister motives.

  "I agree with you completely, Albert. I wouldn't touch the plutonium deal under any circumstances." He paused. "Don't misunderstand. I'm not being high-minded. I'll leave that turf to you. Everyone is entitled to at least one tantrum."

  "Tantrum? Is that what you think?"

  "A kind of hysteria induced by too much conscience. This too shall pass."

  "And if it doesn't?"

  "God help us. Do you think your asshole brother can run things? You had better get your act together and spare us the experience."

  "I will not deal in that commodity," Albert said firmly. "I think I have made myself clear."

  "It may be too late for such luxurious morality, cousin."

  Albert looked into Adolph's face, the mask of jowls unable to hide the animal intelligence beneath it.

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "In due time, cousin. In due time. We'll both know soon enough."

  Albert studied his fat cousin. He was efficient and loyal. But devious, oblique. Sexuality was not his only aberration. He had little respect for the human race, and under the pose of the voluptuary was a hard cynicism.

  "Soon enough," Adolph repeated.

  At that moment, the elevator door cranked open and his father emerged slowly, moving unsteadily on his cane. He was alone. It struck Albert as odd that his aunt did not accompany him. Rushing forward, Albert grabbed the old man's free arm to support him.

  "Where is Aunt Karla?" Albert asked. The Baron, too, was obviously confused and disturbed by her absence.

  "I don't know. It is not like her."