Blood Ties

by Warren Adler

  Charles had been listening patiently, propped in the bed watching the afternoon sunlight wash over the timberline to the west.

  It had been Karla's idea, after all, to invite Olga and the boy to the reunion. He had, of course, finally surrendered. For Karla was the tuning fork of himself, her instincts superior to his. Of that he was certain. It was merely a gesture of fate that she had been born a woman. Only a son, a male, could lead the von Kassels, although in his heart he knew that Karla was the stronger. Hadn't she proved that to him time and time again? With Emma? With Helga? How could he have done his duty without Karla?

  But he found it distasteful to reminisce about Wolfgang. Their disagreements had been fundamental. Wolfgang had always been bookish, argumentative, with no stomach for what had to be done with the peasants. Like his father.

  "We have too much. They have too little," Wolfgang would say. One could have suspected then where his future lay.

  "We have earned it," Charles would protest.

  "We stole it."

  "We are cleverer than they."

  "You mean stronger."

  "That too."

  Compassion Wolfgang had called it. Weakness his grandfather had warned. Pity waters the blood, weakens the resolve. Men were destined to clash. Life was the struggle to survive. And we must be true to our blood.

  Aleksandr sat patiently in a corner of the room, munching a cookie. The boy's resemblance to Wolfgang, even to Charles' grandfather, warmed him. He had never seen that resemblance in his own sons.

  "Something is wrong," he had confided to Karla after the meeting that morning.

  "Wrong?" He could sense her desire to calm him. "You must not thrash around so, Brother. The right way will emerge." He had been brooding about it all day.

  Perhaps it was the loss of the land. From the land, their Estonian lands, one could deduce a clear picture of the von Kassel heritage. The first von Kassel traveling east-ward surely fully understood his conquest in terms of land. That was the thing that he had always felt in his own blood, that his grandfather had confirmed.

  "They did not come to bring God. They came to find land."

  Now, without the land, it was difficult to convey the meaning of it. At least, he had seen the land, had lived on it, smelled it, touched it, killed for it. It was one thing to preserve the heritage of centuries when you had the land. If your spirit needed replenishment, if you faltered momentarily, you could always receive inspiration from the land.

  Now they had lost that symbol. There was still the other. The business of brokering arms, he had proved, could be another symbol of their cohesiveness, of the von Kassel nationhood. That too had held them together. That was the substitute for the land. But would the next generation carry on? Had he done his duty?

  It took will, courage, obsession. Would any of his sons have had the will to kill the barren Emma, to banish the faithless Helga, to have rebuilt the family business from a shell, to have sent their sons to the far corners of the world, to protect the heritage of blood?

  "So you see we are not monsters," Karla was saying. They had undoubtedly thought he had dozed and were speaking quietly together.

  "Monsters?" he said to let them know he had been listening.

  "He wanted you to come back to us," Karla said. It was, Charles knew, her constant theme with the Russian woman. But why? He could understand the motive, but not the degree of her singlemindedness. Karla is true to the blood, he thought. Was the implication that his sons, the blood of his sons, was not worthy?

  "To the reunion, yes," Olga agreed.

  "I mean permanently."

  "No, Karla. I doubt that. He hated the idea of the family business as well. And he was, to the end, as you put it, a good Bolshevik."

  "He was what he was. But he must have had other ideas for the boy."

  "Perhaps." A cloud passed over Olga's face, a hint of her indecision. "I'm not sure."

  "Why then do you think you have come?" Karla persisted. He had not seen her so agitated in years.

  "My own motives are clearer. Family. The boy had a right to see his family."

  "For what purpose?"

  Olga had lowered her eyes. Was it a pose, Charles wondered? Surely, if it was, Karla would see it quicker than himself. Perhaps the woman wanted to be persuaded, after all.

  "Can we go, Mama?" Aleksandr asked. With the last of the cookies, his child's contentment had vanished.

  "Soon," Olga said, patting the boy. It was obvious that her thoughts were elsewhere. She turned toward Karla.

  "All right then. I was alone. Wolfgang had not been able to stop talking ... you may be right ... longing for his family. If there was some mystique, I wanted to discover it for myself." The intensity of her explanation had made her breathless.

  "So the Jew Marx could not blot out the concept of family after all," Charles said. "Even that great archdevil could not destroy it." Karla turned toward him briefly, narrowing her eyes, the familiar rebuke for his exciting himself. He nodded acquiescence.

  "So you see, Olga, It was predestined."

  There was a long silence in the room. He could see the highest trees of the timberline pinching the sun's orange bottom and the light was changing rapidly. A clock on the mantlepiece ticked and the sounds of the castle's activity barely filtered into the room, muffled by the heavy stones' protection.

  "You must stay with us now, Olga. Think of the boy. Of his future. His destiny." She reached out and patted the boy's head. "We will send him to the best schools. We will prepare him for his proper place. He will have his fortune." She looked at Olga. "And so will you, Olga. That is what Wolfgang wanted."

  Charles watched her lift the teacup again, sipping what must be tepid liquid. Her fingers shook. Of course, it was what she had come for in the first place, had longed to hear.

  He lay back on the pillows, spent. Yes. He would choose Karla. Karla knew. Karla would be the bridge between him and the others. There was comfort in that. A bit of insurance. There would be at least a few years in between. Karla would protect them. The von Kassels! While he rested in his eternity with his ancestors in the Estonian ground.

  The pain had begun again. As always, he felt the inner panic. He must not die. Not quite yet. He stuck out his tongue and she placed two pills on it.

  "You really must defect, Olga. You owe it to the boy."

  The pain slowly receded and his eyes grew heavy.

  CHAPTER 16

  Only once had Siegfried had the courage to do what had to be done. To shut off the von Kassel spiggot. Every life had a foundation and that had been his. He had not, he knew now, done it for Alysha. He had done it for himself. And now, even that foundation, like everything in his life, had crumbled.

  He hated the woman, his mother, for telling him what he did not wish to know. Mother? Damn her. How dare she intrude on his hate?

  Even the induced mindlessness of alcohol had given him no respite. His body felt chilled. His head ached. What had transpired in the few hours before he had stumbled into bed was merely an unending series of nightmarish meanderings, kaleidoscopic wanderings in the anguish of his mind. He was trapped, he knew, in the equally preposterous worlds of reality and fantasy. Nothing could demolish that inescapable fact, although he had given it a solid try with alcohol. Vaguely, he had heard Heather's angry admonishment, then a slammed door, and he had sunk again into the pit of nothingness.

  He lay there, fists clenched, jaw tight, eyes bulging beneath tight lids, hoping that, somehow, if he held this stance it would all go away. Maybe it had been an apparition, an imagining, a drunken hallucination.

  When the woman had left, he had rushed to his father's suite, thankful that there had been no answer. Then he had gone to the lobby, standing among the Knights, waiting. Waiting for what? There was no sign of the woman. Then his father had appeared. Alone. He had, he remembered, detected some agitation in his father. Albert had seen him first and he had led the old man into the rectory. His aunt's absence had confused h
im. The woman had made Karla promise that she would see his father.

  But if, as the woman had promised, she had told her story, wouldn't he have been able to see it on his father's face?

  And if she had not told his father, why not? Siegfried's anxiety overheated his mind. He needed a drink. But he sat riveted to the chair, paralyzed by fear and uncertainty. To have told Dawn, a stranger, agitated him further. He was, he was certain now, the weakest of them all.

  He sat in the wing chair in the lobby for a long time, rising when he heard the tapping of his father's cane. He saw Aunt Karla and the Baron emerge slowly from the rectory and moved unsteadily toward them. He followed them down the corridor to the elevator. As they waited, his aunt turned toward him, beckoning for him to follow, and he got into the elevator when it came.

  Standing behind them as the elevator rose, he felt the full measure of his alienation, their toleration of his presence. When they arrived at their floor, his aunt turned, motioning with her finger, an unmistakable signal to wait. Emerging with them, he lingered near the elevator as they moved slowly to the Baron's suite. The Baron had barely acknowledged his presence.

  Siegfried was growing impatient when she emerged, wrapped in a coat. Saying nothing, he opened the elevator door. As he closed the gate, Karla pressed the button and the elevator rose. It was only when they arrived at the rampart promenade that he spoke:

  "She came to me this morning," he said. He wondered if she would be evasive. They began to walk along the graveled promenade. At first she did not respond. The only sound was the banner of the Old Order whipping in the wind.

  "It is no good pretending, Aunt," he said without looking at her face. "I saw her come in last night. I overheard you talking."

  They continued to walk. He sensed no contrition, no remorse. Why had he expected that, he wondered, as if in his heart he had already allied himself with the strange woman's aspirations.

  "Where is she now?" he asked. Karla stopped walking and turned to him.

  "I sent her away." His tension eased with the acknowledgment.

  "Again?"

  "Did it have any point? He is dying. You can see that."

  "And she consented to leave? Just like that? Without any protest? Without any word? Somehow she seemed more determined than that."

  "She was determined."

  "But she went?" His aunt shrugged. He felt a tug of filial instinct, a sense of loss. But hadn't she abandoned them? He was surprised at his flash of anger. Once he had yearned for his lost dead mother, had cried, suffered. The early pain had been her fault. He had a right to be angry with her.

  "Good riddance," he said bitterly.

  "And she didn't see him?" he asked. He could not bring himself to say father.

  "Thank God, no," she whispered. "Only me."

  "And you were able to persuade her."

  "Apparently. She is gone."

  He felt suddenly relieved. So nothing would change after all. Dawn would go away. That would be the end of it. But he could not resist a further probe.

  "You know, of course, what she told me. She said that the Baron was not our father."

  "Yes. She would say that. How else to sow more hatred, more doubt?"

  "Perhaps one," he said. "I might understand that. Even if it were me. But all three?" He took a deep gulp of the fresh mountain air. The sun was still high. "It is absurd, of course. Preposterous. Don't you think?"

  She turned to him and gripped his arm.

  "A pathological fantasy," Karla assured him. "But, then, she never lacked gall. It was tragic. She seemed unhinged even then." He longed to believe in the assurance.

  "You are von Kassels," Karla continued. "All quite legitimate. Even you, Siegfried."

  "She said she had a lover. A Jew."

  "There was no end to her contrivances," Karla sighed. "You are von Kassels," she said firmly. "There is no evidence to suggest otherwise. Only the ravings of an unfaithful woman." There was another long pause. "In the end, even she realized..."

  "Realized what?"

  "That it was better for her to go away."

  "I wanted to believe her," he confessed, confronting the truth of himself. He needed a drink. Despite the sun's warmth, he shivered and his legs were unsteady.

  "It would have explained everything," he said. "My life. I have never felt comfortable as a von Kassel. I wanted to believe her."

  "I'm sorry to have shattered your illusion. Not all von Kassels felt comfortable in their roles."

  Siegfried was not surprised at how easily he had accepted her explanation. There was, after all, no point in disturbing existing circumstances. His life's pattern had been set. If he was incredulous, he would try to create distance from it. Changes were a frightening prospect.

  By then they had traversed the full circle back to the elevator. Recovering herself, his aunt opened the gate of the cab. She pressed the button and the elevator moved, the ancient apparatus shivering as the cab descended. When it stopped, he opened the metal gate. It was then that she faced him again. In her face he saw the Baron, the same cold determined eyes, and beneath them, the cast of mind that gave perpetual energy to the family obsession. Against that, he could never muster more than a meek personal rebellion. He had wondered why he could never find it in himself. Now he knew. He was sure. He could no longer deny it to himself.

  "Say nothing," she said again. "Your mother is deranged." She turned and the doors clanged shut, emphasizing the point. It was then that he headed for the bar.

  CHAPTER 17

  The suite still held an aura of Dawn's presence, as if it were tangible evidence of her refusal to disappear quietly. In the end, he had not denied her her farewell moment. It had been an incredible, preposterous revelation. Then why could he not take refuge in its incredibility?

  He had tried to reach Olga by telephone, but there was no answer. Then he had tried to sleep, but had also failed at that. What he needed was to get away from this place, even for a few hours. Perhaps he might take Olga to dinner in the town.

  When he heard the knock on the door, he welcomed the intrusion. It was Adolph. He stepped inside the sitting room. He had the fat man's grace, a soft step. Often Albert had imagined him in the sexual embrace, the tub of flesh gorging greedily on the carcass of some tight-assed youth. But he knew there was much more to Adolph than met the eye, as if the fat and the homosexuality were merely a natural ruse to deflect penetration. Of all the von Kassels in the business, Adolph could be relied upon to consummate the most delicate deals. His turf being Asia, he was expert in the subtleties of doing business with Orientals, a talent that married deviousness with respect—the more devious, the more respect.

  "You seem agitated, Albert," he said.

  "You have something on your mind, Adolph?" Albert asked, countering the probe with another question.

  "I only suspected it this morning. Now it is confirmed." Adolph did not sit down.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Rudi. The plutonium."

  "That." His mind tried to focus on it.

  "It's a fait accompli," Adolph said, the usual patina of calm strangely missing. His cousin was uncharacteristically worried. "The material has been sold and moved. The gold has already been delivered to Buenos Aires."

  "To Buenos Aires?" He could not believe it. The Unstable South American banking system was rarely used by the family, certainly not for something of this size. All transactions moved through Swiss, German, or American sources.

  "That is not possible," Albert stammered. Adolph held up two fat hands.

  "We paid dearly for the information."

  "But it makes no sense." He remained stunned, searching for logic in his brother's actions. Whatever their differences, no family member ever acted alone.

  "Perhaps he could not stall the transaction. Perhaps he felt that he must act by himself. To prove himself."

  Yes, that would be it, Albert agreed.

  "Two hundred and fifty million in gold," Adol
ph sighed. "And there is more."

  "Still more?" Nothing, after all, was simple.

  "The gold is from Russian stocks."

  "Russian?" Another odd turn. The Russians were glutted with plutonium. Of all the earth's treasures plutonium was in long supply. Their Siberian uranium deposits were abundant and their technological facilities for conversion highly sophisticated.

  "So you see there are mysteries within mysteries." Adolph rubbed his hands together, more in nervousness than in satisfaction.

  "He talked of a South African and Saudi partnership. Why then the Russian gold?"

  "And that is merely the good news," Adolph said. He sank heavily in a chair.

  Albert tried to reason it out. It was not uncommon, after all, to discover that their goods were paid for with indirect Russian complicity. Wilhelm, from his Swiss vantage could always monitor such transactions, and, through expert use of conversion and arbitrage, mask the point of origin. Gold to sterling, then to yen, finally to German marks or Swiss francs. But with something of this magnitude, with such obvious political overtones?

  "So while you were luxuriating in your self-righteousness, little Rudi was being the family Machiavellian," Adolph continued with a chuckle.

  "I was rather enjoying it," Albert said, sensing the hysteria that lay just beneath the surface of his fat cousin.

  "Yes, I know. I have been assailed by it sometimes myself. But I have found a remedy for it." He winked, his meaning clear. "In the end, there are only the senses. And your own pleasures." He patted his ample belly.

  At the moment, he envied Adolph's sensual gluttony. He at least had some refuge, some secret control over his inner life. For Albert there was no escape. Not now. The burden of the von Kassel legacy lay heavy on his shoulders. Now he knew why he had been surrendering so easily. Rudi's ascendency could ease the burden, would free him from the von Kassel responsibility. Whatever the truth of Dawn's assertion, the family conditioning was strong.

  "The question now is not whether Rudi will run the family, the business, but whether his actions have destroyed it." Adolph paused and shook his head. "The stupid asshole. Actually, the entire affair was achieved with the collusion of the Americans. You didn't think for one moment that the nuclear club was ready to allow new members. Not this way. The fact is that the Americans did indeed lose some of their plutonium stocks. Stolen. Very clever, the thieves. They had no ideology. Just wanted to amass some filthy lucre. Entrepreneurs, like us. Oh, the thieves were honorable. They made their connection with Rudi." Adolph paused. "The buyer's connection was where the hitch was. The Americans and Russians were simply waiting for it to surface."