by Warren Adler
"But the gold passed. The transaction was made." Despite himself, Albert was drawn in.
"More bait."
"A quarter of a billion dollars profit in gold?"
"A trifle. The objective is to retrieve all of the materials. Not just part of it. There is more missing. Rudi was certain your father would approve his action. And any delay might ruin the deal. The sellers were getting edgy. Naturally, he did not reckon we would find out before he was ready to tell us. That is understandable. One must have the wisdom of the Orient."
"Please Adolph. No homilies."
"I am sorry, cousin. But, you see, I am still on the good news."
"My God."
"The Saudi-South African connection was also a fabrication. He had invented that. Perhaps he thought he was being clever. The Saudis, after all, would have run to the Americans."
"So who was the supposed buyer?"
Adolph smiled, "Amedou Nsemo."
Albert swallowed deeply, tamping down his rage.
Nsemo was an African demagogue who had waged a war of genocide against any group that opposed him. He was the scourge of that continent. "He was willing to sell plutonium to a madman?"
"I am only repeating my intelligence."
"Are you sure the information is correct?"
"Really, cousin." There was never any question about Adolph's information. In his world, money bought everything but eternal life.
"Rudi must have thought himself rather clever. It was, after all, a logical buyer. Someone so ridiculous. And out of the orbit of either the Russians or the Americans.
"So you see, we have now lost the confidence of the superpowers. We can no longer be trusted as middlemen. Your stupid brother has put the von Kassel head in a great big vise. After they find out who the thieves are, they will snuff us out like a candle. We have stepped over the line."
Watching his cousin's chins vibrating like jelly with outrage, Albert felt the sharp edge of his fear. It surprised him to find his indifference so paper-thin. The von Kassel empire operated at the discretion of the superpowers. Whatever the degree of intrigue, they still operated within the parameters of what was acceptable. One did not go beyond the pale by putting the means for a mini-Armageddon in the hands of someone beyond their control.
"And they have intercepted the shipment?"
"Of course."
"And the additional batch?"
"It is probably in the process of being negotiated. Otherwise..." Adolph put forward his fat palms in an illustrative gesture. "...kaput."
"So there is time?"
"Only Rudi knows that," Adolph sighed. "Perhaps he was so encouraged by this morning's meeting that he has already made his move." There was an unmistakable tone of admonition.
"While you were indulging yourself in moral superiority, Rudi was erecting our burial pyre."
The rebuke, he knew, was meant to test his will. But his mind was already jumping with possibilities, the instinct of command strong.
"Perhaps Rudi contrived it this way?" Uncertainty and doubt fled, or at least were postponed. The moral position had blinded him to the practical realities. His father had not let him run the business for nothing. The sin of pride, he thought, a shaft of humor mellowing the danger.
"I thought of that, cousin," Adolph shrugged. "That he would deliberately court the danger to show his courage. Thumb his nose at the Americans and the Soviets."
"Knowing that he had the trump card. The knowledge of the thieves, the source of the commodity. Keeping them dangling for years ... or trading the knowledge for greater gain."
"Rudi is not that smart," Adolph shrugged, removing a gold cigarette case from a inner pocket, offering one to Albert, who declined. He lit a long cigarette in a light-brown wrapper, breathed in the smoke, then contemplated the glowing ash at the end. Opium tipped, Albert knew.
"To calm the nerves, cousin." He closed his eyes.
"And even if he did not contrive it in that way any confrontation would set off the circumstances. He would hold us hostage to his own obsession."
"To be the Boss."
"Exactly."
"Sibling rivalry," Adolph sighed. "Nature's revenge. I have always assumed that nature's way was the work of the devil ... so I have chosen the unnatural." The opium was taking hold. He was growing perceptibly distant.
"I am afraid you have a full plate now, cousin," Adolph said, raising his bulk from the chair. His eyes had become glassy, the lids heavy. Walking to the door, he paused, then looked back.
"Everything ends. Perhaps that is the most natural thing of all."
No, Albert protested to himself, feeling engulfed again in the tide of the endless river. He knew then that he had not the will to swim to shore.
"Not yet," he whispered. "We are not finished yet."
To be alone was unbearable. Albert had tried Olga's room repeatedly, angered by her absence and his own impatience with himself. Had the possibility of the family's disintegration suddenly cured his moral cancer? It surprised him to see the strength of the idea in himself. He had almost succumbed to the suggestion that Dawn had tried to implant. So here is the evidence, he decided. The most important thing in his life was the preservation of the von Kassels. The sense of family. And he knew that he would do anything, anything, to preserve it.
Tomorrow would be the family picnic, the pagan rite of familial affiliation, another of his father's symbolic rituals. And then, they would have to confront the unavoidable.
The shadows lengthened across the floor. He did not want to be alone in the dark. Not now. He ran from the suite, avoiding the elevator, down the stairway, where the ancient musk was still carefully preserved, through the deserted lobby into the cooling air.
But he did not head for the main doorway, going instead through the exit to the inner courtyard. Outside, the light was diminishing softly and the green of the shrubbery had reached its chromatic fullness. His eyes sought the place where the dead woman had sprawled on the ground. He could still see the indentation made by the lifeless body. Seeing the spot again, picturing the woman's troubled mask of death, made the confrontation with his own hypocrisy palpable. He had rejected the plutonium deal with such inner purity of heart, and yet, almost casually, had agreed to participate in a conspiracy to hide a woman's body. How easy it was to deal with death when you were ten times removed. And all for the sake of the von Kassels.
He stood watching the spot, shivering as he thought of the woman's cold grave in the high mountain lake, food for the exotic fish and fauna.
But something he could not deny nagged at him. Looking up, he could see the low parapet clearly. Why choose this place, this moment, to end ones life? Dawn's words floated back. "Now she has returned to topple the whole house of cards.... "Returned?
He started to move away, denying himself even the hint of revelation. But as he turned, a flash of red struck his vision, a spot in the monochromatic landscape. Blood! He was drawn to it.
It was a considerable distance from where the woman had landed. Stopping, he saw the red object, the swastika in faded gold stamped on its face. Brambles bit his fingers as he reached for it, drawing it upwards. Hesitating, he let it rest in his palm while he contemplated its face. An old Nazi passport.
Even before he opened it he knew what he would find. The picture was barely distinguishable. But the name was quite clear. Helga von Kassel.
With the passport tucked in an inner pocket, and his hand constantly reassuring him that it was, indeed, still there, Albert had moved upward along the mountain trail. By concentrating on the soft ground, still visible in the fading light, he was able to pick out the path most recently used. He could see the fresh marks of footsteps and other signs indicating that the manager had done his work and returned.
"Fraud!" he cried, as he moved upward. The word echoed in the stony wilderness. Reaching back in time as he continued his climb, he tried to pick at his memory for some clue to her existence. Alone in the United States during those f
irst days at school, he had concocted the idea that his birth had killed her, that he had been sent away because of that. He could remember the pain of that bitter fantasy.
Once Siegfried, in a malicious fit of rebellion, suggested that Aunt Karla had really been their mother.
"That's why we are all half-crazy," he had told his brothers. "We are the product of an incestuous union." The thought had upset the two younger boys. But Albert had never believed it. Not Aunt Karla. She was too cold, too forbidding. Their mother would be warm, loving. But that was not an image he could associate with the twisted face of the woman he had seen earlier.
The path narrowed until it was difficult to follow. Then the brush cleared and he reached the outer edges of a lake. In the waning light, the waters were jet black and in the distance he could see the lake's farther edges pushed up against sheer cliffs. An ancient battered rowboat lay on its side. There were signs that something had been dragged from the end of the path to the boat.
So Hans had dropped the body in the center of the lake, surely the deepest part. He was efficient, his aunt had assured him.
He peered into the black depths, feeling at last the full weight of the loss.
"Mama!" he shouted across the waters, the sound bouncing into the shroud of darkness. "Mama!" he shouted again as the word soared back from a hundred places.
But pain, too, could be recycled. And hate. And lost love. However she had learned it, what Dawn had told him was true. He was the son of a stranger, a Jew. Siegfried and Rudi as well. The thing she had come to destroy had, in the end, destroyed her. Yet it must have also sustained her for all these years.
Now her death was meant to have meaning. Once again she had provided the weapon to save the von Kassels. He would trade his silence for Rudi's surrender. And he, Albert, would accept the mantle of von Kassel leadership. It was different now. The continuum of blood was merely an illusion. Only the sense of family was what counted.
He turned away from the lake and proceeded downward into the night.
CHAPTER 18
Siegfried felt the eyes of the stained-glass Christ watching him. He sat there in the small cool bar, wondering which consecutive whiskey would finally obliterate the unspecific hurt.
"Don't you think you've had enough?" the waiter asked gently. He was a young man, different from the one of the night before, but vaguely familiar.
"Yes I have. Quite enough," Siegfried answered, his tongue surprisingly clear. "So you had better get me another one of these." He held out his glass. The waiter hesitated, shrugged, took the glass and moved to the dark rear of the lounge, The sunlight shafts were passing through the stained-glass Christ, throwing colorful images among the abandoned tables. Siegfried could see some of Christ's colors on his hands.
Resignation! Resignation was the exact effect he was searching for. Resignation always chased the pain. It was the ultimate tranquilizer. He supposed that might come with the next whiskey, which now appeared before him and he swallowed half of it down greedily.
In the past few hours, he had been through all the gradations of anger, self-pity, remorse, and guilt. None of these had worked. Now, he hoped, resignation would come and he waited patiently, slowing down the pace of his drinking as he watched the colors of the stained glass attack the liquid.
But resignation did not come and the pain worsened. There seemed to be a blockage, a psychic embolism. What was happening, he decided, was a condition known as the magnetism of biology. The defeated ashen face of the woman, the mother, was beckoning, drawing him into her pain, into her womb, and instead of it being warm and good and delicious, it was cold and dank and bitter.
That was exceedingly unfair, a travesty. It was the only imaginable safe place in the whole fucking world, a nest, a lair, and someone had soiled it. Some monster, or group of monsters, or family of monsters.
He stood up. A hand gripped his.
"Shall I help you to your rooms, Baron?" the waiter asked.
He shrugged the arm away. What he had to do was find the woman. She has gone away, Aunt Karla said. But if what the woman said was true, she was not his aunt. What they had done, he decided, was hidden the woman, stashed her away again like an errant jack-in-the-box. How dare she pop up at such an inappropriate time?
His legs moved him into the lobby, floated him to the desk.
"The woman," he said to the clerk.
"Who?" the clerk asked politely.
"The woman," he repeated. "She hasn't left?"
"No one has left."
Of course. He knew that. Did Aunt Karla truly think that he would believe her?
"Then ring her room."
"Whose?"
Thickheaded clerk, he decided wearily.
"I'm sorry," the clerk said. "Perhaps the manager can help you. Shall I ring him?"
"You had jolly well better," he said assuming the traditional British air of arrogance. The only way to treat the bloody bastards, he told himself, chuckling.
The clerk picked up the phone, waiting for a voice. Looking at Siegfried, he smiled.
"He had some errand today. I don't usually stay on duty so long." He looked at his watch. "He said he would be back by now." He nodded and winked. Peripherally, Siegfried saw the waiter watching them. "Ah yes sir." The clerk began in a polite whisper. He turned his back. Siegfried heard his own name. "The Baron Siegfried." Then the clerk faced him and handed him the phone.
"I'm not sure I understand, Baron Siegfried," Hans said.
Siegfried looked into the phone's mouthpiece.
"The woman from last night."
"I don't know, sir."
"That the Countess talked with?" Why was he so dense? There was hesitation in his voice, the clearing of his throat.
"There was no woman," the manager said.
"No woman?"
Siegfried looked at the desk clerk, who moved his eyes in embarrassment. He slammed down the phone. Suddenly his mouth went dry and he felt the intrusion of nausea.
"Are you all right, Baron?"
"Where are his rooms?" he asked the clerk. He caught a glimpse of his own white face in the mirror behind the desk. The clerk obviously was confused and had reached again for the telephone. Siegfried leaned over the desk and gripped his hand. "You take me to his rooms."
He followed the confused clerk along the opposite end of the lobby where the woman had gone last night. His legs floated forward, although his shoulder occasionally brushed along a stone wall.
Finally they came to a door and stopped. The clerk hesitated, but Siegfried with balled fists hammered the surface. The question was, had he imagined her? His pores had opened and the whiskey seemed to escape in a flood from his body. Yet he was certain, dead certain. He would demand the knowledge now. Demand it. Or die trying.
The manager opened the door and Siegfried staggered past him, stopping in the center of the room.
"You spoke to her last night," he shouted at the manager, who wilted against the wall.
"Drunk," he heard the clerk say, fueling his rage.
"Only the family can lie," Siegfried shouted, as the pain speared into him. There was no way to mask it now. No way at all. But his mind refused to cloud and he felt his alertness return. Some detail in the room caught him. There was something he wanted to say, and from somewhere in himself the words began, but his eyes had by then seen the battered suitcase held together by the tattered rope.
"We'll help you, Baron," the manager said, reaching for an arm, while the clerk took the other and they moved him out of the room, through the lobby again. Resisting mindlessness, he let them drag him forward. The ancient elevator cranked and then he was in the familiar suite. From somewhere Heather's voice whispered.
"Thank you, Hans,"
On his back, the room began to spin. Someone was pulling off his shoes.
"I am not a von Kassel," his mind said clearly, but he could not hear the sound of it.
"Drunken sot," Heather said, touching the buttons of his shirt.
>
"I'll tell him myself, Mother," he heard himself say. "I'll be damned if I'll let him die in peace."
"Stop ranting and go to sleep," Heather said. "You stink like a brewery."
"Not in peace," he said. "If it's the last thing I do, he's going to know the truth."
Suddenly the room stopped spinning and he felt himself slip into the warm pit of his own slime.
CHAPTER 19
The waiter had wheeled in a table and was arranging the settings for dinner for two, while Albert stood by the window watching the white-clad figures of the twins move on the lighted tennis court. He could see Rudi and Mimi as spectators and some of the others, set like statues in the ragged edges of light.
For a moment he speculated on Rudi's state of mind knowing that whatever the state of its smugness or self-satisfaction it was about to be shattered. Turning from the window, he glanced at the wine label the waiter was showing him and nodded approval.
The tightness in his gut had dissipated with his decisiveness. His sense of mission had restored his courage. But it was Olga's voice, soft and comforting on the telephone, that had finally soothed him. Finding her in at last had been the last hurdle of his anxiety.
"But Aleksandr," she had protested weakly. He had already worked out that difficulty, suggesting that the room be monitored by the desk clerk via the telephone. He explained the procedure.
"The line will be open and he will hear the slightest sound."
Her anxieties faded and her voice grew cheerful, but then a new cloud intruded. He had, of course, expected it, deliberately avoiding the revelation, knowing it was an unfair ploy to test her response.