Eagles

by Lewis Orde

  EAGLES

  Lewis Orde

  © Lewis Orde 1983

  Lewis Orde has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1983 by Arbor House Publishing Company.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  For Big Ears, Flossie and Minnie

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE 1970

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  1970

  1957–1970

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  1970–1974

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  With the exception of any historical figures, the characters portrayed in this work are strictly the result of the author’s imagination. Any similarity between these fictional characters and real people is coincidental, and exists solely in the author’s mind.

  PROLOGUE 1970

  The couple moved slowly to the center of the dance floor at Claridge’s, the bride, slender and graceful in a flowing white silk-and-lace dress, the groom, stiff and erect in a tailored formal suit at her side. For an instant they stood motionless gazing at each other until the orchestra began to gently play the first bars of ‘My Way’. A burst of applause erupted from the wedding guests as the couple began to dance, only to be swallowed up moments later by other dancers.

  Off to one side observing the scene stood a very tall, distinguished-looking man in his middle forties. His gray hair was thinning and his sharp blue eyes were set in a round, open face. Only now, as he watched his older daughter, Katherine, dancing with Franz Kassler, her husband of just a few hours, could Roland Eagles finally make himself accept that she was married. Even during the church ceremony the realization had not struck home completely. At the reception and dinner that followed he had deliberately pushed it from his mind. But at this moment, as he watched Katherine being swept around the floor in the arms of her husband, Roland forced himself to admit sadly that his little girl was no longer little, and no longer his.

  He lit a Davidoff cigar, hoping to divert himself from the sentimental thoughts that threatened to bring his emotions to the surface. It would never do for a man who controlled an empire like the Eagles Group to be seen misty-eyed. Then, with an angry, impatient gesture, he stubbed it out. What did he care what anyone thought? As the father of the bride he was entitled to enjoy this particular day in any way he saw fit. If tears were the measure of his happiness it was his concern and no one else’s.

  Watching his daughter, Roland recalled the first time he had ever danced at Claridge’s . . . He was with Katherine’s mother, in white tie and tails amid all the pomp that surrounded a diplomatic affair. Had twenty-one years really passed so quickly? Surely not. The memories of that night were still so sharp, so poignant. It could have been last week . . .

  Katherine and Franz passed close to where Roland stood and she blew him a kiss. He responded with a wave and wondered if her new husband would be jealous of her affection for her father. Could a man be envious of his father-in-law for that reason? It was an intriguing question, but Roland knew that Franz had no cause for concern. Katherine was like her mother: the man she chose to love would be the man she would love forever, with a loyalty and strength that was all-consuming. If Roland could find any dissimilarity between mother and daughter it was in physical appearance alone; Katherine’s mother had been petite with dark skin, jet black hair and dark flashing eyes, like those of a gypsy. Katherine had taken after Roland’s own mother, tall and blonde, with a creamy, clear complexion. Like a young Grace Kelly, Roland had often thought. Her temperament, though, was a legacy from both her mother and himself – a fiery spirit and an indomitable will. In family disagreements, sparks always flew.

  The first dance ended and Roland stepped onto the floor. ‘May I?’ he asked both his daughter and son-in-law.

  Franz Kassler relinquished his grip on Katherine. ‘Only for you, sir, would I give Katherine up. But for no more than one dance.’ The German-accented English was clear and crisp, the delivery – despite the intended humor – almost curt. In another time and place Roland might have mistaken it for an order.

  Roland took his daughter in his arms and gazed fondly at her. ‘You look absolutely radiant, Kathy.’

  She lifted her head to kiss him on the cheek and he saw tears glistening in the blue eyes that were every bit as vivid as his own. ‘Thank you for a wonderful day.’

  ‘You made it wonderful all by yourself.’

  ‘I’m so glad you did it this way, with the reception, banquet and ball following the church service. It’s so much nicer than the customary wedding breakfast. It’s almost like . . .’ Katherine struggled for a few seconds to find a suitable analogy ‘. . . like a Jewish wedding.’

  ‘They believe in big weddings. So do I,’ Roland replied, grinning. He looked over his shoulder at Franz Kassler, who stood on the edge of the dance floor, waiting impatiently for the music to end. ‘He loves you so much he won’t even let you out of his sight. You chose well.’

  ‘You approve?’

  ‘Of course. You always knew that.’

  ‘And if you hadn’t approved? Would you have stood in my way? Denied me my happiness?’

  Roland smiled at the memories those questions triggered. ‘Would you have defied your own father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I know. Which is why I’m glad it never came to that. I would never have found the strength to fight you.’

  A camera flash exploded nearby causing Roland to blink. He recognized the man as a photographer from his own newspaper, and wondered briefly if that would be the photo used in the society column the next day. He mused at what the caption might read: Daughter of British tycoon marries son of German industrialist . . . wealth weds wealth? He never tried to exert any influence over the newspaper, and hoped in exchange that the editorial staff would be kind to him. Had he been smiling when the photograph was taken? Or had his brow been creased in thought? There was so much to think about today . . . the memories of Claridge’s itself . . . Katherine . . . Franz Kassler’s family . . . He was surprised that his daughter’s wedding had brought back so many memories, some he would just as soon forget.

  When the dance finished Roland held his daughter, reluctant to let her go. He felt a tap on his arm. ‘May I have my wife back, sir?’ Franz said, standing next to him.

  ‘You may.’ Roland kissed Katherine, patted Franz on the shoulder and walked away, heading for the table where Franz’s father sat alone. He wondered if Heinrich Kassler was reliving memories as well . . . Was he, too, trying to unravel the intricate maze that had led to this union?

  ‘A truly handsome couple,’ Kassler said as Roland joined him at the table. ‘I am thrilled that my son should have chosen such a wonderful girl for his wife.’

  ‘You know, it was only ten minutes ago that I could make myself believe they were married,’ Roland replied. ‘She’s just turned twenty, he’s twenty-four. Children. It doesn’t seem possible.’

  ‘When we were their age we were preoccupied with other things, eh, Roland?’ Kassler’s voice carried barely any accent at all, as if he had worked hard at perfecting his English. ‘Circumstances dictated that we could not enjoy such innocent happiness.’

  ‘Too true
.’ Roland pulled another Davidoff from his pocket, lit it carefully from a gold Dunhill. ‘I think we’re getting old, Heinrich. Another generation is preparing to take our place.’ Through the cigar smoke he studied Kassler, the lined face, the strands of silver hair smoothed across the scalp, the blue eyes dimmed by time. Roland knew he had only to look out over the dance floor at his son-in-law to see how Heinrich Kassler had once been: straight-backed with a platinum blondness and pale blue eyes that seemed to hold a trace of steely arrogance . . . the same as when Roland had first met him twenty-five years earlier. Now they were both middle-aged.

  ‘Roland, you and me, we will never grow old. Other people, perhaps, but we have been through too much – we have created too much – to be affected by nature’s perfidy. This’ – Kassler touched his thin silver hair – ‘is just camouflage.’

  ‘Are you implying that we’re too rich to become old?’

  Kassler shook his head. ‘No one is ever that wealthy. Even the combined power of Eagles Group and Kassler Industries cannot fight the onset of age. But we have been raised the hard way. We’ve been toughened against the natural processes that afflict ordinary people.’

  ‘Listening to you, I can almost believe it.’

  Another man joined them, a burly, dark-haired man with a square block of face, a heavy nose and a shadowy beard that seemed to resist the efforts of any razor. If what Kassler said was true then Alf Goldstein would never grow old either, Roland decided; he had also been raised the hard way.

  ‘Congratulating each other or just reminiscing?’ Alf Goldstein asked.

  ‘A little bit of both,’ Roland answered. ‘Sit down and join in.’

  Goldstein pulled out a chair and sat down heavily, uncomfortable in his tuxedo. But then his heavy frame tended to look distressed in any kind of suit. Even now Roland could recall the man who was his chauffeur and personal assistant as he had been twenty-one years earlier: a taxi driver content to sit behind the wheel of his cab, exhibiting a knowledge of London that surpassed any map or tour guide.

  And four years before that, in 1945, wearing a British army uniform, filling it out until the seams threatened to burst.

  They had all been in uniform then, when they had first met. Alf Goldstein. Heinrich Kassler. Roland Eagles.

  Only Kassler’s uniform had been different – he had been wearing the colors of the other side. And his perfect command of English had brought Roland to within a hair’s breadth of killing him out of hand . . .

  Just as it had brought Roland face-to-face with a heritage he could no longer ignore.

  Chapter One

  By the spring of 1945, the German war machine lay in ruins. On all fronts, allied forces surged forward against ever weakening resistance. In the east, the Russians advanced; in the south, the Americans; and in the north, the British. Each victorious army uncovered its own share of atrocities to shock a watching world.

  In the middle of April, Roland Eagles was a captain in a British anti-tank regiment in northern Germany, a veteran of almost five decoration-studded years. As a corporal at el-Alamein he had been awarded the enlisted man’s Military Medal. In 1944 he had been given a field commission, jumping from sergeant to second lieutenant after his company commander was killed on Normandy’s Juno Beach; and before the unit got off the beach that day Roland had been put forward for the Military Cross after destroying a German machine-gun emplacement. None of this action, though, could have prepared him for the horror he would encounter in Germany itself.

  During a respite in the fighting, orders came from headquarters that Roland’s unit was to participate in an operation organized by the Red Cross. Faced with an outbreak of typhus, the retreating Germans were willing to turn over a prison camp to British forces. The name of the camp was Bergen-Belsen.

  Through a red veil of barely suppressed anger, Roland watched German troops march away under the protection of a white flag. He understood only too well how fragile the line was that kept him from ordering his men to open fire; he hated this enemy with a passion that bordered on madness. Perhaps the only thing that restrained him from breaking the truce was the knowledge that another British unit was waiting close by, and there the Red Cross and the white flag would be of little use to the retreating Germans.

  When the last of the Germans had marched away, Roland led his men into the camp. No joyful crowds rushed forward to greet the liberating force, as had happened in the towns and cities along the route to victory. In Bergen-Belsen, there was no celebration – only lethargy and resignation to dying among the hapless human refuse which had been transported from other camps in the east as the Germans had fled before the Red Army.

  Sixty thousand survivors crowded the Old Camp, barely able to recognize the difference between German and British troops. Men and women with shaven heads, sunken faces and stooped skeletal frames limped around in grotesquely flapping striped uniforms that offered little protection against the weather. Others lay on the ground or on stacked narrow cots, too weak to move. Arms and legs bore signs of rat bites. Typhus was rampant. For thousands, liberation had come too late; only now it would be German prisoners who pushed the dead to their mass graves.

  Roland was like a man with a holy mission. He searched among his own soldiers for an interpreter, someone who could communicate with the survivors in either German or Yiddish. He found a sergeant who could speak both passably, a heavy-set, dark-haired man named Goldstein. The sergeant became Roland’s constant companion as food rations were passed out and adequate bathing and toilet facilities were erected. Extra accommodation was found in the New Camp, which before the liberation had been military barracks. Typhus sufferers were quarantined. The healthy were disinfected with DDT and issued fresh clothing. Those for whom it was too late continued to die.

  With Goldstein, Roland toured his sector of the camp, attempting to reassure the inmates that everything possible was being done to ease their pain. But even with Goldstein’s help Roland was unable to communicate with many of the survivors, who spoke only Hungarian or Russian; then the survivors themselves had to be pressed into service as part of a complicated chain of interpreters.

  ‘Why do they only eat part of the food?’ Roland asked Goldstein after supervising the distribution of rations.

  Goldstein relayed the question to a group who had been seen hiding unfinished cans of combat rations in their clothes. ‘They’re saving it for tomorrow sir.’

  ‘For God’s sake, why?’ Roland gasped in disbelief. ‘They’ll get more food tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s not the way they’ve been living, sir. If they eat everything at once there might be nothing more for two or three days.’

  ‘Tell them that the British will ensure they have more food, sergeant. They are to eat everything they are given each day.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Shortly after the command was given Roland and Goldstein watched in helpless horror as the survivors became violently sick from cramming so much food – though it was only a can of combat rations – into pitifully shrunken stomachs.

  Two days after the British had taken control of the camp a patrol brought in a man who had been found hiding in the nearby pine forest. Although wearing the dirty, ragged uniform of a Wehrmacht corporal, the man had a healthy, well-fed appearance. In his late twenties, his fair skin gleamed with a shining vitality, his blond hair was almost clean. While searching him the patrol had discovered a small tattoo beneath his left armpit, his blood group. The prisoner was not a simple army corporal but a member of the SS.

  The moment the prisoner was brought into his office, Roland sent for Sergeant Goldstein.

  ‘Sergeant, ask the prisoner what his name is.’

  ‘Wie heissen Sie?’

  ‘An interpreter will not be necessary.’ Standing between his escort of two soldiers, the blond-haired German addressed Roland in English. ‘I speak perfectly adequate—’

  At the sound of the man’s voice it was as if a plunger had suddenly been pressed
inside Roland’s head. He kicked back his chair and pulled his service-issue Webley revolver from its holster, pointing it at the German with a hand that was suddenly white and trembling. ‘Shut up! I don’t want to hear my language coming out of your filthy Nazi mouth!’ He swung around to glare at his interpreter. ‘Goldstein – make the bastard speak German!’

  ‘Wie heissen Sie?’ Goldstein repeated, his eyes leaving the prisoner just long enough to steal a quick glance at Roland as he slumped back into the seat, dropping the Webley to the desk. The sergeant was stunned by the abrupt explosion of his normally calm commanding officer.

  Pale-faced and visibly shaken by the outburst, the German answered: ‘Kassler, Heinrich.’

  ‘Rank?’

  ‘Corporal.’

  This time Roland’s anger was controlled, his voice cold and level. ‘Your real rank, before I order these soldiers to take you outside and shoot you.’

  The German glanced nervously at the escort; they stood at strict attention, rifles gripped tightly. ‘Kapitan.’

  ‘You are a member of the SS. Why are you wearing the uniform of a common German soldier?’ Roland stared belligerently at the prisoner while Goldstein translated in slow, halting German.

  ‘The Schutzstaffel, like the entire National Socialist regime, is responsible for crimes of great magnitude,’ Kassler replied softly. ‘I did not wish to take my chances on being captured and summarily executed.’

  At first Roland was amazed by the answer. Then he became intrigued. Why would an SS officer speak so openly? Why would he incriminate himself in this manner? ‘What was your role in this carnage?’ he said, making a sweeping gesture to encompass the entire camp.

  ‘I had no part in this misery. I was responsible for saving lives here, not destroying them.’

  ‘You were responsible for what?’ Incredulous, Roland waved away Goldstein’s attempt to translate. The prisoner had made Roland want to hear his own language spoken by the German.