Eagles

by Lewis Orde

  ‘Home, sweet home,’ Sally said as she pulled into the driveway. ‘For God’s sake, try to put a smile on your face before Katherine sees you.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice.’ He turned to face Sally as she switched off the engine. ‘What about you? You’ve sorted out my life, now what about your own? Are you staying at the apartment, or do you want to move back here? I’ve gotten used to having you around.’

  ‘I’ll stay put now. I did myself a favor when I went back there last night. I found out that ghosts don’t exist. The police have finished with me and there’s really no reason for me not to stay there. Besides, I like living in town. I might have been brought up on a farm, but I’m not a country bumpkin like you.’

  ‘What about Christopher? What are you going to do about him?’

  ‘He won’t turn up again. Maybe one day I’ll receive some cryptic letter postmarked Pango Pango or somewhere to tell me he’s all right, but that’s all. I guess I’ll just wait a year or so and then file for divorce. I imagine it’ll be uncontested.’

  ‘Coming in?’

  Sally shook her head. ‘I’ve got a lot of work to do. When a newspaper’s closed down for a day there’s plenty to do before you put out the next issue. As a publisher, I thought you would have understood that.’ She grinned in the darkness. ‘Besides, I think you’ve got something to say to Katherine.’

  ‘Yes, I do. You know something, Sally . . . when I bumped into Kassler in Monte Carlo that time, we talked a lot about how our family lives had suffered because of our commitment to work – his far more than mine, I’m glad to say. But I wonder how much easier my own life might have been if I’d put a limit on what I felt I had to achieve.’

  ‘What kind of limit?’ Sally started to feel uncomfortable as she sensed Roland becoming maudlin.

  ‘Maybe just a couple of companies. Eldridge’s, because of its tie to Catarina. And Adler’s, because it was my first major acquisition.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘I suppose the Eagle as well. It has my name, after all. And it did show me the error of my ways.’

  ‘Thanks. Nice to know I’m appreciated. Now stop being so damned introspective; it doesn’t suit you. What’s done is done, so get out of my car and tell your daughter everything’s straightened out.’

  ‘That’s what I needed . . . sympathy and encouragement,’ Roland said, determined to shake off the dark mood. ‘Thanks for the ride and for coming with me to see Simon.’ He kissed Sally on the cheek, climbed out of the car and let himself into the house. ‘Kathy!’

  ‘In the kitchen.’

  Roland walked through the house and found Katherine leaning over the kitchen counter, drinking a glass of milk while she read a letter.

  ‘From Franz?’

  ‘Of course.’ She smiled brightly and kissed him. ‘Who else ever writes to me?’

  ‘Horse and Hound to say your subscription’s overdue.’

  ‘Did you see that terrible man?’

  ‘I had dinner with him.’ Roland was amused by the way Katherine always referred to Rushden. He was even more amused by the manner in which she swiftly scooped up the letter and jammed it into the pocket of her robe. Love letters needed privacy. ‘I also saw Simon.’ He told her about Sharon keeping the letter from Alf Goldstein.

  ‘That must have shocked him.’

  ‘I think Simon’s past that stage, Kathy. He looks old, tired. A man who had everything and now finds that life’s left him with very little.’

  Katherine moved closer to her father, wrapped her arms around his neck; he could smell the freshness of her skin, straight out of the shower. ‘I prefer you this way, do you know that?’

  ‘What way?’

  ‘Being sympathetic toward other people. Before, when you were plotting your revenge against that terrible man, you were like a stranger. Cold, nasty, vindictive. I’m glad you sorted it all out.’

  Roland looked at his daughter . . . her smooth, unblemished skin, eyes like two pools of clear blue. No wonder Franz Kassler wrote to her so regularly. ‘Can you cook?’

  ‘Of course I can cook.’

  ‘Dinner was lousy, a limp salad at a greasy Italian restaurant. Make me an omelet, there’s a good girl.’

  Katherine set to work enthusiastically. Pots and pans clattered as she put together the ingredients for a mushroom omelet. Ten minutes later when she served it to her father at the table in the breakfast room, he saw that the edges were burned while the inside was still half raw.

  He didn’t complain. He didn’t say a word.

  He ate it, every single scrap.

  And to him it was the finest meal he’d ever eaten.

  Chapter Eight

  Katherine graduated from high school in the summer of 1968, at the age of eighteen. Instead of going to college, though, she insisted on beginning work immediately in her father’s business. Roland remembered the omelet and prayed she didn’t intend to make her career at Eldridge’s; he breathed a sigh of relief when she opted for the Eagle. She decided she wanted to learn the newspaper business. Roland understood why: apart from himself, the person to whom Katherine had always been closest was Sally Roberts – even closer than she’d been with Janet, who raised her like her own daughter. In Sally, Katherine recognized what a woman with her own mind could achieve – success, respect and power. Built in her father’s image, Katherine wanted to taste that same success.

  At the Eagle, Katherine started as she expected to – by running errands, acting as a messenger for the newspaper reporters. At first having the chairman’s daughter as a copyboy brought indulgent smiles from the more cynical of the journalists, and they treated her with kid gloves. To Roland’s delight, Katherine would have none of it, insisting that she be treated like anyone else. She wanted to learn the business from the bottom up, starting the way Sally had begun, taking training courses, serving her apprenticeship. By the time her first year was finished, she was following doggedly in Sally’s footsteps by working on the women’s page as a junior reporter. After a lifetime of squabbling with journalists, Roland realized he had one in the family – a journalist who was just as argumentative as any he had met . . .

  They sat up together late at night – the first time Roland could remember making a point of watching television. This was a special occasion, though, history in the making – the landing of the moon module from Apollo Eleven. When Neil Armstrong placed his foot on the surface of the moon and said the words that a team of public relations experts had labored over for months, Katherine’s sarcastic comment was, ‘You do realize that this entire episode is being filmed on some Hollywood set, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’ Roland looked from the television to his daughter, expecting to see her laughing. She was dead serious.

  ‘That’s what millions of people in the United States are saying, that Apollo Eleven – the whole moon landing – is just a hoax to divert attention from what’s happening in Vietnam.’

  ‘And you seriously believe that? That this is a hoax?’

  ‘No.’ Katherine smiled at her father. ‘But just think how timely it is – what a coup for Nixon when he’s fighting all that unrest over Vietnam.’

  ‘That just happens to be the way it worked out.’

  ‘How can you be so naive? Nothing ever works out that fortuitously. Remember the old saying of when you’ve got trouble at home you stage a diversion abroad to unite the people? Nixon’s just went one better and staged a diversion on the moon.’

  ‘So he’s a clever man.’ Had Katherine always been so interested in international affairs? ‘Since when have you been so involved in politics?’

  ‘I’ve had my eyes opened for me at the Eagle.’

  Roland could believe that. The Eagle enjoyed a moderate platform but that didn’t stop many of the staff from criticising American involvement in Southeast Asia. The reporters voiced a position with which he didn’t necessarily agree, but he wasn’t about to try to sway their views; that was a certain way to bring the
house down, and he’d learned that lesson already.

  ‘Franz also writes to me of demonstrations in Germany,’ Katherine said.

  ‘That’s a fine country to demonstrate against war.’

  ‘That was not Franz’s generation. It was his father’s – your friend, remember?’

  Roland questioned how serious the relationship with Franz was becoming. Katherine and Roland had spent a few days at Kassler’s winter home in the mountains the previous year, taking Richard and Carol with them. While Katherine had spent most of her time skiing with Franz, Roland had played with the two younger children, romping in the snow, pelting each other with snowballs and sledding down the gentler slopes. Franz had also visited London the following Easter, staying at Roland’s house for three days. The correspondence between Franz and Katherine was as regular as ever. They even had common ground now. Katherine at the Eagle, and Franz, having graduated from the university, was working for his father in the Kassler Industries head office in Stuttgart.

  Katherine turned her attention back to the television. ‘This could be straight out of a science fiction movie.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know – I never saw one.’ Roland decided he’d seen enough and went to bed.

  When he reached the office the following morning, he wasn’t surprised to find that the main topic of the conversation was the American lunar landing. Just for effect, he repeated Katherine’s opinion, only to learn that she wasn’t alone in her conviction that the landing had been timed to take people’s minds off domestic problems. Even Michael Adler agreed, saying it stood to reason. Roland felt saddened that no one could take historical events at face value anymore – was he the only romantic left in a world full of cynics?

  Like all the other newspapers, the Eagle gave full coverage to the moon landing, and he couldn’t help noticing that one of the side stories was a wire service report that many Americans did regard the event as a hoax. No doubt Katherine would brandish that in his face . . . if it was in the Eagle, surely it must be the truth!

  ‘Believe half of what you see, a quarter of what you hear, and absolutely nothing of what you read,’ he told her that night after she challenged him on the story.

  ‘Can I quote you on that?’ she asked mischievously. ‘That’s an interesting statement for a publisher to make.’

  ‘I believe you probably would.’

  ‘Sorry, but no favoritism in the press.’ She kissed him and ran upstairs to read the latest letter from Franz which had come in the afternoon mail. Roland lit a cigar and wondered whether he was beginning to worry about Katherine as Ambassador Menendez had once worried about his daughter.

  At least there was no possibility of Franz Kassler being a fortune hunter. He had a family fortune already.

  *

  In the spring of 1970, Roland repaid a favor Michael Adler had done for him twenty years earlier. He acted as best man at Michael’s wedding to Lisa Sorensen, a red-haired, Swedish-born doctor he’d been dating for the past two years, since meeting her at the hospital where he’d had his appendix removed.

  ‘I thought you were a confirmed bachelor,’ Roland remarked when Michael asked him.

  ‘I was just biding my time. I’m forty-six now; leave getting married until late enough in life and there’s not enough time for it to go sour.’

  ‘Some of those marriages you saw go bad didn’t get that way because the bride and groom were too young,’ Roland reminded him.

  ‘I was joking. It’s just that I seem to be surrounded by people whose marriages have broken up for one reason or another. But if Catarina had lived I think you’d still be married to her.’

  ‘So do I. What does your father have to say about it? Does he approve?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he?’ Michael was puzzled by the question.

  ‘Well, you know . . .’

  Sensing what he was trying to say, Michael helped him. ‘About Lisa not being Jewish? I don’t think it bothers him particularly. Why should you even think of it?’

  ‘It’s just that I thought it would have been important to him. Only son and all that.’

  Michael laughed and shook his head. ‘No, I don’t believe so. My grandfather might have been upset, but he was a member of the old school. Besides, Lisa and I aren’t thinking in terms of a family, so what’s the problem?’

  ‘Nothing. I guess I just read your father wrong.’ Really wrong, Roland decided. He would have sworn that Albert would have screamed to high heaven about it. Or was he getting too old to even care? Roland only knew about Albert through Michael, living with a full-time nurse who took care of him. He was almost legally blind now, barely able to identify someone standing right in front of him. ‘Will he be at the wedding?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What does he say about me being best man?’

  ‘He just accepted it, pretty well like he seems to accept everything these days – a kind of resignation that comes with age, I guess.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Seventy-two.’

  ‘If your grandfather’s anything to go by, then your father’s got a few years left to him.’

  ‘I wonder. My grandfather was an active man, that’s what kept him going. My father just sits around, listens to the radio, eats when he’s told to, goes to bed when he’s told to.’

  Even though he’d introduced the subject, Roland now wanted to change it; hearing of Albert’s worsening health made him depressed. ‘Where are you and Lisa going to have your reception?’

  ‘Where else? Eldridge’s, of course. I learned one thing from you, Roland . . . keep the business in the family.’

  ‘Have this one on the house – you deserve it.’

  *

  While Michael Adler went ahead with his wedding plans, the Eagles Group main office acquired another employee – Franz Kassler.

  Heinrich Kassler contacted Roland to ask if he could find a trainee management position for Franz. ‘Working for another company, especially in another country, will be more broadening for my son,’ Kassler explained over the telephone to Roland. ‘Here Franz feels he has to fight to get out of my shadow, and if I did anything to smooth the path for him there would be charges of nepotism.’

  Roland understood Kassler’s position all too well . . . hadn’t Katherine fought the same way at the Eagle, wanting to be treated on her own merits, not because of her family connection? ‘You’re not trying to plant an inside man on me, are you, Heinrich?’

  Kassler’s laugh boomed in Roland’s ear. ‘You shouldn’t give me ideas like that. Besides, if that were my idea I wouldn’t use Franz. He’s too fond of your daughter to ever work against her father.’

  ‘Yes, Katherine,’ Roland murmured. How much did she have to do with this unexpected request to find Franz a job in the Eagles Group? ‘How are you and Franz getting along? Are you on friendlier terms?’

  ‘A little. Unfortunately we . . . no, I . . . let too much time elapse before making the effort. I fear that I’ll never be as close to Franz as you are to your daughter.’

  Roland told himself he should be grateful he had one child to whom he was really close. Richard and Carol were still pretty distant from him, despite their visits, and he never saw David, who was now four and living in France with his mother. All in all one daughter – Catarina’s daughter – made up for the relationships he lacked with his other children.

  When he saw Katherine at home that night, he mentioned Kassler’s call. ‘What do you think I should do, Kathy? Should I bring him over here?’

  ‘Of course! It would be a wonderful opportunity for Franz.’

  ‘That’s what I thought you’d say. Now tell me something – did you have anything to do with him wanting to come over here?’

  Katherine turned coy, looked away from her father. ‘I might have mentioned the possibility of his working in London. Franz might have mentioned it as well.’

  ‘I see. The pair of you have been busy hatching up a plot in your interminable correspondenc
e.’

  ‘It’s better for Franz to get out of Germany. He and his father don’t get along that well, you know.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know,’ Kassler hadn’t made it sound like they weren’t communicating at all, Roland thought, but why should that interest him?

  ‘They argue a lot.’

  ‘We’ve also argued.’

  ‘Not the way they do. Franz and his father don’t see eye-to-eye on many things—’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Franz tells me everything in his letters. Three months ago he was arrested during a demonstration outside the Rhein/Main Air Force Base in Frankfurt. It was an anti-Vietnam protest. When Franz was fined in court, it was very embarrassing for his father.’

  ‘I see.’ Roland was no longer so sure of the wisdom in helping Heinrich Kassler, no matter how much the German wanted his son out of his hair. If Franz was in London there would be plenty of anti-American demonstrations he could join; Grosvenor Square, outside the American Embassy, was filled each week. The question was – did Roland want Katherine to be with Franz. ‘Kathy, if Franz comes over here and demonstrates he would stand a good chance of being deported.’

  ‘He knows that.’

  ‘I’m going to say yes. But the moment he arrives I’m going to tell him straight out that I won’t tolerate any shenanigans from him. And I want you to promise me that even if Franz does get involved in political demonstrations over here, you won’t join him. I don’t want any phone calls in the middle of the night.’

  ‘I promise.’