Blood Brothers (2 page)

He turned off the projector, and the screen recessed into the ceiling. “Many companies say that their products will change the world, and virtually all of them are wrong. But I ask you to imagine a time when a firefighter can take a pill that will give him increased strength and speed of mind and hand before he enters a burning building; when our men and women in uniform can make themselves stronger, faster, and smarter than their enemies during battle.” He swept his arms wide to encompass the whole audience. “A time when any of us can make ourselves a little smarter and faster whenever we need to face life’s challenges.”

He held up a single leaf. “This came from a tree grown from one of the seeds found in that ancient cave. It is a gift from our past. It is also our future, and it is a future bright with promise. We stand here tonight at a meeting of the ages. Past, present, and future have come together, each enriching the other. Thank you for coming tonight. I hope you enjoy the exhibition.”

Ben crossed the threshold of the exhibit hall and paused to let his eyes adjust. The interior had been made to look like the longhouse of a Viking king. There were no windows, and the only light came from the entrances and strategically spaced “smoke holes” in the roof. Dark timbers covered the walls and sloped upward to form a steeply peaked roof, supported by richly carved beams bearing images of dragons and serpents that intertwined to form complex patterns that confused the eye. Artifacts protected by Plexiglas cases were arranged to make them appear to be a natural part of the long hall. A collection of eight golden arm rings, each in the form of an emerald-eyed serpent swallowing its tail, lay apparently carelessly arranged in an ironbound chest, as if some warlord had tossed them there after returning from a raid. Two swords with gold-inlaid hilts hung from pegs on the wall, their bright blades bearing the notches of long-ago battles. In a dark corner near the end of the hall, an ancient chair of exquisitely carved black oak sat in a rough circle with several modern copies, in which visitors could sit and imagine a conversation with the lord of the hall. To complete the illusion, one of the chairs held the hulking figure of a Norse warlord bent in thought and shadow, brooding over plans for his next conquest.

Ben decided to give his feet a rest and headed for the little grouping of chairs. As he got closer, he noticed that the clothing on the Viking mannequin didn’t look right, though the light was too dim to say exactly why. As Ben approached, the figure stirred and looked up. It was Gunnar. “Ah, Mr. Corbin. I see that I’m not the only escapee from the hot air blowing out there.”

“The speeches do start to sound the same after a while. I figured the exhibit might be more interesting than the people talking about it.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“Pretty impressive, especially when it’s empty like this. They’ve really created the atmosphere of another place and time. When I walked in here, I almost felt like I’d arrived early for a Viking war council and that any minute the king and his generals would walk in.”

Gunnar regarded him with an odd, piercing look for a moment. “It’s interesting that you should put it like that. I—” There was a noise behind them, and Gunnar looked past Ben’s shoulder. Ben turned and saw Karl Bjornsen walking up to them.

“Gunnar!” he said in a booming voice. “I’m so glad you could make it to our exhibition.” He was smiling, but it was the hard, predatory smile of the victor greeting the vanquished.

“I wanted to make sure you didn’t screw it up too badly after I left,” Gunnar replied. He stood and looked around. “It looks good. I assume someone else took care of it.”

Ben shifted his weight uncomfortably and looked away, but Karl continued to smile. “You’re right. I was so busy cleaning up the mess you left at my company that I didn’t have time to work on this myself.”

Gunnar’s face hardened.
“Ditt selskap, sier du?”

“Ja. Og min teknologi som du stjal,”
Karl growled in reply.

Gunnar tensed and clenched his fists.
“Din helv—”
He stopped himself as he noticed a group entering the exhibit hall from the reception. “Excuse me; do any of you speak Norwegian?”

“Yes, I do,” replied a matronly woman with white hair and a tentlike dress.

“How unfortunate. Since that is the case, I will limit my remarks to wishing you all a good night,” Gunnar continued with an icy smile. “Even you, little brother.” Then he pushed past Karl and out of the hall.

Two hours later, the festivities were winding down. The bar was closed, everyone who wanted to see the exhibit had been through the hall, and most of the crowd had left. The Corbins had spent the past half hour near the door, saying good-bye to guests. At last, even Karl Bjornsen and his wife gathered their coats and were on their way out into the blustery night.

As Ben watched the Bjornsens’ retreating backs, he leaned over to his wife and asked, “What’s the deal with him and his brother? I thought they were going to start fighting when they ran into each other in the exhibit.”

“I told you about that,” replied Noelle. “They founded Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals together, decades ago. Karl was the chairman and Gunnar was the president, but they set it up so that neither of them could make any major decision without the other’s consent. That worked fine for a long time, but about a year ago they stopped agreeing. It turned into a feud over control of the company, and Karl won. He forced Gunnar out in a proxy fight about a month ago.”

Ben vaguely recalled having seen articles about the brothers’ battle, though he hadn’t read them. “That was in the
Tribune
a while back, wasn’t it?”

“And
Crain’s
,” replied Noelle. “A couple of the board members didn’t want to invite Gunnar tonight, because they thought there might be a scene.”

“There
was
a scene.” Ben recounted the incident in the exhibit hall.

Noelle sighed. “I’m glad it wasn’t worse. It sounds like Karl gave Gunnar the bump just as their company was developing that new product, which could be huge. I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

“What new product?”

She looked at him first with surprise, and then with suspicion. “You snuck out before Karl’s presentation, didn’t you?”

“I knew the speeches would go downhill as soon as you stopped talking,” he replied.

She smiled affectionately. “Good answer, but you missed a really interesting talk.” She summarized the story of the hiker’s discovery and the results of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ test results.

“Wow,” Ben said when she had finished. “I’m sorry I missed that. So he’s invented brain steroids, huh? I wish we’d had those when I was in law school.”

One of the servers walked up with a question, and Noelle turned her attention to the aftermath of the party. “The caterer says there’s seven pounds of grilled salmon left,” she informed Ben a few minutes later. “What do you say we bring it home?”

“Brutus will love it,” he replied. Brutus was their ten-pound cockapoo—50 percent cocker spaniel, 50 percent poodle, and 100 percent terror. Noelle had picked the breed, and Ben had picked the name. Brutus was still a puppy and had a huge appetite, particularly for human food.

She made a point of looking appalled. “No way are you giving it to the dog!”

“It’ll stink up the fridge if we have it in there for more than a day,” Ben countered.

“Okay. We’ll take half, and it will be gone in thirty-six hours.”

Ben knew she was up to the challenge. “Deal.”

Gunnar’s car would have been uncomfortably silent had it not been for Markus’s intermittent snoring. Tom nudged his brother, who was quiet for a moment before starting up the chain saw again.

Markus was drunk, as he generally was by late evening. After a contemptuous remark from his father in the parking lot, Markus had put in his earbuds, tuned out his family, and fallen asleep by the time the car reached the highway. About fifteen minutes later, Gunnar said, “Markus!” in an irritated voice. No response.
“Markus!”
he boomed.

His son bolted awake and cringed. “What?”

“You were snoring. Stop it.”

“Yes,
sir
,” Markus replied in a slurred mixture of subservience and resentment. He turned up the volume on his music and closed his eyes again. But he didn’t snore.

Gunnar drove fast. He always did when he was angry. Early in their marriage, Anne would urge him to slow down, but she soon learned that there was no reasoning with him when he was like this. All she could do was wait for the storm to pass and pray that he didn’t hit anyone. So far, he hadn’t.

“Are you still planning on taking the boat out on Thursday?” she asked, hoping to distract him from his wrath.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Did the weather forecast change?”

“No.”

She debated whether to dig deeper and decided it was worth the risk. “Then why
wouldn’t
you go sailing?”

He was silent for so long that she began to think he wouldn’t answer. “I think I’m going to see a lawyer.”

She leaned over and whispered, “About the boys’ inheritance—about Markus?”

“No,” he replied. “About the other problem male in the family.”

The Corbins walked into their Wilmette home and were energetically greeted by ten pounds of fur, tongue, and bark. “Whoa! Down, boy!” said Ben as he tried to protect the pants of his best suit. “I just had these dry cleaned.”

After Brutus’s affections subsided, Ben and Noelle trudged upstairs, worn out by the busy evening. Ben changed into a pair of sweats and got ready for bed. Then he lay down and let his mind idle as he waited for Noelle to finish her complicated ritual for removing her clothing, jewelry, and makeup after society evenings.

His thoughts wandered for a few minutes, but he soon found himself thinking about the exhibition. The intricately worked gold, the weathered runic inscriptions, and the sense that he had been walking among the ghosts of warrior kings all percolated in Ben’s tired brain. He imagined mist-shrouded fjords and mountain forests growing over the burial mounds of ancient Viking lords.

Noelle walked in, interrupting her husband’s Nordic reverie. “Hey, honey,” he said, “what do you think about maybe taking a trip to Norway? We’ve never been there, and it’ll be a lot harder to take trips after the baby comes.”