Authors: Warren Adler
Tags: #Fiction, Psychological, Suspense, Political, Espionage, General, Mystery and Detective, Thrillers
Blood Ties
BOOKS BY WARREN ADLER
Banquet Before Dawn
Blood Ties
Cult
Death of a Washington Madame
Empty Treasures
Flanagan's Dolls
Funny Boys
Madeline's Miracles
Mourning Glory
Natural Enemies
Private Lies
Random Hearts
Residue
The Casanova Embrace
The Children of the Roses
The David Embrace
The Henderson Equation
The Housewife Blues
The War of the Roses
The Womanizer
Trans-Siberian Express
Twilight Child
Undertow
We Are Holding the President
Hostage
SHORT STORIES
Jackson Hole, Uneasy Eden
Never Too Late For Love
New York Echoes
New York Echoes 2
The Sunset Gang
MYSTERIES
American Sextet
American Quartet
Immaculate Deception
Senator Love
The Ties That Bind
The Witch of Watergate
Copyright ©
1979
by Warren Adler.
ISBN 978-1-59006-084-1
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced
in any form without permission. This novel is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, incidents are either the product
of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Inquiries: WarrenAdler.com
STONEHOUSE PRESS
For Sunny
1
Spears of orange from the morning sun poked through the
patches of mist that clung to the mountain peaks. From his poor vantage in the
speeding Daimler, Albert von Kassel waited for the castle's watchtower to
appear.
Beside him Dawn dozed, her head resting on the red velvet
pillow that Garth had provided after he had tucked away their baggage. Now
Garth's bovine bulk in the front seat created further obstructions to the
impending view. It was there, up there, Albert knew, waiting for the car to
reach just the right position.
"Slower," Albert commanded, replicating his
father's inflection. It was not arrogance, merely the standard way of
communication. Garth understood orders. He had been with the SS.
Albert waited, squinting. The change in the Daimler's
rhythm stirred Dawn. She mumbled something, then burrowed deeper into the
pillow. She disliked annoyances that affected sleep, and Albert had quickly
rejected the notion to shake her awake. He no longer felt a compelling need to
share with her. More and more experiences, thoughts, were private. They hung
together now by inertia, although it was too cruel an idea for him to impart
directly. Not yet.
He had been feeling vaguely annoyed for a long time now,
the impending reunion only increasing his agitation. All those long memories to
be confronted. That Teutonic obsession.
"There," he pointed, as if it were a child's
discovery. He felt an odd ripple in his heartbeat, a familiar clutch in his
throat. Garth nodded and he could see the lips curl faintly on the old
retainer's face, a shadow of a smile.
Poking above the mist, he saw the watchtower of the
citadel, stabbing into the sun's orange shower, deflecting rays on the ancient
stone surface. Above the watchtower, plumed on its metallic staff, he could see
the rippling banner, a field of white on which were emblazoned the markings of
the Teutonic Order.
They were still miles from the castle. But what was seen
could raise the adrenalin, involve the living blood. Never mind that it was all
a contrivance now. Never mind that the citadel with its bastions, ramparts,
allures, baileys and barbicans, was only a prop for tourists to stimulate
historical fantasies. Never mind that it was, after all, merely a hotel.
"Damn, it's beautiful," he mumbled. Despite
himself, he could not resist the historical magnetism.
It was built nine hundred years ago by the Knights of the
Teutonic Order, a von Kassel among them. A hundred years later the Knights
moved eastward, bringing their version of a zealous God with them, determined
that the primitive innocents in their acquisitive path would submit their
minds, and lands, to the Knights' enlightenment. They did, not quite
graciously, and they gave the Germans their "Ostland."
The bloody migration deposited a von Kassel on the shores
of the Baltic, Estonia. That would be about eight hundred years ago, thirty-two
odd generations, a time frame perhaps worthy of his father's white-hot
obsession. Such continuity deserved its myths and legends, he supposed,
wondering why he could never really find the heat of this mighty flame inside
himself. It was the old enigma again.
The castle was theirs now, a von Kassel possession, another
artifact in his father's collection of all things ever touched by an authentic
ancestor. Only the Estonian lands remained to be reacquired, an impossible
dream.
Dawn stirred again, moved a gold braceleted wrist to his
knee.
"There yet?" Her voice had not yet cleared.
The private moment had passed.
"Soon." He pointed to the distant watchtower.
She moved downward to catch the picture, blinking to clear
her sleep-fogged eyes.
"Like in a fairy tale," she said, moved, he
suspected, by images of Grimm and Andersen.
"Full of ghosts," he said.
She clutched his knee. She was a child when it came to
that, full of bad dreams, screams in the night. Sometimes she clutched him,
ferocious in her fear, as if by holding tight she would dispel the weird
creatures chasing her to imaginary horrors. Once, reasserting reality in his
arms held a certain charm, exciting him. Now, like most things between them, it
was gone.
"Mumbo jumbo," she hissed, shaking her head,
removing her hand from his knee to fish in her purse for a cigarette. He pulled
out a lighter and flashed it while she breathed in the smoke deeply, forcing it
dragon-like from her delicate nostrils.
"You wanted to come," he said, settling back into
the soft seat, pressing the button to move the glass, sealing their talk from
Garth's ears.
"He looks like Frankenstein's monster," Dawn
said, showing the direction of her thoughts.
"He's just ugly. He can't help that. He's been with
Father for years." Why was he defending? More to the point, why had he
brought her? He could tell the signs. As he withdrew she became more
possessive. He wondered why he couldn't sustain these things. It had been two
years and now it was faltering badly.
"I'm tired. The trip has made me edgy," she said.
It was a logical subterfuge on her part. She could blame it on the trip. He
hated night flights as well. New York to Frankfurt was a long haul and they had
drunk too much.
The long bout of forced physical idleness and no sleep was
thought provoking. Too much had thrashed about in his head. Vague suspicions
had blown up into huge mental conflagrations, imaginary confrontations with his
father, with his brother Rudi, with Dawn.
In his mind Albert had used strong words. Betrayal. Death.
Madness. Aside from other considerations, dealing in plutonium could be bad
business. Atomic weapons, like nerve gas and bacteriological bombs, were not in
the rules of the superpowers' games. Let their clients play with each other
with more manageable toys: tanks, rockets, planes, guns, big and small. That
was the business of the von Kassels, brokering for all sides. If a moral
consideration nagged at him, he had, he thought, kept that hidden. Or had he?
Did his refusal of Rudi's plan show a lack of courage, a weakness? It was sure
to come up again at the reunion. He had tried to be tactful and considerate,
for Rudi's abused ego mostly. Poor Rudi. The middle son. The clumsy one. The
less gifted. Putting him, Albert, the youngest, in charge of the von Kassel
enterprises was humiliation enough for Rudi, considering that their older
brother, Siegfried, had chosen to abdicate his responsibilities. With his
father's health waning, Rudi, goaded by his ambitious wife, might take this
last chance to prove himself worthy to take his rightful place. Perhaps he was
the worthier. Moral considerations were the enemy of the family business, a
violation of the von Kassel code. Plutonium! My God, it could blow up the
world. That is the world's problem, his father would say. What did such a
detail matter to a von Kassel? His own reticence was a break in the pattern.
And holding this family reunion six months before the
scheduled event was another break in the pattern. Considering the Baron's
health, that, at least, was understandable. They would come together every
three years for this ritual restoking of the von Kassel myth. More than mere
business, although that was part of it. Outsiders thought it eccentric. Like
Dawn.
His brother Siegfried had called him from London. Phone
calls were rare, the talk guarded, cryptic. International wires had too many
ears. But Siegfried, the family oddball, observed a poetic license, although he
respected the von Kassel passion for secrecy and knew the code words. He had
seen their father in the spring and the phoned report was ominous. Health
problems. Weight loss. The Baron was slipping badly. In his heart he had
yearned for the Baron to expire without another of these obligatory rituals.
Not loving the old man seemed, somehow, a biological aberration, and he did not
relish the confrontation so near the end. God, how he had longed to love him!
"How much further?" Dawn asked irritably.
"Not long," Albert said gently. He had hoped he
could love Dawn forever.
The Daimler gained speed. The watchtower darted in and out
of sight as they moved closer to it.
"Will they like me?" Dawn asked. It was her
defenselessness that plagued him now. He should have broken it off before the
trip.
"Sure," he lied. When they sensed his waning
interest, they would ignore her. In the world of the von Kassels, ingratiation
had a purpose.
"I hope so," she said.
The Daimler had turned off the main highway and was
climbing cautiously up the narrow road. The high watchtower loomed clearly now,
the reddish brick, the arched lookout holes. Other watchtowers, lower ones,
came into view. As the car moved upward, the mist thinned, the outlines of the
great citadel seemed etched in the blue sky, a gothic masterpiece, perched on
the commanding peak.
"Now there is eloquence," Albert said. "That
says it all." He wondered if he truly believed it.
"Big," she observed. She reached out and clutched
his hand. The sight was intimidating, frightening.
Tiny sensors in his mind were touching the high brick
enclosure, feeling the ancient texture of Westphalian brick, kilned over eight
hundred years ago, piled and mortared with the sweat of feudal peons.
Listen! Can you hear? It was his father's words, returning
with the timbre and echo of twenty-five years before, when he was just ten, and
had crossed the ocean from America for the first time since being sent away.
They had been in the castle rectory. Albert had listened, had wanted to hear.
But he could only catch the echo in the rectory, bouncing around in the brick
vaults of the ceiling held there by slender granite pillars, a masterpiece of
architectural engineering. How desperately he had wanted to hear this sound
that rang in his father's ears. He had clutched the older man's hand as if the
pressure might afford a clue.
Hear what?, he had wondered, but had dared not ask, for his
father's concentration was lost in some distant mist of memory. Voices.
Prayers. The rectory was a religious enclosure, and the Knights knelt toward
the East, toward Jerusalem, which had spawned their spirit. Perhaps his father
had heard the clanking of their armor, the clamor of swords, as they shifted in
their scabbards. It was something he could only observe, but never feel. Was
there something missing in himself?
His father, Charles von Kassel, Baron of the Teutonic
Order, was not bound by time. His mind, like the castle's walls, enclosed more
than mere historical fact. Locked in its ridges and tissues was the blood
memory of all von Kassel generations.
Vainly, Albert searched all of his life to breathe fire
into the image that his father had tried to stamp into his consciousness. He
could see the Knights of his father's litany straggle homeward after doing
battle with the Infidels in the Holy Land. He could see them reform their ranks
and push eastward along the bloody trail to bring the word of Christ and for
themselves, of course, all the lands from Samogitia to the Finnish Gulf and from the Baltic to the Peipus. But he could not hear the rattle of armor and
find the heart's beat within as his father had. He had never dared admit that.
Not that.
Historians, he had learned later, told a different story
than his father. From the security of musty texts, they had called the Knights
butchers, rapists, plunderers, who amassed their acreage by force and
subterfuge.
Lies, his father had ranted, when in a mood of youthful
curiosity he had dared to broach the subject. The land belongs to him who takes
it and holds it, the Baron had roared, his fist descending loudly on the
nearest surface. Perhaps we didn't have the will or the courage to keep it, his
father had responded finally after the tantrum had subsided. Besides, eight
hundred years was a mighty record. We were always our own masters. They
conquered our lands, Russians, Germans, Estonians. But they never conquered us.
Not the von Kassels!
If he secretly seemed misplaced within his father's
obsession, Albert nevertheless admitted the magnetism of the idea which held
them together, recognizing the power of the device. Because of that alone, the
von Kassels were beyond boundaries, beyond governments. Arms brokerage had
always been their business, even beyond the care of the Estonian lands, the
feudal estates. When the Russians had threatened from the East they had
bartered arms for survival. When the Germans threatened from the West, they had
merely shifted customers with similar results. When the Estonians threatened
from within, again the resiliency of the von Kassels triumphed. Others
destroyed each other. The von Kassels survived.
Even now, his father considered the moment only a temporary
exile from their ancestral lands. Estonia. It was as foreign to him as Timbuktu. He smiled.
"What's amusing?" Dawn asked. He had not been
conscious of her eyes watching him.
"I was thinking of the family," he lied. The
dead, actually, he wanted to say.
"They'll all be there?"
"All."
He had kept photographs from past reunions in gold-stamped
leather albums lined up on the bookshelves of his New York penthouse. During
those first days with Dawn, in the flush of loving, he had wanted to share them
with her and they had sat before the fire turning the plastic coated pages, the
inserted photographs neatly captioned. She had watched them all grow old.
"And that funny, horsey lady?" she had asked,
pointing a tapered, well manicured finger.
"Aunt Karla, Father's sister. The wife of Count
Wilhelm von Berghoff," he had explained stroking her bare shoulder.
"Another von."
"We are all vons."
"It seems so..." she hesitated.
"...archaic."
"It is. But that is the point."
"The point?"
"Being archaic holds the whole thing together. It
gives us continuity."
