The Things We Cherished

by Pam Jenoff

  Once inside the imposing lobby, she hesitated, wondering how far behind Brian was, whether she should wait here for him. But the guard behind the security desk held out his hand. “Guten Tag …?” And so she had no choice but to step forward. I don’t know who I’m supposed to ask for, she thought, anxiety rising as she handed her passport across the counter. But the guard tapped on the keyboard, then gave it back to her without asking. “Eighteenth floor,” he said.

  Charlotte passed through the metal detector. A minute later, she stepped off the elevator and approached the receptionist’s desk. The young woman with short dark hair glanced up from her keyboard. “Ja?”

  “Guten Morgen.” She faltered, trying to recall some usable German beyond that and failing. “Charlotte Gold. I’m here for a meeting and not sure who I’m supposed to see,” she said, feeling foolish. “But my colleague will be joining us too so I can just wait …”

  “Herr Warrington called a few minutes ago,” the receptionist replied coolly, cutting her off with clipped English. “He’s been unavoidably detained and urged you to go on and have the meeting without him.”

  Have the meeting without him. Charlotte did not reply but stepped back from the desk, her anger rising. Brian had abandoned her—again. And he hadn’t even had the decency to call her directly. Of course not; he was too afraid of her reaction to tell her himself. He’d always been like that, a ruthless litigator in the courtroom who would do whatever he could to avoid confrontation in his own life.

  As she looked around the elegant reception area, her doubts rose: how could she possibly take the meeting alone? She knew nothing about the case, not even the name of the person she was supposed to see. I need to excuse myself, she thought, figure out what to do next.

  But the receptionist was already opening a door and motioning for Charlotte to follow. The woman led her down a hallway, their footsteps muffled by the plush beige carpet. The office, silent except for low voices behind closed doors, was a sharp contrast to Charlotte’s own chaotic work atmosphere at the defenders’ office. A wave of homesickness washed over her.

  They reached the end of the hall and the receptionist ushered her into an office, then retreated wordlessly. Charlotte scanned the corner suite with its floor-to-ceiling glass windows offering a panoramic view of the city. The walls were bare except for a nondescript watercolor of the Alps, none of the usual photographs and diplomas that might have offered a clue about the person with whom she was to meet. Piles of paper and half-drunk cardboard cups of coffee littered the mahogany conference table. Her eyes dropped to the edge of the massive desk and, as they came to rest on the nameplate, widened. She knew then why Brian had been delayed. Why, in fact, he was not going to show at all.

  The office belonged to Jack Warrington, Brian’s brother.

  So that was why Brian had bailed. He and Jack had never gotten along well—Jack, a Yale Law grad two years their senior, was as quiet and intellectual as his brother was brash and athletic. “He’s brilliant,” Brian had conceded, describing Jack before Charlotte had met him. “If only he’d come out of his own head and live in the real world.” But despite the criticism, Brian’s tone betrayed begrudging admiration, even a hint of envy. She wondered later if he hadn’t gone to law school in part to keep up with his brother.

  But then, sometime toward the end of when Brian and Charlotte dated, the brothers had stopped talking altogether. Brian had never said exactly what happened, and Charlotte had been too caught up with her mother’s illness to ask, but she assumed it was about money or some other family matter that seemed trivial compared to all she was dealing with at the time. Was it possible that they had not spoken in all these years?

  What would Jack think of her showing up here now? Did he even know that she was coming? She was seized with the urge to flee, or at a minimum to step out of the office and compose herself. But before she could move, the door opened and there, standing before her, was Jack.

  “Hello, Charley,” he said, using the nickname that no one had for years. Not even Brian when he came to see her the other day, and he was the one who had coined it. She could not tell if Jack was surprised to see her alone, or that she was here at all. He bent and kissed her cheek and the faint scent of his cologne, something European and distinctive, sent her hurtling back through the years. When had she been close enough to him back then to recognize his scent?

  “Please,” he said as he straightened. He gestured to the conference table, clearing away two of the coffee cups and pulling out a chair.

  As she sat, she found herself studying him out of the corner of her eye. The resemblance to Brian was there, not so strong that one would have recognized the connection at opposite ends of a crowded room, but undeniable to those who knew them. Jack shared his brother’s broad-shouldered lankiness and his hair was the same shade of chocolate brown as Brian’s and parted and flopped at the same angle. But where Brian got a haircut every three weeks religiously, Jack’s was shaggy and had more of a curl, combining with the stubble that covered his cheeks and chin to give him an air of intentional disarray. And his eyes were completely different, ice blue and piercing.

  Jack started to sit across from her, but before he touched the chair, he sprang up again. “Coffee?” Without waiting for an answer, he disappeared from the office, closing the door behind him.

  She shivered involuntarily. Jack had always intimidated her. On the surface, it seemed illogical; he was the softer-spoken brother, Brian loud and blustery. But there was something behind Jack’s impassive exterior, not just his intensity but a quiet bemusement, as though he was in on a joke that the rest of them could not understand or share.

  “He’s just odd,” Brian had replied offhandedly when Charlotte remarked on Jack’s aloofness after meeting him for the first time.

  “Why?” Charlotte asked, trying to understand as she always did what was behind a person’s behavior, the motive that drove the action.

  Brian shrugged. But Charlotte wanted to know more. She was fascinated with peeling back people’s exteriors—the more cryptic the better. What lay beneath the layers in which Jack seemed to shroud himself?

  It seemed to Charlotte that there was more to it than just his demeanor, though; she suspected that Jack didn’t like her. Was it some perceived lack of intellect? Or perhaps it was her background of which he disapproved.

  There had been a moment once when she’d joined them for Thanksgiving dinner and the family, who were not the slightest bit religious, said grace. When she was growing up with Winnie, the holiday had consisted of hot turkey sandwiches for two at the local diner, or maybe Ponderosa in the better years. But for the Warringtons it was a formal meal for twenty, with the good china and seating cards. At some point during the blessing, which proved to be not so much a prayer as a long and winding monologue designed to impress upon the guests the family’s ancestral connection to the Mayflower, Charlotte looked up. Her eyes met Jack’s across the table and he lifted his bowed head slightly and raised one eyebrow, a joke shared between them. She blinked and the expression was gone, his head lowered again, and she thought she imagined it. A few weeks later, she learned of her mother’s illness and she had not visited with Brian’s family or seen Jack again.

  Until now. The office door opened and Jack reappeared, balancing two cups. He handed her one and she dipped her head to the unsweetened cappuccino, equally flattered that he remembered her drink and annoyed that he presumed she had not changed. She toggled between the two emotions before finally pushing them both aside and accepting the much-needed caffeine gratefully.

  “I’m not sure if we should wait,” she began, as she dropped into the chair he indicated. “That is, Brian said—”

  “Brian,” he pronounced his brother’s name with an unmistakable twist, “won’t be joining us. He sent word that he’s been detained but that we should get started without him. But I would be surprised if he showed at all.”

  “You spoke to him?”

  Jack s
hook his head, fiddling with the top button of his crisp blue shirt. “Not in years. He left word with my associate.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Brian’s firm contacted me a few months ago and asked me to work on the Dykmans matter. But on a personal level, my brother and I are, as they say, estranged.” But he still sent you the case, Charlotte thought. Of course. Brian was rational enough to know that Jack was the right person to handle the matter, the same way he knew he needed Charlotte. He would not let his feelings, or in her case, lack thereof, get in the way of providing his client and himself with the best possible chance of winning.

  Jack continued, “Let’s not waste time on that, though. How have you been these many years?”

  “Fine,” she replied awkwardly. “I’m a public defender in Philadelphia, handling juvenile cases.” Marquan’s face popped into her mind. If Brian had backed out of meeting her here, would he renege on his promise to get Marquan the defense counsel Charlotte had demanded?

  “That must be incredibly difficult,” he replied, with more interest than she had expected. There was a spark in his eyes that hadn’t been there when she told Brian of her work.

  “It is,” she confessed, “but I love it. I have no idea what I’m doing here, though.” She paused, hoping for an explanation, but Jack just sat there, fingers at his chin, watching her intently, as if prompting a witness at a deposition to say more. “And I wasn’t expecting to find you in private practice,” she continued awkwardly. “I thought you were at the Tribunal.” Two years ahead of them at law school, Jack had always been focused on war crimes prosecution. He had received the same prestigious fellowship to The Hague that Charlotte later turned down, then became a permanent prosecutor there, gaining international recognition for his successful track record on genocide cases. She had not realized he’d left.

  Jack’s brow furrowed as though he was surprised himself. “Yes, well there was a political shakeup at The Hague and the agenda changed. Everything I tried to do got caught up in bureaucracy and politics. And with all of the other things to focus on since 9/11, the Tribunal just doesn’t have the support it once did from the rest of the world. I found myself growing frustrated, cynical. Then the firm approached me and offered me the chance to continue doing significant human rights work on a pro bono basis.”

  So he had fled too. The realization seemed to level the playing field somehow, made him a hair less intimidating.

  “The catch is, of course, I have to deal with the devil,” he added, gesturing around the office. “How much do you know about Dykmans?”

  She shrugged, the irony of the segue not lost on her. She had Googled Roger Dykmans hurriedly before leaving for the airport, scanned a few articles about the indictment. “Just the public stuff and the bit Brian told me a few days ago. He’s a wealthy financier. And his brother was Hans Dykmans, who rescued several thousand Jews out of Prague.”

  “Prague and Budapest and just about every other major city in Eastern Europe,” Jack replied curtly. Charlotte bristled at the correction. “Roger Dykmans emigrated to Canada after the war. He eventually found his way to Manhattan, where he and a friend started Dykmans James in 1949. Using the acumen he had gathered in the German market, he developed a specialty securing financing for the arms industry. It was the right place at the right time, and he was able to leverage the military buildup for the Cold War successfully, finance several major companies, and make a fortune for his clients.”

  “And himself,” she noted. “He never changed his name after the war?”

  Jack shook his head. “He didn’t have a reason to. To the contrary, being Hans’s brother gave him a kind of legitimacy with the Jewish industrialists.”

  She took a sip of cappuccino, processing the information. “Married? Dykmans, I mean,” she added quickly, worried Jack might think she was asking about him.

  But he seemed to take the question in stride. “Never married, no kids. Some people thought of him as a queer old fellow, others saw him as wrapped up in his work. Anyhow, in 1994, Dykmans suddenly announces that he’s moving to Geneva.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Strange, no? A man in his seventies, leaving his Upper East Side penthouse to relocate. He said it was for the sake of the business, to develop the European presence. But the Geneva office of Dykmans James was never more than a placeholder. His explanation just didn’t make sense.”

  “Swiss girlfriend, maybe?” she offered jokingly.

  But Jack did not respond to her attempt at humor. “Not that we know of,” he replied, a note of disdain in his voice.

  The elder Warrington brother, Charlotte reflected, was seeming less enigmatic by the moment.

  Jack continued, “So he’s living in Switzerland, traveling back and forth nonstop to New York because that’s where his business is still located.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Fast-forward nearly fifteen years. Last spring, a clerk in St. Petersburg claims he found a document showing that Roger was responsible for turning in his brother to the Nazis and for the deaths of the hundreds Hans was trying to save at the time.”

  She tilted her head. “The document surfaced out of nowhere?”

  “The archives,” he replied, and Charlotte nodded, understanding. After Communism ended and the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc regimes fell apart, a ton of records that had been closed off to Western researchers suddenly became available. He continued, “Apparently the man tried to extort millions from Dykmans to keep the information quiet, but he wasn’t playing. So the man went to the authorities and Dykmans was arrested.”

  “In Switzerland?”

  “No, Poland.” Before she could respond, Jack turned and reached around to the desk behind him, pulling a file from the countless stacks without looking and handing it to her. She leafed through the first document, a photocopy of Roger Dykmans’s passport. The pages were filled with stamps from airports all over the world, the global itinerary of a busy finance executive. But there was one stamp that caught her eye—the entry marker for Poland, which appeared repeatedly on each page.

  “That’s the odd part,” Jack continued. “They caught him in Warsaw outside the construction site for the future museum of Jewish history. There was some speculation that he was there to do harm.”

  She looked up. “At his age?”

  He nodded. “Kind of like that crazy old guy who shot up the lobby of the Holocaust museum in Washington a few months ago. Except when they found Dykmans, he was unarmed. They extradited him to Germany.”

  “Dykmans went to Poland at least a dozen times in the past two years,” she noted, “even after the evidence of his alleged complicity surfaced. Why would he do that?”

  He leaned back, lacing his hands behind his head in the same way Brian used to. Then he lunged forward again, taking a sip of coffee. “The guilty are sometimes compelled to return to the scene of the crime.”

  “So I’ve heard.” She found herself irked by the simplistic nature of his statement, and his tone, which bordered on patronizing. Had he forgotten that she worked in criminal defense?

  “But I don’t think it’s that,” he replied, not picking up on or choosing to ignore her sarcasm.

  “Then what?”

  “That’s why you’re here.” He set down his cup.

  “Have you asked him?”

  “Of course. Here’s the really baffling part, though: he refuses to help in his own defense, or to say much of anything at all. It’s as if he’s given up.”

  Brian had said as much, Charlotte recalled. “Strange.”

  “That’s an understatement. I mean, he’s old and alone, but he has his business, his reputation. You’d think he would want to keep those.”

  Charlotte thought of her clients back home, kids like Marquan who more often than not refused to talk. But their silence was born out of fear for their safety and that did not seem likely to be the case here.

  “Are you ready to meet him?” Jack asked. He did not wait
for her response. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

  Ten minutes later, Charlotte found herself seated in the back of a black sedan beside Jack. One of the benefits of private practice, he’d explained when they climbed into the car at the curb of his office, nodding toward the driver. “Is it far?” Charlotte asked now, as they wound their way out of the city center.

  “Just a few miles.”

  As the car skirted the edge of the Marienplatz, Charlotte craned her neck to try to catch a glimpse of the famous glockenspiel. “Oktoberfest.” Jack gestured toward the square, where workers were stacking tables beneath a massive tent, then rolled his eyes. She wouldn’t have minded experiencing the beer festival, Charlotte thought. Events like that, or the Christmas market that filled Kraków’s main market square each December, were part of what had made living in Europe so great. But to Jack, the crowds and noise were nothing more than an infuriating distraction.

  “Have you heard of the Theresienstadt massacre?” he asked.

  Charlotte hesitated, caught off guard by the abrupt change of topic. “No. I mean, I know about the camp.” Theresienstadt, or Terezin, was the model camp set up by the Nazis in Czechoslovakia. It was intended to demonstrate that the Jewish people weren’t being treated that badly, that they were just being temporarily interned. There was a school, with arts and crafts and music, and the students would be trooped out for the Red Cross or other visitors. Of course the moment they were gone, the prisoners were returned to conditions that were nearly as abhorrent as those in the other camps. “But I’ve never heard of a massacre there.”

  A disapproving look flashed across Jack’s face, as though he’d expected her to be better prepared. I would have been, she thought, if I’d had more than twenty-four hours notice.

  “Hans Dykmans was stationed as a diplomat in Breslau until the war broke out,” he explained. Charlotte nodded. Breslau was the German name for Wroclaw, a city now part of Poland. “He became distressed by the plight of the Jews, the failure of almost anyone to do anything to stop it. So working secretly with an international group, he began developing fake papers to help Jews flee. But once they were in the camps, it was almost impossible to do anything to help them. And as the war wore on and the Germans became more desperate, they had less of a reason to maintain the pretense of Terezin.