The Predators

by Harold Robbins

  “That’s funny,” he said. “My father knows everything that I do. In France parents always know what their children are planning to do. I guess the Americans are different.”

  “Americans are not different,” she said in a positive voice. “It’s Elisha. His mother died when he was only a year old and he was raised by nannies until he was almost eleven years old. Father never had time to take care of him because he was away on business. It was not until Father married my mother that Elisha began to live with a real family.”

  “I lost my mother before I even knew her. I was very young, my father told me. But my father and my grandfather always made a home for me.” He smiled at her. “I was lucky, I guess.”

  “You were,” she replied. “My mother passed on when I was four years old. I remember her a little bit, but I always had my big sisters to take care of me.”

  “Then we were both lucky.” He smiled.

  She got out of her chair. “Okay.” She laughed. “Now I’m really going to go up to bed.”

  “Bon dodo,” he said, and laughed.

  12

  It was after midnight when Elisha returned home. He walked up the steps of the porch and was almost opening the door to enter the house when he saw Jean Pierre sitting on the veranda chair. He stared down at Jean Pierre. “What are you doing up so late?”

  “I wasn’t sleepy,” he said. Then he looked up at Elisha. “How was the party?”

  Elisha shrugged his shoulders. “It was okay, I guess. But most of the boys there were pretty stupid.”

  “Then why do you bother with them?” he asked.

  “What else is there to do here?” Elisha replied, and opened a package of cigarettes and took one.

  Jean Pierre watched him. “Could I have one, please?”

  Elisha lit his cigarette. “You can’t smoke. You’re too young.”

  “My father gave me cigarettes when I was nine years old,” Jean Pierre lied. But he had smoked cigarettes that Armand had given to him once in a while. He looked up at Elisha. “Well?”

  Elisha gave him a cigarette. He watched Jean Pierre light it expertly. “Damn!” he said. “You can smoke.”

  Jean Pierre let the smoke flow from his pursed lips. “The girls tell me that you are going to be a professor at Harvard.”

  “The girls talk too much,” Elisha said angrily. He dragged on the cigarette. “Nothing has been agreed to yet.”

  “But you do want to go?” Jean Pierre asked.

  “It would be very important for my career, Jean Pierre, if I got an associate professorship at Harvard,” Elisha answered. “Harvard is one of the best universities in the United States. Of course I would go.”

  Jean Pierre put out his cigarette with his shoe. “You will go,” he said. “I’m sure.”

  “But, if I do go, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t return to St. Xavier. I will know whoever becomes the next headmaster. He will be a very good teacher, I assure you.”

  “It doesn’t matter so much about that,” Jean Pierre said. “I’m lonely. I want to go home to France. Canada or the United States aren’t comfortable for me.”

  “But what about the war?” Elisha asked. “Germany seems to be running over France. What are you going to do if they take your country?”

  “I’m French,” Jean Pierre answered quickly. “I learned to speak English; I guess I can also learn to speak German as well.”

  “You’ll have to write your father for permission,” Elisha said.

  “I know,” Jean Pierre answered. “But I’m not worried about his answer. After all, he is French and he will understand my feelings.”

  13

  He felt a draft as the door to his bedroom opened. He sat up in bed and looked toward the faint light that was shining from the open door and then disappeared. He felt rather than saw a white gown coming to him. “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Kate,” whispered the voice.

  The moon was shining through the open window and he could see her standing next to his bed. “What are you doing?” he asked, also whispering.

  “I’m upset,” she said, sitting down on the edge of his bed.

  “Your father will be angry if he finds you here,” Jean Pierre said.

  “He won’t find us,” she replied. “He sleeps through everything. He can’t hear anything from his bedroom.”

  “Why are you upset?” Jean Pierre asked.

  “Elisha says that you are going back to France,” she said. “But I don’t want you to go; it might be dangerous because of the war.”

  “I just spoke to Elisha and told him I wanted to go home tonight after he came home. I thought you were already asleep. When did you talk to him?”

  She was silent.

  He tried to see her face in the dark. “Did Elisha come to your bedroom?”

  She still didn’t answer.

  “Does he come to your bedroom often?” asked Jean Pierre quietly.

  He could hear her begin to cry.

  He took her hands from her face. “What is it?” he asked softly. “You can tell me, we’re friends.”

  She looked at him. “You won’t tell my sisters or anyone else?”

  “I promise,” he answered.

  “Every summer since I was twelve,” she whispered.

  “Do you think that he ever went to your sisters’ room?” he questioned.

  “No,” she replied. “They always shared a bedroom. I was the only one in a room by myself.”

  “Did he do anything to you?” he asked curiously.

  “Not really,” she said.

  “Then why did he come to your bedroom?”

  “He always takes out his big thing. He wanted me to watch while he would massage it and it would get even bigger. Then he made me massage it until it spit out juice all over my hands.” She began to weep again. “I told him I didn’t want to do it, but he paid no attention to me.”

  “Did you ever want to do anything?” he asked.

  “He wanted me to take it in my mouth or rub it against my behind,” she said huskily. “But I never let him do it, Jean Pierre. I told him I would scream and everyone in the house would know what he had done.”

  He sat silent for a moment and looked at her. “It’s something that a lot of boys like to do.”

  She looked at him. “Do you?”

  Jean Pierre shrugged.

  “Did Elisha show his thing to you?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he answered. “I told you all boys want to do it.”

  She sat quietly for a moment and then shook her head. “I’ll never understand boys.”

  “You don’t have to now. When you get older you’ll understand everything. Isn’t that what our parents always tell us?” Jean Pierre said, laughing.

  “I guess the French and the Americans are the same. That’s what they always tell us,” Kate answered, giggling. “Do you really have to go back to France?” she asked again.

  “It’s my home,” he said.

  “Oh, Jean Pierre, I’ll miss you,” she said. “We have so much fun together and you’re so wise.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” he replied. “But we’ll stay in touch with each other.”

  She leaned down and kissed his cheek and went back to her room. He sat on the bed and thought for a while. Then he went to the small desk near the window.

  He wrote a letter to his father. He wanted to go home.

  14

  Jacques sat at the dinner table facing his father. He held an envelope and a letter out across the table toward him. “It’s a letter from your grandson, the selfish little prick!”

  Maurice read the letter quickly, then looked at Jacques. “What are you so excited about? I remember when you were a child, you pestered me to bring you home from the vacation camp that I paid a lot of money for. You were homesick. So why be angry because your son is homesick?”

  “You know how much it cost to send him there,” he answered. “Going to Canada and the United States is even more
expensive than going to a French vacation camp.”

  Maurice laughed. “We can’t afford it. We are really poor. Jacques, don’t be an ass. The best place for Jean Pierre is to stay there. Not only for his education but his learning about a new world. A world that will someday control everything in business.”

  “The Americans are stupid,” Jacques said. “There’s nothing Jean Pierre could learn from them,” Jacques snapped at his father.

  “Jacques,” his father said soothingly. “They are not stupid. Mark my words, in a very short time they will chase the Germans out of England and Europe.”

  “Their President Wilson said that he will not bring America into the war,” Jacques said.

  “Their President Wilson is a very brilliant politician, and what he wants is a second term. Do you think he could become president again by telling people he wants to bring them into a war? Only the stupid European countries want to rush into war. If we had been intelligent we would have never gone to war against the Germans. We have forgotten what they did to us in the Franco-Prussian War. We were thankful then to get some of our country back.”

  Jacques looked at his father. “You have no faith in us.”

  Maurice laughed again. “My dear son, the French are not warriors. They are lovers.” He leaned back in his chair and reached for a cigar. “We can bring Jean Pierre home when the war is over and then we can teach him about our business. And there will be no interference from a war to bother him. By that time he will be maturing into a man and we will make sure that he is one of the most respected and successful businessmen in all the world, not only in France.”

  15

  The League of Nations—1919

  A light mist was covering the streets of Paris. Jean Pierre came into the house, placing his umbrella in the stand next to the door and hanging his cap and raincoat next to a mirrored wall with clothes hooks. It was nearly five o’clock as he went into the library.

  As usual, his grandfather was seated in his large comfortable leather chair; a small table next to him held his cognac and a Baccarat ashtray, where his cigar smoldered. He looked at his grandson. “You seem very excited.”

  Jean Pierre held out an envelope. “Read this letter and you will know why I am excited.”

  Maurice smiled as he took the letter out of the envelope. “If it’s a letter from that American girl you correspond with, your father will not be that thrilled.”

  “Grandpapa, please, just read the letter.”

  Maurice read the letter quickly. He looked at Jean Pierre in surprise. “The Americans are offering to let you be translator for them at the first League of Nations meeting to be held in Paris.”

  “Yes,” Jean Pierre said with obvious excitement.

  “Why did they choose you? It’s very strange. You have just turned sixteen years old.” He held out the letter as he spoke. “This is a task for someone more mature.”

  “No, Grandpapa, almost five years in American schools in Boston has given me a very good knowledge of the language in the States.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “But that doesn’t tell me why they chose you.”

  “Did you read the signature on the letter?”

  Maurice glanced down at the signature and then looked up at Jean Pierre. “It says that it’s from the head of the translation committee, one of President Wilson’s assistants.”

  Jean Pierre was growing impatient. “But the name, Grandpa,” he said. “Elisha Barnett. He was my first headmaster who then arranged for me to live with his family in Boston while I finished my schooling in the U.S.”

  “And the American girl? She is his sister?”

  “But only he will be in Paris, not her,” Jean Pierre replied.

  Maurice looked at him. “Did you have an affair with him?” His voice expressed curiosity.

  “Not really, Grandpapa,” Jean Pierre answered. “He had many friends closer to his own age.”

  “Then what did ‘not really’ mean exactly?” asked Maurice.

  “We played,” Jean Pierre answered. “I masturbated him and sometimes pushed my hand into his derriere.”

  “Did you have an affair with his sister? The girl you correspond with?”

  “No, Grandpapa.” Jean Pierre smiled. “We were very close friends and I think she tried to find out if Elisha seduced me.”

  “She didn’t try to seduce you herself?” he asked.

  Jean Pierre laughed. “No. She is almost five years older than I am, and besides, she always liked American boys who were athletic.”

  Jacques walked into the library. “I just heard your last words. Who was athletic?”

  “American boys,” Jean Pierre said. He held the letter out to his father. “I’ve been offered a position during the League of Nations’s Parisian congress.”

  Jacques read the letter. He stared up at his son. “But this is from the American delegation?”

  “My former headmaster from Canada, whose family I lived with in the States, has offered me this position as a translator for one of the American groups.”

  Jacques turned to his father. “I don’t like it. Jean Pierre is French, not American. He should not work for them.”

  Maurice shook his head. “No, Jacques, you told me that you wanted Jean Pierre to become a worldwide businessman. Without the United States he will never become what you want him to be.”

  Jacques looked down at his father. “I don’t see how it could benefit him to work in the League of Nations.”

  “You’re not thinking, Jacques.” Maurice continued looking at his son. “Remember just a few years ago, you laughed because the Stales were starting to sell Coca-Cola here in Europe. Do you also remember that I wanted you to make a deal to distribute Coca-Cola here in France? And look at it now. Coca-Cola is the favorite drink for young people and is second only to beer.”

  Jacques stood shaking his head. “How will it help our business?”

  “America will be the next market for us,” Maurice said very assuredly. “Maybe not in my time, and maybe not in yours, but in Jean Pierre’s time, when Plescassier is his own, he will send our water to the States. If today he works in the American delegation, he will make contacts and acquaintances who might be helpful when Plescassier becomes the most successful bottled water in the world.”

  Jacques turned to Jean Pierre. “And what do you think?”

  Jean Pierre answered, “I’d like to do it.”

  Jacques stared at his son. “Are you in love with your former headmaster?”

  Jean Pierre laughed. “I’m too young to fall in love.”

  16

  The Second World War—1940

  JEAN PIERRE

  Jacques leaned back comfortably in his leather-stuffed chair behind the antique ornate desk in his Paris office. He asked his secretary to call his father in his villa in Cannes. That was one thing he had been pleased about. Finally he had been able to persuade his father to retire in the south of France, where there was no pressure from the businesses and no nasty Paris winter weather. After all, his father was eighty-six years old, and even though he was bright and sharp as a tack, there was no reason to put up with the everyday pressures of the business world, especially with all the disruptions that the war had created in France.

  The butler at the villa answered the telephone. “Villa Plescassier.”

  Jacques spoke into the telephone. “Hugo, is my father about?”

  “Monsieur Jacques,” the butler answered. “I am sorry but Monsieur Maurice is taking a nap.”

  “Could you please ask him to call me when he is awake. I will be leaving the office in a few minutes. He can call me at home.”

  “Oui, Monsieur Jacques,” the butler answered politely.

  “Merci,” Jacques said, and put down the telephone. He buzzed his secretary and stood up and reached for his overcoat.

  The secretary came into his office. “Monsieur?”

  “I’m going home. If Jean Pierre calls ask him to call me there. You
can let him know that Monsieur Weil, the banker, will be joining me for dinner.”

  “Oui, monsieur,” she said, and helped him on with his overcoat and then held the door open for him.

  His limousine was already waiting for him in front of his office building on the Champs-Elysées. Robert, his chauffeur, was holding the door to his large Citroen open.

  Silently, he stepped into the automobile. Quickly he picked up the afternoon paper that Robert had left for him on the seat. The news was grim. It was June the third and the German Luftwaffe had chased the British army of almost four hundred thousand infantry along with a large French army troop across the English Channel into England. There were several other stories, including General de Gaulle taking control of the French army in England and naming it the Free French Army.

  He was thoughtful as he watched Robert crank the motor. He was pleased that he had bought the Citroen with its old-fashioned crankcase system. The new automobiles with the electric starting systems had many problems and fell apart very quickly. He was startled when the door next to him swung open.

  Jean Pierre laughed at his father’s surprised face. “I’m French, Papa,” he said. “Not Boche.”

  Jacques was angry. “Why are you here so early? I thought you were still working at the army headquarters.”

  Jean Pierre pointed to the new stars on his uniform. “I’ve just been appointed a captain.”

  “Who made you a captain?” Jacques asked. “There’s no one in the headquarters.” He pointed to the headline in the newspaper. “Maréchal Pétain is meeting with the Germans for an armistice.”

  “General de Gaulle promoted me,” Jean Pierre said.

  “How can he do anything? He’s already fled to England.”

  “He has asked me to join him. He wants me to work in the intelligence division. He is impressed with my knowledge of language with the British and the Americans.”

  “The Americans are not even in the war with us,” Jacques said with disdain.

  “De Gaulle has told me it’s only a matter of time,” Jean Pierre answered. “I’m leaving tonight for London.”