The Adventurers

by Harold Robbins

  They had been brought in to him by his father’s personal secretary several days ago. Attached was a short note in his father’s hand. “Study these, then see me Friday morning.”

  As he opened the folder he wondered why his father was interested in the Kuppen companies. He had read in the papers the week before that the Allies had formed a commission to study the overall company and formulate plans to dissolve the complex. They felt that like Krupp, Kuppen had too great a war-making potential.

  A thought entered his mind. It might be that his father was being asked to represent France on the commission. A smile came to his lips; in that case it would be a pleasure to work on such a project. It seemed almost as if he had grown up with a hatred for the name because it was somehow tied up with every engine of destruction that had come out of Germany. Aircraft submarines, the Kuppen V4 bombs that helped rain destruction on England, even the Kuppen rifle, which had been standard equipment in the Nazi army. It would be a joy to tear such a company apart.

  The telephone on his desk rang. He picked it up. It was his father’s secretary. “The baron is ready to see you now.”

  “I’ll be right in.”

  His father looked up as Robert came into the office. He gestured to a chair. “You read the reports?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You also are aware that last month the Baron Von Kuppen was sentenced to five years in prison for his part in the war crimes?”

  Robert nodded.

  “And that also last week a commission was formed to break up the various companies?”

  “And about time!” Robert burst out. “It should have been done after the first war. Perhaps then the Nazis might never have got started.”

  The baron looked at him placidly. “Is that why you think I gave you those reports to study?”

  “What other reason could there be? Obviously the commission has requested your expert advice.”

  His father was silent for a moment. “Either you’re a complete idiot or a naive fool, and I don’t know which is worse.”

  Robert was confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “You’ve read an analysis of the stockholdings, I presume?”

  Robert nodded.

  “You noticed perhaps that the largest stockholder exclusive of the Von Kuppen family is Credit Zurich International of Switzerland?”

  “Yes, they own thirty percent.” Suddenly a rocket exploded inside his head. “C.Z.I.!”

  “That’s right,” his father said dryly. “C.Z.I. Credit Zurich International. Our bank in Switzerland.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. That means we own thirty percent of the Kuppen Farben?”

  “Exactly,” his father answered quietly. “And that’s why we can’t let them break it up.”

  “Then we’ve been making war against ourselves? And receiving a profit out of it at the same time?”

  “I told you not to be an idiot. We made no profit out of the war. Our equity was confiscated by Hitler.”

  “Then what makes you think we have it back now?”

  “Baron Von Kuppen is a gentleman. I have an assignment from him to the effect that he did not recognize the edict of the Nazis. He will honor his obligation.”

  “Sure,” Robert said, his voice turned sarcastic. “What has he got to lose? His seventy percent of what we may save for him will be worth a hell of a lot more than the hundred percent of nothing he will have if the commission breaks the company up.”

  “You’re talking like a child.”

  “Am I?” Robert got to his feet. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten. These are the people who set out to wipe us off the face of the earth. These are the ones who dragged your daughter into a prison and raped and beat her. These are the same men who tortured me to get me to betray my countrymen. Have you forgotten all this, Father?”

  His father’s eyes were steady. “I haven’t forgotten. But what has that got to do with it? The war is over.”

  “Is it, Father?” Angrily Robert took his jacket off and rolled his shirt sleeve up over his forearm. He leaned over his father’s desk. “Is the war over, Father? Look at my arm and tell me if you still think so!”

  The baron looked down at Robert’s arm. “I don’t understand.”

  “Then let me explain. See those tiny punctures? They’re needle marks, and you can thank your Nazi friends for them. They couldn’t get information out of me any other way, so they turned me into a drug addict. Day after day they shot me full of heroin. Then one morning they stopped. Do you have any idea what that is like, Father? You still say the war is over for me?”

  “Robert.” The baron’s voice trembled. “I didn’t know. We’ll get doctors. You can be cured.”

  Robert’s voice suddenly broke. “I tried, Papa. It’s no use; I live with enough pain as it is, I can’t take any more.”

  “You must go away and rest. We’ll find a way to help you. I’ll figure out another way to handle Kuppen Farben.”

  “Let it go, Papa, we don’t need it! Let them break it up!”

  His father looked at him. “I can’t. There are others, our cousins in England and America. I’m responsible to all of them.”

  “Tell them how we feel then. I’m certain they’ll agree with us.” His father was silent.

  Slowly Robert rolled down his sleeve and picked up his jacket. He walked toward the door. “I’m sorry, Father.”

  The baron looked at him. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going away,” Robert said. “That’s what you said I should do, didn’t you?”

  3

  Denisonde got up from the table in answer to the knock on the door. “Monsieur le baron!”

  Baron de Coyne looked at her hesitantly. “Is my son here?”

  She nodded. “But he’s asleep, m’sieur.”

  “Oh.” The baron stood outside the door awkwardly.

  “Excuse me, I seem to have forgotten my manners. Won’t you come in?”

  “Thank you.” The baron followed her into the apartment. She closed the door and studied him. The baron had grown old. His face was lean and lined, his hair thinned, gray. “You don’t remember me, m’sieur?”

  The baron shook his head.

  “We met once, before the war. At Madame Blanchette’s.”

  “Oh, yes.” But looking at him, she realized that he did not. “You must have been just a child then.”

  She smiled. “Let me get you a coffee. Then I will go and see if Robert is awake.”

  As she placed the cup before him he said, “If he is asleep, don’t disturb him. I can wait.”

  “Oui, m’sieur.”

  Robert was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Who’s out there?” he asked suspiciously. “I told you not to make any dates until I had gone for the day.”

  “It’s your father.”

  He was silent for a moment, staring at her. “Tell him to go away, I don’t want to see him.”

  She stood there without moving.

  “You heard me!” he shouted, suddenly angry.

  She still did not move.

  He glared at her angrily but at last it was he who had to give in. “Oh, all right.” He swung a leg off the bed. “I’ll see him. Help me to dress.”

  ***

  Left alone, the baron took a cigarette from the long, thin gold case and lit it. Delicately he sipped at the coffee and glanced around the meagerly furnished apartment. Nothing was right anymore. Not since the war. All the old standards seemed to have vanished.

  When he was a young man, new to his father’s office, he had been content to spend the long years necessary to gain the experience which would earn the confidence of his elders. The young people of today were in too much of a hurry. He could sense it in almost every department of the bank. He could feel it as he walked through the offices. It was apparent in the almost diffident manner in which the juniors regarded their superiors. It was as if they knew the answers before the questions were even asked.

  More than
once he had become aware of the skeptical, challenging look on their faces at his own orders. What makes you think you’re right? they seemed to be asking. What makes you think you know so much? He should have recognized it long ago. He had seen it on the faces of his own children when war broke out and he had wanted them to come to America. They chose to remain, like the run-of-the-mill man in the street who had no choice. They had no conception of their position in society, or that it raised them above the vulgarity of the conflict.

  It was a malaise de societe. Liberte, egalite, fraternite. Even revolutionists recognized the differences within their own society and that such slogans must apply differently to each level.

  The sound of voices came through the thin wall from the bedroom and he twisted his cigarette nervously. It scattered shreds of tobacco in his hand and he looked around for an ash tray. Almost furtively he stubbed the cigarette out in the saucer under the coffee cup. He got up from his chair and went to the window. The narrow street off the Pigalle seemed even more squalid than by night. The electric signs over the nightclubs, which seemed so bright and colorful in darkness, appeared drab and dingy now. The gutters were filled with the litter of the night before.

  As he watched, a woman and a man came out of a doorway opposite. The woman smiled and opened her purse. Handing him a few bills, she kissed him on the cheek and left him, walking down the street toward the Pigalle with an unmistakable walk.

  A sudden feeling of shame ran through the baron. That man might be his own son. Robert was no better. What personal demons had driven him to such depths? If it had been pride that had sent him away, how could one reconcile that with the squalid way in which he now lived? He remembered how he had learned about it.

  A phone call had come from Madame Blanchette. “Your son, m’sieur, has taken up with one of my girls.”

  The baron had laughed. “Ah, the hot-blooded young! Don’t worry about it, madame. I shall reimburse you for the time she is away.”

  “No, m’sieur, you don’t understand. She has left with him. They have taken an apartment off the Pigalle. She is going into business on her own.”

  He still hadn’t understood. “But what will Robert do?”

  Madame Blanchette did not answer.

  Suddenly the baron was angry. “The fool! Doesn’t the girl understand? She won’t see a sou from me!”

  “She knows that, m’sieur.”

  “Then why did she go with him?” he had asked, bewildered.

  “I think she’s in love with him.”

  “Whores don’t fall in love,” he had replied brutally.

  Madame Blanchette’s voice changed subtly. “She’s also a woman, m’sieur, and women do.”

  The telephone had gone dead in his hand and he had replaced it in its cradle angrily. There was much to do and he erased the conversation from his mind. The boy would come back, he thought. Wait until he found out there would be no money.

  But the weeks had gone by and still no word had come from Robert. Then one day his secretary came in with a curious expression on her face. “A gentleman from the police wishes to see you. An Inspector Leboq.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He says the matter is personal.”

  The baron had hesitated a moment. “Show him in.”

  The detective was a short man in a gray suit, with a manner that was almost fawning.

  “You wished to see me?” the baron asked brusquely. He knew how to deal with presumptuous public servants.

  “Oui, monsieur.” Inspector Leboq’s voice was almost apologetic. “In a raid last night we picked up a few girls and their macs. One of them identified himself as your son, this one.” He handed a photograph to the baron.

  The baron looked down at the uncompromising police mug shot. Robert stared back at him with harsh, defiant eyes. His face is thin and drawn, was the baron’s first thought, he can’t be eating enough. Then he turned back to the policeman.

  “Is that your son?”

  “Yes.” The baron glanced down at the picture again. “What is the charge against him?”

  The policeman sounded embarrassed. “Living off the proceeds of prostitution.”

  The baron was silent for a moment. Suddenly he felt very old. “What will happen to him?”

  “He will go to jail, that is, unless he pays the fine. He says he has no money.”

  “He sent you to me?”

  The detective shook his head. “No, monsieur. He did not mention you at all. I merely came to verify his identity.” He got to his feet and picked up the photograph from the baron’s desk. “Thank you for your assistance, monsieur.”

  The baron looked up at him. “How much is the fine? I will pay it.”

  The policeman shook his head. “I am not permitted to interfere in these matters, monsieur.” He studied the baron. “But my brother is a private detective, also an avocat, and very discreet. I am certain that he could handle the matter for you, and there would be no publicity.”

  “If you will be kind enough to have him call on me, I shall be most grateful.”

  “It will be necessary also to pay the fine of the girl. They are charged jointly.”

  “I understand.”

  That very same afternoon the policeman’s brother came to the baron’s office, almost a carbon copy of the inspector. By the time he had left, everything had been arranged. There would be no further trouble for Robert or the girl. After all, his brother was in charge of the vice squad in that arrondissement.

  That had been almost two years ago. And ever since then the little private detective came to the baron’s office each week with a report about Robert, then left with a pocketful of banknotes. Three weeks ago the baron learned that Robert had been taken ill and sent to the clinique public. But before he could act, Robert had left the hospital of his own volition. When the medical report came to the baron’s desk it seemed clear that Robert was slowly but surely destroying himself. It was then that he had decided to act.

  And now the door from the bedroom was opening. The baron felt the nervousness in his stomach but forced himself to look up. Robert stood in the doorway, silently.

  The baron felt a sadness almost choke him. It was Robert, and yet it was not. The unfamiliar gauntness, the thinness of the pale flesh stretched tightly across his cheekbones, the dark eyes in deep sunken hollows—could this be his son? “Robert!”

  Robert didn’t move from the doorway. His voice was strange, harsh, not the voice his father remembered. “Didn’t you get the message? I told them I didn’t want to see you.”

  “But I wanted to see you.”

  “Why?” Robert asked bitterly. “Are there other Nazis you wish me to save?”

  “Robert, I want you to come home.”

  Robert smiled. At least it was supposed to be a smile, though it was nearer a grimace. “I am home.”

  “I mean—” The baron felt helpless. “You’re ill, Robert, you need care. You’ll die if you keep on going the way you are.”

  “It’s my life,” Robert replied almost carelessly. “It doesn’t matter, I should have died during the war.”

  The baron became angry. “But you didn’t! And to kill yourself this way is a sheer waste. It’s a child’s notion. Is this how you hope to punish me? With a childlike fantasy of my weeping at your grave?”

  Robert started to speak but the baron wouldn’t let him. “I will weep, but not for you. For my son. For what he could have been. With so much to do in this world, with so much that you profess to believe in, with so many things you still could do if you really cared, you wish to throw your life away? No, you’re a spoiled little child who’s on a hunger strike because his daddy won’t play the way he wants.”

  He met Robert’s eye. “You may not agree with what I do, but at least I do what I believe in. I work. I don’t run away and hide when things don’t work out the way I want them to.”

  He walked to the door and opened it. “I was worried about my son,” he said coldly. “I�
��m not anymore; I have no son. No son of mine could be a coward!”

  He started to close the door. “Papa!”

  He turned back into the room.

  “Close the door,” Robert said. “There is something I would like to do.”

  The baron leaned against the doorjamb, a curiously weak feeling in his legs. He looked at Robert silently.

  “I would like to go to Israel, Papa. There, I feel I could find a purpose. I could feel useful again.”

  The baron nodded without speaking.

  “But first there is something I would do.” Robert turned to the girl. “Denisonde, will you marry me?”

  The girl looked at him steadily. After a moment her answer came in a clear, steady voice. “No.”

  It was then that the baron smiled; his son had come home. “Nonsense,” he said, feeling the strength come back into him. “She will marry you, my son.”

  4

  Dax came out of the surf and walked up the beach toward the cabana. The sand was already warm to his naked feet, and the hot Florida sun sparkled in the drops of water still clinging to his body. He glanced down the beach, then up beyond the pool to the big white winter home of the Hadleys.

  Nothing stirred this early in the morning. He picked up his watch from the table near the cabana. Nine o’clock. He sighed with a curious pleasure. He could look forward to almost two hours of solitude. No one at the Hadleys’ ever came outdoors before eleven. He went into the cabana for a towel.

  He stood in the doorway for a moment to let his eyes get used to the dim light, then he noticed her lying on the couch. At first all he could see was the pale-blond hair, but then she suddenly sat up and he saw that she was completely nude.

  “I thought you’d never come out of the water, Dax.”

  He pulled a towel down from the rack and threw it at her. “Sue Ann, you’re an idiot!”

  She made no move for the towel. It slid to the floor beside the couch. “Everyone’s still asleep.”