Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune

by Jeffrey Archer

  Wladek thought the great man looked tired and older, another unaccountable circumstance, and during the following week the Baron often conducted with the chief servants a rapid and anxious dialogue, broken off whenever Leon or Wladek entered the room, an uncharacteristic surreptitiousness that made the two boys uneasy and fearful that they were the unwitting cause of it. Wladek despaired that the Baron might send him back to the trapper’s cottage—always aware he was a stranger in a stranger’s home.

  One evening a few days after the Baron had returned he called for the two boys to join him in the great hall. They crept in, fearful of him. Without explanation he told them that they were about to make a long journey. The little conversation, insubstantial as it seemed to Wladek at the time, remained with him for the rest of his life.

  “My dear children,” began the Baron in a low, faltering tone, “the warmongers of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire are at the throat of Warsaw and will soon be upon us.”

  Wladek recalled an inexplicable phrase flung out by the Polish tutor at the German tutor during their last tense days together. “Does that mean that the hour of the submerged peoples of Europe is at last upon us?” he asked.

  The Baron regarded Wladek’s innocent face tenderly. “Our national spirit has not perished in one hundred. and fifty years of attrition and repression,” he replied. “It may be that that fate of Poland is as much at stake as that of Serbia, but we are powerless to influence history. We are at the mercy of the three mighty empires that surround us.”

  “We are strong, we can fight,” said Leon. “We have wooden swords and shields. We are not afraid of Germans or Russians.”

  “My son, you have only played at war. This battle will not be between children. We must now find a small, quiet place to live until history has decided our fate, and we must leave as soon as possible. I can only pray that this is not the end of your childhood.”

  Leon and Wladek were both mystified and irritated by the Baron’s words. War sounded like an exciting adventure, which they would be sure to miss if they left the castle. The servants took several days to pack the Baron’s possessions, and Wladek and Leon were informed that they would be departing for their small summer home to the north of Grodno on the following Monday. The two boys continued, often unsupervised, with their work and play, but they found no one in the castle with the inclination or time to answer their myriad questions.

  On Saturdays, lessons were held only in the morning. They were translating Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz into Latin when they heard the guns. At first, Wladek thought the familiar sound meant only that another trapper was out shooting on the estate; the boys returned to the Bard of Czarnotas. A second volley of shots, much closer, made them look up, and then they heard the screams coming from downstairs. They stared at each other in bewilderment; they feared nothing, because they had never experienced anything in their short lives that should have made them fearful. The tutor fled, leaving them alone, and then came another shot, this time in the corridor outside their room. The two boys sat motionless, terrified and unbreathing.

  Suddenly the door crashed open and a man no older than their tutor, in a gray soldier’s uniform and steel helmet, stood towering over them. Leon clung to Wladek, while Wladek stared at the intruder. The soldier shouted at them in German, demanding to know who they were, but neither boy replied even though both had mastered the language as well as their mother tongue. Another soldier appeared behind his compatriot as the first advanced on the two boys, grabbed them by the necks, not unlike chickens, and pulled them out into the corridor, down the hall to the front of the castle and then into the gardens, where they found Florentyna screaming hysterically as she stared at the ground in front of her. Leon could not bear to look and buried his head in Wladek’s shoulder. Wladek gazed as much in surprise as in horror at a row of dead bodies, mostly servants, being placed face downward. He was mesmerized by the sight of a mustache in profile against a pool of blood. It was the trapper. Wladek felt nothing as Florentyna continued screaming.

  “Is Papa there?” asked Leon. “Is Papa there?”

  Wladek scanned the line of bodies once again. He thanked God that there was no sign of the Baron Rosnovski. He was about to tell Leon the good news when a soldier came up to them.

  “Wer hat gesprochen?” he demanded fiercely.

  “Ich,” said Wladek defiantly.

  The soldier raised his rifle and brought the butt crashing down on Wladek’s head. He sank to the ground, blood spurting over his face. Where was the Baron, what was happening, why were they being treated like this in their own home? Leon quickly jumped on top of Wladek, trying to protect him from the second blow that the soldier had intended for Wladek’s stomach, but as the rifle came crashing down the full force caught the back of Leon’s head.

  Both boys lay motionless, Wladek because he was still dazed by the blow and the sudden weight of Leon’s body on top of him, and Leon because he was dead.

  Wladek could hear another soldier berating their tormentor for the action he had taken. They picked up Leon, but Wladek clung to him. It took two soldiers to prise his friend’s body away and dump it unceremoniously with the others, facedown on the grass. Wladek’s eyes never left the motionless body of his dearest friend until he was finally marched back inside the castle and, with a handful of dazed survivors, led to the dungeons. Nobody spoke for fear of joining the line of bodies on the grass, until the dungeon doors were bolted and the last murmur of the soldiers had vanished in the distance. Then Wladek said, “Holy God.” For there in a corner, slumped against the wall, sat the Baron, uninjured but stunned, staring into space, alive only because the conquerors needed him to be responsible for the prisoners. Wladek went over to him, while the others sat as far away from their master as possible. The two gazed at each other as they had on the first day they had met. Wladek put his hand out and, as on the first day, the Baron took it. Wladek watched the tears course down the Baron’s proud face. Neither spoke. They had both lost the person they had loved most in the world.

  CHAPTER SIX

  William Kane grew quickly and was considered an adorable child by all who came in contact with him; in the early years of his life these were generally besotted relatives and doting servants.

  The top floor of the Kanes’ eighteenth-century house in Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill had been converted into nursery quarters, crammed with toys. A further bedroom and a sitting room were made available for the newly acquired nurse. The floor was far enough away from Richard Kane for him to be unaware of problems such as teething, wet diapers and the irregular and undisciplined cries for more food. First sound, first tooth, first step and first word were all recorded in a family book by William’s mother along with the progress in his height and weight. Anne was surprised to find that these statistics differed very little from those of any other child with whom she came into contact on Beacon Hill.

  The nurse, an import from England, brought the boy up on a regimen that would have gladdened the heart of a Prussian cavalry officer. William’s father would visit him each evening at six o’clock. As he refused to address the child in baby language, he ended up not speaking to him at all; the two merely stared at each other. William would grip his father’s index finger, the one with which balance sheets were checked, and hold on to it tightly. Richard would allow himself a smile. At the end of the first year the routine was slightly modified and the boy was allowed to come downstairs to see his father. Richard would sit in his high-backed, maroon leather chair, watching his firstborn weave his way on all fours in and out of the legs of the furniture, reappearing when least expected, which led Richard to observe that the child would undoubtedly become a senator. William took his first steps at thirteen months while clinging on to the tails of his father’s topcoat. His first word was Dada, which pleased everyone, including Grandmother Kane and Grandmother Cabot, who were regular visitors. They did not actually push the vehicle in which William was perambulated around Boston, b
ut they did deign to walk a pace behind the nurse in the park on Thursday afternoons, glaring at infants with a less disciplined retinue. While other children fed the ducks in the public gardens, William succeeded in charming the swans in the lake of Mr. Jack Gardner’s extravagant Venetian Palace.

  When two years had passed, the grandmothers intimated by hint and innuendo that it was high time for another prodigy, an appropriate sibling for William. Anne obliged them by becoming pregnant but was distressed to find herself feeling and looking progressively off-color as she entered her fourth month.

  Dr. MacKenzie ceased to smile as he checked the growing stomach and hopeful mother, and when Anne miscarried at sixteen weeks, he was not altogether surprised but did not allow her to indulge her grief. In his notes he wrote: “preeclampsia?” and then told her, “Anne, my dear, the reason you have not been feeling so well is that your blood pressure was too high and would probably have become much higher as your pregnancy progressed. I fear doctors haven’t found the answer to blood pressure yet; in fact, we know very little other than it’s a dangerous condition for anyone, particularly for a pregnant woman.”

  Anne held back her tears while considering the implications of a future without more children.

  “Surely it won’t happen in my next pregnancy?” she asked, phrasing her question to dispose the doctor to a favorable answer.

  “I should be very surprised if it did not, my dear. I am sorry to have to say this to you, but I would strongly advise you against becoming pregnant again.”

  “But I don’t mind feeling off-color for a few months if it means …”

  “I am not talking about feeling off-color, Anne. I am talking about not taking any unneccessary risks with your life.”

  It was a terrible blow for Richard and Anne, who themselves had both been only children, largely as a result of their respective fathers’ premature deaths. They had both assumed that they would produce a family appropriate to the commanding size of their house and their responsibilities to the next generation. “What else is there for a young woman to do?” inquired Grandmother Cabot of Grandmother Kane. No one cared to mention the subject again, and William became the center of everyone’s attention.

  Richard, who after six years on the board had taken over as the president of Kane and Cabot Bank and Trust Company, had always immersed himself in the work of the bank. The bank, which stood on State Street, a bastion of architectural and fiscal solidity, had offices in New York, London and San Francisco. The last had presented a problem to Richard on the very day of William’s birth when, along with the Crocker National Bank, Wells Fargo and the California Bank, it collapsed to the ground, not financially but literally, in the great earthquake of 1906. Richard, by nature a cautious man, was comprehensively insured with Lloyd’s of London. Gentlemen all, they had paid up to the penny, enabling Richard to rebuild. Nevertheless, Richard spent an uncomfortable year jolting across America on the four-day train journey between Boston and San Francisco in order to supervise the rebuilding. He opened the new office in Union Square in October 1907, barely in time to turn his attention to other problems arising on the Eastern Seaboard. There was a minor run on the New York banks, and many of the smaller establishments were unable to cope with large withdrawals and started going to the wall. J. P. Morgan, the legendary chairman of the mighty bank bearing his name, invited Richard to join a consortium to hold firm during the crisis. Richard agreed, the courageous stand worked, and the problem began to dissipate, but not before Richard had had a few sleepless nights.

  William, on the other hand, slept soundly, unaware of the importance of earthquakes and collapsing banks. After all, there were swans that must be fed and endless trips to and from Milton, Brookline and Beverley so that he could be shown to his distinguished relatives.

  Early in the spring of the following year Richard acquired a new toy in return for a cautious investment of captial in a man called Henry Ford, who was claiming he could produce a motor car for the people. The bank entertained Mr. Ford at luncheon, and Richard was coaxed into the acquisition of a Model T for the princely sum of $850. Henry Ford assured Richard that if only the bank would back him the cost could eventually fall to $350 within a few years and everyone would be buying his cars, thus insuring a large profit for his backers. Richard did back him, and it was the first time he had placed good money behind someone who wished his product to halve in price.

  Richard was initially apprehensive that his motor car, somberly black though it was, might not be regarded as a serious mode of transport for the president and chairman of a bank, but he was reassured by the admiring glances from the sidewalks which the machine attracted. At ten miles an hour it was noisier than a horse, but it did have the virtue of leaving no mess in the middle of Mount Vernon Street. His only quarrel with Mr. Ford was that the man would not listen to the suggestion that a Model T should be made available in a variety of colors. Mr. Ford insisted that every car should be black in order to keep the price down. Anne, more sensitive than her husband to the approbation of polite society, would not drive in the vehicle until the Cabots had acquired one.

  William, on the other hand, adored the “automobile,” as the press called it, and immediately assumed that the vehicle had been bought for him to replace his now redundant and unmechanized pram. He also preferred the chauffeur—with his goggles and flat hat—to his nurse. Grandmother Kane and Grandmother Cabot claimed that they would never travel in the dreadful machine and never did, although it should be pointed out that Grandmother Kane traveled to her funeral in a motor car but was never informed.

  During the next two years the bank grew in strength and size, as did William. Americans were once again investing for expansion, and large sums of money found their way to Kane and Cabot’s to be reinvested in such projects as the expanding Lowell leather factory in Lowell, Massachusetts. Richard watched the growth of his bank and his son with unsurprised satisfaction. On William’s fifth birthday, he took the child out of women’s hands by engaging at $450 per annum a private tutor, a Mr. Munro, personally selected by Richard from a list of eight applicants who had earlier been screened by his private secretary. Mr. Munro was charged to ensure that William was ready to enter St. Paul’s by the age of twelve. William immediately took to Mr. Munro, whom he thought to be very old and very clever. He was, in fact, twenty-three and the possessor of a second-class honors degree in English from the University of Edinburgh.

  William quickly learned to read and write with facility but saved his real enthusiasm for figures. His only complaint was that, of the eight lessons taught every weekday, only one was arithmetic. William was quick to point out to his father that one-eighth of the working day was a small investment of time for someone who would one day be the president and chairman of a bank.

  To compensate for his tutor’s lack of foresight, William dogged the footsteps of his accessible relatives with demands for sums to be executed in his head. Grandmother Cabot, who had never been persuaded that the division of an integer by four would necessarily produce the same answer as its multiplication by one quarter—and indeed in her hands the two operations often did result in two different numbers—found herself speedily outclassed by her grandson; but Grandmother Kane, with some small leanings to cleverness, grappled manfully with vulgar fractions, compound interest and the division of eight cakes among nine children.

  “Grandmother,” said William kindly but firmly when she had failed to find the answer to his latest conundrum, “you can buy me a slide rule; then I won’t have to bother you.”

  She was astonished at her grandson’s precocity, but she bought him one just the same, wondering if he really knew how to use the gadget. It was the first time in her life that Grandmother Kane had been known to take the easy way out of any problem.

  Richard’s problems began to gravitate eastward. The chairman of his London branch died at his desk and Richard felt himself required in Lombard Street. He suggested to Anne that she and William accompany h
im to Europe, feeling that the education would not do the boy any harm: he could visit all the places about which Mr. Munro had so often talked. Anne, who had never been to Europe, was excited by the prospect, and filled three steamer trunks with elegant and expensive new clothes in which to confront the Old World. William considered it unfair of his mother not to allow him to take the equally essential aid to travel, his bicycle.

  The Kanes traveled to New York by train to join the Aquitania bound for her voyage to Southampton. Anne was appalled by the sight of the immigrant street peddlers pushing their wares, and she was glad to be safely on board and resting in her cabin. William, on the other hand, was amazed by the size of New York; he had, until that moment, always imagined that his father’s bank was the biggest building in America, if not the world. He wanted to buy a pink-and-yellow ice cream from a man with a little cart, but his father would not hear of it; in any case, Richard never carried small change. William adored the great vessel on sight and quickly became friendly with the captain, who showed him all the secrets of the Cunard steamships’ prima donna. Richard and Anne, who naturally sat at the captain’s table, felt it necessary before the ship had long left America to apologize for the amount of the crew’s time that their son was occupying.

  “Not at all,” replied the white-bearded skipper. “William and I are already good friends. I only wish I could answer all his questions about time, speed and distance. I have to be coached each night by the first engineer in the hope of first anticipating and then surviving the next day.”

  The Aquitania sailed into The Solent to dock at Southampton after a ten-day crossing. William was reluctant to leave her, and tears would have been unavoidable had it not been for the magnificent sight of the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, sitting at the quayside complete with a chauffeur, ready to whisk them off to London. Richard decided on the spur of the moment that he would have the car transported back to New York at the end of the trip, a decision more out of character than any he would make during the rest of his life. He informed Anne that he wanted to show the vehicle to Henry Ford.