Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  “Could you ask your secretary to come in?” said William quietly.

  “As you wish.”

  Alan Lloyd pressed a button on the side of his desk, and a middle-aged, conservatively dressed woman entered the room from a side door.

  “Good morning, Mr. Kane,” she said when she saw William. “I was so sorry to learn about your mother.”

  “Thank you,” said William. “Has anyone else seen this letter?”

  “No sir,” said the secretary. “I was about to type twelve copies for Mr. Lloyd to sign.”

  “Well, don’t type them, and please forget that this draft ever existed. Never mention its existence to anyone, do you understand?”

  She stared into the blue eyes of the sixteen-year-old boy. So like his father, she thought. “Yes, Mr. Kane.” She left quietly, closing the door. Alan Lloyd looked up.

  “Kane and Cabot doesn’t need a new chairman at the moment, Alan,” said William. “You did nothing my father would not have done in the same circumstances.”

  “It’s not as easy as that,” Alan said.

  “It’s as easy as that,” said William. “We can discuss this again when I am twenty-one and not before. Until then I would be obliged if you would run my bank in your usual diplomatic and conservative manner. I want nothing of what has happened to be discussed outside this office. You will destroy any information you have on Henry Osborne and consider the matter closed.”

  William tore up the letter of resignation and dropped the pieces of paper into the fire. He put his arm around Alan’s shoulders.

  “I have no family now, Alan, only you. For God’s sake, don’t desert me.”

  William was driven back to Beacon Hill. Grandmother Kane and Grandmother Cabot were sitting in silence in the drawing room. They both rose as he entered the room. It was the first time that William realized he was now the head of the Kane family.

  The funeral took place quietly two days later at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral. None but the family and close friends was invited; the only notable absentee was Henry Osborne. As the mourners departed, they paid their respects to William. The grandmothers stood one pace behind him, like sentinels, watching, approving the calm and dignified way in which he conducted himself. When everyone had left, William accompanied Alan Lloyd to his car.

  The Chairman was delighted by William’s request of him.

  “As you know, Alan, my mother had always intended to build a children’s wing for Mass. General, in memory of my father. I would like her wishes carried out.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wladek stayed at the Polish consulate in Constantinople for a year and not the few days he had originally expected, working day and night for Pawel Zaleski, becoming an indispensable aide and close friend. Nothing was too much trouble for him, and Zaleski soon began to wonder how he had managed before Wladek arrived. The boy visited the British embassy once a week to eat in the kitchen with Mrs. Henderson, the Scottish cook, and, on one occasion, with His Britannic Majesty’s Second Consul himself.

  Around them the old Islamic way of life was dissolving and the Ottoman Empire was beginning to totter. Mustafa Kemal was the name on everyone’s lips. The sense of impending change made Wladek restless. His mind returned incessantly to the Baron and all whom he had loved in the castle. The necessity of surviving from day to day in Russia had kept them from his mind’s eye, but in Turkey they rose up before him, a silent and slow procession. Sometimes he could see them strong and happy—Leon swimming in the river, Florentyna playing cat’s cradle in his bedroom, the Baron’s face strong and proud in the evening candlelight—but always the well-remembered, well-loved faces would waver and, try as Wladek would to hold them firm, they would change horribly to that last dreadful aspect—Leon dead on top of him, Florentyna bleeding in agony, and the Baron almost blind and broken.

  Wladek began to realize that he could never return to a land peopled by such ghosts until he had made something worthwhile of his life. With that single thought in mind he set his heart on going to America, as his countryman Tadeusz Kosciusko, of whom the Baron had told so many enthralling tales, had so long before him. The United States, described by Pawel Zaleski as the “New World.” The epithet inspired Wladek with a hope for the future and a chance to return one day to Poland in triumph.

  It was Pawel Zaleski who put up the money to purchase an immigrant passage for Wladek to the United States. They were difficult to come by, for they were always booked at least a year in advance. It seemed to Wladek as though the whole of Eastern Europe were trying to escape and start afresh in the New World.

  In the spring of 1921, Wladek Koskiewicz finally left Constantinople and boarded the S.S. Black Arrow, bound for Ellis Island, New York. He possessed one suitcase, containing all his belongings, and a set of papers issued by Pawel Zaleski.

  The Polish Consul accompanied him to the wharf and embraced him affectionately. “Go with God, my boy.”

  The traditional Polish response came naturally from the depths of Wladek’s early childhood. “Remain with God,” he replied.

  As he reached the top of the gangplank, Wladek recalled his terrifying journey from Odessa to Constantinople. This time there was no coal in sight, only people, people everywhere—Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians and others of many racial types unfamiliar to Wladek. He clutched his few belongings and waited in the line, the first of many long waits with which he later associated his entry into the United States.

  His papers were sternly scrutinized by a deck officer who was clearly predisposed to the suspicion that Wladek was trying to avoid military service in Turkey, but Pawel Zaleski’s documents were impeccable; Wladek invoked a silent blessing on his fellow countryman’s head as he watched others being turned back.

  Next came a vaccination and a cursory medical examination, which, had he not had a year of good food and the chance to recover his health in Constantinople, Wladek would certainly have failed. At last, with all the checks over, he was allowed belowdecks into the steerage quarters. There were separate compartments for males, females and married couples. Wladek quickly made his way to the male quarters and found the Polish group occupying a large block of iron berths, each containing four two-tiered bunk beds. Each bunk had a thin straw mattress, a light blanket and no pillow. Having no pillow didn’t worry Wladek, who had never been able to sleep on one since leaving Russia.

  Wladek selected a bunk below a boy of roughly his own age and introduced himself.

  “I’m Wladek Koskiewicz.”

  “I’m Jerzy Nowak from Warsaw,” volunteered the boy in his native Polish, “and I’m going to make my fortune in America.”

  The boy thrust forward his hand.

  Wladek and Jerzy spent the time before the ship sailed telling each other of their experiences, both pleased to have someone to share their loneliness with, neither willing to admit his total ignorance of America. Jerzy, it turned out, had lost both his parents in the war but had few other claims to attention. He was entranced by Wladek’s stories: the son of a baron, brought up in a trapper’s cottage, imprisoned by the Germans and the Russians, escaped from Siberia and then from a Turkish executioner thanks to the heavy silver band that Jerzy couldn’t take his eyes off. Wladek had packed more into his fifteen years than Jerzy thought he himself would manage in a lifetime. Wladek talked all night of the past while Jerzy listened intently, neither wanting to sleep and neither wanting to admit his apprehension of the future.

  The following morning the Black Arrow sailed. Wladek and Jerzy stood at the rail and watched Constantinople slip away in the blue distance of the Bosphorus. After the calm of the Sea of Marmara, the choppiness of the Aegean afflicted them and most of the other passengers with a horrible abruptness. The two washrooms for steerage passengers, with ten basins apiece, six toilets and cold saltwater faucets were wholly inadequate. After a couple of days the stench of their quarters was oppressive.

  Food was served on long tables in a large, filthy dining hall: