Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  “Fine,” said Henry. “I’ll keep you informed if anything comes up that we should worry about.”

  “You must get it through your head, Henry, that there’s nothing for us to worry about. We have your friend, Mr. Kane by the balls and I now intend to squeeze them very slowly.”

  “I’ll enjoy watching that,” said Henry, sounding a little happier.

  “Sometimes I think you hate Kane more than I do.”

  Henry laughed nervously. “Have a good time in Europe.”

  Abel put the phone back on the hook and sat staring into space as he considered his next move, his fingers still tapping noisily on the desk. His secretary came in.

  “Get Mr. Curtis Fenton at the Continental Trust Bank,” he said without looking at her. His fingers continued to tap. His eyes continued to stare. A few moments later the phone rang.

  “Fenton?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Rosnovski, how are you?”

  “I want you to close all my accounts with your bank.”

  There was no reply from the other end.

  “Did you hear me, Fenton?”

  “Yes,” said the stupefied banker. “May I ask why, Mr. Rosnovski?”

  “Because Judas never was my favorite apostle, Fenton, that’s why. As of this moment, you are no longer on the board of the Baron Group. You will shortly receive written instructions confirming this conversation and telling you to which bank the accounts should be transferred.”

  “But I don’t understand why, Mr. Rosnovski. What have I done … ?”

  Abel hung up as his daughter walked into the office. “That didn’t sound very pleasant, Daddy.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be pleasant, but it’s nothing to concern yourself with, darling,” said Abel, his tone changing immediately. “Did you manage to find all the clothes you’ll need?”

  “Yes, thank you, Daddy, but I’m not absolutely sure what they’re wearing in London and Paris. I can only hope I’ve got it right. I don’t want to be a sore thumb.”

  “You’ll stick out, all right, my darling—anyone would with your taste. You’ll be the most beautiful thing Europe’s seen in years. They’ll know your clothes didn’t come out of a ration book. Those young Europeans will be falling all over themselves to get at you, but I’ll be there to stop them. Now, let’s go and have some lunch and discuss what we’re going to do while we’re in London.”

  Ten days later, after Florentyna had spent a long weekend with her mother—Abel never inquired after her—father and daughter flew from New York’s Idlewild Airport to London’s Heathrow. The flight in a Boeing 377 took nearly fourteen hours, and although they had private berths, when they arrived at Claridge’s in Brook Street, the only thing they both wanted was another long sleep.

  Abel was making the trip for three reasons: first, to confirm building contracts for new Baron hotels in London, Paris and possibly Rome; second, to give Florentyna her first view of Europe before she went to Radcliffe to study modern languages; and third, and most important, to revisit his castle in Poland to see if there was even an outside chance of proving his ownership.

  London turned out to be a success for both of them. Abel’s advisors had found a site on Hyde Park corner, and he instructed his solicitors to begin negotiations immediately for the land and the permits that would be needed before England’s capital could boast a Baron. Florentyna found the austerity of postwar London forbidding after the excess of her own home, but the Londoners seemed to be undaunted by their war-damaged city, still believing themselves to be a world power. She was invited to lunches, dinners and balls, and her father was proved right about her taste in clothes and the effect she had on young male Europeans. She returned each night with sparkling eyes and stories of new conquests—most forgotten by the following morning, but not all: she couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted to marry an Etonian from the Grenadier Guards who liked to salute her, or a member of the House of Lords who was in waiting to the King. She wasn’t quite sure what “in waiting” meant, but he certainly knew exactly how to treat a lady.

  In Paris the pace never slackened and because they both spoke good French, they got along as well with the Parisians as they had with the English. Abel was normally bored by the end of the second week of any vacation and would start counting the days until he could return home to work. But not while he had Florentyna as his companion. She had, since his separation from Zaphia, become the center of his life and the sole heir to his fortune.

  When the time came to leave Paris, neither of them wanted to go, so they stayed on a few more days, claiming as an excuse that Abel was still negotiating to buy a famous but now run-down hotel on the Boulevard Raspail. He did not inform the owner, a M. Neuffe, who looked, if it were possible, even more run-down than the hotel, that he planned to demolish the building and start again from scratch. When M. Neuffe signed the papers a few days later, Abel ordered the building razed while he and Florentyna, with no more excuses left for remaining in Paris, reluctantly departed for Rome.

  After the friendliness of the British and the gaiety of the French capital, the sullen and dilapidated Eternal City immediately dampened their spirits, for the Romans felt they had nothing to celebrate. For the two travelers, the pleasures of London and Paris seemed infinitely far behind them. In London they had strolled through the magnificent Royal parks together and admired historic buildings, and Florentyna had danced until the wee hours. In Paris they had been to the Opera, lunched on the banks of the Seine and taken a boat down the river past Notre Dame and on to supper in the Latin Quarter. In Rome, Abel found only an overpowering sense of financial instability and decided that he would have to shelve his plans to build a Baron in the Italian capital. Florentyna sensed her father’s growing impatience to see his castle in Poland once again, so she suggested they leave Italy a day early.

  Abel had found bureaucracy more reluctant to grant a visa for Florentyna and himself to enter an Iron Curtain country than it had been to issue a permit to build a new 500-room hotel in London. A less persistent visitor would probably have given up, but with the appropriate visas firmly stamped in their passports, Abel and Florentyna set off in a hired car for Slonim. They were kept waiting for hours at the Polish border, helped along only by the fact that Abel was fluent in the language. Had the border guards known why his Polish was so good, they would doubtless have taken an entirely different attitude toward allowing his entry. Abel changed $500 into zlotys—that at least seemed to please the Poles—and motored on. The nearer they came to Slonim, the more Florentyna was aware of how much the journey meant to her father.

  “Daddy, I can never remember you so excited about anything.”

  “This is where I was born,” Abel explained. “After such a long time in America, where things change every day, it’s almost unreal to be back where it looks as if nothing has changed since I left.”

  As they drove on toward Slonim, Abel’s senses heightened in anticipation of seeing his birthplace once again. Across a time span of nearly forty years he heard his childish voice ask the Baron whether the hour of the submerged peoples of Europe had arrived and would he be able to play his part, and tears came to his eyes to think how short that hour had been, and what a little part he had played.

  At last they rounded the final corner before approaching the Baron’s estate and saw the great iron gates that led to the castle. Abel laughed aloud in excitement as he brought the car to a halt.

  “It’s all just as I remember it. Nothing’s changed. Come on, let’s go see the cottage where I spent the first five years of my life—I don’t expect anyone is living there now. Then we’ll go and see my castle.”

  Florentyna followed her father as he marched confidently down a small track into the forest of moss-covered birches and oaks that was not going to change in a hundred years. After they had walked for about twenty minutes, they came into a small clearing, and there in front of them was the trapper’s cottage. Abel stood and stared. He had forgotten how tin