第 54 页

When he heard her moan, he was aware how long it had been since he had experienced such ecstasy - and then - how quickly the sensation was past.

Neither of them spoke for several moments, both breathing heavily, Then Abel chuckled. .

'What are you laughing at?' Melanie enquired.

'Nothing,' said Abel, recalling Dr. Johnson's observation about the position being ridiculous and the pleasure momentary.

Abel rolled over, and Melania rested her head on his shoulder. Abel was surprised to find that he no longer wanted to be near Melanie, and as he lay there wondering how to get rid of her without actually being rude, she said, 'I'm afraid I can't stay all night, Abel, I have an early appointment tomorrow and I must get some sleep. I don't want to look as if I spent the night on your Persian carpet.'

'Must you go?' said Abel, sounding desperate, but not too desperate.

'I'm sorry, darling, yes.' She stood up and walked to -the bathroom.

Abel watched her dress, and helped her with her zipper. How much easier the garment was to fasten at leisure than it had been to unfasten in haste. He kissed her gallantly on the hand as she left.

'I hope we'll see each other again soon,' he said, lying., 'I hope so, too,' she said, aware that he did not mean it. He closed the door behind her and walked over to the phone by his becL 'Which room was Miss Melanie Leroy booked into?' he asked.

There was a momenespause; he could hear the flicking of the registration cards.

Abel tapped impatiently on the table.

'There's no -one registered under that name, air,' came the eventual reply. 'We have a Mrs. Melanie Seaton from Dallas, Texas, who arrived this evening, sir, and checks out tomorrow morning?'

'Yes, that will be the lady,' said Abel. 'See that her bill is charged to me.'

'Yes, sir.'

Abel replaced the phone and took a long cold shower before preparing for bed. He felt relaxed as he walked over to the fire to turn out the lamp that had illuminated his first adulterous act and noticed that the large coffee sLiin had now dried on his Persian carpet.

'Silly bitch,' he said out loud and switched off the light

After that night, Abel found that several more coffee stains appeared on the Persian carpet during the next few months, some caused by waitresses, some by other nocturnal visitors, as he and Zaphia grew further apart.

What he hadn't anticipated was that she would hire a private detective to check on him and then sue for a divorce. Divorce was almost unknown in Abel's circle of Polish friends, separation or desertion being far more common. Abel even tried to talk Zaphia out of her desired course, only too aware it would do nothing to enhance his standing in the Polish community, and certain it would not advance any social or political ambitions he had started to hanker after. But Zaphia was determined to carry the divorce proceedings to their bitter conclusion. Abel was surprised to find that the woman who bad been so unsophisticated in his triumph was, to use George's words, a little demon in her revenge.

When Abel consulted his own lawyer, he found out for the second time just how many waitresses and non-paying guests there had been during the last year. He gave in and the only thing he fought for was the custody of Florentyna, now thirteen, and the first true love of his life. Zaphia agreed after a long struggle, accepting a settlement of five hundred thousand dollars, the deed to the house in Chicago, and the right to see Florentyna on the last weekend in every month.

Abel moved his headquarters and permanent home to New York and George dubbed him the Chicago Baron-inexile, as he roamed America north and south building new hotel only returning to Chicago when he had to see Curtis Penton.

27

The letter lay open on a table by William's chair in the living room. He sat in his dressing gown reading it for the third time, trying to figure out why Abel Rosnovski would want to buy so heavily into Lester's Bank, and why he had appointed Henry Osborne as a director of the Baron Group.

William felt he could no longer take the risk of guessing and picked up the phone.

The new Mr. Cohen turned out to be a younger version of his father. When he arrived at East 68th Street, he had no need to introduce himself; the hair was beginning to go grey and thin in exactly the same places and the round body was encased in an exactly similar suit. Perhaps, it was in fact the same suit. William stared at him, but not simply because he looked so like his father.

'You don't remember me, Mr. Kane,' said the lawyer.

'Good God,' said William. 'The great debate at Harvard. Nineteen twenty...'

'Twenty-eight. You won the debate and sacrificed your membership of the Porcellian.'

William burst out laughing. 'Maybe we'll do better on the same team, if your brand of socialism will allow you to act for an unabashed capitalist!

He rose to shake hands with Thaddeus Cohen. For a moment, they both might have been undergraduates again.

William smiled. 'You never did get that drink at the Porcellian. What would you like?'

Thaddeus Cohen declined the offer. 'I don't drink,' he said, blinking in the same disarming way that William recalled so well. '... and I'm afraid I'm now an unabashed capitalist, too.'

He turned out to have his fathers head on his shoulders mentally as well as physically, and had clearly briefed himself on the Rosnovski-Osborne file to the finest detail before he faced William. William explained exactly what he now required.

'An immediate report and a further updated one every three months as in the past. Secrecy is still of paramount importance.' he said, 'but I want every fact you can lay your hands on. Why is Abel Rosnovski buying the bank's share? Does he still feel I am responsible for Davis Leroy's death? Is he continuing his battle with Kane and Cabot even now that they are part of Lester's? What role does Henry Osborne play in all of this? Would a meeting between myself and Rosncvvski help, especially if I tell him that it was the bank, not I who refused to suppoz-t the Richmond Group?'

Thaddeus Cohen's pen was scratching away as furiously as his father's had before him.

'All these questions must be answered as quickly as possible so that I can decide if it's necessary to brief my board!

Thaddeus Cohen gave his father's shy smile as he shut his briefcase. 'I'm sorry that you should be troubled in this way while you are still convalescing. I'll be back to you as soon as I can ascertain the facts.'

He paused at the door. 'I admire greatly what you did at Remagen.'

William recovered his sense of well-being and vigour rapidly in the following months, and the scars on his face and chest faded into relative insignificance. At night Kate would sit up with him until he fell asleep and whisper, 'Thank God you were spared! The terrible headaches and periods of amnesia grew to be things of the past, and the strength returned to his right arm. Kate would not allow him to return to work until they had taken a long and relaxing cruise in the West Indies.

William relaxed with Kate more than at any time since their two weeks together in London. She revelled in the fact that there were no banks on the ship for him to do business with, although she feared if they stayed on board another week- William would have acquired the floating vessel as one of Lester's latest assets, reorganising the crew, routes, timings and even the way they sailed 'the boae, as William insisted on called the great liner. He was tanned and restless once the ship docked in New York Harbour, and Kate could not dissuade him from. returning immediately to the bank.

He soon became deeply involved again in Lester's problems. A new breed of men, toughened by war, enterprising and fast-moving, seemed to be running America's modern banks, under the watchful eye of President Truman, the man who had won, a surprise victory for a second term in the White House after the world had been informed that Dewey was certain to win the election. As if not satisfied with their prediction, the Chicago Tribune went on to announce that Dewey had actually won the election, but it was Harry S. Truman who remained in the White House. William knew very little about the diminutive ex-senator from Missouri, except what he read in the newspapers, and as a staunch Republican, he hoped that his party would find the right man to lead them into the 1952 campaign.

The first report came in from Thaddeus Cohen; Abel Rosnovski was still looking for shares in Lester's bank and had approached all the other benefactors of the will but only one agreement had been concluded. Susan Lester had refused to see William's lawyer when he approached her, so he was unable to discover why she had sold her six per cent. All he could ascertain was that she had no financial reason for doing so. 'Hell hath no fury,' mumbled William.

The document was admirably comprehensive.

Henry Osborne, it seemed, had been appointed a director of the Baron Group in May of 1947, with special responsibility for the Lester's account. More importantly, Abel Rosnovski secured Susan Lester's shares without it being possible to trace the acquisition back to either him or to Osborne.

Rosnovski now owned six per cent of Lester's Bank and appeared to be willing to pay at least another $750,000 to obtain Peter Parfitt's two per cent. William was only too aware of the actions Abel Rosnovski could carry out once he was in possession of eight per cent. Even more worrying to William was the fact that the growth rate of Lester's compared unfavourably with that of the Baron Group, which was already catching up its main rivals, the I-Elton and the Sheraton Groups. William began to wonder if it would now be wise to brief his board of directors on this newly obtained information, and even whether he ought not to contact Abel Rosnovski direct. After some sleepless nights, he turned to Kate for advice.

'Do nothing,' was Kate's reaction, 'until you can be absolutely certain that his intentions are as disruptive as you fear. The whole affair may turn out to be a tempest in a teapot.'

'With Henry Osborne as his hatchet man you can be sure that the tempest will pour far beyond the teacup: nothing can be totally innocent. I don't have to sit around and wait to find out what he is planning for me.'

'He might have changed, William. It must be twenty years since you've had any personal dealings with him. Al Capone might have changed, if he had been allowed to complete his jail sentence. We'll never know for certain, but I would not be willing to put a, bet on it.'

Kate added nothing more, but William let himself be persuaded by her and did little except to keep a close eye on Thaddeus Cohen's quarterly reports and hope that Kate intuition would turn out to be right.

28

The Baron Group profited greatly from the post-war explosion in the American economy. Not since the twenties had it been so easy to make so much money so quickly - and by the early fifties, people were beginning to believe that this time it was going to last. But Abel was not content with financial success alone; as he grew older, he began to worry about Poland's place in the post-war world and to feel that his success did not allow him to be a bystander four thousand miles away. What had Pawel Zaleski~ the Polish consul in Turkey said? 'Perhaps in your lifetime you will see Poland rise again.' Abel did everything he could to influence and persuade the United States Congress to take a more militant attitude towards Russian control of its Eastern European satellites. It seemed to Abel as he watched one puppet socialist government after another come into being, that he had risked his life for nothing. He began to lobby Washington politicians, brief journalists and organise dinners in Chicago and New York and other centres of the Polish-American community, until the Polish cause itself became synonymous with the Chicago Baron,

Dr. Teodor Szymanowski, formerly professor of history at the university of Cracow, wrote a glowing editorial about Abel's 'Fight To Be Recognised' in the journal Freedom, which prompted Abel to contact him and see what else he could do to help. The professor was now an old man, and when Abel was ushered into his study, he was surprised by the frailty of his appearance, knowing the vigour of his opinions. He greeted Abel warn-dy and poured him a Danzig vodka. 'Baron Rosnovski,' he said banding him the glass, 'I have long admired the way you work on and on for our cause and although we make such little headway, you never seem to lose faith.'

'Why should I? I have always believed anything is possible in America.'

'But I fear, Baron, the very men you are now trying to influence are the same ones who had allowed these things to take place. They will never do anything positive to free our people.'

'I do not understand what you mean, Professor,' said Abel. 'Why will they not help us?'

The professor leaned his back in his chair. 'You are surely aware, Baron, that the American armies were given specific orders to slow down their advance east to allow the Russians to take as much of central Europe as they could lay their hands on. Patton could have been in Berlin long before the Russians but Eisenhower told him to hold back. It was our leaders in Washington - the same men you are trying to persuade to put American guns and troops back into Europe - who gave those orders to Eisenhower!

'But they couldn't have known then what the U.S.S.R. would eventually become. The Russians were then our allies. I accept that we were too weak and conciliatory with them in 1945, but it was not the Americans who directly betrayed the Polish people.'

More Szymanowski spoke, he leaned back again and closed his eyes wearily. 'I wish you could have known my brother, Baron Rosnovski. I had word only last week that he died six months ago, in a Soviet camp not unlike the one from which you escaped.'

Abel moved forward as if to offer sympathy, but Szymanowski raised his hand.

'No, don't say anything. You have known the camps yourself. You would be the first to realise that sympathy is no longer important. We must change the world, Baron, while others sleep.' Szymanowski paused. 'My brother was sent to Russia by the Americans.'

Abel looked at him in astonishment 'By the Americans? How is that possible? If your brother was captured in Poland by Russian troops . . .'