Into the Lion's Den (88 page)

“clever” and very good for business and would go to our bank, the Crédit Auvergne. Roger, was still a mystery because he was young, and not very bright, but people loved him just at first sight.

“I arrived to Paris in 1966 and the city changed my view of the world. From the nice, small, provincial Poitiers, I landed on the middle of the existentialism with Camus and Sartre, the Vietnam war, the revolutions in Latin America and Cuba, Mao's Cultural Revolution, The Beatles and Bob Dylan. It was a shock. For my family, the war in Algeria was fine and acceptable. I heard Althusser and I almost joined to the Marxist-Leninist parties, but I knew first hand how things really were in the Soviet Union, so I dropped it. We believed in the elite's role to create the Mass Media and lead the people like sheep, exactly as under the Totalitarian states, but this time with a happy and careless message; get a new car and be happy. Enjoy all what you can. Of course I participated in May 68, fought several times against the CRS and got their sticks on the head many times, but De Gaulle, clever fox, gave a rise to the workers, visited the general in charge of the French troops in Germany—and everyone believed he was going to use the Army against the people; that quieted most of the protests—and he called for elections in forty days. Just as it had started, it finished. Everybody went home after forty days of strikes and demonstrations. All plans to change the world were dismissed, better say, thrown to the trash. I realised that everything had been just the tantrum of some “
enfants gâtés
”, brats playing the revolution, without real convictions behind them. People continued to live in
bidonvilles
or slums, the biggest was in Nanterre at that time, and no one cared at all.”

“I thought a lot during the winter of ‘69. During the revolt I met Nicholas Lefèbre. He was also disappointed with the end of the revolution and we decided to continue to help and using what we had learned from the system to beat it or at least help some people not to be overrun by it. We worked pro bono for many years in a Non Governmental Organization, legally assisting people about to be evicted, immigrants, people who had no money to pay a lawyer. In the meantime, well, after I graduated in 1971, my father put me to work in the bank at their legal offices and I specialized in tax law. My family's dream of making a politician or a diplomat out of me was destroyed after three or four times sleeping in prison. I learned about the Order and helped many of our customers to make a better tax declaration. I felt like shit. I hated it, but this allowed me to keep good links to the enemy's side. I still believed in changing the world.

“In 1974 I met your mother and I fell in love with her. I married her and my family nearly killed me mostly because I had rejected Sybille von Lippe, a very rich widow, a few years older than me, who wanted to marry me. I didn't love her and I told her so. I had to take more hours in the bank and work harder to pay for a flat for my wife. Cécile was also sick and I didn't want her to be working and overexerting herself. I would have kissed the floor she walked on. I still love your mother, Guntram and she was the best woman a man could have desired. Contrary to what you think, we looked for you. We wanted a baby and we didn't care about the consequences. We knew that a pregnancy could be fatal for her and finally it was, but we, especially she, needed to have a baby. Your mother was very happy when she was expecting you.”

“As you know, in mid-1979, Lintorff came to power. He was young, only twenty-two years old, and no one in the Order expected him to survive a year, but he did and made profit. At some point he met your uncle, a trader in Paris, nothing else, and became obsessed with him. Roger was twenty-seven years old, just married with a baby, Marie Helène. My family only discovered the affair in mid-1983. My father wanted to finish it because it was a shame that his youngest child was in bed with another man, and could ruin his marriage with a rich German heiress. Roger would have obeyed my father, but Lintorff interfered and offered a position in the Council for my father, money and support for Pascal's career. In a way, we all sold Roger to him. My brother never loved him, but he liked the way Lintorff was crawling to him every time he saw him. It was a powerful feeling to have a young, good looking man, rich like the devil, as Lintorff to become your lap dog. At that time, all the mothers of Europe were throwing their daughters at his feet, but he was not looking at them. Lintorff only lived for Roger. Their clandestine relationship lasted for many years, meeting at the Ritz in Paris, every time they could. Sometimes it was violent for both of them because they were fighting permanently.”

“Fighting? Impossible! Konrad was always so tender to me!”

“Fighting to the point of Lintorff breaking his arm once. He apologised and paid many things in return for Roger's family. No, Roger loved to drive him mad and over the years he learned how to play with him. It was unexplainable. Lintorff could bend anyone to his will, but Roger could have made him come crawling from Le Bourget just for a kiss.”

“By 1985 my father and other people believed firmly that Roger was the key to get rid of Lintorff, who was gaining more and more power. They convinced my brother to participate and I joined them mostly because I saw it as an opportunity to end with the Order once and for all. I hated the concept of sixty or seventy rich men, meeting once per year or twice at most, ruling four hundred million lives and a full continent. They could do whatever they liked with people; choosing their popular leaders, the opposition, how much they would get from the Social Security, what they could eat and what not. I was confident that a full war would destroy the Order and people would have a chance to decide by themselves.”

“By 1986 we started to boycott everything, and I began to study Lintorff. I realised where his real power resided and that he really had a leadership vision whereas our supporters had nothing. They were only thinking to get more and more money out, while Lintorff was truly convinced on a social-democracy, in a Bismark style, of course, and many times he was taking unnecessary risks to save people's jobs or fight against pollution. I don't deny that if he ever saw an opportunity to make money, out of Europe, he would refuse it. He was a strange mixture of a heartless and ruthless businessman with an old knight, with some bursts of mysticism, I find no other way to describe him, willing to do or sacrifice anything for the people, or better say his subjects, that he considered were under “his protection”. He admired deeply Lorenz von Stein and the
Sozialstaat
and
Soziale Rechtsstaat
ideals
,
and like all monarchists believed that God had given him that position to carry on his word… and poor you if you weren't on his side! Crazy crusader or not, Lintorff was much better than the others only thinking on themselves.”

“I tried to stop everything, but no one heard me. So by 1987, I decided to prepare myself in case we would fail. I didn't want you to be a part of this and I sent you to live in Argentina on a permanent basis. Your lawyer, Luciano Martínez Estrada was a good friend of Nicholas and I. We had met him in 1978 when he had miraculously escaped his country accused of terrorism. He was deeply involved in the
Guerrilla
, in
Montoneros
and had been in one or two bombings. He was the one who was “processing” the money obtained from the kidnappings of many wealthy businessmen. I defended him and saved his life. We became friends because we shared the same beliefs and strategies. He returned to his country in 1985 and became my figurehead so I could get the money I had made during my years working in the banks. By 1988, I had everything out and your trustee fund was organised. Nicholas came up with the idea of the cancer to give more reality to the story.”

“In 1988, Lintorff was finished, but I gave him a chance because he had truly no idea of what was going on. I gave some documents to Ferdinand von Kleist and he, could put two and two together.”

“But you betrayed your family!”

“Yes, I know. I tried to stop it several times but they didn't listen to me. If I spoke it was because I knew that Lintorff alone, would have never gone against us. He would have expelled us from the Order and taken part of our money. I had hidden more than thirty million dollars, more than enough for them to live their lives happy and well provided!”

“Lintorff confronted my father, Pascal and me. He ordered us to resign from everything and disappear from his view. Some malicious rumours provoked a panic in our bank and in less of a week, we were broken, but with some effort, we could had fixed the situation. Nothing else. Exactly as I expected.”

“What happened then?”

“My father and the others didn't want to stop. They leaked some documents about our procedures and deals to the press… And paid a group of mercenaries to attack him. Lintorff was the only survivor. The
Summus
Marescalus
, Hermann von Lintorff and Gustav Löwenstein retaliated on my father and several other top members.

The only mercy they showed us was shooting the children in the head while they were asleep. The only servant who could escape the massacre, told me that they tortured my brother and his wife to death and forced my father to watch it. All of them were hung and beheaded. A traitors' punishment. The house was set on fire.”

“I could escape because I was in Brussels with Nicholas at the time. I knew that Roger had taken his wife and daughter and fled to South Africa. I never saw him again. The women were exiled and we were condemned to death as well as our families.”

“Why didn't you take me with you?”

“I couldn't. I wanted to give you a life, not to become a fugitive or worst, be killed in a horrible way.

Lintorff has been looking for Roger for the past fifteen years. He wanted his revenge on him and he got it last December. My brother was killed in a car accident, along with the journalist he was working with. I'm not completely sure, but I think it was Lintorff's doing.”

“I went to Lintorff after I had everything prepared. I decided to play along with his rules; that was the only way to reassure a wounded animal, Guntram. When I offered you to him, I never thought that he would take it seriously. Who waits fifteen years to get a lover from a child looking exactly as the one who put you through Hell?

What makes you think that this child would love you? You look like your uncle, but nothing else. You two are different! You were all what Lintorff wanted to find in Roger: someone sweet, innocent, selfless who would love him by himself, not because of his money or power.”

“He told me those exact words.” Guntram whispered and drank some water to calm himself.

“I signed the papers naming him your legal tutor, but those papers were not valid! I never told him where you were and I kept myself away from you so they could not link you to me. It only took him two seconds to agree to my proposition, you, after you turned eighteen and only if you wanted, for your pardon, the chance to be readmitted and pardon for my brother. Perhaps he thought that a young boy, without a meddling family, could be the solution for what he needed. I don't know. I only wanted to win time for you.”

“Nicholas knew the case of a man, seriously ill, called Michel Lacroix. He was around my age, had a wife and five children. He was terminal and worried about the family he was leaving behind. We offered to take care of his family in exchange for his body and identity. It was one of the most horrible trades in my life. I paid five million dollars cash to him and he agreed to do it. We faked the papers and placed them in the hospital, feigning my illness, we bribed a doctor too. When the time Lintorff had granted me to put my affairs in order finished, Michel came to us.

He was on the last stages. He told us that he was weighing forty-five kilos and he had been a construction worker.

That night he drank so much to gather the courage to do it, that I thought to drop everything. He fell by the window after asking us to lead him there. Nicholas identified him as me.”

“I went to Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and worked as volunteer in the poorest areas till 1994 when I decided to return to Europe. With Nicholas we bought over the law firm he was working for and I started to work again, not in the courtrooms of course, but in the offices. I became a
Notaire,
Notary. Ironic, the man whose life is a lie, certifies that the others don't lie.”

“Why did you sell me to Konrad? Why did you take me away from him? I was so happy with him! I wanted to have his children with me! It was my chance to have the family I lost!”

“Guntram, I didn't know that, my child. I only knew that your uncle had been murdered by the man who had killed all of us! By the one who forced us to split! By the same who would kill me if he sees me! You can't be in that place! All of them are murderers, of a worst kind than Repin! I thought Lintorff was using you as his whore just to quench his thirst for Roger and to weaken Repin!”

“You took me away from him to punish him for all what he had done to us. Don't lie to me father,” the boy said with an unnatural certainty.

“No! I never wanted you to be with Repin in the first place! Chano would have never let you go to London if he would have known of your intentions. Once you were there, it was impossible to come near you. It was a miracle that Nicholas was called to be your lawyer. Do you remember when he took you to a café? The man sitting next to your table was me and you clearly said that you loved Repin and were happy with him. I thought that maybe it was all right to leave you there because he was sending you to a good school, you were going to have an exhibition and he treated you with respect. Only a few months ago I found out that Repin's wife had attacked you. One day all the Russians went crazy and you were in a hospital, almost dead and Repin took you to St. Petersburg. We knew nothing and the next news we had was that you were in Zurich, living with Lintorff, as his hostage. It was impossible to come near you! We tried it several times but you had his goons all the time with you. I was desperate to get you out and I spoke with Repin, risking my life.”