Tempting Fate (72 page)

Trapped in the middle of the roiling conflict, Ragoczy thrust his way through the closely-pressed men to the far sidewalk, where the fragments of broken glass made the footing less certain. There were fewer men here, although it was still crowded, and Ragoczy could make better progress. He went toward the street the driver had indicated, shrugging off those who tried to stop him. When he was almost to the street, he saw a silver-blue Isotta-Fraschini on its side, tires cut, front window shattered. A crumpled figure was still in the driver’s seat, one arm draped over the steering wheel as if protecting it. Ragoczy rushed up to it, and knelt down beside the automobile.

Blood matted Nikolai’s grizzled hair, and there was a long gash down his cheek that oozed blood. His color was pasty and his breath labored.

With gentle hands Ragoczy made a superficial assessment of the injuries. There were broken ribs and one of his hands had been crushed by the studded heel of a boot. When men pressed close to him, he shoved them away with formidable strength. At last he moved Nikolai enough so that the body of the automobile would protect him. Then he spoke sharply. “Nikolai! Where is Laisha!”

There was no response at first. Ragoczy was not certain that Nikolai could hear, and if he could, if the noise in the platz, which increased constantly, blocked out his own demands. He leaned down so that his head was less than a handbreadth from Nikolai’s. “Rozoh!” he ordered with all the authority in his voice. “Rozoh! Where is Laisha Vlassevna!”

It seemed useless; then Nikolai’s eyelids fluttered and a few words in Russian came from his bruised mouth. “Not here. Looked for her. Drove…”

“Drove where?” Ragoczy shouted, dread coming over him with cold talons.

“Next street. Next street.” His eyes rolled up and he once again lost consciousness.

Ragoczy rose, looking about in desperation. What next street? There were four streets that came together here. He spun around as he heard a shot, and saw that a number of the brownshirts were armed. Nothing would protect Nikolai, or himself, or Laisha, from bullets. Reaching down into the back of the automobile, he tugged once, stepping back as he did. The Isotta-Fraschini groaned and crumbled as he pulled it over onto its back. The automobile was now completely ruined, but Nikolai lay safe in the pocket between the seats and the paving. It was all he could do now.

As he pushed his way through the platz, Ragoczy reminded himself over and over again that Laisha was a sensible young woman who would recognize danger for what it was, and not seek adventure for the excitement of it. There were houses and restaurants and shops along the street. Surely she would take refuge in one of them and stay there until the fighting was over. He quickened his pace as he started down the first street, his eyes scanning the crowd, the shuttered windows, the ruined shopfronts, in the hope of seeing Laisha. Ahead the road dipped and veered to the left, opening into a sort of court before diving back between the narrow walls of the old buildings. He paused at the highest point of the road and looked down. The court was half in shadow, but he made out a flash of dark-blonde hair and a bit of pumpkin-colored fabric. There were brownshirts all around her, one of them reaching for her arm even as Ragoczy caught sight of them.

Laisha stared in shock at the hand closed around her wrist, unable to believe that such a person would so much as approach her. “Release me!” she ordered, too offended to be frightened.

The man and his companions laughed, and one of them recognized her accent. “A Russian. Probably one of the Spartacists,” he suggested, touching her shoulder with ungentle hands.

Heedless of the attention he might gain, Ragoczy ran now, down through the narrow street to the court where Laisha struggled. Those foolish enough to be in his way were thrust aside. But in those seconds he ran toward her, shouting out her name, he saw one of the brownshirts lift a rifle, and holding it by the barrel, swing the butt full force into the side of her face, splintering bone, sending blood and other matter spraying over the hands that held her.

“No!”
he screamed as he saw Laisha start to fall. He did not say it in German or Russian, but in a tongue that had not been spoken for more than thirty-five hundred years.

The men around Laisha exchanged looks and were still not yet aware that she was crumpling, was dead. Then one of them saw Ragoczy racing toward them and said a few terse words to his companions. They faded into the crowd, each going in a different direction.

Ragoczy hardly saw them. Every atom of his being was concentrated on the blood-spattered pumpkin-colored dress. As he ran, the men on the street gave way to him now, and a few of them hurried away. The sounds, the figures around him, were nothing to him, less substantial than shadows or ghosts. He stopped beside her and fell to his knees.

Blood was still pumping from her broken face, and bits of bone stuck to her skin. Three teeth were caught in the tangled mat of her hair, a bit of her jaw attached to them. Her nose was ripped so that the nostril was only a tattered bit of flesh. Her eye was crushed in its socket.

Gently, so gently, Ragoczy took her up in his arms, cradling her shattered head against his chest, grief burning through him like vitriol. He repeated her name softly over and over, rocking her as he did when she was a child. “My daughter, my daughter, my daughter,” he murmured to her, unmindful of the blood and fragments of brain that befouled his fine clothing. Now there would be no social debut. She would never be courted, or married. He would never have the rare delight of holding her child in his arms as he had held her. The elegant woman that was promised by her lankiness would never emerge. These things flitted through his mind, and none of them made any sense to him. He felt her blood seep through his jacket, his vest, and his shirt, hot against his skin. He would never laugh with her again, never play duets with her, or correct her accent in French. Gaetano Cabrini would wait in vain for her return to Verona. She would not pester him with her endless, treasured questions. He knew death, had tasted that bitter cup once, but he denied it now while all his senses recognized it.

The police found him, still on his knees, Laisha in his embrace like a broken doll, some forty minutes later.

“The foreigner,” one of the men said, looking about for the Sergeant.

Another of the men bent down to speak to him, but when he tried to touch Ragoczy’s shoulder, his hand was shrugged off.

“There’s a coroner’s wagon coming, sir,” the first one informed him.

“Get back,” Ragoczy said, so quietly and fiercely that the policemen stood away from him.

There was an awkward pause; then the youngest of the policemen said, “She’s dead, Mein Herr.”

Ragoczy’s dark eyes burned down on him. “And what is that to you?” He knew that had he been capable of weeping, he would drown in his tears. No loss he had suffered, not the sun-ravaged Hesentaton, not the brave, pitiful Ten Chih-Yü, not Jenfra eaten up with plague, not his three killed in the Circus Maximus, had torn at his heart as the death of Laisha did now. Holding her, feeling her so still, was racking torment to his soul, and yet he could not bear to put her down.

In the silence, Ragoczy got to his feet, and with Laisha close, secure against him, he walked from the court toward the wreckage of his automobile.

A letter from Helmut Rauch to Maximillian Altbrunnen.

Rahm Hotel

Wotanstrasse, Nymphenburg

May 31, 1926

Wolkighügel

Hausham

My dear Maximillian:

This is a most distressing letter for me to write to you, for you know the esteem and respect we have held in the past requires that I address you with honor, although I believe that your actions do not warrant it.

In the time you have been with the Thule Gesellschaft, you have repeatedly expressed your willingness to enter into the Initiates of the Bruderschaft, declaring that you are one with us in heart and spirit, devoting to us your every thought. This is required of those entering the Bruderschaft, for there the true work of Thule is done. There should be no deception, no lies among members of the Bruderschaft. You have known this for a considerable time, and yet you have, as I discovered recently, been misrepresenting yourself to us in a most shameful way.

I have recently talked to your widowed sister, who has told me that the fortune you have insisted is at your disposal, does not, in fact, exist. I have been at pains to investigate this claim of hers, for you have been so adamant in the past concerning the availability of funds that I believed it was her opposition to us that spoke, and not her penury. In my years with BKK, I established a great many useful associations, and I made use of them recently. Had there been any monies of the sort you have mentioned, I assure you I would have discovered them. In all my inquiries, I have found nothing to support your claim that you have considerable wealth, and a great deal to give credibility to your sister’s insistence that there are not enough funds left to keep your family estate functioning beyond the most minimal level.

For this reason, I have been forced to recommend that your name be dropped from consideration for Initiation, and that certain punitive measures be set for you. Your squandering of your sister’s little funds is most improper, and that you made us party to this is even more unacceptable. You speak of Deutschland being an example to the world, and I have always agreed with you. Is it proper that such an example be of a young man who drives his widowed sister into the poorhouse? You are hochgeborn, and for that reason, there are privileges that go with such birth, but you will not find such things here. At the meetings of the Bruderschaft, there is no question of birth, for the Initiation is a birth in itself, and such distinctions are no longer applicable to those who wish to number among us. You will submit to whatever chastisement is given you. In this way alone can you reestablish yourself with the Bruderschaft. In time, should you prove to be truly reformed and penitent, then your application for Initiation may be reconsidered. This is by no means a sure thing, I must warn you. You may also elect to leave our numbers, but if this is done, you will at no time be allowed to deal with any of us, in any way again. You will have to resign from the NSDAP and attend no more meetings of this or any other Pan-Teutonic group, for it is our intention to notify all such lodges of your conduct and inform them, in detail, of, the action we have taken and the reasons for it.

I will call upon you in person to inform you of the action to be taken against you, and to offer my apology to your sister. The Bruderschaft will require a week to consider what is best to be done. At the end of that time, hold yourself in readiness to receive me. If you should attempt to avoid this meeting, we will be forced to be more militant in our treatment of you. Discipline is the mark of an Initiate of the Thule Bruderschaft and it is my intention to instill that sense of discipline in you by whatever means necessary. There is no place in Deutschland that we cannot reach you, and very few foreign locations where our arm cannot stretch. It is best if you acquiesce in our demands at once, and show yourself amenable to our strictures. Otherwise, I will not be responsible for what will become of you.

It is my most sincere hope that you will accept your penalties with humility and devotion. There is no other means for you to redeem yourself in our eyes. It would restore our faith in you if you will comply in every particular with our demands and show yourself to be ashamed of what you have done. Should this not be the case, then be certain that the wrath of the Bruderschaft will follow you, not only in the flesh but the spirit as well, and there will not be one day, one hour, when you will be free of our vengeance.

For the Thule Gesellschaft and Bruderschaft, I cannot sign myself your friend.

Helmut Rauch

10

Although her boudoir clock had chimed two, Gudrun was still awake. She sat propped up by pillows, her bedside lamp casting its soft light over the page of the novel she had chosen quite at random nearly five hours ago. So far, she had read roughly fifty pages, for her mind often wandered back to the graveside ceremony that afternoon when Laisha Vlassevna was buried. Until that service, she had not seen Ragoczy since his daughter’s death three days before. She had been appalled by the pain she had seen in his face, and had spoken the first words that came into her head: “I wish I could console you.” He had nodded in a remote way, and turned to listen to the other empty phrases that were offered him by those dozen or so people who had attended the funeral.

Would he come? She alternately hoped that he would and that he would not. Her heart ached for him, but the helplessness she felt in the face of Laisha’s death reminded her again of the long years Jürgen had taken to die, and the memory twisted within her afresh.

On impulse, she rose from her bed, and pulling on a lace-trimmed bed jacket, made her way into the dark hall, and from there to the broad staircase to the lower floor. The carpets were soft under her bare feet, even those that were worn—as she knew most of them were—or of such age that they no longer kept their shape or color. At the foot of the stairs she turned toward the kitchen, feeling her way along the wall. She chided herself for this precaution: she had lived at Wolkighügel for almost half of her life and she should have known these passages as she knew her face. Tonight, however, she felt a stranger here, and nothing she touched seemed familiar.

In the kitchen she turned on the light, grateful for the new electric lines that had been strung early in spring. Why, she asked herself, had she not turned on the lights in the hallway, and could think of no satisfactory answer. She was not actually hungry, but she thought that a bit of food might make her sleepy; she felt giddy with fatigue, but not the least inclined to sleep. There were some berry-filled pastries in the cooler, and after a brief debate with herself, Gudrun took one and bit into it. Sweetness flooded her mouth and she nearly gagged. Very slowly she finished it, finding each bite more cloying than the last. When she was through, she poured a generous glass of wine and drank it much too quickly. Then she went out into the hall again, leaving the kitchen light on and the door half-open.