Searching for Wallenberg by Alan Lelchuk Read Free Book Online

join up with them. In other words, the grandfather and Raoul were on the same page, the same axis of feelings and values regarding money and power.
    Gradually Manny began to get a clearer sense of things, a sharper angle: Raoul was the outsider within the conservative and iron-fisted Wallenberg family and its vast banking and business empire. But an outsider with what qualities? Manny wondered and jotted. Was he a threat? If so, what sort?
    He took a hike through the long rambling house—a kind of three-part Lego creation of an old house, a barn, a 1930s wing, put together in different decades—arriving in the kitchen and cutting a few slices of cheese and apple, and setting them on a plate with stoned wheat crackers. In the large living room he searched through a few piles of books and found several old black and white postcards from Budapest, of the charming Lancid and Elisabeth Bridges, and of the tree-lined Andrássy Street boulevard. Manny recalled his days there, a few years back, as a visiting professor at the Eötvös Loránd University; his friends Lazslo, Tibor, Loke, Julia, Andras; and the bronze statue of RW near his apartment in the second district of Buda. The bronze Raoul had seemed to eye him daily as he had walked up the Szilágyi Erzsébet Fasor to shop at Budagyöngye. (He learned that his Salgo Professorship was named after the same man, Nicolas Salgo, who had commissioned the sculpture.)
    Revved up, Gellerman opened his laptop and began writing a scene:

    At the grand mansion of Marcus Wallenberg in Stockholm, in the salon with family portraits in gilded frames on the walls, a red-jacketed servant appeared with drinks on a silver tray.
    “I don’t really see how we should arrange anything, Marcus, without putting ourselves and our firm at some risk,” said Jacob.
    Marcus nodded. “Maybe great risk, I concur.”
    “Also,” Jacob went on, “it’s not like he’s one of us really. His father was part of our inner circle, to be sure, but when Raoul Oscar died, the connection grew much thinner. His mother—well, she didn’t count. As for that disagreeable grandfather …”
    “Yes, I understand, and quite agree.” Marcus drank his aquavit.
    “And Raoul’s personality … arrogant, skeptical, not a family player. I never trusted him, or even liked him. Far too independent. And stubbornly so. Even when we gave him those few handout jobs to perform, he had to go around poking his nose everywhere.”
    “And not really interested in Enskilda or any of our business ventures, no matter—”
    “Or very interested in females, from what we have observed. Just the one so-called girlfriend and ten-minute ‘engagement’ perhaps, but that ended quickly enough. Who knew if that was even real ? Or a clever camouflage, like all of them? And since then? Never a steady woman, definitely strange. And we will not permit queers in our family.”
    Marcus nodded. “Too much risk all around. Practically speaking, he knows a little too much about our business. Our dealings with the Germans. And remember, he looks at matters from a very different angle. I cautioned you a long time ago”—he accepted a new round of drinks—“we never should have let him get so near to our private arrangements and our international dealings.”
    “He cannot prove anything, of course.”
    “True enough. Still, when I go off to the states to clean up things and try to get us off that nuisance FBI Blacklist, it would be most unfortunate if there were any ‘entanglements’ dangling whatsoever. And Raoul, let us face it, could create a few if he wished to.”
    “I don’t think—”
    “He is a purist ethically, isn’t he? The naïve fool!”
    They sipped their aquavits, in their monogrammed glasses.
    “Then we will do nothing on the Lybianka matter, agreed?”
    “Agreed.”
    “And if the shrewd PM or the king should ask our advice, our counsel?”
    “Sympathy from a distance, neutrality from up close. Whatever the