drive up tonight.”
“Drive? But that’ll take you hours! ”
“It’s a pleasant drive,” he said. And a long drive was precisely what he needed to clear his head right now.
“Surely you can charter a flight if you have to.”
“Can’t,” he said without elaborating. The fact was, he wanted to avoid the airport, where others—if there were others—might be expecting him. “I’ll see you at breakfast, Freddie.”
The taxicab took Ben to an Avis on Gartenhofstrasse, where he rented an Opel Omega, got directions, and set off without incident on the A3 highway, heading southeast out of Zurich. It took a while to get the feel of the road, the great speed at which Swiss drivers raced along their main highways, the aggressive way they signaled that they wanted to pass by pulling up right behind you and flashing their high beams.
Once or twice he had a flash of paranoia—a green Audi seemed to be following him but then disappeared. After a while he began to feel as if he’d left all that madness behind in Zurich. Soon he’d be at the Carlton in St. Moritz, and that was inviolable.
He thought about Peter, as he’d done so often in the last four years, and he felt the old guilt, felt his stomach tighten, then flip over. Guilt that he’d let his brother die alone, because in the last few years of Peter’s life he’d barely even talked to him.
But he knew Peter wasn’t alone at the end. He’d been living with a Swiss woman, a medical student he’d fallen in love with. Peter had told him about it on the phone a couple of months before he was killed.
Ben had seen Peter exactly twice since college. Twice.
As kids, before Max had sent them off to different prep schools, they’d been inseparable. They fought constantly, they wrestled each other until one could claim, You’re good, but I’m better . They hated each other and loved each other, and they were never apart.
But after college Peter had joined the Peace Corps and gone to Kenya. He had no interest in Hartman Capital Management either. Nor would he take anything out of his trust fund. What the hell do I need it for in Africa? he’d said.
The fact was that Peter wasn’t just doing something meaningful with his life. He was escaping Dad. Maxand he had never gotten along. “Christ!” Ben had exploded at him once. “You want to avoid Dad, you can live in Manhattan and simply not call him. Have lunch with Mom once a week or something. You don’t need to live in some goddamned mud hut, for God’s sake!”
But no. Peter had returned to the States twice: once when their mother had her mastectomy, and once after Ben had called to tell him that Mom’s cancer had spread and she didn’t have long to live.
By that time Peter had moved to Switzerland. He’d met a Swiss woman in Kenya. “She’s beautiful, she’s brilliant, and she still hasn’t seen through me,” Peter had told him over the phone. “File that one under ‘strange but true.’” That was a favorite boyhood expression of Peter’s.
The girl was returning to medical school and he was going with her to Zurich. Which was what had first got the two of them talking. You’re tagging along with some chick you met? Ben had said scornfully. He was jealous—jealous that Peter had fallen in love, and jealous, on some crazy brotherly level, that he’d been replaced at the center of Peter’s life.
No, Peter had said, it wasn’t just that. He’d read an article in an international edition of Time magazine about an old woman, a Holocaust survivor, living in France, desperately poor, who’d tried without success to get one of the big Swiss banks to give back the modest sum her father had left for her before he’d perished in the camps.
The bank had demanded her father’s death certificate.
She’d told them that the Nazis hadn’t issued death certificates for the six million Jews they’d murdered.
Peter was going to get the old woman what was due her. Dammit, he said, if a
“Drive? But that’ll take you hours! ”
“It’s a pleasant drive,” he said. And a long drive was precisely what he needed to clear his head right now.
“Surely you can charter a flight if you have to.”
“Can’t,” he said without elaborating. The fact was, he wanted to avoid the airport, where others—if there were others—might be expecting him. “I’ll see you at breakfast, Freddie.”
The taxicab took Ben to an Avis on Gartenhofstrasse, where he rented an Opel Omega, got directions, and set off without incident on the A3 highway, heading southeast out of Zurich. It took a while to get the feel of the road, the great speed at which Swiss drivers raced along their main highways, the aggressive way they signaled that they wanted to pass by pulling up right behind you and flashing their high beams.
Once or twice he had a flash of paranoia—a green Audi seemed to be following him but then disappeared. After a while he began to feel as if he’d left all that madness behind in Zurich. Soon he’d be at the Carlton in St. Moritz, and that was inviolable.
He thought about Peter, as he’d done so often in the last four years, and he felt the old guilt, felt his stomach tighten, then flip over. Guilt that he’d let his brother die alone, because in the last few years of Peter’s life he’d barely even talked to him.
But he knew Peter wasn’t alone at the end. He’d been living with a Swiss woman, a medical student he’d fallen in love with. Peter had told him about it on the phone a couple of months before he was killed.
Ben had seen Peter exactly twice since college. Twice.
As kids, before Max had sent them off to different prep schools, they’d been inseparable. They fought constantly, they wrestled each other until one could claim, You’re good, but I’m better . They hated each other and loved each other, and they were never apart.
But after college Peter had joined the Peace Corps and gone to Kenya. He had no interest in Hartman Capital Management either. Nor would he take anything out of his trust fund. What the hell do I need it for in Africa? he’d said.
The fact was that Peter wasn’t just doing something meaningful with his life. He was escaping Dad. Maxand he had never gotten along. “Christ!” Ben had exploded at him once. “You want to avoid Dad, you can live in Manhattan and simply not call him. Have lunch with Mom once a week or something. You don’t need to live in some goddamned mud hut, for God’s sake!”
But no. Peter had returned to the States twice: once when their mother had her mastectomy, and once after Ben had called to tell him that Mom’s cancer had spread and she didn’t have long to live.
By that time Peter had moved to Switzerland. He’d met a Swiss woman in Kenya. “She’s beautiful, she’s brilliant, and she still hasn’t seen through me,” Peter had told him over the phone. “File that one under ‘strange but true.’” That was a favorite boyhood expression of Peter’s.
The girl was returning to medical school and he was going with her to Zurich. Which was what had first got the two of them talking. You’re tagging along with some chick you met? Ben had said scornfully. He was jealous—jealous that Peter had fallen in love, and jealous, on some crazy brotherly level, that he’d been replaced at the center of Peter’s life.
No, Peter had said, it wasn’t just that. He’d read an article in an international edition of Time magazine about an old woman, a Holocaust survivor, living in France, desperately poor, who’d tried without success to get one of the big Swiss banks to give back the modest sum her father had left for her before he’d perished in the camps.
The bank had demanded her father’s death certificate.
She’d told them that the Nazis hadn’t issued death certificates for the six million Jews they’d murdered.
Peter was going to get the old woman what was due her. Dammit, he said, if a
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