Louise had been his first. She literally took him in hand for the next three years. Marianna had been the next, and stayed with him for several years. By then it was 1935 and Adolfo reluctantly sent Marianna to America; Germany under Hitler was no place for a Jewess.
His wealthy parents, a German father and a Spanish mother, also left for America; they had looked to the future with the "Austrian maniac" running the country and decided Germany wouldn't be a safe place for anyone who disagreed with the Nazi party's views. They were convinced Germany would soon be at war.
Adolfo stayed. Not because he agreed with Hitler's rantings; it was simply that he saw the prospect of a Europe in turmoil as exciting. He expected the war that was inevitable would provide many opportunities for a young man with a cool head.
When war came, he was posted to France as a junior officer. Promotions followed quickly, which gave him opportunities to find the kind of woman he needed. He found Lessandra or, rather, she—on the hunt for an officer with influence- found him and in return for the attention he craved, he got her two brothers out of the country, to America.
Then, in early 1945, he and three other officers were ordered to drive four couriers and their diplomatic boxes to Switzerland. Exactly where Adolfo wanted to go. The couriers always stayed overnight in inns or hotels, while the officers had been ordered to remain in the cars with the diplomatic boxes. Although this had rankled, it meant they escaped the bombs that destroyed the hotel and killed the couriers.
Still following their orders, the four left for their rendezvous point by separate routes. Adolfo's route was blocked by debris from a bombed house. He got out of his vehicle to clear the way, and came face to face with a girl holding a baby. Bombs were still falling so he shouted for her to put the baby down and help him. She was stronger than she looked; between them they cleared a path for the car and when he got behind the wheel, she jumped into the back seat where she'd put the baby. Adolfo gave them no more than a glance before he started the motor and drove for the Swiss border.
There was no-one to meet him at the Schaffhausen rendezvous so he went on to his ski lodge in Winterthur and it was there, eventually, that he and his fellow officers reunited. Germany was defeated; there was nothing to go back to; they opened the diplomatic boxes ... and become millionaires. Diamonds and other precious stones, but mostly diamonds, were all that the boxes contained. They divided up the loot and went their separate ways. The war was over but Europe was still in chaos so Adolfo's first decision was to remain in Switzerland for a few years making plans and establishing a network of business acquaintances. Then he got rid of the name Adolf Hausmann, and established a new identity. His mother was Spanish, with no living relatives in Spain so he took her name and changed Adolf Johann Franz Hausmann to Adolfo Juan Franco del Basquez.
He bought a villa in Spain, added a wing to it, and insisted on modifications that caused the builders to look sideways at him. However, he was el Patron, the man with the money, so who were they to comment.
The search for the villa, and other business meant he was often absent from Winterthur, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks. When he returned to Switzerland after these trips, he was taken care of by the small staff that had remained in Winterthur from before the war: a housekeeper/cook, a maid of all work and a man of all work, and this staff took care of the girl and the baby.
The housekeeper. Senora Bianca, had judged Sophie to be no less than fifteen and probably no more than seventeen; the baby, she said, was at least one year old. After naming them Sophie and Luisa Maria, Adolfo took very little notice of them; he wasn't interested in children. He was soon joined by Lessandra, his paramour, whom he'd had to leave behind when he was ordered to escort the couriers. Lessie was in her forties and, in spite of all the hardships she'd endured during the war, was a good looking woman without any grey in her hair or sag to her body. Her arrival completed the Winterthur household but not everyone would go with him from there to Spain.
When it came time to move, his household would go with him, as would Lessie and Sophie. Luisa Maria, he decided, would be dropped off at an orphanage along the way.
A few years later, the Winterthur lodge was closed and Don Adolfo Juan Franco del Basquez took his household, Lessie and Sophie and Luisa Maria went with him. He was never sure when it happened but at some point very early on in Luisa's life, Adolfo's feelings for the little girl became those of a doting father. Perhaps it was when her chubby fingers held his face and her rosebud mouth planted baby kisses on his cheeks. Perhaps it was when her little hand held his so trustingly. Whenever it happened, whatever caused it, it was clear to his household that the little girl held the Patron in the palm of her little hand.
But she was never allowed to call his Papa, or father. From the time she was talking intelligibly, Luisa called him mi Patron, never Papa. Others would call him Patron, or refer to him as el Patron, but for Luisa he was mi Patron, whom she adored, and she was Don Adolfo Juan Franco del Basquez's adored daughter.
Sophie's introduction to serving Adolfo
Of that long ago day when she had staggered, dazed and bleeding, from the wreckage of a bombed house, Sophie remembered very little. She'd seen a movement, found a crying child in a bundled up blanket, and was holding it when a tall, broad shouldered man in uniform appeared.
He'd spoken to her but she was shell shocked and deafened by the noise of the bombardment. He hadn't wasted time trying to speak to her; he gestured at the baby and at the ground, then at herself and the debris blocking the road.
When the road was clear, she jumped into the back of the car where she'd placed the baby. After a quick look, the officer shrugged and then drove them all away from a nightmare of explosions and devastation. In the days that followed, her hearing returned but not her speech.
The man drove all through the night, changing vehicles twice. Before they drove across the border into Switzerland, he changed his clothes.
The house they were welcomed into was obviously the man's house because there were servants who bowed and welcomed him, their soft, deferential voices speaking Spanish. The man, who'd been speaking fluent German now spoke fluent Spanish. She never heard him speak German again. Don Adolfo, as his servants called him, hardly spoke to her at all but the servants were patient with her, speaking slowly and clearly, until she learned the new language.
A few years later, when he announced they would be moving to Spain, two grim-faced, taciturn young men had joined the household. They kept apart from the servants, becoming shadows of the man they called Patron. Always alert, always watchful, they went everywhere the Patron went. Although the war was over, Europe was ravaged and ruined in many places. People were slowly rebuilding their lives but there were those who would never return to the peaceful, ordered, law-abiding way of life the war had taken from them. It was these people the Patron dealt with, and it was from these people his Shadows protected him.
In Winterthur, Sophie had always made herself useful but Adolfo never made her status clear, neither to her nor to the rest of his household. She wasn't quite servant, not quite guest. But once in Spain, Sophie was given a uniform and told an account would be kept of her wages; a uniform and wages settled the matter of her status: she was a servant.
Luisa Maria, however, was accepted as Adolfo's daughter and installed in a suite with a maid and a niñera to take care of her day and night.
