"Sir, would you like your bath drawn?"
The valet's subservient, crackling voice was an anchor in Jason's spinning panic. It jerked him back from the horror in front of him in the mirror. He tore his eyes from the stranger's face—his face—and looked at the servant.
Kykuit. We were to dine at Kykuit, they were told by the valet. That fabled Rockefeller residence. The name was a clap of thunder,confirmation of the unthinkable reality of his situation. He was Ezra Prentice. It was the 1930s. And he was a guest at the lion's den.
His mind, honed in the furnace of fiscal emergencies where a fleeting moment of hesitation spelled doom, seized the reins. He could not panic. Information was survival. He must judge, improvise, and prepare.
"Not. No bath. Just... go away for a minute," Jason labored to extricate himself, still strange-sounding in his own throat. He motioned with a hand for dismissal, trying to make it sound imperious, not needy. The valet bowed low once, imperceptibly, really, and was gone from the room, closing the door softly with a click.
Silence.
He leaned against the dresser, his new hands on the polished wood. He took a deep breath, shuddering. Think. Don't feel. Think.
He surveyed the room, not as a disoriented man, but as an analyst inventorying. Fixtures were elaborate brass, clearly for gas lighting but hastily modified to accommodate a single, dark electric bulb. Wiring was visible down the molding. Primitive. Inefficent. He classed it.
On a side table next to a chaise lounge, he saw it. A folded newspaper. He reached for it, his hands shaking a bit as he laid out the broadsheet. The New York Times. His eyes flashed past headlines of President Hoover's recent reassurances and a dispute over European tariffs, right to that one item of news he was more interested in than anything. The date.
October 26, 1931.
A shivering, electric spark went through him, a chill so severe it overwhelmed for an instant the paralyzing horror of suffocation. October 1931. Not just the past. Rock-bottom. The world was sinking, the economic heart of man had tightened, and all were blind, deaf, and terrified to death. Well, not he.
A predatory smile, slow and sadly incongruous on Ezra Prentice's humble face, began to spread. Not a jail. It was history's best ever financial chance for humankind. An informational advantage asymmetry of unimaginable proportions.
He was going strong. No more beaten-down, hungover slob; it was a century's historical statistics whizzing on a super. The Great Depression. Those brands of corporations that would weather it, their brands indistinguishable from American life: comfort and soap selling going on at Procter & Gamble, cheap comfort selling going on at Coca-Cola. Those young tech firms everyone dismissed as engineer diversion: Thomas J. Watson's International Business Machines, which would get a collosal, national-building contract from the Social Security Act he knew would come in a few years. Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which would join newspapers as chief medium of influence.
The politics played in his head like a clear map. Hoover was a dead man walking. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was going to clean his clock in the upcoming election. The New Deal. The Public Works Administration. The Civilian Conservation Corps. Repeal of Prohibition, which would with one stroke of a pen overnight create a mass, legitimate thirst for booze. And the End Move of them all: Roosevelt's Executive Order 6102, a taking of private gold, which would devalue the dollar and set the stock market on one of its wildest bull charges ever.
He knew it all. He knew when to buy, when to sell. He knew who would go bankrupt, who would become a giant. He knew what would befall of wars not yet started. It was intoxicating material, a sense of god-like omnipotence that made his 21st-century losses a childish argument in a sandbox.
A soft knocking at the door was accompanied by a worried-sounding woman's voice. "Ezra? Are you alright in there?"
Mrs. Prentice. Alta Rockefeller. Wife of his.
He couldn't conceal for very much more. He would have to face her. This was his first genuine test—not an economic model, but a human relationship in which one misstep would be his ruin. He gave one last look into the mirror, schooling the stranger's face into an air of wearied weariness. He opened the door.
She was as the old photographs depicted her: graceful, with an angular face and her father's piercing eyes. She was in a simple but well-made day frock, her posture mirroring the still confidence of a great privilege-born lady. The look she sported was an honest, unadulterated concern.
"Ezra, dear. You look absolutely pale," she said, her voice soft. "I was ever so worried when you were not responding this morning. You did not stir much on the train."
He needed to act his scene. He was no longer Jason Underwood, tough-minded money man. He was Ezra Prentice, unobtrusive husband. He massaged a hand across his forehead, a gesture he hoped looked natural.
"My apologies, my dear," he said, the words feeling like marbles in his mouth. "The journey... and a sharp, splintering headache. I feel as if I've come out of a long disorienting dream." It was the perfect alibi. Close enough to the truth to be believable, vague enough to hide any strange activity.
Alta's expression eased with worry. "Good heavens, you poor dear. Perhaps you can skip dinner? Father would not mind. Your health comes first."
He exclaimed in his mind, NO! This dinner was it. It was his first chance to get a read on the king and his heir. Miss it would be to cede the field before a battle ever took place.
"Nonsense," he said, taking on an air of strained fortitude. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. In fact, a little conversation would be good for me. I feel... disconnected from everything." It was a soft inquiry, a challenge for her to offer some details. "Tell me, what about your father? And Junior? And what about his great plans?"
Relief flashed across Alta's face. This was the husband she knew—genuine, worrying about family business. "Father is well," she remarked, sitting down on the veranda as he sat next to her. "He is as he ever is. Quiet. Watching. He misses the city, I think." She poured him a cup of coffee from a silver urn. "Junior is... obsessed. He's pouring his all into this Rockefeller Center project. He thinks it's a beacon of hope, a way of putting thousands of people to work when nobody else will take a chance."
She paused, a small frown of disapproval between her eyes. "He gets so indignant, though. He blames the 'speculators' and the 'vultures,' as he calls them. Men who he believes are profiteering from people's misery. He believes it's his family's duty to provide, not to receive, under circumstances like this."
Jason sipped his coffee, the hot, bitter drink a point of focus. High moral ground was being claimed. Junior, the good philanthropist, vs. the specter of the rapacious capitalist. And Jason Underwood, future greatest capitalist of all, was hiding under the mask of Ezra Prentice, right in front of Junior's ideological crosshairs.
He must be careful about what he said. "A grand concept," he said, his voice neutral. "Lofty thinking, though, doesn't establish a new economy. Only finances can. And finances must be utilized to its utmost benefit."
Alta looked at him, a spark of astonishment in her eyes. It was a harsher, more clinical feeling than she was used to hearing from her husband, the lawyer.
Before she could reply, the valet returned once more, standing discreetly outside the door.
"The car is ready, Mr. and Mrs. Prentice," he announced. "You are invited to the main house."
The moment of truth. The age of subtle assessment was over. Jason arose, offering his arm to his wife. He must step onto the stage, into the very core of the gilded cage, and face the lions.