Senior's conference ended without a decision but in a fractured, tense standoff. Ezra's proposal, a plot to actively speculate against the currency of one of the major ally and benefactor nations, suspended like a declaration of war.
Junior was morally outraged. He thought it was a ghastly business of profiting from the miseries of others on a grand scale, back to the worst possible robber-baron ethos that he'd spent his entire adult life trying to erase from the company heritage. He paced the room, his face flushed with rage.
"It's not who we are," he said, his voice ringing with conviction. "Pursuing the annihilation of a grand people, the people that stood with us in the Great War... it's impossible. It's a crime against finance and fraternity. Father, you can't be serious about this!"
Senior, however, remained still. He wasn't weighing the moral implications of the act; he was weighing in his mind the cold, beautiful, deadly logic of the plan. He was interested, but he did not make any indication of going along with him. He had given Ezra the podium to act, but he hadn't given him the permission to command the armies of the family yet. The ultimate power, the ability to marshal the type of capital involved in making a big money play, remained within the complicated trust and banking accounts web that Junior, as the public face and active manager of the family, ultimately controlled.
The struggle for power needed to transition from theory to practice.
Later in the day, Ezra went in search of Junior. He found him in the vast art gallery of the house, in front of a peaceful landscape by Corot, and he seemed to be trying to wash his mind clear of the ugliness of Ezra's offer.
Ezra knew that cajoling, appealing to conscience, or coming up with more data would be efforts in vain. Junior's mind was a citadel of principle. So he would not attack the citadel; he would bring a key.
"Junior," he said, his tone not argumentative but businesslike. "I did not come to debate the morality of the situation. I visited you to make you a proposition."
Junior rotated ponderously, his eyes cold. "I can conceive of no suggestion you could make that I'd find pleasant at this moment."
"Hear me out," soothed Ezra. "You believe that I am some sort of wild bettor. You believe my European theory to be a product of my fevered imagination. I believe that I am right. Let us test it."
He paused and let the offer evolve. "Grant me the access to a pool of discretionary funds. Ten million dollars."
Junior's laugh was a rapid staccato bark of disbelief. "Absolutely not."
"Let me finish," Ezra emphasized. "Not as a gift. Not even as a regular distribution. Present it to me as a bet between ourselves. I will personally guarantee a fifty-percent return within six months' time. If I renege—if I lose so much as a dollar of that principal—then you will have my bond, in writing, sworn to by whoever you desire. You will be free to use the default to permanently disqualify me in the eyes of your father. You will enjoy absolute legal control of all my business transactions, every asset related to Alta included, for the remainder of our lives together. I will be voted off the board, so to speak. Permanently."
The proposition hung between them, winking with temptation and peril. It was a devil's bargain. Junior detested the plot with every fiber of his being. But Ezra was offering to provide him with what he desired: a silver bullet to get rid of this new perceived threat to his father and secure the family honor forever and ever. All he'd need to do was give the madman enough rope to hang himself.
But what if he did not hang? What if, in some devilish miracle, he was in the right? To honor the bet would be to risk giving Ezra a victory so massive that it would give him limitless power and influence over the family.
Flustered, Junior found sanctuary in the safety of consensus. With his advisors, the same club men, he convened a meeting over the telephone. Their counsel was unanimous as well as definitive. "Speculation in currencies is a game for fools, Mr. Rockefeller," pronounced Harrison, the banker. "Even for the specialists. Currencies are matters of national pride. Governments act in unpredictable ways. To bet against the Bank of England is to bet against the British Empire itself. It is pure folly."
With this expert seal of approval, Junior's resolve became final. He would deny the request. But the struggle was far from done. It was to spill, yet, into the crucible of all crucibles: the family itself.
Ezra recognized that the ten million was a bluffing maneuver. He did not expect Junior to buy his proposal. His ideal outcome was modest, within grasp, and emotionally far more complicated. He needed Alta.
He found her in the conservatory, a beautiful glasshouse filled with exotic orchids that her mother so adored. She was arranging a spray of white phalaenopsis, moving with a gentle grace.
He explained the problem before her, not the exotic financial instruments, but the substance of the disagreement. He explained that he wanted to hedge their exposure against a coming European storm, but that Junior was blocking his way on moral grounds.
"He feels that I am being a vulture," he briefly explained. "He wants to keep our funds in the old systems out of a sense of loyalty. I believe that loyalty will lead to our destruction."
Just as if he was called, Junior arrived at the door of the conservatory. He clearly knew Ezra's next move. "Alta," he said in his tone of alert concern. "Do not listen to him. He wants you to participate in some awful act."
He went into the conservatory and made it a courtroom. "He wants to bet your money, money our father left to you so you'd be safe the rest of your life, on the breakdown of the British economy! He wants you to bless this! To bet your future against the breakdown of our allies!"
It was a powerful, impassioned argument. He was framing Ezra in the worst possible light, a ghoul rummaging through the wreckage of a friend.
Ezra remained motionless until he was finished. He did not scream. He did not argue about morality. He looked into his wife's eyes, his gaze steady and strong.
"Junior sees countries and flags," he clarified, his voice flat and logical. "I see structures and foundations. That British foundation, the one that's kept the world together for a hundred years, will fall apart. It's not my work, nor Junior's. It's a given. Clinging to it out of sentiment is how we end up with nothing. This isn't about tearing down, Alta. This is about moving our holdings out of a house with a shifting foundation to one made of rock before the earthquake begins. I'm not guessing; I'm protecting you."
Alta stood paralyzed between the two men, between two competing modes of how to perceive the world. Her brother, the representative of custom, duty, and old-fashioned morality. And her husband, this terrifying, novel, and captivating stranger with his speaking of the future as if he knew it to be so.
She looked at Junior's spluttering, indignant wrath. Then at Ezra's rock-solid, unnerving faith in himself. She thought back to his initial impossible promise: the seven-day miracle. He'd delivered. He'd asked her to trust him, and he'd repaid that trust a thousand times over. Now he was asking for it all, but this time on a much grander scale.
Her hand trembled a little when she looked down at the orchid in her hand. She held the casting vote. Her battlefield was the unseen one.
Finally, she took in a deep breath. She stared at her brother, her face that of repentance but resolve too.
"John," she said softly but uncompromisingly, "you're a good man. The best men are. But I... I trust my husband."
She passed by her shell-shocked brother to a small writing desk beside the corner of the conservatory. Ezra left the legal documents there, and this was indicative of his forethoughts. Carefully, she picked up the fountain pen, dipped the pen in the penholder, and signed the memorandum. By signing, the memorandum vested Ezra with temporary, full discretionary powers to administer her entire trust.
Junior stared at him, white-faced. He'd been beaten. Not with a superior argument for dollars and cents, but with a much more effective and surprising source: a wife's act of faith in the husband she'd married.
Ezra had his war chest now. Not the ten million he asked for, but enough to throw the first stone in his war against the old world.