“Honest answer?” Dunfield replied. “I wouldn’t want my family in Berlin. You have to understand: everything—and I mean everything—you do in Hitler’s Germany is political. Everything. I had six good Jewish employees: they’re all gone. And that’s just for openers. The taxes are iniquitous.”
“Duly noted,” Seabrook observed. “See any big deals down the road?
“A deal’s always possible, in theory. Question is—”
“—how do we get our clients’ money out?” Seligman mused.
Dunfield looked around the table for support. There was none. They were all biding their time, waiting to see Allen’s cards.
“Exactly,” Dunfield continued. “The currency restrictions are enough to kill any deal, and that’s the way Hitler wants it: the foreign exchange stays at home, so they export like crazy. Fact is, unless you’re selling ’em munitions or raw materials for the military, you’re the last one in.”
Foster was staring hard at his blank legal pad, occasionally tapping the lined yellow paper with his pen tip, but writing nothing.
Seabrook lit a new cigar: he was not a nostalgic man. “Joe?” he asked.
Dropping a file folder three inches thick to the tabletop with a satisfying thud, Seligman said smoothly, “Billing statements for the last year.” He then pulled a thick red file from the annual record. “These are the billing statements for our Jewish clients. They’re wondering what the hell we’re doing in Germany—even if they’re making money in Herr Hitler’s playground. They want to know why we still have a Berlin office. They want to know why we still have clients like Hamburg America, IG Farben, Bosch—the list goes on. We have a choice to make, gentlemen, and we’d better make it soon, or our Jewish clients and their friends are going to make it for us.” He placed his hand on the big billings file. “This isn’t small beer.” He took Foster in with a long glance. “There are real consequences to keeping Berlin open, Fos. Hitler—at least in the opinion of a goodly number of our clients, and the press to boot—is a scourge on the planet. We make a clean break from Hitler, gentlemen, or we lose not only anti-Nazi clients here, but our reputation as well. And that’s going to be far harder to recover than a few hundred thousand bucks”—Allen strolled in—“in billings.”
“Must be talking about my billings,” Allen said, grinning. “Sorry I’m late. The breakfasts at the House of Morgan do go on.”
“You haven’t missed the fireworks,” Seabrook senior offered. “You’re up next. We’re getting the gospel according to Joe. Dunfield’s already had his say.”
“It’s going to hell in a handbasket as a place to do real business, is what I said,” Dunfield repeated, noting Allen’s late entrance with a flinty eye.
“Thanks. Sorry, Joe. Norrell, welcome back from Berlin, sorry.” Allen took his seat.
“We haven’t any choice,” Seligman said, his voice flat. “Even our own people are angry. There’s at least four of the most promising associates threatening to leave. The next generation of our office, out the door.”
“I have letters from Parsons, Young, Wallace, and Stark,” reported Seabrook senior. “There’s not a hothead in the bunch. Stark and Parsons brought us the big Americo Pipe deal.”
“And there’s me,” said his son, examining a point in space over Foster’s head. “I haven’t written my letter yet.”
That cooled talk for a long moment.
“I don’t see a compromise,” said Arthur Dean, speaking for the first time. Dean was the heavyweight, the silent one, the only lawyer Foster deferred to. Dean had both fists pressed down on his green baize blotter, hard. “I say we shut Berlin down, cut our losses, rebuild here. Boom. Like that. Allen, you opened this can of worms up at Town Hall—say your piece. Last word to Fos.”
“It’s not only the four who’ve written letters, and young Seabrook,” Allen opened, pitching his voice softly, so the others at the far end of the table had to crane in to hear him. “We’re going to have a palace revolution right here at head office. Look at the papers: every day there’s a steady drumbeat of reasons to get out of Germany. First off, as Norrell knows, you can’t be a lawyer in Berlin. You just can’t. How can you practice law in a place where the courts are controlled lock, stock, and barrel by the state? I can’t. We can’t represent our clients properly. I vote we shut it down.”
Dean broke the cavernous silence after that broadside. “I think it’s time we heard from Foster.”
Foster took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “We have to keep a sense of proportion,” he said, almost to himself. He put his glasses back on. “Damn it, the place is open for business. You all know what’s going to happen if we close down Berlin. Half of Wall Street’ll be on the next boat to Bremerhaven, waving contracts.”
“I take it that’s a no,” Dean summed up.
“You’re damn right it’s a no, Arthur,” Foster snarled, flaring. “If Hitler falls, that country’s going to be red as Mrs. McGillicuddy’s drawers inside six months. Then we’ll see how our French clients like staring across the Rhine at a Communist Germany. Anybody thought about that one?”
Seabrook junior rose to his feet and rested his hands on his chair back. “I’m speaking only for myself, no one else.”
“The other associates,” Dean acknowledged, “will have the floor when it’s their moment.”
“I’m not staying at this firm if we continue to have law offices in Germany,” Seabrook junior declared. “We don’t have to do business with these people. It’s as simple as that. There’s been a Seabrook at Sullivan and Cromwell since 1890. If we decide to keep that office open, I’m giving my notice, effective immediately. Thank you.” He smoothed back his hair.
Foster sat, stone silent, his big hands opened flat, covering his legal pad as if it might fly away.
“That seems pretty clear,” Dean said. “Allen?”
“When I gave that speech at Town Hall, I was the first to take our business outside these four walls, first to speak about what’s happened to this firm, about our business in Germany. Things have gotten pretty lively since.”
“Lively? The house is on fire,” Dean noted.
This raised a brief gust of laughter from all except Foster. Allen registered that abstention out of the corner of his eye.
“Well, I guess”—he hesitated, gathering himself for the collision—“we’re on very thin ice. I simply don’t see how we can in fact—”
“In Shakespeare, Allen,” Foster cut in, “this is where they send in the assassins. The only fact in politics is power. And Hitler has it. What do you propose we do, young Seabrook, take it away from him by walking out in a fit of legal pique?” He stared at each of them in turn; only Dean and Seligman met his gaze. “Well, it won’t work. I made the German account in this law firm, and by God I’ll unmake it. This is exactly what the competition wants, you know: they want us to go picnicking on one another here at this law firm.” Someone down the table cleared his throat nervously. Foster took off his glasses and folded them, turning them in his hands. “We don’t do this. We won’t. It’s worse than wrong: it’s careless.”
“Foster, no one is trying to take the account away from you,” Seligman said consolingly, “or deny your role in making us all rich men.”
“Then why in God’s good name are we sitting here now?”
“Because we took the money, Foster,” Seligman replied, unflinching. “We took the money.”
Foster snapped his glasses back on. “You won’t get around me with a moral lecture, Joe. Least of all you.”
“I don’t want to do this, Foster.”
“Then don’t. Sit down, Phil junior, you look out of sorts standing there. All right, Joe, level with me—what do you want?”
“Hitler’s been in power over three years, Foster. Whatever the future is for that horrid little man—and I personally hope it’s mercifully brief—people will say we didn’t cut him loose when we first saw him for what he was. They’ll say we kept doing
the deals.”
“Allen. You. What do you want?”
“To stop arguing, Foster,” Allen replied softly. “To finish it.”
“I like a good argument, personally,” Foster shot back. “Good for the circulation. Tell me, now that you’ve fitted me up for the box, why not hit the godforsaken nail?”
Allen colored. “The young lawyers came to me—”
“—for a quiet confidence or two. Your Dutch uncle routine. Allen, you want Berlin shut because it’ll make your life easier when you represent us at that merry-go-round they call the State Department. Well, I like kicking the State Department in the teeth at least once a year, just to see my tax dollars at work.”
“That’s harsh,” Allen replied, his voice set low. “I did the right thing. For all of us.”
Seabrook noticed a vein on Foster’s temple throbbing. “And pigs will fly,” Foster muttered.
“In which case,” Arthur Dean said to no one in particular, “there’s going to be pork all over the boardroom ceiling in short order.”
No one had the spine to laugh just then, though Dean dined out on his bon mot for years afterwards.
“I have a stock swap closing in fourteen minutes,” Dean said gently, pitching his words gingerly, like eggs, “thirteen if you count the walk to my office. Foster, you’ve had your say.”
Seligman, who had a theatrical instinct or two, slid an envelope out from under his blotter. “It’s over, Foster. If you want a full vote of the board, if you want to take this right to the wall, here are the votes.” Joe opened the envelope and pushed a single page of typescript over to Foster. “I polled all the partners and all the associates too. It’s overwhelming.”
Foster read the results in the dead silence. He took off his glasses again. He rose and went to the boardroom window, the full span of the room away from Allen. Finally, he coughed once or twice, then chewed his thin lips. “I see.” He turned to face them. “I can’t agree, but I must consent. It’s the will of the board. We close the Berlin office forthwith. Minutes to me first thing tomorrow … No. No minutes.”
“We weren’t taking notes, Foster,” Joe Seligman assured him. “There won’t be any minutes. Phil and Arthur thought that might be—”
“—advisable,” Seabrook senior finished.
“I understand,” was all Foster said, his eyes fixed somewhere far away.
Dean watched him for a moment, then broke up the meeting. “Good. I’m off. My deal has to be at the registrar’s by noon. Those typists have sixteen copies to crank out.”
The others followed wordlessly. Seligman, the last, hesitated for a moment but saw that Allen hadn’t moved. Joe closed the door, and the click hung between the brothers until Allen stood and walked the length of the boardroom table.
“Don’t. Don’t say a word,” Foster warned, his face flushed. He gestured past Allen to the closed boardroom door. “You’re quite the diplomat, Allen. All that with a few meetings and a single piece of paper.” Foster extended his hand. Allen hesitated, then took it. Foster squeezed and drew his brother closer. “Last time, you understand?” he said, hoarse. “I brought you here, I made you, handed you off to clients like Rockefeller and Rollie Harriman, got you out of one big hole.” He bent close to Allen, his grip tightening. “Never end-run me again, hear? This is where you say yes. “
“Yes,” was all Allen said.
“Good morning.” Foster turned his back and went to the window, looking down the facades of Wall Street.
Allen left Foster, the pallid winter light on him, his suit bunched high over his big shoulders. None of the fight had gone out of Foster, a bull cornered but untouched.
correspondence file: Eleanor Dulles to Grace Dunlop
Bryn Mawr
May 17 1936
Grace
It’s a very quiet Sunday morning here; there’s that late-in-the-semester feeling of new summer and a new life in the quads. I’m at Professor Kiley’s house. I wrote her, telling her I needed a break, and her daughter—who’s now sixteen and a lovely girl—has taken Sophie to Philadelphia for the day. I’m in Prof. K’s workroom, watching one of the students reading, her back to the old tree near the path to Wyndham, and wondering, “Was I like that, was that me, ages ago?”
The work for SSA is really rolling now. We’re overworked on all fronts—policy, legislation, administration—but it’s coming together. It’s quite a thing, to consider that I’m the research leader for the whole Social Security program, with all those lives to think of. We make jokes about it some days, when the work gets to be too much, about taking away Mrs. Miller’s pin money in Sheboygan and having the whole thing fall down. But on the whole, it will work and it will make a difference.
I’m also pushing for a historian to keep track of our progress. I’ve had quite a fight here and on the Hill getting the money set aside to keep a record of what’s gone on. These are big, sometimes overwhelming, policy decisions the government is making, and they rely on us to get it right for them. Might as well have history see what we did, for better or for worse.
Sophie’s fine, she’s reading all the time now and a happy child. Her latest success is demanding I help her bake her “mixtures,” inventions of her own in the kitchen. We don’t eat them, of course. One or two of them might be bulletproof. I think about Sophie a lot in my work, about her retirement, what she’ll have to look forward to, what we’re doing for the ones after us. I remember what Professor Teasdale used to say about public service, that we are what we do. It’s good work. It’s made me a better person.
Foster calls me “Red Eleanor” when I get too loud over dinner. I don’t care, neither he nor Allen has much sense what it’s like to be poor in this country. When you’re back, tell me all about Siam. I want to hear about Bert and her family. That ambassador’s story, the one about the ship to Ceylon? Is it true? Tell all, Gracie, you always do.
Give India a hug from Aunt Eleanor.
Love
Ellie
XX
JUNE 1936
The sybaritic Allen savored his visits to 26 Broadway, the oil capital of the world. The penthouse office was a prince’s lair. Nelson Rockefeller’s private dining room at his family’s head offices was gently lit with elegant tapers and a minimum of electric light; a butler came and went silently on crepe soles, bearing silver trays, while Allen and his client talked, referring to a file Rockefeller had open to his right. They had reached dessert: Kona–Blue Mountain coffee, a perfect flaky galette, and anisette.
“I’m of the opinion that sooner or later there’s going to be war, Nelson,” Allen said, choosing his subdued tone, the one he used for the heavyweight client closings. “Could be five years or ten years from now. But everything I see says war with Germany. I was there a month ago for a disarmament conference. The Rhineland is just the start for Hitler.” Rockefeller said nothing, listening, a thumb across his lips sealing in his thoughts.
Rockefeller turned a page. “Okay. There’s a war. What if we do want to move money around that’s parked in Switzerland? Says here you’re recommending the Bank for International Settlements?”
“We are,” Allen agreed. “We’ve worked out a few wrinkles there, too. The idea’s really implicit in the Standard–Farben share swap. There’s no reason why your Standard–Farben royalty flows shouldn’t go through Switzerland to the BIS and on to New York. And vice versa for the Standard outflows from Germany.”
“We’ve got almost forty percent ownership of the Thyssen bank shares via Chase?” Rockefeller was saying.
“That’s correct. Chase New York holds thirty-eight percent of Thyssen’s cross-holdings in Farben.” Allen took a sip of his anisette, letting it linger.
“So you and Fos are proposing to cloak Standard’s German holdings with a Swiss holding company, here in the U.S., to protect the thirty-eight?” Rockefeller slapped a hand down on the file. “I like it. I don’t like Sweden, and Portugal’s too close to Spain. I see those Spanish Reds just shi
pped their entire gold reserve to Moscow. Jesus.”
“They’ll never see that again, you ask me,” Allen replied feelingly. “Stalin got his start robbing banks, didn’t he?”
Rockefeller leant back in his chair. “Bank secrecy makes all kinds of sense, but how does the Swiss end work? Moving money around, I mean? How do I know my business is secure while there’s a war on?”
“The Swiss banks use the latest coding communications, the best around. Nelson, we use the same machines ourselves at Sullivan.”
Rockefeller tapped the table with a fingertip. “So, you’re convinced there’s going to be a war. You’ll be cloaking all kinds of corporate trade, won’t you? Good for business, right?”
“Actually,” Allen said quietly, “most of Wall Street have enough on their plates just keeping their heads above water. And the State Department? They’re all ostriches. Nobody wants to know. You’d be ahead of the game.”
“I see your old friend Norman Davis is running the Council on Foreign Relations. He figures Hitler’s not going to stop until he’s got Austria and maybe even Czechoslovakia too.”
Allen, polishing off his galette, nodded. “Who can afford a war in Europe these days, except Hitler—”
“We have a real client in that German air force,” Rockefeller mused. “They need leaded aviation fuel, and lots of it—and that’s our patent.”
Allen could see Nelson’s gears going. “All the more reason to cloak like this,” he observed. “A really fine dessert. And superb venison, Nelson.”
“We fly ’em in live from upstate, nothing but fresh-killed at this table, I can tell you that.” Nelson closed the cloaking file and pondered its cover for a moment. “Right. Let’s keep on with this cloaking neutrality idea some more. Here’s what I hear on the Standard grapevine: Caracas, Bogotá, Mexico City—the South American countries are going to follow the Vatican’s lead and stay out of it if Europe goes up, aren’t they?”
“The State men tell me yes, yes, they will. The Pope’s made it quite clear the real enemy is the Bolsheviks. My best information says they’ll stay neutral. But that’s only part of the story,” Allen continued. “No point in pumping oil you can’t sell because your tankers are on the alien property custodian’s list. Everything’s got to be able to move with a war on. Otherwise you’re hamstrung by currency restrictions or even flat-out confiscation.”
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