Ezra's response to the threat was not fear, but icy, instant rage. The dead orchid on his desk wasn't merely a threat object; it was a trigger. It took the abstract, global war and made it a basic, individual conflict. He called his security chief, Sullivan, to his office. The box remained open on the desk between them.
"We're at war, Sullivan," declared Ezra, his tone bereft of all sentiment except a chilling definitive end to his sentence. "A war which has just knocked at our door. Effective this instant, all of our operations security procedures are to be raised to a state of war operations."
Sullivan, whose face had been carved out of stone, nodded once. He understood. He had lived his professional existence within the gray area between violence and law, and he recognized the transformation at once.
The lockdown was swift and invisible to the outside world. Within twenty-four hours, the sprawling estates of Kykuit and the Prentices' Upper East Side residence were no longer just homes; they were fortresses. A team of Sullivan's best men—ten ex-Pinkerton detectives and former federal agents, all of whom had been quietly on Ezra's payroll for months—became a round-the-clock, plainclothes personal security detail. They were shadows, present but unobtrusive, their eyes constantly scanning, assessing every car that passed, every face in a crowd.
The existing household staffs were re-screened with delicacy and secrecy. Two gardeners and one junior footman at Kykuit, men with German ties via distant relations, were subtly terminated with handsomely lucrative severance packages. Each new hire, from a maid to a kitchen porter, was subjected to a background probe so sensitive that the FBI would have been proud of it. Each piece that arrived via delivery, from mail to victuals, was vetted at an off-site location prior to being introduced to the grounds. Ezra was establishing his own private investigative and counter-investigative agency, a Praetorian Guard for his shadow empire.
But his new fortress had a critical vulnerability: his wife. He could not protect Alta by keeping her in the dark. The time for pleasant fictions and reassuring vagaries was over. He found her in the conservatory, the beautiful glass house that was her sanctuary. The dead orchid had been a violation of this sacred space, and she had been avoiding it.
He did not come to her with apologies, but with the bare, unvarnished truth—or at least half of it. He offered her the dead flower.
"My business dealings have angered some very powerful and very ruthless rivals in Germany," he explained, his voice calm but serious. "They have demonstrated that they are willing to move beyond the boardroom. The car accident was not an accident. This," he gestured to the orchid, "is a direct threat against you. Against us."
Alta gazed at the crushed blossom, her face ashen. This was reality behind the rocketing profits and her husband's cryptic confidence. This was the cost. For an instant, sheer mortification of it all almost overwhelmed her. But then she gazed at her husband. He did not panic. He was master of the situation, his eyes sharp and focused. He was a commander studying a new battlefield. He fortified her with his own strength. The ingenuous do-gooder's daughter, who had once been appalled at his vulturous talk, was being tempered by fire into the wife of a wartime consigliere.
"What do we do?" she asked calmly, her question not that of a victim, but of a partner.
While Ezra fortified his home, the financial attack from von Hauser was causing chaos within the family. The orchestrated default on the German bonds was a public humiliation for Junior. It was a failure of his conservative, steady-as-she-goes management style. He was furious, and he directed all his anger at Ezra.
At the subsequent meeting with his family, which took place under a cloud of open hostility, Junior attacked him. "This is the result of your rashness, Ezra!" he ranted, his voice tense with rage. "I told you so. I told you that your aggressive approach would alienate us from men who are very capable of harm. The public reputation of this family is now damaged, and our trusts have taken a tangible loss due to your personal crusade!"
The old Ezra would have been forced into a defensive crouch. But Jason Underwood, the master strategist, saw the attack not as a problem, but as an opportunity. He let Junior's tirade wash over him, then responded with a shocking statement.
"Yes, Junior," he said, the softly spoken words at once freezing everyone to stillness. Everyone looked at him. "My actions have, by chance, highlighted the entire family as targets. Your modus operandi—doing business freely, with dozens of publicly visible trusts and transparent bank accounts—was to be admired under tranquil circumstances. However, under our current conditions, it is a fatal flaw. Everyone can see our assets; everyone will know just where to hurt us, as this affair has so bitterly made plain."
He left the suggestion to linger. "We can no longer afford to be quite so open. We have to consolidate. Our assets need to be insulated, brought under one, less noticeable management entity that can act quickly and unobtrusively to insulate us from these foreign menaces."
He didn't need to clarify who would be responsible for this new creation. He did a magnificent play of political chess. He was utilizing the threat from without that he himself had provoked to create an argument for still greater, top-down control of the family finances. Junior was stymied, his own role skillfully diverted back at himself.
Later that same evening, alone in his newly secured study, with the silent company of his new bodyguards, Ezra made one stark and terrifying realization. He had great economic influence. He had a clandestine, globe-altering scientific endeavor at his command. He had a legion of industrialists, scientists, and now, private security agents. But that still wasn't enough.
He remained vulnerable. Baron von Hauser acted with all the protection, power, and resources of a nation-state behind him. He could summon ministries, embassies, and espionage agencies as personal tools. Ezra Prentice, despite all his riches, was still merely a private citizen. If his German foes were sophisticated enough, they could spread word to his foes within America—the isolationists, his business competitors, even J. Edgar Hoover. They could frame him as an unauthorised actor, a warmonger, a person illegally practicing foreign policy. He could be searched, fined, or even jailed by his own government.
Economic muscle was a sword, not a shield. For that, he required political power. He required an unimpeachable champion entangled in the fabric of the American government.
Ezra pushed open a file cabinet. He took out a new set of files, not patent files nor company files, but politician files. He scanned the names of the old guard—the New York and New England senators who were under the thumb of Wall Street establishment he was disrupting. They were irrelevant to him. He needed a rising man, not someone from within that eastern elite. Someone practical, combative, and above all, someone who inherently grasped Germany as a threat.
His gaze fell upon a name. A junior senator from Missouri. A farmer, a former haberdasher, a Great War artillery captain. A man who was establishing himself as the vitally intelligent and thoroughly unflinching chairman of a new Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. A man named Harry S. Truman.
He read the file. He saw a man of principle, a man who hated slobs and inefficiency, a man with a healthy dislike of corporate fat cats but an even healthier devotion to his nation. A man he could do business with.
He picked up the secure telephone on his desk. "Sullivan," he said when his security chief answered. "I need you to arrange a meeting for me. A very private one. No intermediaries. Find a way to get me in a room, alone, with Senator Harry Truman."