The Chase-Rockefeller International Bank's brand-new headquarters was a symbol of a new brand of power. Its lobby, in the very center of Wall Street, was an expansive room of gleaming marble and chilly bronze, calculated to convey an image of impeccable solidity and contemporary, worldwide scope. And at the very center of it all, in the expansive corner office with the sweeping view of New York Harbor, sat David Rockefeller.
He was in his element. Young, charismatic, and radiating a confidence that was backed by both a legendary name and a brilliant mind, he had seized the opportunity Ezra had given him and forged it into his own empire. He was no longer just the brilliant son of a famous father; he was a power in his own right, a central figure in the post-war global economy.
He sat at the head of an enormous conference table, shifting with ease between English, German, and French as he presided over a meeting with a group of Japanese and German industrialists. These were the men whose factories had lain in rubble only years before. David, with the complete support of the Rockefeller name and the enormous capital of the family trusts, was deftly negotiating the terms of financing their rebuilding.
At first, the two empires—the technological and industrial giant of Ezra, and the financial behemoth of David—operated in smooth, terrifying tandem. They were the two giants of a new world order. Ezra's information network, bolstered now by Baron von Hauser's vast encyclopedias of knowledge, would survey the world for the brightest foreign businesses and political climates. He would provide this inside information to David. David's bank would then move on the scene, providing the capital to restructure a German chemical plant or a Japanese electronics firm. In return, those newly restructured enterprises, indebted to Rockefeller capital, would become locked-in customers for Ezra's high-tech building materials, his new computers, and his proprietary technologies. Together, they were building an economic and technological stranglehold on the entire non-communist world.
The first fracture in this ideal coalition occurred over an agreement not in the ruins of the former world, but in the jungles of the latter.
Ezra's airborne geophysical surveys with recently invented airborne magnetic resonance instruments had picked up on an enormous, exceedingly rich deposit of uranium deep within mountains of one of the smaller, politically volatile nations of South America. It was controlled by an American-hostile nationalistic dictator.
Ezra, looking at the deposit as a key strategic asset for his budding private nuclear industry, decided on a straight action. He wanted to underwrite a coup, a clandestine regime-change operation that would remove an incumbent government and substitute it with a more "business-friendly," pro-American regime that would then grant Prentice Applied Science exclusive, long-term rights to mine the uranium. To do it, he had to secretly move millions of dollars to the opposition leaders. He had to have a bank able to facilitate such a sensitive off-the-books transaction. He had to have David.
He summoned his nephew to the office. He outlined the geology facts and the math of politics.
"A straightforward operation," Ezra summed up, as if it were a common merger. "We transfer the money through your bank's Swiss affiliate to the proper individuals. We'll have a new, stable government within six months, and we'll have locked down a fifty-year supply of high-quality uranium for our nuclear power initiative."
David listened all the way through, never interrupting. When Ezra had finished, he did not respond at once. He got up and went over to the window, staring down at the city.
"No," he replied at last, his voice low but positively firm.
Ezra was taken aback he did not know if he had heard correctly. "I beg your pardon?"
David got on his feet. "The answer is no, Uncle Ezra. My bank is not going to be part of this."
"David," stated Ezra, his voice assuming a perilous tone, "this is not a request. It is an issue of strategic national interest. The uranium at hand is essential to our long-term energy dominance."
"I don't doubt it is," said David in a matter-of-fact way. "But my bank is a commercial institution. Its reputation is grounded in stability, trust, and the rule of law. We construct industries. We underwrite trade. We don't overthrow sovereign nations. It is detrimental to our reputation, long-term it is bad for business. Instability breeds risk, and my whole business is the mitigation of risk, not the generation of it."
Ezra was furious. He was the family head, the man who had pulled David's kingdom out of thin air. He was used to having his commands, nevertheless implicit, being strictly executed. Part of his own kingdom, the result of his brilliant mind, had turned against him.
He had made the wrong choice. In bequeathing David his own empire, he had not produced a faithful vassal. He had produced a rival king, an autonomous power base with a mind of its own, with its own rationality, and with its own practical, banker's conscience. The new family feud was no longer the straightforward clash of Ezra's tough-minded realism versus Junior's old-fashioned moralism. It was far more than that. It was now the much more sinister confrontation of two very different American visions of power: Ezra's hard-power, "ends justify the means" direct intervention strategy, versus David's long-term economic instruments of statecraft and domination.
Enraged, Ezra made a tactical error born of frustration. He went over his nephew's head. He demanded a private meeting with John D. Rockefeller Jr., the family patriarch. He laid out his proposal and David's refusal, framing it as an act of insubordination that threatened a vital family interest.
"He must be ordered to cooperate," Ezra pressed on. "You're still the head of the family. Your voice alone holds the final authority."
Junior listened intently, his face showing little. He had sat through the past year watching his youngest son with inward, mounting pride. He had sat back and watched David build an international giant powerful, strong, and, more importantly, profitable in the way that he could understand and admire. More and more, he saw his son leveraging the Rockefeller name as more of building brick than as bludgeon. More and more, he saw him building a pure, contemporary, and strong legacy.
He looked at Ezra, at this strange, terrifying man who spoke of coups and clandestine war, of war that had brought the family unimaginable wealth but unimaginable danger and a lasting, soul-destroying fear.
And he made his choice.
"No, Ezra," said Junior, his tone subdued but with an absoluteness that had long been absent in him. "I won't."
He rose, a man restoring a throne he had long ago relinquished in spirit. "What David is constructing... the bank, the alliances, the emphasis on solid, long-term growth... that is an honorable legacy for our name. It is a future of which I can be proud. Your way... is yours. But it is not the family's. Not anymore."
In that quiet, decisive moment, Junior officially and finally transferred the moral authority of the Rockefeller name from Ezra to his own son. Ezra stared at him, stunned. He had won the financial war. He had won the strategic war. He had seized control of the family's purse strings and its future. But he realized, in that instant, that he had irrevocably lost the war for its soul. He was the king, but of a kingdom that no longer truly wanted him.