Blink of an Eye

by William S. Cohen

  Trond Eriksen’s instinct for bigger and better ventures took him beyond the shipyard to finance and international trade, so he shifted operations to New York, America’s premier port. His reputation as a solid, honest businessman was enhanced by his backing of the reformers who had overthrown Boss Tweed.

  New York society was in the midst of changing the guard. Trond and his Minnesota-born wife, who lived in a fashionable townhouse and saw themselves as good citizens, were deemed nouveau riche by New York’s fading society leaders. Unable to view the opera from box seats at the Academy of Music, the Eriksens joined the similarly snubbed Astors, Vanderbilts, and Morgans to build and endow the Metropolitan Opera House.

  The Eriksens thus began their dynasty’s quiet fame as New York philanthropists and became part of a new class of socially acceptable merchants. Stonemill did not immediately give them entrée to Southport, a citadel maintained by families with colonial ancestors. But society was changing even in Connecticut, and Yankee tastemakers began to realize that there was no sense ignoring money just because it was somewhat new. Besides, a commuter railroad was making Fairfield County towns like Southport attractive for the entrepreneurs earning new money on Wall Street and in the corner offices of New York skyscrapers. Stonemill became accepted as a place that proclaimed wealth, status, and power.

  All Eriksen companies were privately held, and privacy was a family hallmark. The immensity of Trond’s philanthropy was known only to a small circle of similarly unpublicized donors. Eriksen’s public relations managers were hired with the understanding that Trond, his family, his philanthropy, and his financial transactions were not to be publicized.

  Trond’s only child, Harald, was ten when his father died of a heart attack in his box at the Met. Harald’s mother, knowing that Harald, not she, was the ultimate inheritor, turned to trusted managers, most of them of Norwegian ancestry. They ran the Eriksen empire while she, as the titular manager, acted as regent for her son.

  Harald continued to live his sheltered boyhood, taught by tutors in a Stonemill tower room that had been turned into a schoolroom. His playmates were the children of Southport’s moneyed families. He emerged from Stonemill and from adolescence as a tall, blond, and handsome prince. He was skilled at keeping himself almost anonymous during his years at Yale, from which he graduated summa cum laude.

  When Harald came of age, he enthusiastically took up the mission of learning how to run the Eriksen empire, which then consisted of three shipyards and a fleet of merchantmen. He soon took over from the able, cautious managers and resisted their advice to go public. Showing that he inherited his father’s shrewdness, he expanded the empire, purchasing oil tankers and giant carriers of liquefied natural gas, along with pipelines, refineries, and offshore oil platforms. He also invested broadly, and within a few years his holdings included forests and oil fields in Alaska, uranium mines in Australia and Canada, three radio stations, and a string of Midwestern newspapers.

  Harald’s life was centered on the family business, which he ran out of the Fifth Avenue headquarters of Eriksen Inc., where he also had his townhouse. He traveled frequently but usually managed to spend time at Stonemill on weekends. His wife, Ethel, whom he had known since playmate days, learned to live as a society matron with a circle of bridge-playing, tennis-playing friends. As the years passed, no heir or heiress was born, but the idea of adopting a child did not appeal to Harald Eriksen.

  When Harald and the twentieth century were turning fifty, his lawyers arranged a quiet divorce with a generous settlement for Ethel, and Harald married the woman who, for several years, had been his secret love. She was Betsy Fleming, a frequent Vogue cover girl with dazzling green eyes and red hair.

  Betsy was the daughter of a New York City bus driver. A tabloid gossip column claimed that Betsy had met Harald because Mike Fleming, from his driver’s seat, had noted Eriksen’s brisk morning walks along Fifth Avenue and frequently dropped off his daughter at the right time and place. There was some truth, perhaps, to the story because they did, as a matter of fact, meet one windy day on Fifth Avenue when Harald recovered her flown-away hat. She soon gave up her modeling career and became Harald’s mistress.

  Mrs. Betsy Eriksen had a miscarriage. Then, to their great joy, Rolf was born. Two months after she and Harald celebrated Rolf’s birth, Harald was diagnosed with lung cancer. And the Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, D.C., became a new beneficiary of Eriksen donations.

  Harald, although pleased with how his mother had acted as his regent, decided that Betsy was not adequate to play that role for Rolf. Harald spent the last months of his life at meetings with the nation’s leading corporate lawyers and economists. They created a council of well-paid advisors who were to maintain his empire until Rolf came of age.

  After Harald Eriksen died and Betsy became the heiress of one of the nation’s largest fortunes, she took advice from the council only long enough for her bright, quick mind to learn the basics of Eriksen Inc. She then established herself as the real manager of the empire, finally dissolving the advisory council. She presented termination bonuses to everyone on the council, except Brian Pershing, a young economist. Pershing became her sole advisor, the day-to-day executive manager of the empire. And, in their early years together, he was also her lover.

  *

  ROLF, growing up, realized that he would not be allowed to run Eriksen Inc. while his mother was alive. They never discussed the question, but, as he gradually became acquainted with Pershing, he learned the truth and, for a time after he graduated from college, he accepted the idea of being rich and idle.

  But in his early thirties, with Pershing’s endorsement, Rolf became a company executive with an office, an assistant, and vaguely described duties. He kept aware of the empire’s inner workings through his friendship with Pershing, who became his mentor both in business and in the way to live a circumspect but pleasurable New York life.

  Pershing was too old for the kind of party scene that Rolf preferred. But Pershing stayed current enough to guide Rolf to discreet escort services that provided beautiful women where and when Rolf desired them. The women rendezvoused with their clients through the middlemen who made the arrangements and identified the clients only by their numerals and particular sexual demands.

  Pershing also found Rolf bodyguards who doubled as advance men at parties, establishing that there was no dope on the premises and that everyone in attendance was on Pershing’s safe list.

  By the time Rolf entered into the family business, Betsy was famous, not only because of the rarity of women CEOs but also because of her philanthropy. She lived a busy double life, managing Eriksen Inc., while also continuing the tradition of Eriksen philanthropy, serving on museum boards and sponsoring charity balls. And, at the age of seventy-two she had kept her svelte figure and was still a lovely, photogenic woman.

  As the doyenne of New York society, she received far more publicity than her husband or his father ever did. Her photo appeared frequently in the New York Times Sunday Styles section, which gave over a page each week to illustrated moments in the lives of rich New Yorkers who were smiling, dancing, dining, bestowing charitable donations, and giving awards to the talented nonrich.

  While Betsy was waiting for the President and Rolf, her guests were talking about her recent $100 million contribution to Lincoln Center in honor of Trond Eriksen, who had not lived to see the center become the home of his beloved Metropolitan Opera. Coincidentally, Fortune had just listed her as the second richest woman in America, estimating her fortune at $16.7 billion.

  After the Supreme Court ruled, in a bitterly split decision, that corporations could contribute as much as they wanted to political candidates, Betsy made Eriksen Inc. a major contributor to campaign funds selected by Ray Quinlan. Those donations led directly to this Stonemill fund-raiser. An invitation cost $10,000, and hardly anyone refused an invitation from Betsy.

  *

  NOW the sun was gone, but the tall bronze lamps tha
t lined the terrace were giving off flickering light and a steady heat that warmed the hardy guests who had strolled outside. At 8:10, Brian Pershing, white-haired and graceful in his flawless tuxedo, slipped onto the terrace and told Betsy that the Secret Service had notified him that President Oxley’s motorcade would arrive in approximately fifteen minutes. Pershing also reported that Rolf had just arrived and would remain in the library during the presidential visit. Betsy nodded and walked into Stonemill’s grand ballroom.

  A reception line was forming under Betsy’s direction and the watchful eye of Ray Quinlan, who stood next to her, ready to prompt her about the names and attributes of guests she might not have had on her A-list. On her other side, given the honor of being the first guest to shake hands with the President, was Rachel Yeager, who, only two weeks before, had been appointed Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.

  “Welcome back to America,” President Oxley said, shaking her hand. He had been told that Yeager might make an unconventional surprise appearance. He had also been given a short briefing paper that noted Yeager’s service in the Mossad, Israel’s famed intelligence service.

  “Thank you, Mr. President. I look forward to my assignment here,” she said.

  Oxley continued down the line. His “back to America” remark was a reminder that he knew about her earlier covert work in Washington. The briefing paper also said that her assignment to the UN inevitably included some spying on the side.

  *

  BETSY had known Rachel Yeager for about three years. They had met when Betsy made her first trip to Israel. Rachel, ostensibly a representative of the Israel Ministry of Tourism, was the knowledgeable, witty director of Betsy’s small tour group. But Betsy, after spotting the mini-Uzi in Rachel’s backpack, believed that she was actually in charge of security. Betsy was half-right; Rachel was also a Mossad intelligence officer.

  When Betsy returned from the tour, she made her first contribution to Israel, a relatively small donation to Tel Aviv University. Soon afterward, she got an unexpected call, on her unlisted phone, from Rachel. She said she was in New York on a business trip for the Ministry of Tourism and was calling to invite Betsy to a small dinner party hosted by the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.

  Rachel attended the dinner with Rolf, who was obviously attracted to Rachel, a luminously beautiful woman of uncertain age. Behind her smile, Rolf could see much, much more than he had ever perceived in a woman. Rolf was wise enough to realize that Rachel Yeager was emphatically not his type. But he sensed that she carried valuable knowledge, and he decided that he would try to develop her as a friend.

  The smile she gave him was the smile of a Mossad officer who had recruited a dozen highly effective agents so far in her career. At the dinner she had started a kind of courtship, luring him and his mother into a relationship that would provide him with the pleasure of dealing with an attractive woman—and would provide her with entrée to one of America’s wealthiest families and to Eriksen Inc., with its global oil and shipping interests.

  At the dinner, Rachel introduced Betsy and Rolf not only to Israeli diplomats but also to influential friends of Israel in New York. As Rachel had anticipated back in Israel during the tour, Betsy and Rolf would greatly appreciate an opportunity to join a new circle of philanthropists with Mideast connections.

  14

  ROLF ERIKSEN did not like parties at Stonemill. The presence of dozens of chattering people spoiled the illusion of Stonemill’s splendid isolation, an illusion that traced back to his tutoring days in the tower. After college, when he began collecting art, he still liked to climb up to the tower room. But the place he cherished most was the library. Now, standing in the library and looking at the starlit blackness of Long Island Sound, he felt the pleasure of isolation and the pleasure of having what he wanted—the art on these walls and on the walls of the gallery that opened off the library.

  Members of Stonemill’s staff called the library and the gallery Rolfland. The only person allowed to enter Rolfland to clean and maintain it was an elderly maid. And she could enter only if Eriksen was present to press the sequence of numbers that controlled one lock on the library door and then lined up his right eye to a second lock with a device that scanned his retina for a positive identification. A Mayan carving next to the door hid a surveillance camera and a motion detector linked to the computer in Rolf’s office.

  Eriksen was just a bit over six feet tall and had a fit body that a personal trainer helped him to preserve. Close-cut blond hair edged his high forehead. His tight lips and the sharply sculpted lines of his face gave him a stern look, relieved by eyes as green as his mother’s. He wore tightly tailored jeans over black half-boots, a gray turtleneck, and an opened bomber jacket of Italian lambskin leather.

  He turned from the window and tossed the jacket on one of the two wooden chairs at the long mahogany table that had served as his father’s desk. He sat in the other chair, switched on the computer before him, typed in the password, opened the table’s drawer to look at a device about the size of a matchbook, typed in the six numbers he saw, and waited for the computer to start.

  Eriksen’s computer was shielded so that it did not emit electromagnetic radiation beyond the metal box that enclosed it. The striking of a key in this computer, as in all computers, produced an electronic emission. But each emission in this computer was sealed off from the outside world.

  The computer was built to standards developed by the National Security Agency to thwart eavesdropping electronic devices that picked up and reconstructed emanations from keystrokes and video display terminals. The NSA anti-eavesdrop system, called Emsec (for Emissions Security), was highly classified and restricted to key government computers. But Eriksen had been able to obtain the system from a contractor who had installed Emsec computers for the Department of Defense.

  Eriksen swiftly scanned several political-news sites, then switched to the STANFIELD FOR PRESIDENT Web page. While he was scrawling down the Stanfield page devoted to his itinerary, a red dot began flashing in the upper right corner of the monitor screen. Frowning, he touched a button next to the keyboard and saw an image of Brian Pershing, waiting at the door. Rolf pressed a button beneath the desk, the two locks snapped open, and he got up to open the door.

  In the soundproofed room, Eriksen had not been able to hear the sounds of the party. Now, as he opened the door, for an instant he heard President Oxley speaking as he addressed Betsy and her guests in the smooth, slightly drawled voice he used on such occasions.

  “So the son of a bitch is still here,” Eriksen said as Pershing entered.

  “He’ll be gone soon,” Pershing said.

  “Yeah. Hopefully, he’ll be impeached,” Eriksen said with a quick smile, to which Pershing responded with a wide grin. Eriksen’s face turned stern and he asked, “What’s the news?”

  Pershing moved his head quickly left and right, as if he was looking for lurking spies. It was an instinctive move that always amused Eriksen. Pershing had a long neck and ears that looked like trophy handles. At Deerfield, after the class read “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the skinny, awkward Pershing got the nickname Ichabod, which lasted until he bloodied a couple of noses. He had been self-assured ever since.

  “Yes, news,” Pershing said pensively, speaking slowly. “The news is not good. A lot of sniffing around Archway.”

  “By the SEC?”

  “Yes, and the Department of Justice.”

  “Goddamn. I thought that was all over.”

  “So did I. But somebody turned on the heat again.”

  Eriksen motioned Pershing to a chair and returned to his chair at the computer. “What are you doing about it?” he asked, looking at the monitor rather than at Pershing.

  “Doing my best to throw them off the scent. I—shall we say?—sponsored a whistleblower at the Cowley Group who is feeding some choice bits to the SEC. Cowley’s much bigger than Archway, and that makes them a more attractive SEC target. I think that t
he Oxley administration is looking for election-year headlines about cracking down on Wall Street.”

  “You think he’s after me or after Archway?”

  Pershing leaned forward, elbows on the desk, made a tent of his hands, and stared at the Matisse nude on the opposite wall. “The way I see it,” he said, “you and I are sealed off from federal scrutiny. We’re invisible. There’s a way to do that, and I have done it. Others have also done it. And it works.”

  “Tell that to Bernie Madoff,” Eriksen said, finally turning away from the monitor and looking at Pershing.

  “Madoff was a crook. We’re not.”

  “Tell that to Betsy’s accountants.”

  “We’ve gone over this many times, Rolf. We are sealed off. The SEC and the Justice bloodhounds are wandering around looking at hedge funds, hoping to find a crook. We’re not crooks. We don’t screw people.” He paused and turned toward Eriksen, “Why are you so edgy all of a sudden?”

  “I have my reasons,” Eriksen said. “Tell me about Archway. Whether it’s healthy or not I am going to need some cash. Not money. Cash. One million.”

  “I’ll make the usual arrangements,” Pershing said. “But—”

  “No buts, Brian. No buts. One million.”

  Pershing nodded, a frown his only sign of displeasure. Internally, however, he was seething. He knows damn well that cash is dangerous, Pershing told himself. Asking for cash can make a bank clerk pick up a phone and call The Law. So I have to do some more money laundering. Like a goddamn drug dealer. The money’s for that asshole religion he’s so secret about.

  When the unexplained requests for cash began, Pershing had put a private detective on Eriksen and learned that he was frequently driven to an East Side brownstone that was the little-publicized New York headquarters of The Brethren. Pershing was checking up on Eriksen not so much to protect him as to protect Archway.