“The least we could do,” Allen said cheerfully. What was a few hundred dollars when the monsignor held the purse strings to one of the biggest investment portfolios in the world? A slim waitress floated in and floated out again and Allen watched her go with a vertical flickering of his gaze. “Ah, here’s the wine. We’ve a connection or two to a rather nice vineyard, and I’m delighted to note you’re our very first guest to try a taste.” Allen poured a glass and waited for the verdict.
“Quite nice. Thank you,” the monsignor said. He glanced around the office, grand as anything in any bishop’s palace he knew. “I am a little pressed for time, so let us dispense with formalities. The Holy Father takes a great interest in these matters.”
“Where to begin, monsignor?” Allen replied, making a dismissive gesture with his cigarette.
“Mr. Dulles, our investment reports are quite negative—so much so, we are actively reconsidering all our German positions. In contrast, the Sullivan and Cromwell assessments of the German economy are uniformly optimistic, to a rather excessive degree, Mr. Dulles. This,” the monsignor summed up, “puts the Holy See in a delicate situation. A tiff in the corridors among God’s bankers, as the quaint phrase goes. The Holy Father is not amused.”
Allen nodded and began to pack his pipe. “You can’t be too careful with any investment, monsignor,” he said, working a burning match over the tobacco. “And Germany, at first glance, seems to be a country on the verge of real change. But I think—and it’s my firm’s position too—that Germany has the most potential of any European economy.”
And at that point Foster entered, his finger stirring his tumbler of liquor, his high Victorian collar tight about his neck. “Monsignor, welcome, welcome,” he said as his brother vacated his seat.
“Ah, the elder Mr. Dulles,” the monsignor replied as they shook hands. “We took the liberty of beginning in your absence. I was explaining there are one or two concerns in Rome about the state of our insurance investments in Germany.”
“Why?” Foster kept stirring his drink absently, staring at the Vatican’s emissary. “You losing money? Are they, Allen?”
“No, they’re not,” Allen replied. “There’s been an interruption or two in repayments, but these days that’s par for the course.” Allen smiled. “Besides, your own nuncio is happy. I had a letter from him last week. Very pleased.”
“Except the nuncio does not work with us. I have a responsibility to the investment and to His Holiness which is mine alone. Now, I would like to interview the people who made the reports your firm forwarded to us. I have questions,” Sommer said. He twitched his shoulders, as would a man whose shirt irritates him.
Foster stopped his stirring and exhaled noisily. “You’re looking at him, monsignor.”
“Looking at whom, Mr. Dulles?”
“You’re looking at the man who wrote the legal work for the German elements of your portfolios. You’re at arm’s length, monsignor—your only exposure in Germany is the Italian collateral. Which is why the buck, as we say in America, stops here. Those reinsurance deals we showed you are ironclad, monsignor. You’re covered six ways from Sunday, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
The monsignor looked uncomfortable. He hesitated. “My question, then: what is your prediction for the yield on the German municipal bond market over the next year?”
“Well over the European average.” Foster paused and looked at Allen for a second. “This is the best-performing bond market in Europe, monsignor. That’s a depression out there, and you’re nervous because a handful of water utilities have your insurance portfolio on hold, I got that right?”
The monsignor colored at this bluntness. “It’s more than a few water utilities, Mr. Dulles. We prefer the Italian insurance companies, if you must know. The Holy Father … well, imagine our nerves, with the Communists knocking on the Reichstag doors. It’s a very political situation, beyond the financial considerations. The German banks and insurance companies are, to be blunt, in bed with the Nazis: both want to cut Weimar’s throat. That is our concern. Expropriation, nationalization. We have a portfolio of Tsarist rail bonds, dead as doornails. You see, the Holy See knows its history—we have seen this sort of thing before. And the Reichsbank’s Herr Schacht is as good a dancing master as he is a banker—I very much doubt he will make good on the bond portfolios you have so assiduously helped market to your clients here and in Europe. No, it’s more than a few water utilities, Mr. Dulles. We smell revolution.”
Allen moved in to smooth the fractured silence. “No one’s disagreeing with you—”
“I am,” Foster interrupted. “If anything, the Nazis are a vent for a helluva big German frustration with the botch we made of Versailles. Unpayable reparations! We must have been mad. Let the Nazis have their day. The German banking system is in far better shape than it was even three years ago, their patent royalty arrangements second to none, a vibrant technology market. Hell, in chemicals alone they’re years ahead of us. I know, monsignor. I last visited Germany in the fall—Hamburg and Berlin, knocked on more than a few doors. I know the place, I know the players. Next question,” Foster demanded.
The room cooled a degree or two. “I will require a written assessment from you of the reinsurance arrangements you have structured for us, account by account, please,” the monsignor announced.
Allen was about to speak when Foster cut him off with a glance. “You’ll have that report by the end of business tomorrow. Will that be satisfactory?”
“Yes, it will.”
“Monsignor, you’re a client we don’t want in any way displeased with our work,” Foster said slowly, pitching his voice a shade lower. “But you surely acknowledge that, diplomatically, for Rome, it’s a nightmare to undercut what Herr Hitler is trying to do against the Communists.” He coughed and cleared his throat, running his hand over his hair. “The man has his faults, but damned if I see anyone else in Germany with a sound mind who wants the job. Hitler’s clear: he wants new roads, new hydroelectric facilities in the Ruhr, the remaking of the guts of German industry. Somebody’s going to have to get him the money, right?”
Sommer spread his hands. “Yes,” he murmured. “I take your point.”
“These are uncertain times, monsignor,” Foster agreed. “You hold tight, see what the new year brings. You’ll have your report tomorrow, and I’ll personally sign off on it. Allen, see we get our best men on this. Get ’em out of the party and in the number two boardroom, pulling files. Let’s go,” Foster ordered. “We can’t keep the Pope waiting.” He cracked his knuckles. “No more, I’m afraid, monsignor,” he said, rising and moving for the door, wearing the closest thing to a smile he ever chose to wear on his parson’s face, “than I can keep Mr. Cromwell waiting.” Foster offered Sommer a cool, dry hand and left.
The wives had congregated in the candlelit sitting room across the hall to escape the cigar smoke and compare notes on servants and schools. Time had reduced old Cromwell, the firm’s founding partner, to a patriarch trotted out only for state occasions. One of the junior partners was squiring the frail old man past the wives and into the holy of holies for his traditional male-only speech in a few minutes, but Allen had other things on his mind before he let Sommer depart.
“Franz-Josef, a moment,” he said, ushering the monsignor into his own office. “There’s an issue we didn’t discuss with Foster.”
“And that is?”
“Come in, sit down for a moment.” Allen closed the door and held the monsignor’s chair while he sat. “Monsignor,” he said, sitting on the edge of a desk more modest by half than his brother’s, “there are maybe three hundred businessmen in all of Germany who really count. Most of these men are our clients—not personally, of course, but their firms are. There’s a web of bankers and bank directors who run Germany. Often, as you know, they have more power than the corporate people themselves. Those bankers,” Allen said, tapping the palm of his hand with his forefinger, “are right here. We help und
erwrite them, establish their joint ventures, consult on the directorships they need to fill. Barely a phone call takes place among those men we don’t hear about, and damn soon. All in, this law firm has intelligence connections as good as the State Department, and probably the Vatican itself.”
The monsignor observed Allen’s performance blandly. This was, the monsignor gathered, an off-the-peg speech his lawyer took out of the closet when required.
“Things aren’t perfect in Germany,” the younger Dulles was saying, “and I’m far cooler to this Hitler fellow than Foster is. Rearmament means just that in my view, but we shall see. The bottom line is this: Germany needs capital. And, whatever my reservations about Germany sidestepping Versailles, if she needs capital, she needs capitalists. That’s something the bankers of Germany understand to a man.”
“Don’t patronize me, Mr. Dulles. I’m not a child,” Sommer warned. “God gave me two good eyes to see with and they tell me Germany will bite the hand that feeds it, mark my words, sooner rather than later.” The monsignor reached for his black leather briefcase and offered Dulles a quick handshake. “For the record,” the banker-priest observed, fitting his cap on, “I know these times are a wolves’ paradise—and every wolf for himself. This wolf is leaving your den now, Mr. Dulles. Thank you for the wine. Kindly see that the report is at the chancery office by dinnertime tomorrow evening. Good night.”
On his way out, Sommer passed the secretary with the curly hair he had seen in the hallway while waiting outside Foster’s office. Her cheeks were high in color and her eyes sharp, a woman rather more focused than a Christmas party required. He turned and watched her slip through the door into Allen’s office so quietly the door might never have been opened.
An hour later, after old Mr. Cromwell had wheezed his piece and the more sober senior men had begun to head home, Foster and Allen were smoking in Foster’s office. Behind Foster, his window framed a perfect New York snowfall. He rolled up a Sullivan and Cromwell memo and tapped it on the glass surface of his desk.
“We’ve broken the bank this time around, Allie,” he said bluntly. “These are the partnership payouts for 1932, plus or minus a few administrative items. You’re in for $160,000. What were you making at State when you left?”
“One one-hundredth of that.”
Foster shrugged. “The senior partners are slated for upwards of three hundred. If this keeps up, we’ll own Wall Street, what’s left of the old girl. What do you think, Allen? In for a penny, right? We go after Hitler’s business and really clean up?”
Allen was at the sideboard now, pouring Scotch. “I think anyone who wants to rearm Germany better be watched damn carefully. And Hitler has Hindenburg in his pocket, from what I hear.”
“What do you hear?” Foster demanded, swirling his Scotch and loosening his tie.
“That’s what the handicappers in Berlin are saying as of yesterday.”
Foster grunted. “Doesn’t matter. Somebody’s got to pony up the capital to keep the Germans afloat. Everybody’s in too far to give up the game now.”
Allen laughed softly. “That’s what Sommer said, before he lectured me about the advice the firm has given him.”
“Hell, he’s got half the Curia thrilled to be throwing Mussolini’s Lateran payoff around and he’s worried about the reinsurance on a few dud bond issues. He’s got thirty-eight million dollars to play with and he’s worried about his reinsurance. Man alive. Well, a rising tide floats all boats—I figure Hitler will have the German economy in high gear inside three years. Make geniuses of us all, you watch.”
“And they’re going to do it by ignoring every provision in the Versailles Treaty, and then some,” Allen warned. “Hindenburg is the army. If he lets Hitler in, the army’s going to either go Nazi outright or get into the sack with them. Then where the hell will we be?”
“Damnation, Allen, you and half my partners are going to bankrupt this firm through sheer perversity,” Foster said, his voice rising. “These deals are our bread and butter. You suggesting we walk away from the money tree? Because if we do, you can bet half the law firms on this street will be at each other’s throats to write the deals we walked away from to bankroll the German economy.” Foster coughed and cleared his throat. “Wonder how the wives are. Where’s Clover? She enjoying the food? Looks thin, eats like a sparrow. You should take her out, Allen, get her a square meal at Delmonico’s, look after her a little.”
Allen shrugged and sipped his Scotch.
Foster looked at him for a moment, then began to retie his tie. “Promised my loving wife I’d speak with one of the juniors’ wives about some damn scholarship. Must be getting old, I can’t remember the kid’s name. You coming along?”
Down the hall, seven or eight of the juniors were officially dry despite the open taps in the big boardroom. The cigar smoke of their elders and betters drifted down the hall as the mules of Sullivan and Cromwell strained at their traces, assembling the brief for the Holy See that Foster would sign tomorrow, not a drink in sight, nor hope of one.
XIII
MAY 1933
Back from a hand-holding client lunch with the widow Montague, Allen opened his window wide; his law office had broiled in the midday spring sun. He looked down at the boycott parade, a river of hats and signs from this height, a phalanx of Jewish war veterans, Pershing’s boys, many of them in their old uniform and puttees, slow-marching downtown, packing Wall Street from curb to curb. Allen loosened his tie and watched the tough old soldiers for a good while, pensive, reading the set faces more than the signs, a thinking man with a good deal to think about, not least his coming appointment with Foster.
The hallway clock pealed half past two. As he came around his desk, Allen found Leo Miller, Sullivan’s lanky young office factotum, in his doorway, his file cart jammed high with bundles of mail, one hand steadying the shifting paper pyramid. “Hey, hi, Mr. Dulles,” Leo called out cheerfully. “That tall German waiting downstairs, dressed like our other Mr. Dulles, high collar and all—that’s Klinsmann? The auto parts guy?”
Allen joined Leo in the hallway. “The one and only. This Law Digest spoken for?”
“Take it, sir, on the house. Klinsmann, huh? Gee, my first live Nazi in the flesh.” Leo tapped a file box knowingly. “We going to do business with Klinsmann?”
Allen glanced at Leo as they walked, but the beanpole clerk stared straight ahead as he pushed. “He and his partner seem efficient-enough businesspeople, Leo.”
Leo nodded. “What’s all this about using ‘Heil Hitler’ on the correspondence to Berlin, sir? Half our typists are Jews, Mr. Dulles—three of them have husbands marching today.”
Allen patted Leo on the shoulder, his football coach gesture. “Don’t like it any more than you do, Leo. It’s the cost of doing business. And that Klinsmann fellow’s going to boost our year-end.”
“I could use the Christmas bonus this year, Mr. Dulles,” Leo said feelingly. “My brother’s been outta work two years now. Two kids and a sick wife. This depression’s gotta turn someday, huh?”
“I certainly hope so, Leo. Well, here I am. You keep up the good work.”
“I will, Mr. Dulles. Thanks a heap,” Leo said without stopping. There was no stopping Leo: he was a go-getter.
Foster had his office window open, his cold cigar cocked in midair, a length of ticker tape between his hands like knitting as the machine chattered out the quotes. “You’re two minutes late. Get in here,” Foster growled, nodding hard at the sounds of marching floating up from Wall Street. “This blasted thing’s bigger than Lindbergh’s hoopla. Look at ’em, the great unwashed.” He scanned the tape, then threw it out the window. “They’ve closed the bridges and the Holland Tunnel.”
Allen hadn’t seen him this flammable in months. “And?” was all he could offer.
“Over eighty thousand, maybe a hundred. Goes on for blocks, from Central Park to the Bowery. The train home will be wall to wall—I’ll never get home for supper. Where’d y
ou lunch?” Foster plowed straight on before Allen could reply. “They picketing the Stock Exchange?”
“No,” Allen replied. “It’s technically a parade, the mayor’s office says. I called Gladding at the Chase exchange desk. Not a lot of hecklers, Dave says. Want to go downstairs and take a look? Not every day of the week you get a chance to look a million-man boycott in the eye.”
Foster shook his head no, staring down at the sea of people jammed into the narrow street below.
Allen raised a smile, a trial balloon. “Well, at least they won’t interrupt trading like the damn anarchists, eh? Blew that corner right off the Morgan Bank. Remember that?”
Foster nodded, still thinking.
“They’re picketing all the German-owned stores,” Allen continued. “I heard that from one of the cops downstairs. Kresge’s, Ehmer’s, drugstores with Bayer in the window, camera shops … the docks as well. Hamburg America Line.”
“The German banks?”
“Them too. Ted Townes called, said there’s hundreds of people on the steps of the Deutsche Bank offices, that many, maybe more, in front of the German consulate over on Twelfth. A Jewish boycott of the Nazis as far as the eye can see.”
Foster chewed on the Cuban cigar, the big muscles in his neck working. “I suppose after they bring Hitler down they’ll want a slice of Palestine. A country.” He reached for the stuttering ticker tape, reading. “Well, well, well, the German stocks have taken a hit, pretty near all of them. Has anyone thought this through? Bosch, the chemicals … who do we talk to?”
Allen was lost. He shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“Use your God-given brain, will you? What’s State think?”
“I doubt they’re thinking anything yet,” Allen said, wary, feeling his way. “Roosevelt’s enthusiasms haven’t reached the striped pants crowd yet.”
The Witness Tree Page 11
