“Off the top of my head,” said Morgan, “I can think up a half dozen critical difficulties with this scheme. But the most clearly insurmountable is a simple one.”
“What?”
“Thomas Edison.” He took a thoughtful sip of his Scotch. “I don’t know what you’ve told Westinghouse, or even what you might, with that silvery tongue, be able to convince him of. But I can assure you that Thomas will never go along with this plan.”
“I know,” said Paul.
“He despises Westinghouse.”
“I know.”
“So long as Thomas Edison is at the head of the Edison General Electric Company, it will engage in no partnership with your client.”
Paul moved a step closer to Morgan, placing his hand boldly on the industrial baron’s left shoulder. “But whoever said Edison has to remain at the head of his company?”
I just invent a thing, then wait until man comes around to needing what I’ve invented.
—BUCKMINSTER FULLER
“WOULD YOU LIKE to know the easiest way to make a billion dollars?” asked J. P. Morgan the next day. They were standing among the Cypriot antique collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“I’d love to,” replied Paul. The two men gazed at the rows of ancient pottery before them.
“Take a penny. Bury it in the ground for a thousand years. Then dig.” Morgan gestured to the faded brown vases, intricately etched plates, and darkly stained pitchers that lined the walls of the hall. The Cypriot wing was vacant save for these relics. The voices of the two men echoed through the room.
The museum was under construction. Scaffolding covered its Fifth Avenue facade.
“Do you know Luigi di Cesnola?” Morgan asked.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Paul.
“Sardinian, but he came here in the fifties. Fought in the war. Ours, not theirs. Well, theirs too, I think, at some point earlier. But he made his name in ours. After which he sailed back to Cyprus, took care to amass this collection, and then sold it back here for…well, Mr. Cravath, what do you think the museum board gave him for it?”
“I couldn’t possibly say.”
“They gave him the museum. They made him the director. And the Metropolitan Museum of Art now has an antiquities collection that’s starting to give London worry.”
“It sounds like a smart deal.”
“Bury a single penny, and in enough time, you’ll have yourself a fortune. That is my point. It only gets hard if you want to get it done a bit faster.”
Paul looked around. They were still alone, and their secret meeting remained, so far as he could tell, unobserved.
“You may speak freely here, Mr. Cravath. We have the wing to ourselves for the afternoon. Luigi is a good friend.”
Paul knew that he should not be surprised by anything Morgan was capable of. Nothing in New York was beyond Morgan’s grasp. Paul was certain that even as Morgan had entertained this talk of a partnership, the older man was in no sense his ally. He would turn against Paul in a second flat if it ever became in his financial interest to do so. One doesn’t lie down with a lion and get to act surprised if one finds oneself devoured.
Paul knew that there was a sizable chance that after their meeting at the ball, Morgan had rushed immediately to Edison with the sordid details of Paul’s proposition. What mitigated his fears was the comforting reminder of Morgan’s immense greed. While what motivated Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse would always remain somewhat uncertain, what motivated Morgan was no mystery. No one amassed as much money as he had by accident. And it was unclear if anyone in the history of the world had ever before amassed that much money.
Money was a far more predictable motivator than legacy, or fame, or love, or whatever else might rouse a man from his bedsheets. An artist—or an inventor—was a far more dangerous partner than a businessman. The latter’s betrayals could be planned for, even depended upon.
“You’ve examined my proposal,” said Paul. “You have the authority to stage a coup, so to speak, at EGE. You can depose Edison and put your own man in charge. Someone sympathetic to our cause.”
“I know what I can do, Mr. Cravath. I have lawyers too. They’re quite a bit more experienced than you are.”
“And yet I’ll wager they told you that everything I said was absolutely correct.”
“They did indeed.”
“And your accountants, I am sure, have analyzed the profits and losses of EGE as well.”
“Two cents,” said Morgan. “That is EGE’s profit per share. It’s not a loss, but it’s not much in the way of benefit either.”
“So you see that I’m right. If you can depose Edison from inside, I can handle things on Westinghouse’s end.”
“This seems terribly simple from your perspective, does it?”
“Yes,” said Paul. “It is mercilessly simple. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.”
“Do you trust me?”
Paul was startled at the question. “Of course not,” he replied honestly. If he intended on negotiating toe-to-toe with the most powerful businessman of the age, then he would do so without insulting either of their intelligences by pretending that they were friends.
“I don’t trust you either,” said Morgan. “Which is why I’m going to tell you a secret. A very expensive secret. And your response to this secret is going to give me quite a bit of information as to how far I need to go in distrusting you.”
“What is it?”
“This is going to be a bit more complicated than you think it is.”
“Why?”
“There’s a spy inside the Westinghouse Electric Company.”
Paul stared blankly. It could not be true. Westinghouse had chosen his team personally. His engineers, his factory foremen, even his lawyers.
“Edison has a spy in Westinghouse’s senior leadership. He’s been reporting back all of Westinghouse’s plans—corporate strategy, the laboratory reports, even the designs of those Pennsylvania factories—to Edison. He’s been doing it for more than a year. You idiots kept getting beat and you couldn’t figure out why. Well—this is why.”
Paul felt sick, but he could not show weakness.
“How can you be sure Edison has a spy?”
“Because,” replied Morgan, “I was the one who put him there.”
Paul looked Morgan dead in his calm, unblinking eyes. In confessing this secret, he seemed to feel neither pleasure nor relief.
“Your plan is going to be significantly more complicated than you realize, Mr. Cravath, because if Westinghouse tells his senior staff about it, then our spy will tell Edison.”
“Who is it?” asked Paul. “Who is the spy?”
“You bury a penny,” said J. P. Morgan, his words echoing among the ancient pottery, “and in a thousand years you’ll have a fortune. But if you want to get to the fortune a bit faster…you need to bury something a whole lot bigger than a penny.”
Is the sudden transformation of all the relevant scientific characters [in your book] from petty people to great and selfless men because they see together a beautiful corner of nature unveiled and forget themselves in the presence of the wonder? Or is it because our writer suddenly sees all his characters in a new and generous light because he has achieved success and confidence in his work, and himself?
—RICHARD FEYNMAN, FROM A LETTER TO JAMES WATSON, CONCERNING THE LATTER’S MANUSCRIPT OF HIS MEMOIR THE DOUBLE HELIX
“REGINALD FESSENDEN?”
Paul’s mind raced to make sense of what Morgan had told him. Paul had not only spent hours by Fessenden’s side over the past year, but had even recruited the man himself. It had been Paul’s sales pitch that won Fessenden to their side, after he’d been fired by Edison….“You’re lying,” said Paul.
“Frequently. But not, as it happens, today.”
“Prove it.”
Morgan sighed. “You hired Fessenden yourself, eighteen months ago. You did so at a meeting at his Indiana office, after coming to believe that Edison fired him. You read about the firing in the papers, and went to find a bitter ex-Edison employee who might be bought off. You contacted Fessenden for information about Edison’s patent filing, only…Well, tell me: Did he actually give you any information that would help you take down Edison’s patent?”