"What did you just say? Lehman chairman Richard Fuld called and said he wanted my help with something? And by 'something,' he meant his friend, Marvel chairman Isaac Perlmutter, is in a serious conflict with Isabella Haywood, and he wants me to mediate between them? Oh—shit—"
"…"
"Has he lost his fucking mind, or have I? Is that bastard insane?"
Perhaps the situation couldn't afford any delay, or perhaps Richard Fuld was simply impatient. Whatever the case, once he learned that Isaac Perlmutter wanted to resolve the problem through their shared Jewish identity, Fuld immediately instructed his subordinates to contact Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s people.
They were, after all, all Jewish. Marvel's chairman, Isaac Perlmutter, was an Israeli Jew. Lehman's chairman, Richard Fuld, was a Jewish American. And the globally renowned prodigal son Edgar Bronfman Jr. was widely known as the son of the former president of the World Jewish Congress. These identities were the real reason Perlmutter had chosen to approach Bronfman: he'd only reached his current position because he'd shed blood and risked his life for the Jewish people. So—I'm in trouble, and you refuse to help me? Then even if you silence me permanently, I can still make sure your dirty secrets spread across the world. Anyone who played with power had a filthy heart.
Bronfman might have been somewhat deficient when it came to business, but he understood human relationships and social obligations perfectly well. Otherwise, how could the conflict with his elder brother have vanished from public view so quickly? If he had no ability at all, how could he have seized most of the family fortune while his father was still alive? Most regions followed male primogeniture, after all. So when he learned the person asking for help was a personal friend, a "close relative" of the same people, whose social status was no lower than his own, Bronfman decisively listened to his secretary's report.
Then he was dumbfounded—because never in his wildest dreams had he expected that the person Fuld's enforcer had provoked would be Isabella Haywood. Was there anyone in the world who didn't know that he and Isabella were enemies? Who didn't know she'd already defeated him? Who didn't know he'd been the real deserter in their previous conflict? So when "everyone in the world" knew that Bronfman had failed against Isabella, Fuld wanted him to mediate before her?
Bronfman stared intensely at the secretary delivering the report. The secretary pursed his lips and nodded gently, and that affirmation made Bronfman explode. "Motherfucker! Did Richard get kicked in the head by a donkey?" He began cursing—in his eyes, Fuld's behavior was the most deranged insanity imaginable.
Still, after roaring twice and venting, he placed his hands on his hips and motioned for the secretary to explain clearly. When he learned that Perlmutter had already shown signs of kneeling and begging for mercy, practically kowtowing and admitting his mistakes, yet Isabella had no intention of giving him a chance to reform and merely wanted to drive him into a dead end, Bronfman's eyes narrowed. Having leaped to his feet in anger, he slowly sat back down, tapping the desk with his right hand. "So Isabella doesn't know Isaac's background?" he asked in a low voice.
"There's no possibility she doesn't know," the secretary said, after thinking it over.
"If she knows his background, then she still wants to force him to his death?" Bronfman frowned—he didn't believe there was anything wrong with his intelligence, so the request made no logical sense to him.
The secretary licked his lips. "Sir, I think the situation is actually easy enough to understand. According to Richard, it began when Isabella acquired shares in Marvel and tried to gain control of the company, but his enforcer, Isaac, refused, since Marvel is currently Isaac's only business. Then, to prevent Isabella from using force, Isaac launched a defensive counterattack—he wanted another backer through Microsoft. On the surface, we might conclude Isabella started the conflict this time and Isaac only responded. But that's only Richard's version. Even taking his account alone, Isaac hardly comes off as a good person either, does he? After acquiring shares, it was perfectly normal for Isabella to seek influence within the company. Even knowing she's a terrible person, we can't call that an attack. And after failing to gain influence, she simply stopped paying attention to Marvel—the conflict could have ended there. Isaac had every right to retaliate and find a backer, but Microsoft was the one party he absolutely couldn't embrace, because Isabella owns Google stock and has joined forces with Apple. So when Isaac drew his knife and stabbed toward Isabella's abdomen, in her eyes that amounted to 'if you don't accept it, then fight me'—he was asking to die, wasn't he? Once he began fighting her to the death, it became perfectly natural for her to refuse him mercy, especially since Isabella fears no one now. Only a few months ago she ignored everyone and buried Facebook outright, despite everyone protecting it. From the moment she attacked until the coffin was nailed shut, it took her six hours. She didn't care who stood behind Facebook, because whoever protected it would be destroyed along with it."
The forceful analysis made Bronfman nod repeatedly. After hearing the sequence laid out, he suddenly felt there was nothing particularly unreasonable about Isabella wanting to kill Perlmutter. Then, having already leaned back while listening, he closed his eyes, and a cold expression crossed his face. "Richard Fuld has a truly filthy heart. He clearly knows his own man is at fault, and he clearly knows Isabella and I are enemies, yet he still came to me for help? Ha—does he think that because my family is facing difficulties, he can manipulate and coerce us however he pleases?"
His furious roar silenced the secretary—not that he didn't want to join in condemning Fuld, but the matter was too significant for him to interfere in.
As for what Bronfman meant: his father had resigned as president of the World Jewish Congress earlier that year. On May 7, 2007, Edgar Bronfman Sr. formally stepped down from the position he'd held for thirty years—not because he was too old or in poor health, but because he'd become entangled in a corruption scandal. As early as 2004, the New York Attorney General's Office had received a complaint alleging that senior officials of the Congress had embezzled compensation paid by various countries, organizations, and institutions to Jewish Holocaust survivors over the years. A large portion of the $1.25 billion settlement paid by Swiss banks, for instance, had allegedly been misappropriated by senior officials. The Attorney General's Office investigated the Congress's finances and found that Israel Singer, the organization's second-ranking figure, appeared to have problems, and formally opened a case.
As the investigation continued, more problems surfaced. Singer had been Bronfman Sr.'s right-hand man since 1986, and Bronfman Sr. had personally granted him authority to negotiate compensation for Holocaust survivors on the Congress's behalf. So if Singer had problems, could Bronfman Sr. truly have been innocent? He could hardly claim he'd eaten three hundred thousand tons of beef by himself. So, once it became clear the problems around Singer couldn't be explained away, Bronfman Sr. tried to sacrifice one arm to save the body: he dismissed Singer from every position he held within the Congress, hoping to end the investigations.
It didn't work. He'd barely dismissed Singer before branches of the Congress across Europe, Latin America, Israel, and elsewhere erupted in fierce opposition, demanding the return of the misappropriated compensation and opposing any end to the investigation. Unable to suppress the opposition, Bronfman Sr. finally gave in after holding out for several years. That May, he formally resigned and began cooperating with the New York Attorney General's investigation.
Someone might ask how a minor corruption case could bring him down, given that the compensation paid to survivors amounted to practically nothing next to his privately owned businesses. Fair question—but the corruption case was actually the smallest of his problems. His biggest problem arose in 2003, when he contacted the president in Washington and asked him, as president, to pressure Israel into halting construction of the West Bank barrier. Some things are difficult to say openly, so that's all that needs to be said. In the eyes of many, his opposition amounted to betraying his own people, and a Congress president who'd betrayed his people couldn't possibly remain in the position.
Bronfman Sr. hadn't truly resigned voluntarily. His original plan for his life had been rather impressive: he'd intended to remain in office until 2009, when he'd turn eighty, having been born in 1929, before retiring and passing the presidency to his son, Matthew Bronfman. Because everything he'd done before 2003 had aligned with the interests of most of his people, everyone had supported the succession plan at the time, even though it would effectively have turned a public institution into a family inheritance. But once he rebelled, everything reset to zero. With those dissatisfied now labeling the Bronfmans traitors, Fuld's sudden approach to Bronfman Jr.—asking him to help their "hero" Perlmutter—amounted to nothing less than blatant coercion. To ordinary people, Fuld's suggestion looked like an appeal to personal connections; to Bronfman Jr., it was a fucking underhanded threat.
"Do you think Richard Fuld is threatening me?" Bronfman Jr. asked, opening his eyes after reviewing his family's problems once more, looking toward his secretary.
The question left the secretary unsure how to answer. In the end he shook his head. "I don't know."
"Oh, you've disappointed me." A look of regret crossed Bronfman's face. But before he could sigh, the secretary continued, "But I do know something else."
"What?"
"Your father told you not to provoke Isabella again."
The seemingly irrelevant answer brought a smile to Bronfman's face. "Okay, okay. Then we won't provoke Isabella. But we can't simply refuse to help Richard Fuld either, can we? So go take care of it. Handle it however you think best."
"Okay." The secretary nodded and turned away decisively.
Watching him go, Bronfman's smile grew wider. Back during the family's internal struggle, he'd been willing to trade knife blows with his own brother—so now Fuld wanted to drag him into this using an external threat? Why would that ever succeed? To put it more harshly: if Douglas MacArthur had truly been Fuld's biological uncle, Bronfman would have held his nose, accepted the threat, and done the job, since MacArthur would have been family too. The five-star general's son, Arthur MacArthur IV, was still alive, and though he spent his days secluded at home, other family members remained active in the United States—his relative John MacArthur, for instance, had founded Grace Community Church, part of the evangelical movement. Anyone who understood Earth knew what churches truly represented: not merely private soldiers, but men willing to die for you. Church families were among the hardest people to kill. But Fuld wasn't the five-star general's biological nephew. So—perhaps Bronfman was incapable of accomplishing anything, but surely he could still ruin things.
Although deeply displeased with Fuld's behavior, Bronfman didn't intend to sabotage matters openly; his family was already facing considerable difficulties, attacked from front and rear, surrounded on every side. So instead, he chose to secretly trip Fuld up. When Fuld wanted him to contact Steven Spielberg, using Rupert Murdoch's earlier five-billion-dollar donation as a connection to Isabella, Bronfman personally called Spielberg and told him someone wanted to invite him to dinner—the other party being Isabella's enemy, hoping Spielberg could mediate.
When Spielberg completely failed to grasp what Bronfman was implying, Bronfman laid it out directly: the entire conflict between Marvel's chairman and Isabella, the relationship between Marvel's chairman and Lehman's chairman, and their connection to the World Jewish Congress. When Spielberg asked what role Bronfman himself was playing, Bronfman answered honestly. "Steven, your father and my father were good friends, so I won't hide things from you. My father ignored the money transfers you made back then because he didn't want to become your enemy. He also taught me not to become your enemy. And our family doesn't currently want to make enemies everywhere. So I don't care how you choose to negotiate with Lehman and Marvel. I'm only passing on the message. Okay?"
In the eyes of the world, Bronfman was a reckless fool—so as long as he kept behaving like one, couldn't he quietly sabotage the situation? Did Fuld think himself clever? No one in the world would believe such a claim.
So when Isabella received Spielberg's call and learned that Fuld, Perlmutter's backer, wanted to convey his "goodwill" through him, she immediately began laughing. "Oh, Steven—thank you for calling. Hm? You aren't planning to negotiate with Isaac and the others?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because they're threatening me now, aren't they?"
"???" Far away in California, Spielberg didn't understand what Isabella meant. In Africa, Isabella picked up a piece of salmon from her plate and tossed it casually in front of the dining table. The next second, the sea lion resting nearby lifted its head and caught the fish in its mouth with astonishing speed. After eating, the creature happily slapped its belly and began barking loudly. Ugly as the sound was, Isabella didn't mind. Watching its agile movements, she smiled and said, "Steven, could you do me a favor?"
"Tell me."
"Someone is threatening me, so could you ask them what exactly they think they're doing?"