Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [52]
The Carlton family was American blue blood. The first documented ancestor, William, had come to the British colony of New York to serve on the staff of General William Howe in early 1777. He’d proved popular on the social circuit that consumed the interests of the British officers during that first winter of occupation. In general, his staff work was adequate and his American career was marred only by an aborted field command. A less senior officer took the blame for the debacle, and Carlton was transferred to England, where he was soon well wed. But within twenty years he had spent the family into the poorhouse. His oldest son, also named George, with no realistic prospects in Britain, emigrated to the United States.
For three generations the Carlton family prospered in America. They were connected by marriage, schooling, or business to most of the new country’s families of influence. But in the period following the Civil War, the family’s wealth began to decline. Carlton’s grandfather, Edward, had invested heavily in the stock market following World War I, and for a time it appeared the Carltons would be restored to their former luster, but the weekend he would have received a warning to get out of the market in late 1929, he was on his yacht with his sixteen-year-old Cuban mistress, and the family lost nearly everything. Edward took the honorable way out, though he botched his suicide, which he’d tried to mask as a boating accident.
Carlton’s father, another William, served under “Wild Bill” Donovan in the American OSS during World War II, providing invaluable staff work. As a reward he was selected to be one of the five most senior officers in the newly created Central Intelligence Agency after the war. He and the fifth director, Allen Dulles, got along well, but when Dulles was forced to resign following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, William Carlton’s career went into eclipse. He retained just enough influence before dying of lung cancer to see that his son, George, who had gone into the FBI following his graduation from Yale, received a favorable appointment with the Company. The transfer had been more than unusual and raised a few eyebrows, as the FBI and CIA were rivals and rarely exchanged staff.
With a stellar family name and widespread connections, Carlton’s career should have flourished. Though the family had retained their Nantucket summer cottage, his father had been compelled to sell the surviving family estate in Maryland after the suicide of his father. The fact was, the Carltons were broke.
George Carlton had sought a wife with one concern in mind—to marry well and restore his fortune. A family name, especially in America, counted for nothing without the money to go with it. The woman he chose, Emily Langsdon, was a bit horse-faced with an overbite, but she had a fine figure and her pedigree was impeccable. Her family was, reputedly, so wealthy as to be beyond comment.
George’s awakening upon his return from a honeymoon he had financed by mortgaging the Nantucket cottage was brutal. He’d told Emily that it was his duty as her husband to assume management of her finances. She’d agreed. He soon learned why: there was almost nothing to manage.
While Carlton came to learn that the Langsdon family was wealthy indeed, the details of the wealth were devastating in their effect on him personally. Emily’s father had fallen out with his father many years before. The grandfather had seen that his granddaughter lacked for nothing, that she was properly educated and traveled, but Emily’s father was omitted from the will and all but eliminated from the Langsdon Family Trust.
Emily would inherit no property and had but a single trust fund herself, containing a mere $500,000. It was managed by the family financial administrators. She received the income from it in an annual check. Upon her death the fund would revert to the