That will absorb any profits."
"Let them," Jonas said, his voice still emotionless. "You don't have to give it to them."
"I already did," David answered.
Rosa could almost hear the moment's silence.
She looked from one to the other, though she couldn't see their faces.
"You did?" Jonas said quietly, but an undercurrent of coldness had come into his voice. "I thought union negotiations were Dan's province.''
David's voice was steady. There was a cautious note in it but it was the caution used by a man seeking his way through unknown territory, not that of fear. "It was, until tonight," he said. "Until it affected the welfare of the company.
Then it became my business."
"Why couldn't Dan settle it?"
"Because you never replied to his messages," David said quietly.
"He felt he couldn't make a deal without your approval."
"And you felt differently?"
"Yes."
Jonas' voice grew colder. "What makes you think you don't need my approval any more than he does?"
She heard a click as David flicked his lighter and held the flame to his cigarette. Light danced across his face for a moment, then went out.
The cigarette glowed in the dark.
"Because I assumed that if you'd wanted me to bankrupt the company, you'd have told me so two years ago."
Jonas ignored the answer.
"What else did you want to see me about?"
"The government's starting that antitrust business again," David said.
"They want us to separate the theaters from the studio.
I sent you all the pertinent data some time ago.
We'll have to give them an answer." Jonas sounded uninterested. "I've already told Mac what to do about that. We'll be able to stall until after the war, when we ought to get a good price for the theaters.
There's always an inflation in real estate after a war."
"What if we don't have a war?"
"We'll have a war," Jonas said flatly. "Sometime within the next few years.
Hitler is going to find himself in a bind. He'll have to expand or bust the whole phony prosperity he's brought to Germany."
Rosa felt a knot in her stomach.
It was one thing to feel that it was inevitable because you always kept hoping you were wrong.
But to put it as simply and concisely as Jonas… Sans emotion; one plus one equals two.
War.
And then there would be no place left to go.
Germany would rule the world.
Even her father said that the Fatherland was so far ahead of the rest of the world that it would take them a century to catch up.
She stared at David.
How could Americans know so little?
Did they honestly believe that they could escape this war unscathed?
How could he sit there talking business as if nothing were going to happen?
He was a Jew.
Didn't he, too, feel the shadow of Hitler falling across him?
She heard David chuckle. "Then we're in the same boat," he said. She stared at him in shocked surprise as he went on talking. "What we've done by virtue of enforced economies is to build a false economy for ourselves. One in which we count as profit the savings produced by eliminating the waste from our own body. But we haven't created any new sources of real profit."
"And that's why you've been talking to Bonner?"
She felt David start in surprise. For the first time that evening, his voice wasn't assured.
"Yes," he answered.
"I suppose you felt it was quite within your authority to initiate such discussions without prior consultations with me?" Jonas' voice was still quiet.
"As far back as a year ago, I sent you a note asking your permission to talk to Zanuck.
I never received a reply and Zanuck signed with Fox."
"If I’d wanted you to talk to him, I’d have let you know," Jonas said sharply. "What makes you think Dan can't do what Bonner can?"
David hesitated. He ground his cigarette out in the ash tray on the arm rest beside him.
"Two things," he said cautiously. "I’m not knocking Dan. He's proved himself an extremely able administrator and studio executive.