Path to Convergence
Copyright© 2025 by Vonalt
Chapter 20: New York City September 10, 2001
Johannes Frisch and I boarded a train from Washington, D.C., to New York City just after dawn. I’ve always preferred rail as it’s quieter, harder to track, and doesn’t leave you stranded in a holding pattern at 30,000 feet. This wasn’t just any train, either. We were on the Acela, the East Coast’s new high-speed service, recently launched, sleek, fast, and still under the radar.
Unlike the claustrophobic grip of air travel, the train gave us room to think, to move, and to plan. There’s no recycled air, no forced smiles from exhausted flight attendants, just motion and momentum. We mostly kept to ourselves, a table between us, files unopened. We looked like two consultants on a business trip to anyone who was watching, which was the idea.
It matched air travel time-wise, and maybe even beat it once you factored in the chaos of security checkpoints and the inevitable cab hunt and ride on the other end. We stepped off nearly at our destination with Acela, with no delays, and no unnecessary exposure. We could vanish into the city on foot if we needed to.
We came to New York for a reason, not sightseeing. There’s talk of our company establishing a satellite office here in a quiet move to get closer to key clients. That’s the official story. Unofficially? Mercer, Frisch, & Associates has been growing quickly since 1992. Growth like that doesn’t go unnoticed.
We’d grown very fast. What began as a team of eight full-time staff, and added a few hundred contractors in our security and auxiliary services branch that had evolved into a global operation. We now employ thousands of full-time personnel across multiple continents.
Our focus is international security; discrete and effective elite-level services. We also provide advanced training for private security teams, many of whom are deployed into high-risk environments where failure isn’t an option.
We’ve also expanded beyond security. Our certified international business consultants advise both corporate and government clients on how to enter and operate within volatile foreign markets, the kind of places where one wrong move can cost more than just money.
That growth is what brought Johannes and me to New York. We were scouting locations for our new satellite office. The World Trade Center (WTC) came highly recommended.
My contacts in the city made it clear that we needed to be high up if we were going to be there. The view alone was worth the price of admission, a panoramic statement piece. Image is leverage in this business. The more successful you look, the more clients trust you to be exactly that.
It’s a lesson that I learned early on, back when we first dealt with Japanese firms. Perception, in many cultures, is as critical as performance, and sometimes more.
There was another reason that we were considering the WTC, one less cosmetic. A terrorist group had detonated a bomb in the underground garage in 1993. The blast had been severe, but the towers held with minimal structural damage. It left a few scars, but they stood, and that mattered to us.
Mercer, Frisch, & Associates has been targeted more than once. Our work isn’t theoretical, and we know the risks firsthand. Security is a service for our clients, but it’s a mindset for us. It’s survival.
Our meeting with the realty consultant was scheduled in the South Tower’s lobby at 10:00 AM the next morning. We’d go up to tour the suite that they believed best matched our operational needs from there. Key were a high floor, an expansive layout, and discreet access points.
I was curious to see what they’d chosen. Curious, and cautious, because the old feeling was back for reasons that I couldn’t name. That old pressure in my chest like Grandma Jorgenson was pestering me again. It had been a long time since I’d felt her presence like that; a whisper of warning telling me to be careful. Karen admitted that she sometimes got the same feeling. We’d learned not to take it for granted over the years.
I never spoke about it to anyone else. Mention something like that to a sane, ordinary person, and they’d think you were joking, or worse, unbalanced. So I kept it to myself. Quietly. Always.
I’d heed the warning tomorrow morning. Stay sharp, be careful. Odds were that it was nothing more than some street junkie sizing me and Johannes up as easy marks. But my instincts, and Grandma’s shadow, told me to stay alert anyway.
My thoughts drifted to the weekend, my home and my family, for now.
Karen and Andi were edging into middle age like me. The twins, just as striking as their mother, were in high school now. They’d long since grown out of their awkward, ugly‑duckling phase, and were stepping into their beauty with alarming speed.
Much to my dismay, that beauty was drawing attention; high‑school boys, sure, but also older men who should have known better. As their father, that reality gnawed at me more than I liked to admit. They fortunately weren’t unprotected. They had their own detail, all women, and a big, scarred protective mutt named Bastard, whose name alone tended to clear a room.
Bastard was Beast’s son, the dog we had lost to old age a few years earlier. I cried the day Beast died—not just a few tears, but deep, uncontrollable sobs, the same kind I had when we lost Grandma Jorgenson. His ashes are spread among the trees and near the water in the backyard where he loved to roam. It was his favorite place, and we wanted him to remain there in some way.
Beast had been more than a dog; he had protected my family and made us feel safe. Bastard inherited that instinct—the same steady eyes others quickly learned to take seriously, and the same calm, reliable presence.
Bastard had presence and had earned his name. He had all of his father’s traits; the loyalty, the intelligence, and the fierce love Beast had for our girls. His other name was SOB, not the usual meaning as it stood for ‘Son of Beast’.
Karen and I had kept Sophie, another dog from a later Beast-Princess litter. She was gentler, a sweetheart who quickly and deeply bonded with Karen and Andi. Me, she merely tolerated. She’d come to my aid if I was ever in trouble, but reluctantly. Sophie was their dog, and she made that clear from day one.
We used the same trainer who had worked with our Dobermans and Beast to train our current dogs. He was a seasoned professional; blunt, intuitive, unshakably calm, and he’d taken a particular interest in Bastard’s breed. The Russian Terrier–Poodle mix had impressed him. He claimed that they were easier to train than most protection breeds, with a strong natural bond to their protectees. That kind of loyalty couldn’t be taught, only encouraged. He was already exploring ways to source the hybrid for other clients.
He advised me to consider a different breed moving forward. Black Russian Terriers, especially from reputable bloodlines, were becoming increasingly difficult to acquire. He recommended the Giant Schnauzer instead. Just as protective, he said, but more personable. The Russian Terriers he’d recently seen had become more aloof, less reliable in a family setting, not the kind of risk that I was willing to take with Karen, Andi, the girls, and especially not with my rambunctious sons.
It was just one more thing weighing on my mind as Johannes and I stepped out of the Plaza Hotel and into the New York evening. We decided to find a small, quiet place for supper, somewhere we could talk through our expectations for tomorrow’s meeting without raising eyebrows.
I double-checked the time with Johannes as we walked. The realtor was meeting us in the South Tower lobby at 10:00 AM. That gave us time to sleep in, grab a late breakfast, and head out at 8:30, more than enough time to catch a cab downtown without rushing.
Johannes agreed. He suggested a breakfast spot that he knew, just a block northeast of the hotel. Quiet, local, and unpretentious, exactly what we needed.