looked down at his phone and waited, the light of its screen making his face glow. His headlights were extinguished and he was all but invisible to the morning traffic that passed by. Then, a little bit before six thirty, the man in the Tahoe flipped on his headlights and drove forward. At the same time, another black SUV emerged from Charles Koch’s compound, pulling out from an entrance that was partly obscured by shrubbery. The man in the Tahoe pulled out into traffic, his timing impeccable, and fell into line behind the other black SUV. Both cars headed north, toward Koch Industries headquarters.
Part of the myth about Charles Koch was that he drove himself to work every day, parking in front of Koch Industries headquarters and walking up the stairs to his office. His reality was different now. It was an open secret in Wichita that Charles Koch rode to work in a convoy of armored vehicles, chaperoned by armed security guards. This was seen as pragmatic. Since he had become politically active, Charles Koch was a magnet for death threats. He was a private man, little understood and widely hated. He was now also one of the richest men on earth, so security was necessary. Charles Koch’s great skill was analyzing and mitigating risk.
Traffic was light this early in the morning. The black SUVs drove past strip malls as they headed north. The sky continued to lighten, but only slightly. At this time of day, the commute to Koch headquarters lasted only a matter of minutes. The Koch Industries campus was visible from miles away. The Tower sat at the center of the campus, still the tallest building within several miles. The first rays of the morning sun glinted off the dark brown granite walls and the opaque windows. The parking lots around the Tower were still illuminated, this early in the morning, by bright lights that hung from the top of tall black poles. The lights made the campus look like a self-contained universe, a splendidly isolated pool of shining stars, surrounded by a wall. It was a beautiful sight in the morning. Kochland.
When he arrived at work, Charles Koch’s car pulled into a special parking garage with high security. The lot was near the bombproof chamber where mail was sorted before entering the building. Here was a universe that he, primarily, had authored. The people he encountered spoke a language he invented, worked in business units he oversaw, and granted him the kind of deference enjoyed by national leaders. When he entered the hallways of his office building, Charles Koch could take the elevator up to the third floor, or walk there through the spacious and well-lit stairwell.
The hallways were hushed in the morning. The décor of the third floor, which housed Koch’s executive suites, had barely changed in twenty years. The doorway to the executive suite was near the elevator bank. Walking inside that door, Charles Koch passed into a spacious lobby. There was a couch, a table, and a small bookcase across from the desk where his assistant sat. Beyond the desk was the doorway to his office. And to the left, on the other side of the lobby, was the entrance to the corporate boardroom, the site of countless strategy sessions and battles over the decades.
As he walked to his office, Charles Koch passed a sculpture. It was a bust of his father’s head, mounted on a tall pedestal, surrounded by decorative plants. It looked like a monument to a nation’s founder. It had been fifty years since Fred Koch died and Charles took over the family company. Fred Koch, that difficult and driving man, was now safely enshrined in the form of a memorial, a silent bust. The man who had encouraged his sons to wear boxing gloves and fight one another, the man who forced Charles Koch to dig weeds in the family yard with a spoon, the man who sent Charles to military school, who used guilt to drag Charles back home to Wichita to run the business, that man was gone. There was only the memory of him—a memory that was shaped and cultivated by his son Charles. Every year in September, Charles Koch hosted the “Founder’s Day” memorial event, where he talked about his father’s legacy. He wrote about his father and produced videos about his father. He controlled the narrative. And one part of the narrative that Charles Koch didn’t emphasize, maybe because he didn’t have to,