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member exited, shooting a wilted glance in his direction.
    â€œBuddy, I only have one question for you,” 76-year-old Gussie rasped, moments after Reisinger walked in. “How are you going to vote tomorrow?”
    Reisinger, one of many family members who tried to broker peace between Gussie and The Third during the coup, confessed that he planned to vote for August III and then briefly outlined his position. The layers of internal politics and infighting were too messy to delve into. Among those issues was at least one tangible viewpoint: The board felt August III had a better grasp of the threat from Miller and how to address it.
    â€œThis should be the greatest moment of your life,” Reisinger told Gussie. “You brought the company a lot of success, and you’re still alive and can now turn it over to your son. This should be the best thing you could ever do.”
    Gussie wasn’t swayed. When the vote came down the next day in favor of his son, Gussie—who had been emotionally ravaged just months earlier by the death of his eight-year-old daughter in a car accident—lashed out like a wounded animal at the directors and executives who betrayed him. The family split into factions based on their support or abhorrence of August’s forced ascension, and Gussie’s younger children by his third wife, Trudy, including The Third’s half-brother Adolphus IV, were particularly upset.
    â€œAugust has stabbed my father in the back,” said Peter Busch, another one of Trudy’s children, to a mentor of his at the time. After his 29 years as head of the company, Gussie was left with little to show for it other than his beloved St. Louis Cardinals. He remained president of the baseball team until he died on September 29, 1989, at home near St. Louis, at the age of 90.
    â€œIt was a tough time,” said Michael Roarty, a legendary marketing executive at the company. “But I think the timing was right.”
    â€œAnheuser-Busch is a proud company, and the Busch family made it so,” Roarty said. “Gussie was a proud man. But as time went by, August proved to be a great general. Many of the great things we experienced were directly attributed to August III. There’s a tendency to forget that, but it shouldn’t be forgotten.”
    When asked more than three decades later about the coup, The Third remained stoic and brief. “My father built the company,” he said. “He was a visionary. He and I had years of a great relationship and I had great respect for him.”
    Yet from that day in May until Gussie’s death more than 14 years later, the two men’s relationship remained strained in the best of times and non-existent in the worst. They didn’t speak for roughly a decade. Gussie hired Louis Susman, a St. Louis lawyer, to represent him on matters concerning the company, the Cardinals, and eventually, his giant personal estate, and Susman ultimately served as a go-between for Gussie and The Third.
    At the time of his death, Gussie controlled a 13.5 percent stake in the company worth roughly $1.5 billion. For his work as executor of the estate, Susman was handed 2 percent of the trust income and 1 percent of the sale of Gussie’s personal property and was soon worth millions.
    In 2009, President Obama raised a few eyebrows by rewarding Susman with a job as ambassador to the United Kingdom, one of the country’s most prestigious overseas appointments, despite his lack of foreign policy expertise. The promotion allowed Susman to move into Winfield House, the London Embassy’s opulent residence in Regent’s Park, which makes Grant’s Farm look like a stable. Many of those who spoke out in Susman’s support cited the “diplomatic” experience he gained while brokering deals between Gussie and The Third, whose animosities seemed to be deeper-rooted than any harbored between the United States and the United