嫁给世纪巨骗麦道夫的儿子（节选）

    凯瑟琳•霍伯和安德鲁•麦道夫的曼哈顿公寓里有一间空卧室，放着很多应急避险物资。一个架子上放着钛手电筒、太阳能电池充电器和胶带，另一个架子上是便携式辐射检测仪、碘化钾药片以及能量棒，床上则是一些防辐射服。“我们没把这些放在网站上，”霍伯一边说，一边打开了一件带电池组和气泵的儿童辐射服。霍伯的灾难应急准备公司Black Umbrella面向的都是些担心世界末日即将来临的人，但即使对这些客户们来说，想像一个孩子笼罩在辐射尘中依然是一件令人不寒而栗的事。霍伯说，她和麦道夫正在打造的事业是基于“人类是多么脆弱这一根本性认知”。

    是的，对于这一点他们深有体会，因为近年来霍伯经历了太多坎坷。2008年12月，她搬入男友安德鲁•麦道夫的住所。当时，她只是一个普通的纽约姑娘，受过良好的教育，一心向上，在时尚业有着一份不错的工作。三天后，男友的父亲伯尼•麦道夫因为布了下美国历史上最大的庞氏骗局而遭到逮捕。霍伯没有离开，与安德鲁一起亲历了接下来的所有起起落落：当伯尼•麦道夫认罪并被判终身监禁时，她陪伴并安慰着未婚夫安德鲁；伯尼•麦道夫被捕两年后，安德鲁的亲哥哥马克——他唯一的手足，也是他当时在父亲公司交易部门时的合作伙伴——自杀身亡，霍伯开始帮助安德鲁另谋生路。霍伯说：“对未来有计划的人才能更加坚韧。”

    对于诈骗丑闻之后的生活，霍伯和安德鲁的说法是“事情已经这样了。”如今，霍伯已成为了麦道夫家族的一员，甚至是公关经理。去年秋季，她鼓励安德鲁、而安德鲁又说服了自己的母亲露丝，这家人才首次公开回应了诈骗丑闻。看过哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）的《60分钟》（60 Minutes）栏目或全国广播公司的《今天》（Today）栏目相关采访的人或许会怀疑，真相究竟是什么？因为伯尼的妻子和次子在节目中称，他们根本不知道自己曾经挚爱的这个人是个骗子。同时也会疑惑，在电视采访中一直站在安德鲁身边的那个白净的棕发女人是谁?

    霍伯首先是安德鲁•麦道夫东山再起计划的首席执行官。“Black Umbrella是我的全职工作，”安德鲁骄傲地说。安德鲁在这家霍伯全资拥有的公司中担任营运总监，每周工作50-60个小时。安德鲁不领薪水；两个人都认为，当初涉及金额达到650亿美元的麦道夫骗局令许多人一生的积蓄化为乌有，很多受害人仍在巴巴地期待能拿回一些本金，安德鲁在这个时候领薪水并不恰当。39岁的霍伯谈及未婚夫时这样说：“很多人认为，安德鲁这辈子都不该再赚一分钱，他应该放弃成年以后赚的所有钱。”当45岁的安德鲁自称“我也是麦道夫受害者”时，很难让人对其心生同情。但这种说法在一定程度上并没有错。

    霍伯在努力拯救男友和他事业的同时，她也把握住了时代思潮：人们觉得这个世界比过去更不可预测，更危险。霍伯说：“谈到美国大城市可能被飓风摧毁的概率，纽约市仅次于迈阿密和新奥尔良，位居第三。”Black Umbrella的客户们支付750美元至2,000美元购买服务，希望该公司能帮助他们渡过飓风、洪水、地震、脏弹、甚至是核战争等灾难。

    霍伯于2009年成立了Black Umbrella公司，显然，它绝不会成为下一个Facebook。她雇了11个员工，2011年营业收入不到50万美元。但业务正在增长。后来，她和麦道夫发现除了服务，客户们也需要相关的物资。于是，他们开始销售隔热保温服、瓶装水以及那间空卧室里放的所有装备，平均每单销售额立刻大增。“我想，今天的应急相应服务所处的地位就如同杰克•拉拉尼（美国健身之父——译注）诞生之前的健身运动一样吧，”霍伯认真地说。

    阅读全文>>>

    Inside the Manhattan apartment of Catherine Hooper and Andrew Madoff, there is a spare bedroom containing items one might need in case disaster strikes. Titanium flashlights, solar battery chargers, and duct tape line one shelf. Pocket-size radiation detectors, potassium iodide tablets, and energy bars fill another. On a bed are anti-radiation suits. "We do not put these on our website," Hooper says as she unfolds a child-size suit with battery pack and air pump. The notion of a child coated with radioactive dust is too harrowing even for the doom-fearing customers of Black Umbrella, Hooper's emergency-preparedness company. She and Madoff are building the business off of "a fundamental awareness of how vulnerable we are," she says.

    Yes, the resonance here is jolting, given the direction of Hooper's life. She was just another well-bred, social-climbing New Yorker with a good gig in the fashion industry when she moved in with her boyfriend, Andrew Madoff, in December 2008. That was three days before Bernie Madoff was arrested for operating the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. Hooper stayed around for the ensuing drama: When her intended father-in-law pleaded guilty and went to prison for life, she consoled Andrew, her fiancé. When Andrew's older brother, Mark -- his only sibling and his partner in the trading arm of their father's firm -- committed suicide exactly two years after Bernie's arrest, Hooper helped Andrew hone his own survival skills. "Resilient people are those who have a plan," Hooper says.

    "Since everything happened" -- the phrase she and Andrew use to describe their lives post-scandal -- Hooper has become part of the Madoff family and even a manager of its public affairs. She encouraged Andrew -- who persuaded his mother, Ruth -- to speak publicly for the first time about the scandal last fall. If you watched them on CBS's 60 Minutes or NBC's Today, where Bernie's wife and son declared that they had no clue that the man they loved was a crook, you probably wondered, What is the truth? And who is the porcelain-skinned brunette standing by her man throughout the TV interrogations?

    Hooper is, first of all, the CEO of Andrew Madoff's personal-renewal program. "Black Umbrella is my full-time job," he says proudly. He works 50 to 60 hours a week as director of operations at the company, which is 100% owned by Hooper. He doesn't take a salary; they agreed it wouldn't look right while claimants wait to receive pieces of their life savings that disappeared in the $65 billion Madoff scam. "A lot of people out there think he should never make a penny for the rest of his life and give up all he's earned since his bar mitzvah," says Hooper, 39, about her fiancé. It's not easy to feel sympathy for Andrew, 45, when he says, "I'm a Madoff victim too." But his statement, which he delivers with emotional coldness, is, by a certain measure, true.

    While she works to rescue her boyfriend and his career, Hooper is also making a play on the zeitgeist: the notion that the world is less predictable and more dangerous than it used to be. "New York City is the third most likely major city, after Miami and New Orleans, to be devastated by a hurricane," says Hooper. Black Umbrella's clients pay $750 to $2,000 for services to help them survive hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, dirty bombs, even nuclear war.

    Hooper launched Black Umbrella in 2009, and it's definitely not the next Facebook. She employs 11 people and generated less than $500,000 in 2011 revenue. But the business is growing. After she and Madoff found that customers wanted supplies, not just services, they began selling thermal clothing, bottled water, and all that gear in the spare bedroom -- and the average ticket multiplied. "I think emergency preparedness is in the same position today as fitness was before Jack LaLanne," says Hooper in all seriousness.