“The firm’s headquarters. We will create a holding company, and it must have an official address. Of course we’ll have branch offices all over the world, that’s obvious, but we need a central office. The question is where.”
John looked at the map a bit confused. “Which would be most suitable?”
“Any. You are John Salvatore Fontanelli, the wealthiest man of all time. Where you are will always be number one.”
“Hmm.” He didn’t really want to decide here and now, just like that, so to speak. But McCaine seemed to want precisely that. He had once read that a ready desire to make decisions was a key characteristic of leadership. “How about Florence?”
McCaine nodded, but a bit reluctantly. “Florence, okay, that’s a good as any other place.”
“It actually doesn’t matter to me,” John added quickly.
“May I suggest London? Not because I live there and my old mum lives with me in my house. That could all be arranged differently, and, of course, I’ll go along with whatever you want. But London is an important financial center, a city with tradition. If we made London the capital, there would be a symbolic value.”
John shrugged his shoulders. “Fine, London is okay with me.”
“Wonderful.” McCaine rolled the map up.
“Then we’ll set up Fontanelli Enterprises with London as its headquarters.” He looked around briefly. “It should not be difficult to find a house suitable for you there.”
“What’s wrong with this one?”
McCaine raised his hands. “Nothing, absolutely nothing, this house is okay. Please don’t misunderstand me.” He went silent, as if considering what to say next. “The Vacchis made you see things from their point of view at their own level. As nice as this house is, it is a house for a common millionaire not that of the richest man who ever lived. From the viewpoint of a billionaire at the bottom of Forbes’ list you live like a poor crud.”
“I really don’t care. I like it here.”
“That’s not the point. For someone in your position, just liking a place is hardly the aim, that’s something you take for granted. A starting point, if you like.” McCaine was sitting on the couch while John stood at the other end of the coffee table, but the Englishman still managed to look at him like a stern teacher bending down to a first grader as if trying to make him understand something. “Here we obey other rules, John. We’re not talking about money here, we’re talking about power. And in the world of power you have to follow the rules of power, and whether you like it or not, one of these rules is to brag. You must impress others, show them their place. You have to become the biggest gorilla in the pack, the alpha male who is followed by everyone else.” He tried to smile, but his eyes remained deadly serious, the expression of a general about to lead his troops into a hard battle. “And you will. Trust me.”
For a moment you could’ve heard a pin drop. They heard a seagull cry, breaking the silence. John nodded, although he couldn’t say that he trusted him. But he had chosen to go down this path, and that’s what he was going to do.
“But there’s nothing to stop you from keeping this house,” McCaine then said with a shrug. He opened the briefcase and took out some papers, a paper calendar, and a mobile phone. “All right, let’s go!” he said, making it sound like a battle cry. John sat down on the armrest of the easy chair and listened to McCaine call a notary public in London. McCaine talked until eventually he persuaded the notary to meet him and John this evening to set up a limited liability company.
“Go get a few things packed,” McCaine told John. “I’ll see to everything else.”
John was glad to escape the man’s magnetic field for a few minutes. He’d have to get used to the tempo of McCaine’s work. He called Jeremy and told him pack a travel bag.
“For how long, sir?” the butler wanted to know.
John shrugged his shoulders. “A few days. I don’t know. Could be longer.”
“Shall I notify the bodyguards? When are you departing?”
“Today. Later on. Yes, tell Marco.”
The butler nodded with a stony face and went upstairs. John stopped in the hallway, McCaine’s voice still ringing in his head: the way the man had badgered, cajoled, laid down the law, insisted on things, made subliminal threats. The man was a bulldozer. He would flatten everything in his way with a trillion dollars behind him.
“Bank account statements!” McCaine called from the living room.
“What do you want?” John shouted back unsure if he was meant with the demand.
But the Englishman appeared himself. “You need to make copies of your bank statements and bring them with you. I take it that the computer is here in the cellar?”
“Yes, but I have no idea how to print.”
“I can show you.”
They went down to the cellar, which a specialist company had fitted out with armor-plating and the latest security technology. McCaine turned around when John punched in the code. He nodded when he saw the computer and the new programs on it. “Not bad,” he said. “Who wrote the program? I take it that the young Vacchi wrote it? What’s his name? Eduardo?”
John nodded. The figure at the bottom of the screen was spinning as fast as ever. It was now at one trillion and thirty billion dollars.
“Very nice. May I?” He sat down on a chair before the computer and clicked around with the mouse. “Just what I thought, he based it on my program. But it was well done, I must say. Well, then let’s see what we can print out …”
“Won’t that be a lot of paper?” John asked.
“With one line for each account, it’ll be about twelve thousand pages,” McCaine said nodding. “That’s about thirty binders full. That’s too much, of course. We’ll print an overview by countries and type of investment. That’ll come to about forty pages.” The printer started to hum and spit out sheets of paper. “This reminds me of something; the computer in the Vacchis’ law firm still exists, right? We must have it turned off. It’s not as if I mistrust the Vacchis. Their integrity is unquestionable, but I don’t like them having an open window on our finances. Do you understand?”
“Hmm,” John said. He wasn’t happy about McCaine’s use of the term “our” finances, but perhaps he’d said it without thinking.
The foundation of Fontanelli Enterprises Limited was accomplished with, if possible, even less fanfare than the handing over of the original fortune. The skies were growing dark over London as they entered the notary public’s office. It had dark wall panels and high ceilings that seemed to embody something of the old British Empire. The notary, a distinguished gray-haired man with the build of a polo player, looked and acted as if he was related to the queen herself. He explained to John in precisely articulated upper-class English, which sounded as if he had a hot potato in his mouth, the contents of the documents. The notary lost a bit of his composure when he realized that the sum involved was one trillion dollars. But he recovered right away and continued as normal. John would, he explained, be the sole shareholder of the company and Malcolm McCaine would be the chief executive. He went on page after page reading paragraphs. Then he wanted to see the employment contract for McCaine.
“That’s not important now,” McCaine said impatiently. “We will sign a run-of-the-mill contract of employment later. We can do this between the two of us.”
“As you wish,” the notary said and cocked his head a bit to show his displeasure.
McCaine glanced to John. “He only wanted to charge more money for that,” he told him in Italian.
There were more stamps, signatures, and carbon copies, but no champagne and no congratulations. A thin, pale-faced woman waited by the door to take copies for the notary’s records, and then the notary handed John his copies with a handshake. He shook McCaine’s hand too and that was it. Five minutes later they were back in the car, heading to John’s hotel.
John had expected to see the hotel surrounded by a mob of reporters the next day, but to his relief when
he awoke and peered through the black curtains he saw not a single mobile satellite dish.
Yet their evening visit to the lawyer did not go unnoticed. McCaine appeared with a bunch of newspapers clamped under an arm as John was eating a remarkably bad breakfast in the dining room of his suite. The Sun had a lengthy article with the title ‘Trillion dollar boy has new toy’. The Financial Times had decided on a two column report about it, on the front page no less, but at the bottom and with the acidic sarcasm the paper was so well known for: There was no indication what branch of business Fontanelli Enterprises was interested in. Perhaps, to fulfill the prophecy, some land in the Amazon might be bought to prevent further decimation of the rain forest to preserve earth’s green lungs?
“They’ll see who laughs last,” was McCaine’s only comment.
John flipped through the stack of papers. “What about American papers?”
“It’s still too early for them,” McCaine answered. “Only CNN will do a special report a half hour long at some stage. But I wonder what they think they can fill a half hour with, speculations, no doubt.”
“Is that good or bad?” John asked and looked at his soggy toast, which he decided not to eat.
McCaine gathered up the papers and tossed them into the garbage pail. “Any publicity is good publicity doesn’t just apply to Hollywood stars. A lot of people this morning will have their appetites ruined by this news.”
The coffee, John determined, was just as bad as the rest of his breakfast. “Can we go someplace where I can get a decent breakfast?”
They were still in the hotel’s elevator when McCaine started calling real estate agents to help find a suitable location for the new company’s head office. “A whole high-rise in the City if possible,” he explained to one of his business partners as they rushed through the foyer. “And I’ll pay in cash if need be.”
John noticed with surprise that McCaine did everything from memory. He knew all the phone numbers by heart, remembered addresses that were given him by phone and didn’t seem to need a city map to find them. He did not even have one in his car.
“I think branch offices in New York, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Sydney and Kuwait will be enough for the start,” McCaine said as he maneuvered his messy car through the center of London.
Marco, Carlin, and the third bodyguard whose name was also John, drove in an armored Mercedes rented from a local security company.
“As soon as the company is up and running we’ll need branch offices in every capital city.”
“Kuwait?” John asked, still wondering about it from McCaine’s previous sentence.
“Oil,” McCaine simply said.
“Oil? Is that still so important these days?”
McCaine looked at him astounded and debasingly. “You mean compared to genetic engineering?”
“Maybe. I mean, we’re talking about the future here, and that is going to depend on industries like that, or at least that’s what you read in the papers.”
“Forget all that. Sunrise industries … sure, you can make a lot of money in genetic engineering, medicine, and computer software. If you believe the stock markets then Microsoft is worth more than all of Russia. But do you really believe that? A few buildings and computers are worth more than the largest country on earth, with all the oil and other raw materials and endless land? That is not reality. That is only the way the markets see things and they are nothing more than gambling shops. The only difference is the high stakes on the stock markets.” McCaine was watching the traffic like a warrior in a battle. He changed lanes abruptly. “Things look different in real life. In real life only food and energy count. Did you know that the world reserves of wheat, rice, and other grains are at their lowest level in twenty years? You won’t see that in the news, of course. They’d rather report on a shootout in Bosnia. And the prognosis for this year’s crops is bad, which means that the world reserves will sink to below the fifty-day mark of world usage. And while the world’s population grows, arable land shrinks through erosion, salinization, desertification, and urban sprawl. Each year on Java alone twenty thousand hectares of land are lost to new roads, housing, and factories. That’s an area that could feed over three hundred thousand people, while at the same time Indonesia’s population grows by three million each year. Why do you think that the US is determined to remain the world’s biggest exporter of grains? Because that means power. Sometime in the future silos filled with grain will represent more power than silos filled with rockets.”
“Are you trying to say you want to coerce governments with food?” John asked.
“No. You don’t coerce. Most of the time it is enough to make it clear to the other party what could happen. McCaine smiled. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon see how this works.”
A week later, John signed away an awe-inspiring number of British pounds for an awe-inspiring high-rise in the City of London that used to belong to the NatWest Bank. The old sign with the bank’s name was just being removed when John and McCaine arrived to look at the building.
“It’s not like they’re poor,” McCaine told John. “The bank has another five tall buildings around here, and most are bigger than this one.”
Even empty the building still exuded power, wealth, and the centuries-old tradition of the bank. Their steps echoed on the bare stuccoed walls as they walked over old, solid wooden floors and looked out over the city through tall windows.
McCaine seemed very pleased with their new headquarters, right in the middle of enemy territory, as he put it. “Look outside, John,” he said when they got to the top floor. “This is the City of London. It is independent of the rest of the metropolis, has its own administration, its own jurisprudence and its own police. It’s almost a state within a state. Over there is the Bank of England, and over there is Lloyd’s of London. The London Stock Exchange is there. Practically every important business in the world is represented here. You won’t find a wealthier square mile anywhere else in the world. This is truly the Vatican of money, and we’re right in the middle of it.”
John looked at London’s skyline, the dark meandering Thames River, and he thought about the number of zeros on the check he signed and was not quite as impressed. “So, what now?”
You could wake McCain in the middle of the night and he would still be able to outline every detail of his plans. “We will start hiring people,” he told John, without a second’s hesitation and never taking his eyes away from the breathtaking vista in front of them. “Analysts, for a start, to examine every company in the world and to help work out which ones we need to buy, people with expertise in management to help build the organization, lawyers to put everything on a solid legal foundation, and so forth. We could bring over a few people from my old firm, but they won’t be enough. I’ve put ads in all the important newspapers, which will appear in tomorrow’s editions, and I also contacted personnel consultants to find good administrators.”
“Personnel consultants?” John echoed, wondering aloud what on earth McCaine meant.
But McCaine thought John was worried about the cost and quickly added: “The success of every company depends on its employees. You might think that is the best kept secret in the economy, but it really is no secret. Everybody will tell you that, but hardly anyone understands it. It is especially the people looking for work who don’t understand. If they did the world of labor would be a different place.”
A while later John took a walk through the Vatican of money. Alone for the first time since — he could hardly remember when he last went anywhere alone. McCaine assured him that nothing would happen to him. Indeed, there were video cameras on every corner and the police with their special insignia on their helmets keeping watch. Everything was spic and span, also very dull, despite all the golden coats of arms and splendid facades. There were few people out and about and there didn’t seem to be many tourists among them.
He discovered a sign on a narrow one-lane street that said N. M. Rothschild & Sons. He looked i
nto the entryway and saw a large painting of Moses and his people receiving the Ten Commandments.
“Sir?” A security man dressed in a dark uniform suddenly stood beside John. “Would you please move along?” he asked him politely but firmly.
John looked at him and thought that he could buy this bank and have him fired. He saw his reflection in the glass of the vestibule. Wrong outfit. He had left his suits at the hotel and was wearing a pair of jeans and a thin windbreaker. It had also cost a lot of money, but you couldn’t tell. He most definitely didn’t look like a customer of N. M. Rothschild & Sons. “All right all ready,” he said. “I was moving along anyway.”
The real estate agent was gaunt, talked down his nose, had a crooked face and dirty-red, unruly hair. But his cologne smelled expensive, and he had a gold coat of arms on his business card. And of course he drove them to the “property,” as he called it, in a Rolls Royce.
“The property,” he said in a nasal whine as they drove towards a giant wrought-iron gate, “used to belong to the eighteenth Earl of Harrington-Keynes, who died without heirs, unfortunately.” He pressed a button on a remote control. As the gate majestically swung open he pointed out the coat of arms on it. “Naturally you’ll have to remove the insignia if you should buy it.”
“Naturally,” McCaine said. “If.”
They drove through the gate. The old walls surrounding the estate looked like they dated back to the Norman invasions, and the trees inside looked like they might once have provided shade for Henry VIII. They hadn’t even seen anything of the house yet. The car passed through a landscape that looked like a hunting ground or a rustic golf course.
“For years, the countess has lived in a nursing home and couldn’t take proper care of the place,” the agent explained. “Two years ago she decided to sell.”
They went over a rise and the view improved. They saw the castle before them looking like something from a different world. Made of gray basalt, it was built to last for centuries. It had three wings, each several floors high and which faced a symmetrical pond. There were little turrets at the corners while the projecting roof over the front entrance had clearly been added later. The car pulled up to the entrance, and they got out.
One Trillion Dollars Page 30
