One Trillion Dollars

by Andreas Eschbach

  “The difference is,” according to a certain Lord Peter Rawburne, who the subtitle shown on the screen during the interview called one of the world’s most distinguished financial journalists, “that this Fontanelli doesn’t have to give a hoot about the rate of return to his investment when he makes a decision about something, and that makes him incalculable. One might also say ‘free.’”

  But that amount of freedom gave rise to apprehension. Economics ministers advised him to show social responsibility. Trade union leaders were very wary of so much concentration of money and influence. The chairmen of other large corporations were trying hard to remain calm and appear confident they were still in control.

  What would happen next was the number one question.

  A few periodicals, among which were some renowned financial magazines, showed with great effectiveness world maps with firm logos and stock market values of different companies around the world to illustrate what a global Fontanelli conglomerate could look like.

  “They are doing half the work our analysts are supposed to do,” McCaine said with a smirk.

  A not so serious magazine even spelled out which of the smaller African nations Fontanelli could buy outright, including everything state owned. No two prognoses were the same. It seemed anything was possible.

  Surprised, John accepted an invitation from McCaine to join him and his mother for Christmas dinner.

  Mrs. Ruth Earnestine McCaine suffered from advanced rheumatism. She sat crooked and bent in her over-sized chintz wingback chair, but was determined not to let the disease get her down. Blue-gray eyes looked out from a face full of laughter lines and age spots, framed by a surprisingly full and thick mop of curly white hair. “How do you like your castle?” she wanted to know.

  “I can’t really say yet,” John answered. “I’ve only been there a week.”

  “But it’s all nicely done up now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sure, very nice.”

  “You should know,” McCaine told John with an amusing smile, “that mother devours the gutter press. She probably knows your stately home better than even you.”

  “Ah,” John said. “Well, that wouldn’t be too hard.”

  A few copies of the said gutter press newspapers were lying on the table. John was glad to see at least Lady Di was still attracting the media’s attention.

  It was odd for John to see the private side of McCaine’s life. A man who in the office was a dynamo functioning at top speed, sending sparks flying, never still, driven by his goals to the extent of even appearing careless. Tonight, at home with his elderly mother, he seemed, calm, even relaxed, and in a good mood.

  Their home was a respectable, white-painted house built sometime around the turn of the century, located on a quiet street in a quiet part of London and looked almost modest compared to all the other villas in the neighborhood. There was a modern glass elevator for McCaine’s mother, since she was restricted in her movements, and that rather detracted from the architecture of the hallway. But apart from that you could have filmed a movie set in pre-war days here without changing much of the interior or furniture.

  The food was good, but not elaborate, basic home cooking. It was served by a thick housekeeper, the only employee in the McCaine household, as John found out. There was a nurse who came twice a day for one or two hours to look after Mrs. McCaine.

  When McCaine left the table for a moment, his mother pointed out watercolor painting over the fireplace with a plain stainless steel frame. “Do you recognize that?”

  John looked at the picture. “Could be Florence,” he guessed. “One of the bridges over the Arno.”

  “Yes, the Ponte Vecchio.” In a conspiratorial tone of voice she added: “Malcolm painted it.”

  “Really?” Never in his life would John have thought that McCaine could swing a paintbrush.

  “He painted a lot when he was a young man,” she told him. “My late husband was transferred often between bases, you know, and so we got around a lot. Back then we were stationed in Italy and Malcolm went to work for a computer firm and shortly thereafter he stopped painting.” Her eyes sparkled. “Don’t tell him I told you that.”

  John stared at the painting and didn’t know what to think. Surely it was absurd to see this as some divine message, wasn’t it? But he couldn’t think of it in any other way. Both of them used to paint, but gave it up — it was a meaningless detail. A sign that both were destined to meet one day.

  “There is one more matter that we have put off,” McCaine told John a day before they were to attend a conference with the chairman of Exxon in Irving, Texas. “My employment. We must clear that up before I present myself officially as chief executive.”

  “Oh,” John said and reached for a pen. “Of course. I totally forgot.”

  “Well, we were busy,” McCaine said and pulled out a document several pages long in triplicates from a leather-backed folder. “You do understand that I have to think about me too once in a while. If, for example, we are not of one mind with my contract and we go our separate ways, then I would have worked all these months for nothing. You would owe me not a single shilling.”

  John was surprised to find that McCaine was worried about this. Did he, John Fontanelli, seem so unpredictable to the British? “Well, maybe we’ll agree,” he tried to joke and reached for the papers. “Let me have it.”

  McCaine handed him a draft contract, and said: “Read everything closely before you sign it.” He sat down, crossed his legs and arms, like someone ready to wait for a long time.

  John had to force himself to read the whole page before he flipped to the next one. He only understood the bare bones of it anyway with all the legalese it was written in. It changed when he got to the paragraph that mentioned the salary; it was unmistakable what it said there. John’s jaw dropped. McCaine wanted an annual salary of one hundred million dollars!

  $23,000,000,000,000

  JOHN FELT HIS blood boil as he stared at the number on the contract. It was presented as something absolutely routine, but it was precisely that, the way in which it was presented so routinely that angered him, but he somehow realized that he had to repress his obvious anger. “Isn’t this a bit, hmm, much?”

  McCaine lifted his brows. “What do you mean?”

  John held up the piece of paper. It seemed to weigh a hundred pounds now. “I’m at the part with the salary, and I somehow have the feeling that you wrote a zero too many in there.”

  “No, I think not.”

  “But a hundred million dollars … There is not a single chairman on earth who gets anywhere near that much!”

  “Come now, John,” McCaine responded with a touch of anger in his voice. “A hundred million dollars is what you earn in interest in one day. And I will increase your money. I will easily double it. That means I will earn you three hundred times what you pay me. Show me an employee on this planet who can say that.”

  “But that’s not the point. We’re not doing all of this just to make more money, are we? I thought we were here on a mission. To change the future.”

  McCaine looked at his fingernails. “You know I don’t care about money, John. My salary is symbolic. It is symbolic of the fact that I’m the boss of the largest company on earth … by far the largest company in the world. And that’s why it must be the largest sum ever to be paid. Do you understand? You can’t keep something like this secret. I don’t want to. When I sit across from one of those guys who thinks he is so very important, I want him to know that I earn fifty times more than he does. That’s how this game is played, John. He will feel tiny and insignificant and will do whatever I want.”

  John looked at the number again; $100,000,000. Naturally, he could refuse to sign. The company and the money belonged to John, everything did, even the chair that McCaine was sitting on, the paper the draft employment contract was printed on, the pen he was supposed to sign it with. He could cross out the number and write another one instead; twenty million maybe, or tw
enty-five or even only ten, which was still a whole bunch of money. If McCaine didn’t agree, then they would part ways.

  Theoretically, he had just bought a multinational oil company, an office building worth millions, hired people, and signed contracts. He had done things he could never have done by himself. He had less knowledge about running a business and economics than Murali, the pizza man. He couldn’t even run a newspaper stand, much less a company with more assets than the next three hundred largest companies put together.

  He felt his hands get sweaty as if the piece of paper was hot. He looked at McCaine, but McCaine’s expression was that of a poker player. Maybe McCaine wouldn’t go away. This project was his calling in life, after all. At least that’s what he had told John. Was all of this nothing but an ingenious plan to get a pile of money? But even if it were, he had no other choice. He had himself backed into a corner somehow, and all of a sudden his money couldn’t help him.

  “Hmm,” John said. Actually, he felt as if he had been tricked, and that’s what was bothering him most, not the money itself. McCaine might even be right with his argument.

  All in all, John had no choice.

  John took the pen that had somehow slipped from his fingers earlier when he started to read the contract. “Well,” he said in a weak attempt to make it seem like a sovereign decision, “I think you are right. Given the scale of things, it’s only appropriate.” He flipped to the last page and scribbled his name and did so with the other copies too. He put one copy with his files and handed McCaine the other two. McCaine took them without changing his expression.

  There was an embarrassing silence in the room for a moment.

  “Okay,” John said, trying to appear casual. He leaned back and clapped his hands, “when are we taking off? What are we going to do with the Texans?”

  McCaine stood and said, “We will talk with the chairmen, shake their hands in a friendly manner, and then fire half of them.”

  “What? Why?” John blinked his eyes. It suddenly seemed to have cooled down a few degrees in the room. “Is that necessary? I mean, they seem to have done a good job if Exxon is profitable. Haven’t they?”

  “Sure, but that’s not the reason. The reason is to make it clear to them that we are in complete control now.”

  “What?”

  “We will put a few of our own people in their place.”

  John raised a hand. “Wait a minute, I don’t like that. I don’t want any part in these kinds of absurd power games.”

  McCaine looked down on John with a cold expression. “John, your outlook on the world needs to change, you can’t actually imagine that we can do what we set out to do and still be nice guys.” He shook his head. “Forget that. What we will are going to ask people to do isn’t going to be easy or pleasant. We will be hated for this. Our names will be cuss words for the next hundred years. Churchill told the British all he had to offer them was blood, sweat, and tears, but those days are long-gone. We can’t try that again. We cannot ask anyone for permission, we have to do what has to be done, and that is a question of power, indeed. John, you still have a lot to learn about power. I see it as part of my task to teach you everything I know about power.” He lifted both copies of his contracts. “This was the first lesson. What did you learn from it?”

  John looked perplex. “What do you mean?”

  “I handed you a contract of employment with an exorbitant amount of money for salary. You signed it despite feeling it was too high. Why?”

  “Because your arguments had convinced me after I thought about it.”

  McCaine smiled thinly. “That’s a lie.”

  “Why? I don’t have to make such a fuss over a few million…”

  “Now you’re making excuses for yourself. The truth is; you thought my salary was too high, but you thought you had no other choice but to agree. In other words, I was more powerful, even though you are the wealthiest man in the world, and I’m nothing in comparison.” McCaine turned around and went a few steps. He stopped and then faced John again. “Would you like to know how I accomplished this?”

  John sat there with his mouth open. Not only had McCaine tricked him into a salary two hundred times as much as the US president, now he was even bragging about it and wanted to explain how he did it! “I am,” he croaked, “curious.”

  “You made a serious mistake right from the start that you should never repeat. An elementary rule concerning contracts is that you let it wait. You faced a fait accompli, and you can’t do a deal on a fait accompli. I was able to wait until you were in a position where you couldn’t simply get up and leave. But when you enter negotiations without this option — the option of getting up without signing — then you are automatically in a weak position.” McCaine was acting like a professor teaching the basics of his specialty. “Take for example moving into an apartment without having first signed a rental agreement. Once you’re moved into the place the landlord can almost do what he wants, demand more money to do small renovations each year, and so forth. Your only alternative would be to move back out. You can’t just leave and find another place. It’s not that easy when you’ve already gone through all the effort and expense. Do you understand? You allowed a fait accompli, and that greatly weakened your position.”

  “So, we should’ve spoken about your salary from the very start?”

  “Ideally, yes,” McCaine said nodding. “Your position then was optimal. I was a man whose life revolved around an idea that could only be realized with your agreement. You are the richest man on earth and fairly disinterested. Hell, if you had insisted, I would’ve worked for nothing!”

  John thought about the day he and Marco came to London the first time without the Vacchis knowing about it. “I guess I’m not very skilled in this stuff, am I?”

  “This is no skill you are born with. You have to learn it. The lessons have just started.”

  “You’re a mean teacher.”

  “It’s a tough class,” McCaine replied. “Admit it; a while ago you thought, ‘What will I do if he leaves me alone with all this?’”

  John nodded reluctantly. “Was it obvious?”

  “No. I just knew that was what you would think. But did you also notice that I didn’t make threats? That would’ve been blackmail, if I would’ve said something like, ‘You either sign, or I go,’ then you would’ve resisted. My leverage was that I knew that you knew my abilities and your own inabilities. That I did not mention these two facts strengthened my situation. You didn’t know what I would do, but you knew what I could do. Those arguments I presented were correct, but not crucial. What was crucial was the balance of power between us at that moment.” McCaine gestured to the windows. “We will be on the go during the next few months and be in many discussions. It is important that you understand what is going on … really going on, I mean.”

  John looked at him and tried to grasp what McCaine was saying. It was hard from to understand that these were the rules, the rules the world worked by.

  “Which one of us in charge, I mean really in charge?”

  McCaine shrugged his shoulders. “As I see it, the situation is fluid. You cannot follow through with the plan without my experience and without all the preparations I’ve already made, and I can’t do it without your money. I guess one could call it a symbiosis.”

  John took his copy of the contract and held it up. “Does this mean we can tear this up and start again?”

  McCaine folded his copies lengthwise and stuffed them into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Only in your dreams.” He grinned mockingly. “See it as a charge for the lesson.”

  They flew to Texas and wearing friendly smiles shook hands with every member of the board of Exxon. After they took their seats, McCaine read a number of names from a list of those who would be fired with immediate effect.

  It was a practical execution. Security people McCaine brought along accompanied the fired managers to their desks to assure that only personal items were packed and t
hat they spoke with none of the other employees. The security men stayed with them until they were out of the parking lot. Computer specialists went to work to have their passwords and access codes deleted. John sat there without saying a word and watched the happenings with a blank expression on his face.

  The media went haywire, especially after they still didn’t get to interview the new owners or get an official statement.

  “What does Fontanelli want?” asked the headline of an article from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

  McCaine was very satisfied. He left one newspaper lying on the table of the conference room with the headlines showing. John asked him if reports like that would harm them. “Nonsense,” he only said. “In a week it’ll all be forgotten.”

  And so it was. In Chechnya, in mid January, a bloody hostage crisis came to an end after six days when Russian forces flattened the village of Pervomaiskoye. Early in February a Turkish Boeing 757 crashed before the coast of the Dominican Republic. After seventeen months of inactivity the IRA set off several bombs in London killing three and injuring over a hundred people. In mid February the oil tanker Sea Empress, sailing under a Liberian flag, ran aground off the Welsh coast by Milford Haven and polluted the islands of Skokholm and Skomer. The breeding grounds for tens of thousands of marine birds and the natural preserve of Pembrokeshire were contaminated with crude oil. Experts considered this accident as destructive as the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989.

  “We should see to it that nothing like that can ever happen again with one of our tankers,” John said. He was surprised at himself by the way he already spoke of “our” tankers.

  “We should. That’s a good idea,” McCaine said after a short pause. “And then we should inform the press about it.”

  A short while later a press release was issued stating that Fontanelli Enterprises had decided that crude oil would be transported only in tankers that meet stringent safety measures developed by its own safety board, and that only tankers with double hulls would be built for the company in future. The only reaction to this report was a drop in Exxon share prices on the stock market.