One Trillion Dollars

by Andreas Eschbach

  It was McCaine’s idea. And he even left him alone for this occasion. You can do it, he had told John. This tempo of his daily life, John reflected, at least meant he didn’t have much time to think about his love life.

  The car came gracefully to a halt. One of the men in the security detail opened the door. And then John Major got out, immediately recognizable with his white parted hair, large thin-framed eyeglasses and broad smile. Just like John had seen him on TV. When they shook hands, John sensed that the politician was also a bit nervous. He will be afraid of you, McCaine had told John. There are only a handful of countries in the world that could withstand an assault from your money, and Great Britain isn’t one of them — not by a long shot. He will wonder what it is you want from him. He will wonder, between dinner and dessert, if you plan to demand something outrageous.

  John had an almost out-of-body experience and was standing there watching himself shaking the hand of the Prime Minister of Her Majesty the Queen of England, making small talk like he had been doing it all his life. He had insisted on taking some lessons on behavior with an etiquette teacher in London in preparation. He practiced formal etiquette down to the smallest detail. McCaine had laughed and said, you are the wealthiest man on earth, you can act any way you want.

  John felt that Mr. Major was impressed as they went inside. It was obvious that the interior designer had managed to create exactly what John had wanted: an elegant and dignified atmosphere without pretending that representatives of an old dynasty lived here. Precious antique furniture stood beside ultra-modern pieces made of steel and glass. Modern paintings added an interesting touch, and above all, the interior of the castle was lighter and more cheerful since being renovated. Floodlights were placed where there used to be dark corners, which also made the interior seem much larger than before.

  As planned in detail over the week before, they first went for a stroll out in the garden behind the great house. They tried to make casual conversation while being watched from afar by dozens of security people. John learned that John Major loved opera and cricket, neither of which interested John. The keeping of peacocks was something neither man knew anything about, and so they had little to say other than how nice it was to get to know one another.

  Finally, the prime minister told John that his royal highness, the Prince of Wales, wanted to meet him. “He didn’t exactly tell me to give you his best wishes,” the British prime minister added, “but it may well be that he sends you an invitation to visit one of these days.”

  John nodded. He and McCaine had discussed this once before, to invite the heir to the throne instead of the prime minister, but McCaine was against it. That would be a snub. “It’s not that we couldn’t afford to do this, and Prince Charles would probably even come, but we would be acting too imperiously too soon,” McCaine had said at the time.

  A half hour later the other guests started to arrive. The publisher of the reputable monthly magazine 20th Century Observer, Victoria Holden, had arrived by train in London and John had her picked-up from the train station. She was called the Grand Old Lady of upscale journalism. Arriving at the same time as Victoria Holden was Alain Smith, publisher of the mass circulation newspaper, The Sun. In quality of journalism it was the exact opposite to the 20th Century Observer. They still greeted each other like old friends.

  A short while later the Washington Post’s Great Britain’s bureau chief arrived. He was a wiry young man named David Moody, with a firm grip of a handshake that left John’s hands numb for several minutes.

  And finally the famous journalist Lord Rawburne ambled in, his clapped-out Aston Martin car backfiring as he came over the hill, making the guards nervous. He blatantly parked his car right next to all the luxury vehicles, and got out dressed in baggy tweed clothes as if he had just returned from a hunt. He didn’t seem to give a shit about dress codes and etiquette.

  It was also Lord Peter Rawburne who made the evening lively. “Speak up, Mr. Fontanelli,” he said as the starter plates were being cleared from the table. “You didn’t invite us just to pass the time. Am I right?”

  John placed the napkin off to the side, looked at his guests and felt knots in his stomach. He suffered from stomach cramps caused by nerves so badly he could hardly sleep. He hoped he didn’t look as ridiculously unsure of himself as he felt. He had practiced his speech a hundred times in front of a mirror and in front of video cameras, until he felt he was saying what he wanted casually enough, without it looking over-rehearsed. Now he only had to get through his opening remarks.

  “I would never dare take such a liberty,” he tried to joke, but no one laughed. He knew then that this was not going to be easy. He began, as he had practiced, “I have looked for an opportunity to set some things straight — things that concern my company. Fontanelli Enterprises is generally seen in the public eye as an ordinary investment for a great fortune looking for additional profits.” John waved his hand to remind them of the opulence of their surroundings. “You will no doubt agree with me that the last thing I need is yet more money.”

  The only thing you must keep from them is the fact that what we are aiming at is virtual global hegemony, McCaine had warned him. Be modest.

  “I know a few people you could say that about,” Miss Holden threw in. “But it doesn’t stop them trying to earn even more money. Once, I asked one of them why he wanted to keep earning money, even though he doesn’t need any more. He said, ‘I don’t do it because I need to, but because I can.’”

  “But I can’t!” It wasn’t a comment John had planned. He cleared his throat. “What I mean by that is that no one can say that I’m a born businessman.”

  “But you appear to be learning fast,” said David Moody. “You invest cleverly, worldwide. I think the only countries you have not bought anything yet are Iraq and North Korea, and the only place where you aren’t represented is Antarctica.”

  “I have clever employees. Besides, you can’t invest such vast wealth in a single country, not even in a single continent without creating a monopoly.”

  “Or even on a single planet,” Alain Smith scoffed.

  John felt hot. The publisher of The Sun was, without knowing it, darned close to the truth. “I see my wealth primarily as an obligation,” John said slowly. “I don’t want to amass more money. I want it to be of some use to humanity.”

  “So it’s true,” Lord Rawburne threw in. “The prophecy is the driving force.”

  “Why don’t you just give your money to the poor?” Smith wanted to know. “Or at least a good part of it.”

  John looked at him and said, “Because I don’t think that would help much.”

  “A homeless man under one of the Thames bridges might think otherwise.”

  “And he would be wrong,” John said. He was surprised at the conviction in his words, and even more so to see that it had an effect on his guests. Alain Smith kept his mouth shut and simply nodded, looking like he thought John might have a point. No one else interrupted him so he returned to his speech, at last believing he might get to the end without having a nervous breakdown. “What I wanted to say is that my main emphasis is to protect the environment. We are in the process of developing environmental protection measures that will be implemented in each of my companies, and this even in countries and in situations where such measures will bring a loss in profits. You may have heard of our efforts to make transporting crude oil safer. That costs money, but I want to do everything possible to avoid a ship sailing under my flag getting into the same situation as the Sea Empress did. What we’re implementing now are measures that can be quickly put into practice, for instance using recycled paper in my offices, separating and recycling waste, not using products that damage the ozone layer, and so forth. Unfortunately, such measures are of a more symbolic value. In the near future we will start projects that will take us a few steps further, for instance production methods that are environmentally sound down to the last detail. We have even more ambitious plans. Ho
wever,” John said as he focused on the prime minister, “these will need the support of the government.”

  Major’s eyes opened wide, or maybe it was only his glasses that gave that impression. “I had been wondering why I was invited,” he said dryly.

  John took a deep breath. The butterflies in his stomach were still troubling him. Go on — don’t stop now! “The Fontanelli Group will, I think I can say safely, play a major role in the world’s economy. That means I shall be instigating certain changes in economic-political systems that will be of great benefit to the world in the long run. I will support company policies to that end, even if it means reducing economic efficiency and hope that we set a precedent that others will follow.”

  He looked at perplexed faces.

  Alain Smith, sitting at the other end of the table, took his wine glass, and John heard him mumble; “Now we’re in for some fun.”

  The prime minister’s face was rigid. “Your willingness to engage with government is welcome,” he said icily. “But I still must draw your attention to the fact that in a democracy the correct way to achieve policy change is through Parliament, not private arrangements over dinner.”

  Victoria Holden leaned forward, the pearls of her necklace jangling on her plate. “Mr. Fontanelli, would you care to outline the sort of economic-political changes you have in mind?”

  John looked at her thankfully. Miss Holden, despite her nearly eighty years, might be the most progressive and open-minded spirit at your table, McCaine had told John. And what she has to say has more weight than the numbers of copies her magazine sells would suggest.

  “I am, as I’ve said, a newcomer in the business world,” John explained to her and the others. “Maybe that’s why I am still in awe over certain things that others consider normal; those who have practically grown up in this environment. For instance I ask myself how it can be profitable to transport crabs from the North Sea to Morocco, simply to have their shells removed there. How is it you can transport apples by air from New Zealand and sell them cheaper than apples grown in your own country?” Now he got to the part of his speech that really meant something to him. “Here‘s a really big question; how can something that’s harmful for the environment be more profitable than the other way around? It’s because the price a company has to pay for something — in this case for transport — does not correspond to the real costs. If everything was priced according to the damage it causes to the environment, we wouldn’t have pollution problems. There’s one thing people care about and that’s keeping costs down. We all are pretty inventive in this regard. The history of industrialization is a history of reducing costs. Why aren’t we putting the same effort into assuring a more sustainable way of economics? Why can’t we have environmental impact integrated into cost calculations? Why don’t we just make sure that it is expensive to cause damage to the environment?”

  There was a long silence, as if he said something extremely embarrassing.

  “If you make transportation costs more expensive then you’ll strangle world trade,” David Moody said and leaned back. “The economy is dependent on good transportation conditions.”

  This argument was predictable. Even John had thought of this when he discussed these matters with McCaine. “It is not simply a matter of transportation costs. The economy developed as it did because those costs are cheap, and not the other way around. I am aware that it will cause serious consequences if my plan is implemented. I’m not saying that it has to be done all at once. But it must eventually happen.”

  “Your suggestion would mean,” Smith insisted, “that, for instance, subsidies to mining would stop, and a hefty tax on coal. The result would be a huge rise in unemployment.”

  “If we aren’t going to change anything, then there is no point even beginning,” John replied.

  The prime minister said nothing, but he was not amused. He just stared straight ahead, clearly wishing he was somewhere else.

  The next course, a salmon pate with Riesling sauce, was served in silence. What a crazy environment to discuss the misery of this world, John thought when he saw the beautifully decorated plate placed before him.

  “I think Mr. Fontanelli is right,” Lord Rawburne said, taking up his fork and fish knife. “We are amongst our peers here, we are all fairly intelligent people, and we don’t need to fool ourselves. If you take a look at industry today, you will see that there is a line beyond which we start taking from nature and another where we begin to return something, although at present that is usually just waste. Everything in between is something humans can deal with. These two boundaries are the critical markers: we keep using up resources, which are not limitless, and we keep dumping waste, which is something we also cannot continue to do. We have all known this for some time now and done nothing about it. Mr. Fontanelli’s suggestion is spot on; as long as we can carry on as at present with no financial consequences, nothing is going to change. I said nothing on purpose. There are idealists who still hope that the global economy will dispense with economics. The rules of the game at present lend no weight to the environment. But we can change the rules. It’s not that hard, we do it all the time. We change construction laws, laws on insurance, the stock market, tax, exhaust emissions — this is all part of economic policy. And we could just as easily make laws that make it expensive to pollute. Then all those things we would like people do on moral grounds will get done automatically through normal capitalist logic. That may well be the only way; there is no obvious alternative.

  David Moody had started to shake his head during Rawburne’s comment and seemed unable to stop. “All this is undoubtedly well meant,” he said, “even though it’s not very original. It’s the usual call for more state control. But the fact is that the environment is better off in those countries with a free market, while in the formerly centrally controlled economies it has been ruined.”

  Rawburne leaned forward and pointed the fish knife at the American as if it were a dueling sword. “Rules and regulations are not the same as a centrally controlled economy, as you well know, Mr. Moody. The state must set rules. That’s what it’s there for. Your free economy would not function without rules that were created by a government. I’m talking about such rules as those governing the stock market, bank contracts, and so forth. Just the same, in those states where rules are not enforceable, a free market won’t function either. That’s why you don’t invest in Russia.”

  John felt he needed to say something to cool down the animosity between the two men to prevent it from getting out of hand. “I’m far from being an economics expert,” he interrupted. “I only asked what things might look like if the whole planet, including the environment, were treated as one company. If we had to buy everything we need from this company. I mean everything, not just raw materials, but water, air, and land.”

  The company we’re building, McCaine thought, and lifted his glass for a toast.

  Victoria Holden smirked. “Then life would be too expensive.”

  “Nonsense,” Smith said.

  “That would be a monopoly,” Moody grumbled. “Your ‘whole Earth’ company could set prices as high as it wanted, nobody could pay anymore.”

  “You appear to believe that we humans are undesirable here on earth,” Lord Rawburne argued. “You have an interesting position that may be worth a closer look in another discussion. But the answer to Mr. Fontanelli’s question is obvious; it is self-evident that nature is not a firm. I can see a role for state intervention here. Up until now, the state has been interested solely in boosting the economy, and in good times the interests of its people. It might be more intelligent to leave the economy to itself and for the state to be the trustee of nature.”

  “All that sounds nice, Lord Rawburne,” the prime minister said, “but in political reality, that’s utopian. Let’s assume you could get a majority vote for that, all you would achieve is to place Britain in a worse economic situation in the global market.”

  Miss Holden inte
rjected, “Of course such a measure would need international cooperation. For a single nation to go down that path would not only be senseless, it would also be useless.”

  Alain Smith waved her comment away. “Forget it, Victoria. Every country would try to find ways to circumvent such an agreement.”

  John Major nodded grimly. “I can only agree with your colleague.”

  The heated discussions continued over dinner without any productive results, or any discussion of the culinary qualities of the food. Afterwards, at the earliest possible time that was within the parameters of proper etiquette, the prime minister left the gathering, but not without saying a few carefully selected words about how he had appreciated being invited and hoped for good relations in the future.

  Alain Smith followed him a short while later. “Anyway,” he said on leaving, “I find it reassuring that the man at the head of the largest company in the world has higher values then the usual greed, blind ambition and hunger for power.”

  “I’m certain that your concerns for the environment will set an example,” David Moody said. “Just don’t overdo it. One step at a time.”

  Victoria Holden didn’t have any good advice, and just thanked John for the invitation.

  The last to leave was Lord Peter Rawburne. “You’re thinking in the right direction,” he told John as he shook his hand. “You just haven’t thought it through yet.” With these enigmatic words the journalist got into old banger and drove off, spewing a trail of dirty hydrocarbon exhaust from his tailpipe

  For a long time John stood at the window of his room, staring up at the starry sky, as the gossamer ideas in his head turned to steely resolve. He glanced at his watch and saw it was time: eleven thirty. He went to the phone and flipped through the pages of the directory lying beside it. There are over two hundred telephones in the castle, which meant that most numbers had three digits. He found the number he was looking for and dialed it.