One Trillion Dollars

by Andreas Eschbach

  Paul’s apartment in Washington was so like the one he had in Manhattan that John almost thought he had traveled back in time. The view was not across the Hudson, but the Potomac and the Capitol could be seen in the distance. There was the same furniture, the same exquisite taste and almost the same layout of the rooms.

  “It was also the same construction company,” Paul said. “I suppose it’s cheaper to re-use the same set of plans.”

  Everything had gone smoothly. They had driven over the Mexican high country, crossed the border at Laredo without any questions being asked, and then took the next possible flight to Washington. Paul had complained about the smell in the car when he returned it, and told them that it had gotten worse during their drive. The car rental employee thought that maybe there was a defect in the air-conditioner, offered a discount, and breathed a sigh of relief when Paul told her no, it was not that bad.

  “I gave the cleaning lady some time off, by the way,” Paul said when he returned from shopping for the weekend. “So, we’ll need to clean up after ourselves as long as you’re here.”

  “No problem.” John was sitting in front of the TV watching the news. McCaine seemed to have successfully forced the Yamaichi Bank into bankruptcy and got the Japanese government involved in a financial scandal. They kept repeating a sequence of an interview with the finance minister, who kept bowing and asking for forgiveness with tear-filled eyes. It was said that a bank director had committed suicide. The disappearance of John Fontanelli over three weeks ago was mentioned only marginally. A special police task force was thoroughly looing into every lead they received. That it was a kidnapping seemed more than certain, but there had been no demands for ransom yet, at least not any credible ones. In the end, it basically sounded as if nothing whatsoever was known.

  “What are you going to do now?” Paul asked a while later. They were sitting at the dinner table in front of the window with the best view, and the food tasted great even though it was a simple meal. John wondered if there was anything his old friend was not good at.

  “Yesterday, before I fell asleep,” he told Paul as his eyes gazed over the sparkling river, “I was thinking about something. It was something outrageous, to be honest, and I’d rather forget it totally and forever, but I can’t for some reason.”

  “Sometimes thoughts have a habit of doing that.”

  “It’s just a suspicion.”

  “I thought so.”

  John started moving his glass around the table and rearranging his knife and fork into neat positions. “A few days … before McCaine sent me to Mexico,” he began hesitantly, “I started getting interested in the firm’s bookkeeping. Up until then I didn’t care about it, you understand? In the beginning I just had no idea about all those numbers, but I’ve learned this and that since. Well, anyhow … I started to ask questions.”

  “Exciting,” Paul said dryly. “Sounds like an episode from a soap opera.”

  “Paul, Fontanelli Enterprises paid one billion dollars for consultation fees. One billion dollars!”

  Paul looked at him confused. He sat there for a long moment before he burst out in a laugh. “So now you think that McCaine wants to get rid of you because of that? Because you caught him?”

  John looked at his friend grimly as he laughed. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, John …” He actually had tears in his eyes. “Basically, you’re still a shoemaker’s son from New Jersey, and a million dollars is more than anyone can imagine. Seriously, John, that is real funny …”

  “Do you mean that my suspicion is silly?”

  “Silly? More than silly … it goes beyond words.”

  John leaned back and waited for Paul to finish laughing. “Well, I’m sure glad that you’re having a fun time with me,” he said, “but I’d like a laugh too.”

  “John,” Paul said still wiping tears from his eyes and cheeks, “you got interested in the bookkeeping; so maybe you can give me a few important figures, and then we might be able to put this into perspective. How high, for instance, was the sales turnover last year?”

  John crinkled his forehead. “About two point four trillion dollars.”

  “The operating profit?”

  “That would be almost one hundred and eighty billion dollars.”

  Paul did some calculations in his head. “Well, not exactly mind-boggling, but I guess a pretty decent showing for a company that size. How many employees does Fontanelli Enterprises have altogether?”

  “Seven and a half million.”

  “More than Finland’s population, by the way. How high are the total personnel costs?”

  John shrugged his shoulders. “No idea.”

  “Hmm,” Paul said. “To be on the safe side, let’s say a half a trillion dollars per year. That’s about right for cheap labor countries.” He grinned. “And you think McCaine cares about a lousy billion? Given the dodgy plans he’s working on? Please …”

  John nodded. He was relieved to hear that. His sudden mistrust towards McCaine had been bothering him even though he was loath to admit it. “I think you’re right — about the shoemaker’s son. By now I’ve got used to a million. But one billion for consultations …? My God, I thought, that’s a monster sum …”

  “To me it sounds trivial,” Paul said shaking his head. “I’ve been wondering the whole time how McCaine is doing all of this. I mean, he is a monster of a manager, to create such a conglomerate in such a short time…”

  “He does have all my money available,” John argued.

  “Then think of how far you’d be if you were alone,” Paul countered. “No, it is quite an impressive accomplishment that hardly anyone else could copy. Okay, he might not be the most sympathetic person, but Henry Ford wasn’t either.” He thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single big boss who didn’t have at least some sort of quirk. I guess that’s the price they pay.”

  “Hmm,” John said. He still was not very satisfied. There was still something … some sort of detail that he could not get a grasp on, which was still important though. Some connection, but he had no idea where to look.

  “It is not all that difficult to imagine McCaine having to call on the help of consultants without first having a crisis as an excuse,” Paul said, and now he sounded as if he were giving a lecture on economic research to a room full of novice investors. “It is often the case that a person in McCaine’s position may get into a dangerous rut of not hearing enough critical voices and end up seeing his every decision as being infallible. This could make him lose touch with reality without even realizing it and then make more and more decisions that are nonsense or even downright dangerous. It seems he was aware of this danger. To keep a measure of criticism alive within a company is difficult, and in a conglomerate the size of Fontanelli Enterprises almost impossible. An external consultant can exercise the necessary critical eye and assure a balance, especially when getting paid for it. And for the management of critical projects it is often better to get an external decision maker who does not care if he is hated or not at the end of the day.”

  “I just had the feeling that we were financing the entire consulting industry,” John admitted, who had been listening only marginally.

  “Oh, not all of it but a large portion, no doubt. I’m not totally sure, but I think the combined yearly turnover in the consultation area is somewhere around forty or fifty billion dollars. What are some of the firms again? I suppose the bigger ones were just good enough, oh yeah … McKinsey, Anderson, KPMG …”

  “No, it was only one, Callum Consulting.”

  Paul was puzzled. “Callum? Never heard of them.”

  John crinkled his forehead. “Looks like you’re not up to date then.”

  “Guess so,” Paul agreed and got up. “Excuse me, but there is something I have to check.”

  He climbed up the spiral staircase that went into a small office beneath the roof. John followed him and they both watched the computer boot up. There w
as a nice view from up there too; you could see the bicycle paths and gardens.

  “There are a number of information bureaus that work for the IMF,” Paul explained while the computer connected to the Internet. “I will log-in on one of them. Actually, I’d have to ask you to look the other way while I enter the password.”

  “Anything else?” John grumbled.

  A homepage appeared with an impressive coat-of-arms. Paul typed in his access data, and then a notice appeared saying that a secure connection was being made. The loading icon circled endlessly.

  “Callum Consulting,” John said again. “Something about that rings a bell in my head. Callum … what does that mean?”

  Paul shrugged his shoulders. “I think it’s a name … a Scottish name, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “A first name?” Damn it, that was important for some reason. A dime dropped, but it got stuck on its way to the floor.

  Paul started to ask questions of his own. “In my first year at Harvard I shared a room with a guy named Callum,” he said. “He was pretty stuck-up. His dad was a successful lawyer, but can you believe I can’t think of his last name any more.”

  The log-in icon was still circling.

  “McKinley?” Paul guessed. “No, not McKinley.”

  John suddenly felt as if hot water flowed in his arteries. I’m not very good at dreaming up names for my firms. I always name them after family members. “McCaine,” escaped his lips.

  “No, not McCaine, that would have…”

  “McCaine’s father’s name was Philipp Callum McCaine,” John said. “That’s why Callum Consulting. His mother’s name is Ruth Earnestine, and his brokerage firm was called Earnestine Investment. He dissolved it, but I never asked him if he had another firm…”

  “What?” Paul asked blankly.

  “Just punch it in — Callum Consulting.”

  Then a new page appeared on the screen showing the search result for the last request. Callum Consulting was a business-consulting firm headquartered in Gibraltar. It was organized as a one-man firm with a grand total of ten employees and the sole boss and chief executive was Malcolm McCaine.

  It was barely three weeks until Christmas, and Arturo Sanchez wasn’t sure if he should love or hate the job he’d been given. “Wait here,” the lawyer told the driver of the little delivery van. The man wrinkled his nose and the lawyer understood why. It stank around here. And it did not get any better as he walked over to the garbage dump and started asking the pepenadores, the garbage-sifters, who were staring at him like he was a two-headed donkey.

  He finally made his arduous way through the dump, and located the crooked little sheet metal shack at the foot of the garbage mountain. He asked a young, overworked and filthy looking woman: “Are you Maricarmen Berthier?”

  And she said, “Yes.”

  Sanchez sighed with relief. Finally. “Did you save a man from the garbage dump about four weeks ago and take him in while he was sick?”

  She nodded reluctantly. “An American. My son found him,” she told him in Spanish. “I thought he would die of fever, but he did not die. Mother Mary saved him.” She lifted her hands. “But he is not here anymore. He went away one week ago.”

  “Yes, I know.” Arturo Sanchez looked around. “Can we go somewhere and …? Oh, what the heck.” He placed the briefcase on the closest stone slab and let the shiny locks snap open. He took a notepad and pencil out and handed them to the woman. “Please, write your name on this piece of paper.”

  She seemed to blush, but then wrote her name down. The lawyer took out the photocopy that had been given him and compared the handwriting. It was her, no doubt.

  “Señora Berthier,” he said, “the man’s name you took in is John Fontanelli, and he gave me the task of finding you. He wants to display his thanks to you for having saved his life. And because he is a wealthy man he wants to give you something.”

  A little boy came from out of nowhere and hid behind his mother’s skirt. Sanchez stopped and looked at the two standing there in the midst of all this poverty. They deserved what’s coming now, God knows.

  “Give something?” she asked with big eyes.

  Sanchez nodded and got out some documents. “It is an apartment in a new neighborhood in San Rosario, a certain amount of money for furniture, clothing, and whatever else you need and a nice monthly stipend for the rest of your life. Mr. Fontanelli wants me to tell you that he would be happy if you’d accept these gifts. Your son could go to school there,” he added.

  “Go to school?” she echoed wide-eyed. She looked round, as if for the first time she realized what dump –literally — she lived in, and looked disgusted by it.

  Sanchez put the documents back in the case. There would be time enough for that later. “I have a car up by the road,” he said. “If you wish, we could go right now.”

  $43,000,000,000,000

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1997 was a moist, chilly day in London. There was a thick fog over the city, which even swallowed the tops of the skyscrapers, made the silhouette of the Tower Bridge look like a bony skeleton and made Big Ben’s bells sound ghostly. It had rained last night, a cold, biting drizzle to announce the coming of winter. It was the sort of day when no one went outside unless they had to.

  The sun tried to peer through the fog around noon, looking like a white disk in the haze rising out of the broad Thames River. The city streets, lined with sober, old-fashioned facades and impressive buildings, were virtually empty except for a few watchmen with their collars turned up making their rounds, and a man here and there in his fine threads walking hastily to the Tube station. The doorman, at the entrance to the Fontanelli building looked up from his newspaper when one of London’s instantly recognizable taxis stopped in front of the steps.

  A man got out. He was wearing a dark-green waxed coat with a hood, and without giving the cab driver another glance, which the doorman knew almost everyone did, came walking towards the building. There was such determination to the way the man moved it was almost alarming. He seemed like a human tank with the intention of breaking through the front doors, despite the bulletproof glass. The doorman put the newspaper away and let his finger hover above the alarm button.

  He was relieved to see the man stop and punch in the access code, which every employee had to do when coming in after hours. But the lock did not click. Instead a little red lamp lit up on the front desk console: wrong code. The doorman watched with interest, though it might be best to call the security guards. Let them go out and take a closer look at the guy.

  The man tried to put in the code a second time, but it still didn’t work. Then he gave up and walked around the entrance directly to the window, knocked on the window, and pulled back his hood.

  “Mr. Fontanelli!” the doorman exclaimed.

  The boss himself! The man all of Central America was looking for. Many believed him dead, but there he was right outside the window! The doorman waved to him to let him know that he’d open up the door. Of course … immediately! He hurried around the console to the front doors, stuck his key card into the slot, and pulled the door open to let John in, along with a gush of moist, cold air.

  “Mr. Fontanelli, what a pleasure … I didn’t know … I thought that you …”

  “Yes, thank you,” John replied. “I’m doing fine.”

  The doorman was out of breath. “I’m sorry about the code, but Mr. McCaine had it cancelled, just to be sure …”

  “Please activate it again.”

  “I … well, he’s not here today, Mr. McCaine, I mean.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s in Copenhagen, you know, because of the awards …”

  The Gaea Prize,” John nodded. “I know. Say, how many security people are here today?”

  The doorman batted his eyelids. “Oh,” he said a bit surprised by the question, “I think … I suppose it’s the usual weekend crew. Twelve men, I think.”

  “Call them together,” John ordered. He pointed at
the red telephone at the doorman’s console. “I want ten men to accompany me. I want them to take along whatever key copies, tools and crowbars there are in this place.”

  The members of the string quartette wore smart tailcoats and were tuning their instruments. An older man in livery walked down the hall adjusting the chairs so they stood perfect straight rows. The lighting people were screwing around with their cables and light stands and going over details with the TV crews. Two stagehands were doing last-minute preparations with the stage sets and the artistic banner bearing the symbol of the Gaea prize.

  In all this bustle three African women in splendid costumes were trying to understand what the grand marshal wanted from them. The three women were representing this year's prize winner: they had started a women's initiative that accomplished an amazing reforestation project at the edge of the Sahel.

  McCaine sat in a chair in the very last row and watched the final preparations for tonight’s show. Christiansborg Palace is a sprawling, awe-inspiring gray building within sight of the harbor, and it was an appropriate venue for tonight’s event. After all, it was home to both the seat of the Folketing, the Danish parliament, as well as the Supreme Court, and the royal audience rooms left nothing to be desired as far as pomp and circumstance went. Unfortunately, they had not managed to get Her Royal Highness Margrethe II, by the grace of God, Queen of Denmark, to present the award. The task now fell to the senior judges. But at least the queen and prince consort would be attending the festivities, and McCaine had told the TV teams emphatically to show the royal pair on the TV screens as much as possible. They had sent out invitations to environmental groups around the world, most of which were enthusiastically accepted. The best hotels in Copenhagen had probably never heard so much debate about environmental protection as occurred that weekend.

  Fontanelli Enterprises had, relying on the experienced advice of public relations companies, imposed utmost restraint in the arrangement of the ceremony, and the signature dark-red f was extremely inconspicuous. McCaine was there to represent John Fontanelli, whose whereabouts were sadly still unknown, but would give only a short welcome speech.