He watched, satisfied that everything was going just fine, until a secretary appeared next to him. “A call from London,” she said and handed him a note.
At the very moment McCaine was being handed the note, John Fontanelli was standing in front of his office with the ten security guards, armed with tools and crowbars. “Break it open!” he ordered them.
McCaine read the note. “Fontanelli?” he hissed and looked at the woman disbelievingly.
She nodded. “That’s what he said.
“In London?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
At this every moment the heavy door in London gave way and flew open with splinters flying. John Fontanelli marched right in behind the security men. He pointed to the drawers and compartments of the desk and the file cabinets standing against the wall, and told the men: “Break them open — all of them!”
“Call the airport,” McCaine ordered with a whisper. “I want the plane ready to fly immediately. I need to get back as fast as possible.”
John sat there and thumbed through thick books and read the names of companies he never heard of before, stared at economic terms that he didn’t understand, looked at incomprehensible lines and pages full of puzzling numbers, laboriously deciphered notes and key words written in McCaine’s crude handwriting, scanned through faxes, contracts, organization charts, and read copies of letters. All this, he thought, just to end up sitting here piling one folder on top of another without having understood any of it.
He never thought it would be difficult. His almost manic determination was fading by the minute as he sat behind McCaine’s desk, the drawers showing the bent and twisted metal and splintered wood where they had been broken open. The damaged office door hung on only one hinge. He could hear the guards talking in low tones, gossiping about the storm of activity he had unleashed just half an hour ago. The storm was over. All that John felt now was despondency; that he had behaved like a total idiot.
He looked up, beyond the white glass wall of nothingness and saw the ghostly apparitions of the neighboring buildings seemingly mocking him. What had he expected to find? Or to put it another way how and why had he ever expected to find something incriminating? There might well indeed be details of the greatest conspiracy, the most vile intrigue or the most scandalous fraud somewhere within all these papers — but he would never be the wiser.
The filing cabinet was a monster when all the doors were opened. John studied the hanging files, all the folders neatly labeled in an awe-inspiring order that was hard to reconcile with McCaine’s personality, especially if you took a look at his car, or his random choice of ties. But a look at this highly organized system of files, evidence of a merciless discipline, revealed a sense of purpose, an almost monstrous obsession with a mission for which no sacrifice was too great, personal or otherwise.
Take, for example, the file on Exxon; John touched the hanging binder wondering what he might expect to find in it, but suddenly decided to leave it alone when he saw, hanging half in the shadow in an upper tier, a file with the title; Fontanelli, John.
He took the file out of the cabinet and opened it. He looked at his life, summed up in a neatly typed report from the Dalloway detective agency. He read:
John Salvatore Fontanelli, DOB: 1 September, 1967 in Bridgewater, NJ. Son of a shoemaker, Francesco Fontanelli and Gianna Fontanelli, maiden name Ventura. Two older brothers; Cesare, born 1958, and Lino, born 1961, both without children. Father, born 1936 as an only child of Enrico Fontanelli. Fled from political persecution under Mussolini to US … And so on and so forth. Currently employed as a pizza delivery boy at Super Pizza Service, owner; G. Murali. No recognizable ambition to change his lot.
This Dalloway, whoever that may be, sure had hit the nail on the head. John flipped the page. He saw copies of his report cards, photos of him biking through Manhattan, even copies of his miserable bank statements, back in the days when had still had that account. There were files on his parents, his brothers, and, look at this: Helen had been in psychiatric therapy for three years! Cesare never breathed a word about it. And there was Lino’s pilot’s license. Lost in thought, John leafed through the pages until he got to the last, which has the part about his Lino’s infertility — that one word that had decided the war between brothers.
Oh well. He closed the binder and was about to put it back when his eyes caught the title of another binder, behind where his own had hung.
“Well, now looky here,” John said to himself in a quiet voice. He took it out, opened it and began to read.
Even the first pages grabbed his attention — it was written in Italian, but the crucial word in the short sentence was marked in red, along with an exclamation point in the margin. John read it once and then he read it again, over and over, because he would have preferred to believe he was losing his grip on the language than believe what he was reading and what his brain thought it understood. A part of the world as he knew it was collapsing in slow-motion … bit by bit as he read and reread it. This was just too unbelievable.
It was a convoy of black limousines — an army of men in gray suits. Malcolm McCaine, CEO of the largest company in the history of humanity and the best-paid manager in the world, approached the main entrance in combat mode and the doorman hastened to open the front door for him.
“Where is he?” he hissed.
“Upstairs, sir, Mr. McCaine …” the old man in uniform coughed.
“Get me the elevator.”
While the man hurried away, McCaine told his entourage: “I will take care of this personally. You wait for me here.”
Then the gong sounded and the shiny elevator door swished open. The security men stood stiffly as McCaine got out of the elevator. A few of them looked as if they were about to spring to attention and salute him. McCaine ignored them. He was concentrated solely on the broken door hanging from a solitary hinge. He marched towards it, pushed it out of his way and entered his office; the true center of power of the world for the past two years.
John Fontanelli sat behind the desk with slumped shoulders. The desk drawers had been broken open, as well as the filing cabinets. Files were lying around in heaps; the carpet was covered with wood splinters.
“May I ask,” McCaine asked, trying his best to keep his composure, “what is going on here?”
John Fontanelli looked up, looking tired and weary. His eyes sunk in his head, as if he had seen a ghost — or even worse, as if some supernatural creature had told him when and how he would die. He began to talk, but had to clear his throat and start again. “I came to find out what’s been going on here.”
McCaine folded his arms and stared around him. “Are you responsible for this? Did you have all my things broken open?”
“Of course. Who else?” John simply said.
“May I ask why? And may I ask,” he went on angrily, “what in the hell you’re doing here? Where did you suddenly spring from when the entire world thinks you’ve been abducted in Mexico and possibly dead?”
John rubbed his chin. “Dead … yes,” he said pensively. “It was a close call.” With a weary motion he reached for a file ling in front of him on the desk and shoved it towards McCaine. “Do you know what this is?”
McCaine gave it a brief glance. “No.”
“It’s a dossier I found in your filing cabinet. Right behind the one you have on me, by the way.” He turned the file around so that McCaine could read it better. “Which is logical, considering that it’s all in alphabetical order.”
The file’s title was Fontanelli, Lorenzo.
“So?” McCaine barked.
John opened the file. “The first document in here,” he explained with a sigh, “is a medical report. Similar to the one you have on my brother Lino, Lord knows how. The medical report is in Italian, but one part is clearly marked, by your own hand I suppose, which highlights the one crucial element.” John tapped on the spot marked in red. “It says here bee venom allergy — danger of possible anap
hylactic shock.”
McCaine only stared at him without saying a word. His mere presence in the fading light was intimidating. He seemed to fill the entire room and capable of crushing anyone in it.
“I’m an idiot,” said John. “I confess it. You can make me believe just about anything. I ask no questions, discover no inconstancies, and I especially can’t see through deceptions. I’m so naïve that it must hurt trying not to laugh at me. An idiot!” He took the file and set it down before him. “But with all the facts in front of me, clearly and unambiguously, and if you give me enough time and maybe even hit me round the head a few times, then even I can understand what is going on.” He stood up with effort, as if he had a ton weight was on his shoulders. “You made preparations for twenty-five years for that fateful date. Just as the Vacchis had done, you kept the possible heirs under surveillance. You watched me, and after Lorenzo was born, you watched him too. You found out what sort of person he was, how he was developing, what he had planned for his life.” John laughed bitterly. “Lorenzo’s bad luck was his intelligence, the fact that he was too independent, too clever. He was a wunderkind, award-winning, impressive, promising, and defiant. You saw him as a boy you could never have tamed. Lorenzo was someone who would have developed and followed his own plans to fulfill the prophecy, and they would have been good plans, too. He was a math genius and economic calculations would have been simple to him. He would have been quick to learn how to handle the money and power. Lorenzo would have had no use for you. All your nice plans, all your preparations would have been for nothing if Lorenzo had inherited the trillion dollars. That’s why you decided it would be better to let the simpleton shoemaker’s son from New Jersey become the heir.”
McCaine still said nothing. The light waned, but there was still enough coming through the big windows to see that John Fontanelli’s eyes were full of tears.
“Lorenzo Fontanelli was the true heir,” John whispered, “and you killed him. It should have been him … the heir to the prophecy that the vision had chosen, the man who could have saved humanity’s future. He had everything he needed. I knew it the whole time. It is not me, and it never was … I was only a pawn in your game, McCaine. You killed the true heir, because you wanted to go through with your plans.”
His low, quiet voiced echoed strangely in the dark corners of the room, like the hissing of snakes.
“John,” McCaine said slowly, “you are talking nonsense.”
John Fontanelli seemed not to hear him. “I don’t know how you managed to do it. How do you kill someone with bees? I see a glass jar, one with a screw-on lid and inside the jar a nice, fresh, sweet pear, and maybe a few small air holes in the lid for the bees. I see a man holding a skinny boy and forcing the pear full of bees into his mouth. I don’t know if that was how you did it. Did you have contact with Lorenzo? Did you find an excuse to talk to him, to find out what you could do with him? Maybe you got stung too, but so what? You knew that Lorenzo would die from the beestings, just like you know about everyone else you’re dealing with. And he did die, just in time — just before the deadline and in a neat and unsuspicious way.”
John stopped talking and in the ensuing silence only his breathing could be heard, like subdued sobbing.
McCaine cleared his throat distinctly. “No, John, that’s not how it works. Before you make such serious accusations against someone, you must be sure that you can prove them.”
“Oh,” John nodded, absentmindedly.
“And you can’t, John,” McCaine added. “You can’t prove a thing.”
John took in a lungful of air. “Where were you on the day that Lorenzo died?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” McCaine said annoyed. “I can’t remember that. But I’m sure I could find out from one of my old appointment calendars.”
“The case can be re-opened.”
“There is no case. You’re fantasizing, John.”
“It would be possible to check the old booking records of the airlines to see when you were in Italy.” He paused. “But if I think how easily I entered the US with a fake passport, this would probably be a waste of time, wouldn’t it?”
McCaine nodded. “You can’t prove anything, because there’s nothing to prove.”
“You’re right. I can’t prove it,” John said and turned on the desk lamp. “But, there’s something else that you did, something really stupid that I can prove.” John’s voice suddenly sounded like steel, and he pulled out a sheet of paper, slapping it on his desk like a panther displaying its claws. “You awarded contracts to Callum Consulting worth a billion dollars … a company that belongs to you! Every court in the world would at least charge you with embezzlement and thus consider you to have committed such a serious breach of your contract of employment as CEO that an immediate termination would be absolutely justified.”
McCaine looked around. As if from nowhere, security guards suddenly stood by the door and by the wall behind him. Turning on the desk lamp had been the signal John had arranged with them before McCaine’s arrival.
“Malcolm, you are fired,” John said like ice. “If you have any personal items in your desk, you may take them now. These gentlemen will then accompany you to the exit.” John looked at McCaine with contempt. “You already know the procedure.”
$44,000,000,000,000
AND THEN HE was alone. He was alone when he answered the questions from the press. He was alone as he sat within the halls of marble trying to run a global conglomerate he knew little about. He read documents alone, met with employees, held conferences, and made decisions. He sat alone at the giant table in the giant conference room, eating lunch and looking at the wintery panorama of London’s financial district, over which he was the solitary ruler.
John told the press more or less exactly how his abduction had happened. He was silent about his return to Great Britain, however, saying only that a friend had helped him and that this explanation would have to do. He mentioned meeting with Bleeker and told them that he said he was working for other unknown men. And he told them about his weeks living in the garbage dump.
At those moments it would grow strangely silent in the room, something unusual at press conferences. “I hired a lawyer to find the woman,” he told the silent crowd. “She will be able to substantiate my statements, including, for instance, that I was bound by my hands and feet when she found me. However, that was not why I sent the lawyer to find her, but to show here my thanks.” He told them about the apartment he gave her, and the annuity for life, to the delight of the tabloids. He only disappointed them by refusing to reveal the woman’s name.
John was visited by Interpol officers who took his statements, but told him that there was little hope in finding the abductors. The only thing they could hope for was to catch Bleeker by some coincidence, and they needed incriminating information in their files at Interpol in case this should happen. He did find out from the officers that Ursula had never been to Mexico, and that she knew nothing about supposedly being there, and that they were still seeking the missing bodyguard, known by the name of Foster, who had replaced Marco Benetti and subsequently disappeared mysteriously.
That had been the only change of pace during the past week. Besides the fact that he worked like he never worked before in his life. He arrived at the office at seven in the morning, and when he realized this was not early enough he arrived at six and then at five. He read mountains of letters, contracts and notes until nine, and after that he had one meeting after another until late into the night. He ordered people to make reports. He gave instructions. He had projects, building plans, and financial reports explained to him, had problem-solving sessions and made decisions, one after another, said yes or no or asked for alternatives. He sat at the head of the large shimmering table with the city’s silhouette at his back and saw fifty pairs of directors’ eyes look back at him, every one of them at least ten years older than he. He told them what he wanted, demanded, imagined, and then dismissed them with a nod
of his head, because the next conference was scheduled to start. At first all this had been exciting to him — pure adrenaline. Everything was important, and he had it under control. He carried the world’s burden on his shoulders. At times it was better than sex, and he began to understand why so many people got hooked on careers, power, and influence. It was a pleasant feeling to get up from behind the desk and be exhausted after an eventful day, to be surrounded by the same darkness he had woken up in that morning, the long hours. It was rather like a sports match or a night spent making love.
Yet, after a few days of this he felt it begin to drain his strength. It got harder to get out of bed, he saw rings under his eyes when he looked into the bathroom mirror, he needed large quantities of strong coffee to get going, and even more to keep going. Before long, it was past midnight by the time his Rolls drove out of the parking garage, and he always fell asleep on the way to his estate. He started getting irritated during meetings, easily lost his patience, got annoyed and rough. Though his people flinched and tried to blame themselves for their powerful boss’s bad mood, John knew that he himself was the problem, that he was no longer in control of his emotions. He felt this was starting to get dangerous, but had only a vague idea what it might mean. The entire conglomerate belonged to him down to the last pencil stub; he was in no danger of losing his job. And he was so rich that even if he were to lose billions every day, he would still die a wealthy man.
Mindful of one of McCaine’s mottos that money compensates for everything, even a lack of talent, he discretely let one of the best management consultants in the world instruct him for a few days. He began to set priorities. He accepted no report longer than one page. He demanded that no one come to him with a problem without having a possible solution. He held meetings standing up, so they did not last so long. He practiced the art of proper delegating, he listened to the consultant’s suggestions.
One Trillion Dollars Page 65
