“That would be a major problem for me,” Louis answered, his thoughts drifting away for a second.
“Louis, you will never create a market otherwise! There is no market without competitors. Of course you want to be the best, but if you are alone no one will ever understand your product and you will not go anywhere. Imagine if tomorrow you discover the best cosmetic product ever, the recipe for eternal life.
If you do not tell the market, it simply does not exist. As soon as you say you have this new killer product, rest assured a flock of competitors will pop up, pretending they also have it.
Some of them will be only wannabes, looking to get their hands on money, but some others will end up with similar products. The point is, you have the market! And market defines value, the amount you can sell your product for, and your reputation, too.”
“I like your example. Do you really think you can sell it on the market? I mean, the potion of eternal life?”
“Ok, I agree. Maybe I went too far, but you can certainly find something that makes you look forty when you are seventy, or perhaps gives you an extra twenty years added to your life, or extends your sexual potency….you are the expert here.”
“George, I worked for years at L’Oreal before setting up shop here. I can guide you, if you want to enter the biotech field and you would be surprised to learn how reasonable my fees would be.
Nevertheless, why would you balk at the idea of launching the potion of eternal life into the market? You plan to put a phone in the pocket of each of us, after all. Maybe, with time, your techno wizards will also manage to fit a small computer inside. And so why not the potion of eternal life?”
George was amused at the idea and started staring at his glass of Brunello, while pondering an answer. Dora suddenly jumped in to prevent him from thinking too long.
“Immortality is not appealing enough for you?”
“The problem is,” George conceded, “I am not really sure we would have something called a market after it. Forget about all the problems that would arise - although there would be many, I believe I am rich enough not to care too much.
My problem is, I simply find it appalling to work for the next several thousand years with the same guys of KPCB. They would be corrupted by power, and even worse, I would be dragged down with them.
On the other hand, I take your point. After mobile communication, I promise you my next venture will be in biology. Consider yourself enrolled as a consultant. Money is no issue.”
George kept his promise, and from 1988 he would regularly ask my advice about requests for fundings he was receiving from biotech scientists and he would take me on regular tours of the most promising biotech labs in America.
Unknowingly, he was giving me far more than money. He was allowing me to check how far away other researchers were from Telomerax and where genetics were heading.
Then, towards the end of 1996, he told me about an experiment that had been done in Scotland, where a sheep named Dolly had been cloned out of the cells of her mother. The experiment would be publicized the following year because a number of parties, from governments to big pharmaceutical companies, were evaluating the results and the possible applications. George had been called in, because by now he was one of the most successful and respected investors in the biotech sector.
He was not as upbeat as usual. He told me he felt uneasy, like we were crossing some kind of invisible line.
“The problem is, Louis, we cannot help crossing it. Yet, I feel increasingly fearful. I wonder what will happen if we continue in this direction.”
“George, I get your point. But before you continue, there is something you have to know…”
He was not particularly shocked by the disclosure. He pretended he had guessed it in our conversation eight years before. I think he also had gotten used to worse things, from the DNA projects he had seen in his activity of venture capitalist.
“George, we have to keep this discovery under wraps for a while. And I need you to keep watching what’s going on in the sector. We cannot afford a competitor here.”
“But what if somebody else publicly discovers it? Or what if they discover us? “
“Do not worry, George. You and I are good guys, we do not have the guts to push the limits. However, I do know of someone, and she has what we are missing.”
Chapter 9
“Helena Rodrigo Fatima would become a key part of our team. She was a customer of ‘Le Jardin’ since 1989, and she had heard about us from one of her colleagues from the London branch of Lehman Brothers.
She decided to give it a try for a weekend break. I was struck by this very energetic, yet very severe woman whose business card carried the title of “Corporate Investment Vice President”, and who was not even thirty.”
“She was proud of her humble origins and gave some hints of her troubled history, but it was not until 1996 that she started to open up to Dora. During one of the dinners, she told my wife of the traumas in her family. She was born in the ghetto of Mexico City, sometime in 1961, and she managed to attend a tiny Catholic school until age eleven, when her family was slaughtered in a drug war.
Her brother was a low key pusher who tried to cheat his boss. As soon as the boss found out, he sent the death gang to her home to give an example to the rest of the dealers. Luckily for Helena, that afternoon she was at school, preparing for the summer examinations.”
“When I came back home,” she recalled, “I found a small crowd of neighbors screaming. I immediately froze in expectation of what I was about to see.
I went past the people who recognized me and they fell completely silent. All three of my family members laid on the floor, soaked in blood. They had shot my father on the doorstep, straight in the heart. My brother was trapped inside. They made him kneel and shot him in the face, right in front of my mother. They had run out of rounds, so they cut her throat. And they would have done the same to me. Before leaving, they told neighbors that this was the law of Conchito Aguirre, the local boss. They knew the police would do nothing, even if someone dared to tell.”
“The missionary fathers managed to send me away to a boarding school in Guadalajara, where I completed high school with the highest marks. I wanted to get out of this environment with all my might, and studying and learning were all I could bet on, but I had no money to continue to university, so in 1978 I was back in Mexico City. It was like returning to hell.”
“Why didn’t the priests finance your college? You were good at school, after all,” asked Dora.
“They had no money. If they had sent me to college, they would have had to refuse admission to primary school to ten children and leave them on the streets. I do not blame them at all. You know why? They told me the truth. It was a triage.
I was an adult and I had better chances than when I entered school. I also knew they were honest. For two years I helped them out with their records and I was aware of how low their finances were. The only thing I disappointed them in, even with all the prayers and good intentions, was my crave for revenge. The more they preached about forgiving, the more I hated those who exterminated my family. How could I take pardon on them?”
“Back in the capital, I quickly decided my survival strategy. I was already very attractive at the time, petite but very well proportioned and athletic, and I realized the effect that my flashy Hispanic eyes had on men. So I started to go to some high-end clubs where I eventually selected my prey. I became the mistress of Emiliano Rojas, the son of a big heroin and cocaine dealer. To get to the point, I was a bitch, and a very clever one at that.”
Dora was shocked by the abruptness.
“Helena, it takes me months to get my patients to admit they married their partner just to please their father or mother, but you…”
“If you start lying to yourself, you lose sight on your target, and you cannot lie to others when you do not have a fixed story. My target was to get my revenge and get out of that place forever. I managed the firs
t one, but not the second.”
“Unlike other girls at the night club, I would not spend my money on dresses and jewels but rather on the fees and books to study Economics. My boyfriend noticed I was not only very enjoyable in bed but I also had a good brain attached to my body, so he started asking me some advice about money laundering and where to invest the clean cash. By the time I graduated in 1983, I was not only running the accounts of the clan, but I was sent to the United States to specialize in corporate finance and international tax law.”
“In 1986, I graduated and landed a job at the Mexican branch of Chase Manhattan Bank. My responsibility was overseeing the clan investments and bringing in new customers, many of whom belonged to narcos gangs. It was in the posh office of Chase that one day Paco Aguirre showed up, the first and only son of Conchito. I felt my revenge was within reach, at last. And it was much easier than I expected.”
“While my boyfriend had a deep commitment to the family dynasty and his duty to continue expanding the business, Paco was the typical ignorant second generation narco living under a flow of money and cocaine. I quickly became his object of desire and Emiliano immediately noticed. On a Saturday night at the club I drank a few more tequilas; not too many to lose control, not too few to make people realize I was playing. I could feel the eyes of both Emiliano and Paco on me, their desires exploding.
Then I let Paco approach me in the club’s private rooms just to start shouting as soon as his hands started grabbing my dress. Emiliano quickly stepped in and slapped me in the face, but I was not to be blamed too much, after all I had demonstrated to whom I belonged. The body of Paco was left mutilated the morning after, in front of the main gate of the villa of Conchito Aguirre, who could not claim any revenge because his son had done the wrong thing and the Rojas were higher than he was in the narco hierarchy.
I see you are not scandalized by this, Dora. Then I will tell you another thing. Getting my revenge made me feel good. I felt a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Yet poor Paco was not guilty for the death of my family, at the very most he was guilty of being an idiot.”
“No, Helena, I am not scandalized. Reality is, you can overcome resentment with replacement victims. Although it is horrible, it works. Especially if you have good reasons to believe that the victim is somehow guilty. It's the wrath of the righteous.”
“In my case, I was indeed in the right. Having achieved revenge, I had to plot a way out of the narcos, but I could not spontaneously break up with Emiliano. So I let finance and money occupy more and more space in our conversations until his passion faded away and he was looking at me just as a very reliable assistant. Then came the offer from Lehman to go to London to work at the emerging market finance desk.
The deal with the Rojas was straightforward: I could leave Mexico and no longer be involved in illegal activities. On the other hand, I would become their trusted investment guardian. Not only for them, but also for affiliate gangs in other countries and if needed I could ask for more special services, if you know what I mean.”
“Well, not really. I am not sure I want to understand that.”
“Dora, when you grow up in the midst of violence and eventually get out of it through violence, you learn that there is a certain logic you have to abide by. Gratuity is the first thing you have to avoid. Anyway, in the first months in London I was stalked by a guy that would follow me in the metro from downtown to my house in Tottenham Court Road. I waited for the monthly business meeting with one of the head cartel representatives. At the time, they were buying Italian treasuries by the millions and after we settled all the deals, I told them about my little problem. They asked just a few questions and made no comments.
The next three days, the guy was still following me. On the fourth day, he got blocked by a pack of hooligans who stumbled out from a pub, drunk. It lasted a few minutes. It looked like one of the occasional street brawls, but I noticed that all the members of the mob were hitting him except one, who kept whispering something in his ears. My stalker was left unconscious on the street, and I did not see him ever again.”
“Helena, I think there is more to you than the cynical narco-turned-banker character. Why would you then finance all these organizations, that try to get children out of the streets?”
“Several reasons. Easy answer; it worked for me. It saved me and made me who I am today. I really want to return the favor and make sure others get a chance. And let me underline it once again: I have no guilt whatsoever, for what I did in the past. I wanted it, it made me happy, and I deserve happiness.
At the same time, I feel reality is so wrong. Not so much for the evil, but for human ignorance. Think about it, if twenty five years ago the death gang of Conchito Aguirre had limited themselves to kill only my brother, all would have stopped there. There would be no backfire. He had done the wrong thing and he had paid the price set by the laws of the slums. But they went too far. And that triggered my search for revenge. So it looks like the world, our society - I do not know how to call it exactly - even the simple way we interact with each other has deep flaws, and it probably can’t be fixed, but I need to give it a try. I would feel ashamed if I didn’t, now that I earn one million dollars a month.
But I realize it’s like building a cathedral in the Middle Ages. If I am lucky I will maybe see some walls being erected during my lifetime, but for sure not the finished product.”
“Well, Helena, I am happy you are here. You will be surprised by how good we are at taking care of our customers. I need you to talk with my husband, before leaving. He has a generous offer waiting for you.”
Chapter 10
“Louis, the team was ready by the late nineties of the last century. What were your plans? What was your primary goal at the time?”
“I held the first meeting with Tarek, Valerio, Helena, and George in the summer of 1999. Some of the members already knew each other, like Helena and George, but no one was aware they all had access to Telomerax. The agenda was always focused around two main points; if and how to take Telomerax public, and if anyone had spotted any threats to our group, how to address it.
During the first meetings, we determined that in order to go public we first needed a better understanding of all the possible consequences, and a detailed plan to address them in the most effective way. After this was settled, I asked for each member to vote unanimously on certain subjects.
I had no special voting rights. My vote would be counted like the others. Our first poll’s results stated there would be no fixed dates for the meetings. We would meet at least once a year, possibly in different locations, or anytime one of us had something relevant to share with the group. Another point of agreement was that the best time to go public had to be one when economic and political tensions were low, as everybody was conscious that dropping a bomb like Telomerax in a geopolitically-tense environment could have horrible consequences. It was clear that this opportunity window would be very short, a few years at most, and it would pop up once every few decades. This led the team to split between the pessimists and the optimists, and it was a good thing.”
“Who were the pessimists?”
“You should have guessed by now! Tarek and Valerio made it clear they had no hope in the world. They believed that the right time would never come. They thought that the affairs of mankind were in such a dire state that we would have to wait centuries for a revelation, unless we wanted to create a catastrophe.
On the other side, Helena and George, driven maybe by their New World optimism, saw the possibility coming in the near future. They presumed in less than twenty years. This left Dora and me on the needles to make a final decision.”
“How did the poll on taking Telomerax public, go?”
“We held it in 2000, as both the economic and political situations seemed to be going steady, with a wave of optimism that reminded me of the beginning of the nineties. The big pusher was Helena, but she realized she needed to do some research on it so she asked Geor
ge to work with her. Remember that, at the time, George was getting started in the biotech sector so he went through Helena to get introduced at Lehman and leverage their macroeconomic and political intelligence.
He pretended to have a lead on a product that would increase the average lifespan by thirty years. However, he wanted to have a detailed report of all the consequences, such as: extension of retirement age, ethical debate, and so on, before seeking further capital funding.
That’s why he knocked at Lehman’s doors. Of course, if interested, Lehman could take part in the venture.”
“What was the outcome? Did Lehman end up investing in your idea?”
“Believe it or not, the vice president told Helena that they had more interesting projects on their hands and could not invest in yet another startup, so they would reconsider it in a few months. A few months later, as soon as Helena and George were considering to reapproach Lehman, September 11th occurred.”
“And this made everything more difficult…”
“Indeed. In the meeting we held in May 2002, we all thought we had missed the opportunity presented at the start of the new millennium. We held the meeting in New York, and when Tarek told us about all the new security measures that were being enforced just to get his visa approved, we understood we had to wait for a major political change before reconsidering the decision.
This meant going dormant until a new President was chosen in the US. We also felt we had to be more cautious and be prepared to change our identities within the next decade. George and Helena were known at Lehman, so they would be the first to make the move.
Helena left Lehman in 2004 and joined a hedge fund stationed in Singapore, which specialized in emerging markets. She did not join as Helena Rodrigo Fatima, though, but as a newly graduated twenty-six-year-old named Rosa Montero Gutierrez, with a PhD in Economics. Let me continue calling her Helena, otherwise the rest of the interview will get very confusing.”
The Last Enemy - A history of the present future - 1934-2084 Page 5
