One Trillion Dollars

by Andreas Eschbach

  “Open it,” the cardinal told him. “It’s signed.”

  “How nice,” John mumbled and flipped through the pages until he got to the flyleaf. It was scrawled full with a marker, but John couldn’t read a single word. “Thank you very much.” He closed it and laid it before him on the table.

  The cardinal folded his hands grandly. “John, you will soon be the richest man on earth. Many people will come to offer you investment possibilities for your money. To get right to the point, I’m here to ask you to donate a part of your fortune to charities.”

  At least he didn’t beat around the bush, and he didn’t seem to want to wait for John’s reaction. He was handed a folder by his assistant and pulled out photos of children, most of them dark skinned, who were sitting at looms, or carrying baskets filled with bricks, or working with wet balls of cloth in dark cellars. “Child labor is still common all over the globe and hundreds of thousands of children work under conditions that can only be described as slavery. They are sold by parents who cannot feed them in exchange for a few dollars off their debts. Most of the children will remain in this situation for the rest of their lives. Since the Holy Father is very concerned for the wellbeing of children all over the world, he has tasked me with purchasing the freedom of as many children as possible, to free them from slavery.”

  “Slavery?” John echoed and stared at the photos. “There’s still slavery?”

  “It isn’t called that. The official description for their plight is work to re-pay their parent’s debts. But the two are basically the same.” The cardinal unfolded his hands and spread the fingers unassumingly. “Even a few million dollars could work miracles…”

  At this moment the door was pulled open and a breathless Gregorio stuck his head in. “John, Eduardo!” he gasped. “Quick, come here. You must see this … on CNN … the latest news broadcast … unbelievable! I beg your pardon, Your Eminence…”

  Confused, John and Eduardo looked at each other.

  “It seems to be important,” the cardinal said with a kind smile. “Go ahead, I’ll wait.”

  So they went, and both were more concerned about Gregorio’s health than whatever might be on the news. They followed the gasping man up the stairs to the small salon on the third floor. The widescreen TV was displaying the CNN logo and a female reporter was just finishing an interview on location with a few nondescript comments. Then commercials. The Padrone sat in a large easy chair, bowed forward with his chin resting on his hands.

  Gregorio stood behind the couch trying to catch his breath, leaning on the backrest and shaking his head all the while. Then he said still breathing hard, “What a disgrace, what a disgrace!”

  John stepped over to Alberto, who stood there quietly following the events with a large drink in his hand. “What is going on?”

  “Your brother Lino has a son out of wedlock from an affair he had four years ago,” Alberto said. “If this is true, then the boy is the rightful heir of the Fontanelli fortune.”

  $7,000,000,000,000

  HE HAD REALLY done it. It all played out exactly the way she thought it would. Susan Winter turned down the TV, picked up the phone, placed the note with the number on the table, and just stared at it. She would have preferred to wait a bit longer, but if she ever wanted to put what she knew to use then it would have to be now.

  Bad luck in love, good luck in gambling. She was about to go all in. She dialed the phone number as if it was the winning lottery number.

  The phone rang, and she held her breath.

  “Yeah?” A deep, resonant, and very relaxed male voice answered.

  “My name is Susan Winter,” she began and hated her squeaky voice and the queasy feeling in her stomach, her damn fear. “You received information from me three weeks ago about John Fontanelli and his family. I just watched the news on CNN and wanted to tell you that I know what it is you have planned.”

  “Where did you get this number?” the voice asked in a dull monotone.

  “I’m a detective,” Susan told him. “It’s my job.”

  “I see. Then tell me, what am I planning to do, in your professional opinion?”

  Susan told him.

  When she was finished she felt as if her entire body had been squeezed dry, and she could not have uttered another word, not for a million dollars. She closed her eyes and waited for the response — a scoffing laugh or angry threats, depending on whether she had guessed right or wrong.

  The man only laughed a low chuckle; it sounded almost like an acknowledgement. “Not bad,” he said, and she could almost hear the grin. “I admit that I had underestimated you, Miss Winter. What is it that you hope to accomplish with this phone call? Money, I suppose, to keep your discovery to yourself?”

  Susan took a deep breath, swallowed hard and said with a quavering voice: “Something like that.”

  “We can be honest with each other. You want hush money. Of course we can do that, but I have to ask myself if I can’t make you a better offer.”

  “Better for whom?”

  “For the both of us, Miss. Winter. How much do you earn at your current job?”

  “Eighty thousand,” She told him without thinking about it. It was, in fact, seventy thousand last year, but with the bonuses she always said eighty thousand.

  “I will pay you ten times that amount with the possibility of an increase if you quit your job and work for me.”

  She didn’t think she heard him properly. How utterly unprofessional. “W-What?” She almost yelled it into the phone.

  “If you were able to find out my phone number,” the calm voice said at the other end, “then I have no doubt that you found out a lot more about me. And your analysis of my intentions shows that you are clearly good at your job. I think you’re wasting your talents by only spying on cheating husbands and disgruntled employees. So let’s not beat around the bush. The fact is that I’ve been looking for an analyst with your capabilities for years. A starting allowance of eight hundred thousand is a bit high, but not by that much. We could consider it a part of the hush money. To be very clear; if you had demonstrated your skills to me sooner, then I would’ve hired you away from your detective agency and bribed someone else ages ago.”

  It’s not that the conversation was going so wrong; it just wasn’t going the way she had intended. What she thought would be blackmail ended up turning into a job offer.

  “Miss. Winter? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, I am, still thinking.” And what if this is a trick? What sort of analyst did he have in mind? And her? Was her work worth eight hundred thousand a year?

  “Miss. Winter, one question: Do you love your current job so much that a change is out of the question?”

  “Ahem — no. No, absolutely not. I mean, yes, I could imagine changing jobs.” That was a lie. In all her life she never thought about having another job.

  “Then I’d like to make a suggestion, Miss. Winter. I will come to New York and then we can meet. Shall we meet at the same place as the first time, on Tuesday at seven p.m.? To keep things simple. Would this suit you?”

  “Yes,” Susan nodded, “sure, Tuesday at seven.”

  “Fine. I know of a nice, quiet restaurant nearby, where we can discuss the details. I will bring along some papers and a contract. And you can start composing your letter of resignation. When you’ve read my contract, you’ll need it, I promise.” He made a pause, and then added, “I know there is no need to say this, but just so we understand one another, if you should tell anyone what you found out about me, then my offer will, of course, no longer apply.”

  “Yes.” Susan swallowed hard. “Of course.”

  But he had already hung up.

  Bit by bit enough information came together to form a full picture of what had happened. A bunch of minor comments, short reports and summaries brought light to the darkness. They found out that Lino had an affair with a woman from Philadelphia four years ago, whose name was Deborah Peterson. She worked as a secret
ary at a law firm. They met during an air show that Deborah and a few of her friends attended. Lino’s task had been to help out with the spectators. The affair was intense, secret, and brief. It only lasted a month, after which they went their separate ways and never saw each other again. Not until Deborah contacted Lino through a lawyer. Lino didn’t know that Deborah had been pregnant at the time of their separation, and she never told anyone who the father was.

  “I didn’t want to harm his career,” the delicate woman with blond locks said into the camera. Her son, Andrew, a beautiful child with dark curly hair, was sitting on her lap didn’t look amused. The reporter was already calling him the trillion dollar kid.

  Lino was also interviewed, standing on his lawn in Wrightstown. “I’m very happy to have a son,” he admitted with a twitch. “I was very moved when I heard about it. It’s not about the money. I don’t want the money for me, I only want the best for my son. Do you understand?”

  “Will you and Deborah get married now?” the reporter asked.

  Lino chewed on his lower lip. “I don’t know yet. I can’t say.”

  “But you won’t rule it out?”

  “I rule nothing out.”

  It was odd to see his brother on TV, framed by subtitles and channel logos. John realized that this is what all his friends and family members must have felt like when he was on TV. Lino’s girlfriend, Vera Jones, was in the background with her daughter in her arms and tearstained face. John had met her before at various family gatherings in his parent’s house; the last time was just after Christmas. She was a bit overweight but a very sweet woman, who deeply loved Lino despite his constant bad mood, and wished nothing more than for them to get married. This newest turn of events must have hurt her to the core.

  The Padrone uttered a loud comment when the news program was interrupted by a commercial. “This is a trick!” he said grimly.

  Gregorio gave his father an irritable look. “How do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  “A child out of wedlock. Giacomo Fontanelli was also an illegitimate child. It wouldn’t be so odd.”

  Cristoforo turned around. “This child is too young. Think about the prophecy. What sense does it make to give such a fortune to a three-year-old child? De facto, the money would be in the hands of the parents to manage it until the child comes of age. And until that occurs nothing would happen — at least nothing good. This makes no sense.”

  Gregorio stared intently at the carpet like the answers might be written on it. “There is no mention of a minimum age in the testament,” he murmured.

  “You think I don’t realize that?” the Padrone uttered.

  “And you also realize we cannot do as we please? We are the legal representatives of the legacy, and we must follow the laws as any other legal representative would. The deciding factors are the words in the testament, not how we interpret them.”

  The Padrone nodded reluctantly.

  An unpleasant looking man with a big pockmarked face appeared on the TV screen. According to the subtitle his name was Randolph Bleeker and he was Deborah Peterson’s lawyer. Standing on the stairs in front of an imposing building, surrounded by microphones, cameras, and people, he held a stamped document up into the air.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Lino Fontanelli has officially acknowledged being Andrew Peterson’s father,” he said into he microphones. He held up another sheet of paper and added: “These are the lab results from a blood test that confirms that Mr. Fontanelli is the father. This means that the son of my client, Deborah Peterson, is, as of the 23 of April, 1995, the youngest male descendant of the Florentine merchant Giacomo Fontanelli and thus the rightful heir to his fortune. I demand the Vacchi law firm hand over the original testament to the authorities so the document can be examined and to determine the rightful heir.”

  Gregorio Vacchi slapped a sofa pillow with the flat of his hand. “We cannot ignore this,” he called out. “Impossible. Eduardo, call the Ministry of Finance and the notary as well. We’re cancelling all appointments until this matter is cleared up.”

  Eduardo looked questionably at his grandfather. He nodded tiredly. Then he looked at John with worried eyes. “We must discuss things that concern you now, John. I think you understand. And I think it’s best that you’re not present for this.”

  The sudden quietness in the room, a room which soon might not be his anymore, was crushing. He stared down from the window at the armed men with bulletproof vests patrolling the grounds. Before long he might no longer warrant such protection. The reporters, who for the moment were still out there stepping on and shoving each other around just for a photo of his shadow at a window would move on to beleaguer a three-year-old boy in Philadelphia. They’d disappear just like the cardinal, who was gone when John returned to the salon. He must’ve found out what had happened. He had even taken the autographed book with him.

  John would be sent back to a life of nothingness, the meaningless existence he had escaped. That was not going to be easy. After tasting the sweet life of plenty, he’d go back to Marvin and the cramped apartment and to some lousy-ass job. His only tiny little shimmer of hope was that some newspaper or magazine would be interested in his story and pay him a few dollars for it. All he would be left with was the story of what it felt like to buy and drive a Ferrari.

  He took a look at himself and wondered if he would get to keep the suits. He had got really used to wearing them. Yet he doubted he would even be able to afford having them cleaned. Dammit, he had just started getting used to the life of luxury. Last week he thought he thought he was the wrong heir and now that it looked like he had been right. He felt a deep anger at Lino for taking the money away. His money! It was a wild and defiant anger, the anger of a small selfish child who didn’t care about others. A child ready to bite and to scratch and to kick to keep what is his. His hands jittered and he felt his lungs work as his heart pumped adrenaline through his body.

  The phone rang.

  John spun around but felt his will to fight vanish like air leaving a balloon. He was almost ready just to go into the bathroom and let it ring. But maybe it was the Vacchis. To tell him to start packing. He sat down on the bed and reached for the phone.

  “You have problems,” a deep, initially unfamiliar voice said.

  John’s tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. “You can say that again.”

  “I told you I’d call back, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I told you you’d need help, right?”

  “Yes.” John‘s pulse quickened.

  “You’re going to have a few things to do. It would be advantageous to have a fax machine connected to your phone. Could you arrange that?”

  John remembered the credit card that Eduardo gave him. He still had it. “Yes, I think so.”

  “Get it as soon as possible. I’m not sure we’ll need it, but it could prove useful.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what you’re up to, are you?”

  “Only because I don’t know yet. You’ll have to trust me. You are in a very difficult situation, but there are possibilities — opportunities even. We will see.”

  The man’s words and his tone of voice calmed John. “And I suppose you won’t be telling me who you are yet either?”

  “You must believe me that there are good reasons why I must act in this manner,” the stranger said. “Stay in your room as much as possible once you have the fax. I will contact you again.” He hung up.

  When John opened the door, he saw Marco sitting on a chair in the hallway across from his room with his mighty arms crossed in front of him.

  “Marco? I need a fax machine,” John said. His plan had been to sneak off somehow with the Ferrari to the next town to buy one there. But the bodyguard pulled out his mobile phone and said, “Va bene, Signor Fontanelli. I will get one for you.”

  There were only two topics in the newspapers the following day; the outbreak of an epidemic in central Afric
a caused by the Ebola virus, and the fight for the trillion dollars.

  “Grandfather still believes that you’re the rightful heir,” Eduardo told John during breakfast. “But then my father thinks that it’s his senile stubbornness. My uncle finds it distasteful to work himself to death for a three-year-old trillionaire, and so do I, to be honest.”

  They were alone in the salon. The Vacchis had talked late into the night about possible next steps, and so far only Eduardo was up for breakfast.

  “So, what’s next?” John asked.

  “Most likely,” Eduardo explained, chewing a pastry, “this will be the start of what we lawyers are here for; a legal battle. And it may very likely be a long drawn out battle. And when I say ‘long’ I am using the lawyer’s definition: years or even decades.”

  A helicopter flew over the house again. The number of reporters had not dwindled, but rather increased fivefold. No delivery man and no house employee could get into the grounds without giving comments into the bundles of microphones.

  “That’s just great,” John uttered defeated.

  “The first step is to have all the relevant documents sent over to us from the US. Then they must be properly translated and notarized, and so on. That’ll take time and cost money. Well, you know that. We will also demand that a genetic evaluation be performed on the child and father. The blood test that this dubious Mr. Bleeker waved in the air is worthless.”

  “Really? But he said…”

  “Lawyers are always saying something; after all they make their living with claims and legal arguments. The fact is that all a blood test can do is to rule someone out as the father. It is based on the fact that certain blood types are passed on to the child according to fixed rules. For instance, when a child has blood type AB and the mother A, then a man with blood type A cannot be the father, only someone with B or AB. The blood test, however, does not confirm that a particular man is the father.”

  John stared at the young lawyer. He suddenly remembered back when he was still a child and mother was handing out sweets to him and his brothers and how Lino took his share away. He took the candy just because he was stronger. “And a genetic test?” he asked, his voice trembling with anger.