Paul Siegel started his job as CEO of Fontanelli Enterprises in early March. He came to London a few days earlier and accomplished what John considered impossible: with the help of a real estate agent and lots of luck, Paul found an apartment and one that was exactly what he wanted. Unsurprisingly, it was uncannily similar to the other two he had in the States, except that now the view was not of the Hudson or Potomac, but the Thames.
John had McCaine’s office renovated and moved in immediately afterwards done, letting Paul move into his old office. John did not like the idea of his friend sitting in McCaine’s old office as his replacement.
Paul introduced a new style of leadership. As of immediately there would be no more lonely lunches in the conference room. He would join all the other directors in the cafeteria, and he had no problem with having a few tables being moved together, and letting the men and the few women talk about whatever they wanted to. After an initial reluctance, John finally joined them and found it invigorating to leave the heights of the command bridge at least for a little while.
Yet Paul was not only open and forthcoming, he could also be tough when he had to be. He eavesdropped and listened patiently to three directors agreeing with the McCaine concept of surplus people. The detectives Paul hired to snoop on the three men found evidence that linked them directly to McCaine. Paul told them that they themselves were now considered “surplus people.” He not only fired them, but sued them for breach of trust, damaging private property and industrial espionage. He managed to find numerous other moles after that, all at management level, and they too were fired.
John tried to call Ursula three times. The first time he stopped before he had finished dialing her number, thinking that she would have contacted him already if she cared for him anymore. A few days later he conquered his fears again and even managed to finish dialing the number but only got her answering machine, and he hung up without leaving a message. What he had to say to her could not be done on an answering machine. And when he once more attempted to call her a few days later not even the answering machine kicked in — the phone just rang and rang and rang.
It was during those days that a secretary brought John a letter that looked conspicuously different from the normal business mail. “First we thought it was one of those letters that children write you sometimes,” she told him, “but it is indeed a business letter.”
“Really?” John wondered and took the envelope. As with every letter or package, it had been thoroughly examined before he got it. It had a bunch of brightly colored little stickers on it, and was addressed awkwardly but correctly to, Mr. John S. Fontanelli, and had a sender’s address from the Republic of the Philippines. The sender was a Manuel Melgar. “Who’s Manuel Melgar?” John mumbled, but then he remembered. That guy … Tuay, Panglawan. It was the boy who had borrowed three hundred dollars.
The envelope contained a letter that told of Manuel’s first business successes and failures. He had bought the tricycle and had it rebuilt. He got into a disagreement with Mr. Balabagan, and then found another fishmonger, and business was doing well, and selling sweets to the local children had really taken off. There was also a photo in the envelope showing an image of a tricycle covered in stickers with a proud young Filipino holding the handlebars. And finally there was a carefully written repayment schedule for the three hundred dollars. Manuel had arbitrarily set a term of fifteen years and an interest rate of six percent and had calculated a monthly rate of $2.53. There was a check enclosed for $15.18, covering the first six months.
“Goddamn it,” John mumbled, “can’t I get rid of any money?”
Paul did not seem to understand John’s point of view. He read the letter, studied the repayment schedule, pointed out one of the figures, and said while reaching for a calculator: “I think he miscalculated here.”
“That’s not the point,” John said upset.
“What then? You loaned him money and he’s repaying you — it’s the most normal thing in the world.”
“With interest!” John got up. “Dammit! I gave him that money to give him a chance, so he could make something of himself. And now? Now I’m earning off of his work! How does this ever end? I give money to people, and they return it to me. That’s got to end one of these days! Otherwise all the money in the world will belong to me one day, and then what? Then the whole world is mine, or what? None of it makes any sense.”
Paul leaned back and watched him thoughtfully. “I doubt it will come to that. The whole world belonging to you, I mean.”
“You don’t think so? Paul, more money is coming in than I can spend. What is going to stop me from ending up with all the money in the world?”
“Up until now every great fortune declined in the end.”
“Until now.”
“If things were as easy as you think, then the world would already belong to the Rockefellers, or if not, then the descendants of the Fuggers.”
John uttered a cry. “Who do you think I am? I’m descendant of Jakob Fugger!”
“That’s what Ursula Valen told you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the descendent of Francesco Fontanelli.”
“Oh, sure.” John plumped down into one of the easy chairs, leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. It was quiet for a while except for the clicking noise of Paul playing around with a pen.
“What is wrong with you?” Paul’s voice sounded a million miles away.
“Am I the heir? Yes. Am I the true heir? No. I won’t be able to give back humanity’s lost future. I have no idea how to even start. I don’t even know what all this is about.” He moved his clasped hands back and forth. “Lorenzo would have known. Lorenzo would have been the right one. But McCaine killed him …”
“John?”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t know what’s so impressive about divine providence if it can be manipulated so easily by someone like McCaine.”
Surprised, John looked up. Paul was sitting behind his desk, twisting his pen around in his fingers and looking irritated. “What?”
“I think the whole thing is a heap of bullshit,” Paul said. “It doesn’t matter a bit whose descendant you are and what kind of vision someone had. What counts is here and now. You happen to have this fortune and this conglomerate and now you have to work out how to manage it. What better ideas might your cousin have had? He was sixteen, for God’s sake. What does anyone know of life at that age?”
“What does anyone know of life at this age?” John got up. “I will show you what Lorenzo knew of life at that age.” He stormed over to his office, rummaged through his drawers looking for the two student newspaper drafts and the translations he had made of them, and then returned to Paul. “Here, read this.”
Paul read it. He read it and smirked at first, but the further he got the more he frowned, and then finally he said: “Hmm.”
“And?” John asked lurking. “Ingenious, right?”
“I don’t know. It sounds a little like one of those pamphlets that want to prove that Einstein was wrong, or that the theory of evolution can’t be true. The stuff that gets handed out to you by a nut with a scraggly beard and crazy eyes on Times Square.” He put the papers down as if they were flea infested.
“Why?” John wanted to know. “Tell me what is wrong with it. I checked it out. That’s the way money creation works — with the central bank or business banks. Lorenzo didn’t mention that but I know the game from my own bank: someone deposits money and I loan it to someone else who will deposit it with me again, and so I can loan it out once more, and so on. This results in more and more credit, which qualifies as money. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Paul said reluctantly.
“The books I’ve read don’t mention some of the things he wrote, but it’s so obvious. With loans there has to be debt — always and inevitably. When interest is applied the debit and the credit grow. The entire system is one-way and endless. You have to go on and on, and the more you exert yourself, th
e deeper into the shit you sink; the whole thing takes on an irreversible snowball effect.”
Paul Spiegel blinked eyes irritably. “I don’t know. That’s a pretty unorthodox way to see things. That contradicts everything I’ve ever learned.”
“I realize that.” John let himself drop back into the chair. “And I really don’t know how I’m supposed to deal with all this.”
They were quiet for a while. Then John saw that Paul was reading the text once more. He finally said, “You only have two alternatives: either a monetary economy, with all its advantages and disadvantages, or you go back to some form of barter-based economy, which has mostly disadvantages. Okay, I guess these days with the help of computers and the Internet and everything, there are more alternatives than in the past. To be honest, though, I don’t have the imagination to work out the details.”
John asked, “Do you think that if we did find an ingenious alternative to the current monetary system we have enough power to force it through?”
Without hesitating Paul said, “No.”
“Even with the largest company in the world, and the largest fortune of all time?”
“Never. The world would be united, and it would be united against you.”
“Yeah,” John said, nodding and let his head recline against the backrest. “That’s what I thought too.”
His head was pounding. He had a feeling of dissatisfaction, and a little like he had missed something: a connection, some important detail, but he could not remember what. Maybe he was just getting sick. He touched his forehead … it felt hot. No wonder after all this stress.
He stood up. It was nearly dawn. “I’m going home,” he said. Paul looked at him, surprised. “I’m not feeling well. I need to drink some herbal tea and go to bed.”
“Oh,” Paul said. “Yes, do that.” He held up the translation. “Can I keep this for a little while longer? Maybe I can think of something.”
“Sure, no problem. We’ll save the world another time.”
There was a nasty sleet storm to greet him when he arrived at the estate. “Shall I drive into the garage, sir?” the chauffeur asked. That way he could have reached the house without getting wet. But the many stairs he would have to take seemed worse to John than a few steps in the icy rain.
“No, it’s okay.”
Inside, the butler took his wet coat, handed him a warmed towel for his hair, and then a comb and mirror after John had rubbed his hair dry. John asked him to make some tea, and then dragged himself upstairs into his chambers.
The chambermaid, Francesca, brought him the tea. She was still so shy after all those years, just like when she first started to work for him in the mansion in Portecéto. She placed the tray on the table. On it was a small, expensive porcelain teapot, a matching cup, a slice of lemon, some milk, sugar, a small gold hourglass that indicated when it was time to remove the tea strainer, and a small saucer to put it on. The time was now up, so she removed the strainer from the pot and poured him a cup of tea.
“Grazie,” he said.
“Prego,” she responded softly. But, instead of disappearing as quietly as a shadow, as he was accustomed to her doing, she stayed and said hesitantly: “Scusi, Signor Fontanelli …”
John sniffed the tea. His head felt like it was about to explode. “Si?”
She looked as if she barely dared to say what she wanted to say. “I, ahem … it’s so that I, ahem …” she stuttered, each word making his headache worse.
“Come?” he whispered.
“A CD,” she uttered, waving her hands about as if she was having some kind of attack. “I bought a CD and … I wanted to ask you if you mind …”
He looked at the pale, narrow-hipped chambermaid, standing there with tears in her eyes, and wondered if she really believed that she needed his permission to buy a CD.
“… if I could listen to it on your stereo?” she finally finished saying, took a step backwards as if she expecting to get hit, and looked at him with her big eyes. “But of course only when you’re not at home,” she added in almost a whisper.
That’s it? John nodded with difficulty. “Si. D’accordo.” And thanked heaven when she finally left him alone.
He drank the tea in small sips, and with each one it felt less and less like the flu, but rather more as if his brain was increasingly burdened with heavy. He wondered if he should call the doctor, or was it better just to take a painkiller?
He found himself incapable of making any further decisions. There was no doubt that his head would explode at some stage. So what? He finished the tea and went to bed, where he had a restless sleep filled with wild dreams.
When he woke up the next morning, he felt as if he hadn’t slept a wink but had been knocked out instead. He did feel a bit better, but not much. It felt like a wound that was healing but threatened to rip open again if he made a wrong move. Still, he did not feel like lounging around in the house, so he let himself be driven to the office.
When he got there he found a note from Paul on his desk, wishing him well and telling him that he had gone to Paris for a meeting and wouldn’t be back until the evening.
John cancelled all his appointments. Instead, he read business reports for Banco Fontanelli, the South American mining company, and the newspaper. McCaine, who had appeared in public a lot more over the past few weeks — more than he had done during the entire two years as head of Fontanelli Enterprises, was becoming an idol for investors all over the world. He spoke openly in favor of freeing the "power elite" from paying taxes that were wasted on keeping “bums” alive. “Nature doesn’t have any social security,” he explained, to a loud ovation from the audience in the economic symposium, and he also demanded a rigorous reduction in trade barriers and a radical deregulation of the markets.
John watched a TV report about the demonstrations outside the doors of the symposium. An older man wearing glasses with thick lenses said: “I’ve got severe diabetes and have been unemployed for seven years. I’m demonstrating because I have the feeling that McCaine and his cronies would put me in a gas chamber.”
A memorandum from the market analysis department reported an increasing number of business alliances under the leadership of McCaine, who was now on eleven supervisory boards, including that of the second largest energy producer after Fontanelli Enterprises. The market price of Morris-Capstone associated companies, those that were publically listed, rose to levels previously considered unthinkable.
John took note of all this and gave it some food for thought, but no matter how he looked at it, he could not shake the feeling of impending danger and the feeling that he had failed.
The lights in the cafeteria had been turned down. The ocean of London’s lights shimmered through the windows. The two men were the only diners, and if the man behind the counter at the other end of the large room was waiting to go home rather than pass the time polishing clean glasses, he was careful not to say it.
“Back in the old days you could just go into any old bar,” John said.
Paul sipped on his drink. “But we never did.”
“But we could have.”
“We couldn’t, because you never had enough money.”
“There’s always something.” John stared into his glass. “After what happened in Mexico, I’m being watched so closely that I feel like a prisoner.”
“Well, goes to show that everything has consequences, even if you have endless wealth.”
The windows radiated a mellow coolness. The Thames sparkled in the distance. Far down below you could see cars and pedestrians, mostly couples, appear in the glow of the street lights only to disappear again into the night after just a few steps.
“What’s going to happen?” John asked.
Paul looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“We’re forgetting the prophecy. We’re abandoning all our ambitions to influence the course of the world. We’re doing business as usual: buying, selling, hiring, firing, and counting money.” John wa
s turning the glass in his hands. “And then what?”
Paul leaned back. “Nothing, that’s what. You can do this all your life.”
“But what sense does it make?”
“You’re not a businessman, that’s obvious. It’s not about counting money, it’s about accomplishing something. A company like this is constantly developing. There’s always something going on somewhere, things change, and you have to react or make long-term decisions when you can. That’s the name of the game. It’s like baseball, you play it because it’s fun.”
John looked at the last drop in his glass, and then downed it. He ordered another. “When did you last go to a ball game?”
“Hmm,” Paul thought about it. “That’s a long time ago. I think the last time was when you and I went to a Yankees game … before I went off to Harvard.” He shook his head. “But, I couldn’t tell you who they were playing if my life depended on it.”
“Me neither.” The waiter came over, placed the drink on the table and took the empty glass. Paul ordered another too. “I used to watch a lot of games, but then I didn’t have a TV any more and it all just drifted away.”
“It was almost the same with me, except that I was studying.”
John nodded, and laughed dryly. “Isn’t that awful?”
“It is tragic.” Paul’s new drink arrived. He took it and nodded in thanks. He took a sip and waited until the waiter had left. “You know,” he then said, “what is happening now is that you are beginning a new financial dynasty, like the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds or the Medici. Or the Fuggers, if you prefer. You will find a woman, sooner or later, who can handle the wealth and luxury, and have a bunch of kids who will be properly raised, well cared-for, and who will attend the best schools in the world and who will take over the business…”
“Now you’re starting to sound like McCaine. He constantly told me that I should start a dynasty.”
“Well, not everything he said was wrong. After what you’ve told me and after what I’ve read in the papers, he seems to be just going nuts lately.” Paul pushed his glass around on the table. “That’s how it is, you know. You could see virtually the same thing in Harvard, all those spoiled sons and daughters. As long as you’re alive your fortune will grow and your children will keep it safe, but eventually, maybe in your grandkids’ generation it’ll start shrinking. That’s what happens to all great fortunes, but, a trillion dollars that will be enough for generations to come, regardless how wasteful they are.”
One Trillion Dollars Page 68