NTD was a portfolio that contained major investments in neodymium, terbium, and dysprosium, rare earth metals that were crucial to the building, and maintaining, of computer hard drives and computer chips, as well as the very components, sneakily enough, that were central to the production of the new US treasury bills.
Counterfeiting cash, the real stimulus project, was only a way to garner attention, and thinking about it had produced wonderful conversations over the past thirty years. But they all knew that counterfeiting was an attention grabber, and that it was the NTD portfolio that was the ticket to the US Treasury and their ongoing negotiations with China for long-term rights. Ted’s plan had been to pool together a portion of his own resources and, moreover, the brunt of Tom’s in order to corner the market for rare earth metals, including rare earth elements, that is, the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium, as well as six platinum group elements. Nobody had paid much attention to this investment, because most rare earth metals are quite common in nature, and to date relatively inexpensive to procure: the secret was that they are seldom found in sufficient amounts to be extracted economically outside of certain regions of the world, most notably China.
With Tom’s enormous access to liquid funds, in addition to the buying power that he wielded through access to his own investment fund that boasted more than $100 billion, the overall percentage of raw materials they could control was staggering. That he trusted Ted with all of the negotiations was a sign of his having gone “all in,” and the gamble had paid off already, as he’d seen the value of that option portfolio more than double in three years. This in itself had made him a darling of the Wall Street set, an investor who had chosen to buy a solid commodity, rather than some speculative derivative or other complex tool, and had done brilliantly by it.
To own a significant portion of the market for a staple mineral had been tried before, most notably in the early 1970s, when Bunker Hunt and his brother started to amass huge amounts of silver. By the end of the decade, they had used the commodity options market in Chicago to quite literally corner the market, owning more silver bullion—on paper—than the total amount available in the marketplace. As the market responded to impending shortages, the Hunt Brothers benefitted massively—to the tune of $4 billion—with no end in sight. The problem was that they didn’t have a long-term plan for what to do with the 3,100,000 kg of silver on which they’d planned to exercise their options and, as was to be expected, the Chicago commodity regulators came down on them as the delivery date neared, causing a precipitous decline in the price of silver and, eventually, the bankruptcy of the brothers.
Subsequent regulation prohibited such transactions, in part by ensuring that larger amounts of cash outlay would be required in order to secure options for commodity purchases at a later date. But all of the new regulations had been set up with the Hunts in mind, that is, with regulations designed to prevent massive rises in the cost of major commodities (silver had risen by 1,000 percent in just a few years due to the Hunt scheme), and not by-products like rare earth elements. In other words, nothing was done that could prevent actions that didn’t look like speculation for short-term gain, and this, as it turned out, was the genius of Ted’s plan. He not only had the cash on hand to purchase a huge percentage of existing stocks of rare earth metals, but he also procured ownership of mining facilities abroad, most notably in China, by greasing the palms of the local government officials who owned control of their production. Since it all occurred in China, US regulators had no sense of what was happening, and since he had a rather rare ability with the Chinese language, he never had to employ meddling intermediaries to help with the negotiations.
To be fair, the success of this scheme wasn’t entirely attributable to Ted’s “genius,” but rather to his insistence upon investing in tangible and, preferably, earth-bound commodities. Always the Proudhon-inspired anarchist, Ted felt an affinity to the soil, the land, the very ground upon which houses and, moreover, homes are built. He couldn’t have imagined when he started on this quest that world demand for rare earth metals would be projected to exceed 195,000 tons by 2020 and 300,000 tons by 2025, as middle-class consumption habits explode in China, India, and Africa. Nobody could have imagined how important but little-known elements like cerium, lanthanum, europium, neodymium, terbium, yttrium, and dysprosium would be, just as no one foresaw the explosion of the instruments that use them, like smartphones, touchscreens, batteries, fuel cells, wind turbines, catalysts, and, the newest addition, plastic money.
It was also not the case that Ted was able to predict the role that China would play in producing these elements, this was simply a consequence of their having mass-produced them first, at a huge environmental cost, allowing other countries, including the US, South Africa, Canada, Australia, Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa, Malaysia, and Malawi to delay the messy mining process, and were now at least ten years away from developing viable extraction strategies. Once again, it wasn’t Ted’s foresight or Chinese know-how, but rather that many of the elements could be mined in places like Jiangxi with only a shovel, whereas rich deposits in Greenland or Northern Canada required huge investments and developing technologies to render them viable.
When they stood up to leave, the wheels were in motion. Ted would call in all of his impending options in the coming weeks, which would cause ripples, and then concern, and finally panic in the commodity market. At the same time, tons of raw materials accumulated for the production of paper money would be quietly transported to the warehouse that Steve had procured, years ago, in preparation, always rather timid, of this moment. There would be details to work out, most notably regarding the distribution of sufficient currency, sufficiently quickly, to make the headlines required for that long-anticipated meeting with the US Treasury.
For the moment, though, they were in the prep stages, and the production of the money had to take precedence over everything else, because it was that meal of cold cash that would begin the banquet. The bill was paid, almost as an afterthought, and the three men were barely speaking as they moved towards the exit of Fabergé Restaurant. In one moment of recollection, Ted caught Jude’s searching gaze and smiled, then pointed at him. Jude, unsure of what any of this meant, grinned, pointed back, and then regretted his gesture. Perhaps Ted would think he was trying to come on to him?
When they left that night, the foundation had been poured for the final episode in this strange existence of mine, a base that had been foretold by some being, because I’d already known it was there from the moment I was conscious of my existence. I felt excited, feeling them leave Fabergé Restaurant, and knew that in future penetrations into my being they would bring us all closer to an abyss I’d anticipated as long as I could remember.
Chapter 16
John looked every bit the commanding officer of a ground force charged with fighting back a savage army of murderous infidels, with his chiseled jaw, his piercing, blue eyes, his workmanlike hands, and his gruff demeanor. As such, he hardly looked the part of a chef, and even less an architect of the elite, prestigious, meticulous Fabergé Restaurant, the New York landmark that prided itself on producing creations crafted to emulate those incredibly eggzotic artworks produced by the Russian jeweler, Peter Carl Fabergé, and his goldsmiths for the Russian Imperial Family. A look into John’s past, however, changed the complexion of his face from that of a military tactician to that of a careful crafter of recipes, weathered and hardened by his unrelenting attention to each detail of the invasion, and focused by his careful oversight of each member of the battalion charged with carrying out his culinary conquests.
John grew up and into the persona of John-the-Owner in the unassuming and one-time industrial town of Waltham, Massachusetts, where his father worked as a proud craftsman for the Waltham Watch Company, an enterprise committed to the revolutionary idea of creating moving parts that were so precise, as to be completely interchangeable. Appropriately enough, the company was once called the Warren M
anufacturing Company, named in honor of General Warren of Roxbury, a renowned soldier of the War of Independence. The work they were doing on timepieces of the period were considered so novel that the founders specifically omitted the word “watch” from any reference to the company. Headquarters were built for this innovative company in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1854. And, to John-the-Owner’s pride, they still stand today, reminders of the first pocket watches made in America, as well as early chronometers and some lasting heirlooms, including the “William Ellery,” a key-wind watch that President Lincoln received as a tribute at the Gettysburg Address.
In 1949 the company declared bankruptcy, and John-the-Child’s father, who was by then nearly of retirement age, retreated for a time to his South Street home, where he and his wife discovered the length of the eight-hour day spent together. Luckily, their three-year-old child, John, was able to monopolize his father’s attention. And luckily for John, his father continued his meticulous work at home. John Senior had floundered about for a few months after the factory closed, but then sought desperately for an activity that would satisfy his lust for assembling intricate devices, leading him into the construction of balsa wood airplanes and, inevitably, ships in bottles. Young John watched his father work at these creations with surprising fascination and patience and was always rewarded with the product of his father’s meticulous labor. Unlike his father, though, John-the-Child fetishized the end results, and so in addition to the random collection of egg-related objects that are now scattered throughout the dining room of Fabergé Restaurant, the attentive customer can also admire, but not touch, the many airplanes and bottled ships that he had received and now treasured.
The connected parts of John’s early domestic setting were disassembled when he was a boy of twelve, when the Waltham Precision Instruments Company opened its doors in the revamped premises of the now bankrupt Waltham Watch Company factory. In what turned out to be the greatest, but also the final pinnacle of John’s father’s career, the company teamed up with Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers on building gyroscopes and other instruments designed for measuring changes in direction. The impetus for this new line of work was a huge order from NASA’s new Apollo navigation system, a collection of instruments that were to be assembled with the kind of precision for which Waltham watchmakers had become famous. The hygiene and cleanliness rules of the team were so strict that women were not allowed to wear makeup, and workers who came back from their sunny vacations were forbidden to work near the assembly area, out of fear that they could have skin flaking off from their suntans.
Unfortunately, though, John’s father never got to wallow in the glow of his company’s galactic success. On the very eve of the Apollo 15 mission of 1971, when Astronaut David Scott substituted his damaged Omega Speedmaster Professional chronograph with a Waltham timepiece, John’s father’s heart stopped. It was ironic that the precise ticking instrument that had successfully carried him to his eighty-third year had stopped on the eve of his greatest achievement. And so as the Apollo astronauts were catapulted by unprecedented rocket-fueled engines into space, one of the technicians whose work had made the mission possible was also blasted off into the other world, the glow of the television report about the Apollo mission illuminating his final moments.
All of this is to say that John-the-Child grew into John-the-Owner, bearing familial characteristics that were transposed: from the ticking timepiece to the culinary creation, from the eternal to the ethereal, and from keeping time to watching it carefully in order to ensure the absolute perfection of the well-wrought meal. And along the way, John-the-Owner met his own precise masterwork: Яйцо Фаберже, the Fabergé egg. Inspired by its beauty, its complexity, and the pure aesthetic bliss of being in its presence, John-the-Owner emulated Gustav Faberge, eventually Fabergé (to add some style), as well as Gustav’s son, Peter Carl Fabergé, who both supplied masterpieces to the rich, the famous—and the doomed. Inspired by his new mentor, now that his revered father was no more, John-the-Owner fashioned himself into a creator and supplier of masterpieces, and was, or appeared, unconcerned by the ethereal nature of his own art and masterworks. In this regard, John-the-Child’s father would not have respected or even understood his son, because the very definition of craftsmanship, and even art, was survival, not only through time, but also through space and space-time. John’s father believed that art would be recognized as such in any dimension, just as his own crafted masterpieces would bear motion in time and space without diminution of their original worth.
It was perhaps for this reason that John grew into an inveterate collector of fine artworks, even in the absence of pockets deep enough to own those icons his father would have so admired. Furthermore, without the kind of cultural snobbery of a man with access to Chanel or Cartier or Fabergé, and with a belief in the American version of building from the ground up, John-the-Owner could settle, if settle is the right term, for magnificent, self-made creations. In short, even though he settled for facsimiles, he nonetheless managed to surround himself, and his clients, with images of fine craftsmanship. And each of the hundreds, nay, thousands of culinary creations that John-the-Owner had offered over the years to stimulate the palates of his clients bore the stamp of his father’s dedication to reproduction. And the reproduction of great dishes isn’t mechanical reproduction, it’s true reproduction, because each creation reproduces the power of the first work. From this perspective, great recipes hearken back to the creative flame that illuminates the vision of the creator.
At the same time, though, like the engineer-son of an inventor, or the dance-daughter of a choreographer, or the musician-child of a composer, John-the-Owner was destined for disillusionment. Relative to his own father, he would leave no instrument behind, and in regards to his own flesh-and-blood creations, his twin nine-year-old sons Jason and Jim, he had but a partial link that was eventually damaged by the destructive tides of a washed-up marriage. John seldom saw his ex-wife, and spent his days with Tina, who, like himself and his father before him, fought the fight of earthly perfection. Tina’s very existence seemed to reassure John, since she proved to him that despite the chips and cracks and flaws of the shells we call existence, there is nonetheless the chance to encounter true beauty.
Nobody could quite work out the connection between this odd couple, because nobody could fathom the depth of their connection. What people saw was superficial, that tiny, doll-like Tina and demonically possessed John were polar opposites, in every way visible, and so speculation abounded as to whether they could possibly be involved in a corporal relationship. The very image of John’s brutal masculinity seemed sufficient to crush the fragile femininity that coursed through Tina’s veins, veins that seemed barely wide enough to allow her body sufficient sustenance to survive. Nevertheless, everyone who worked at Fabergé Restaurant knew that John depended absolutely on Tina, just as they knew that he would be adrift were it not for the powerful force exerted by Doris the bookkeeper, and, moreover, that everything that truly mattered in the Fabergé Restaurant depended upon the value provided to it by Jessica.
Masculinity is the image behind the glass, or reflected back by the mirror. What the viewer cannot see, in both cases, is the weakness inherent in the display of raw power. The truth of nature and her creations is in the possibility of reproduction, and in that regard men are the spectators, not the progenitors. Nate’s transient creations, Jude’s puerile observations, even John’s masterful culinary creations are but the window-dressing of a world that survives by reproduction, but is given meaning by cycles. Value isn’t present in production or even reproduction, because both are slated for consumption, obsolescence, and decay. Value, like the passage from one generation to another, has to be experienced, not witnessed.
If Jessica, then, is the truth about this world, then Doris is its protector, who toils behind the scene to ensure that tomorrow might have some of the positive elements present in the world today. While masterful eggy
creations flowed from Fabergé Restaurant, Doris, when she wasn’t keeping the lights on and the gas flowing, played the role of a dawdling grandmother to John-the-Father’s children, on the days when they were staying with him. They would come directly from school to Fabergé Restaurant, enter directly into the Yolk, and play in various regions of the kitchen, while they waited long hours for him to pack them into the red convertible Eldorado for the short drive to his home. The children didn’t seem to mind that their father was so completely consumed by the many tasks of running the restaurant, because they knew that their actual needs would be met by those around him, especially Doris. And for entertainment, there was Nate. Young boys were enthralled by people like Nate, who seemed to have no boundaries, and for whom every activity could be turned into a game, or a performance. Their father was all business, all serious, all the time, but Nate was crazy, silly, and always ready to spoil them with his folly.
When Nate’s performances were over, though, they would turn to Jessica, whom they thought to be Nate’s girlfriend, an idea that Nate had never challenged. Jessica spoiled them with her affection, and delighted them with her kindness. And then, when it was time to ensure that they would have a good night’s sleep, and a proper meal, they knew that they could rely upon Tina, who would take them to their father’s house in advance of his departure from Fabergé Restaurant, where she would set the table and serve whatever tasty delight their father, or Jessica or Nate, had prepared for them. Sometimes Tina would be there in the morning as well to help out with breakfast and with their departure to school. They never thought that she was dating their father any more than they imagined that Doris was, even though she certainly looked more the part. At nine years old, they were still in that phase when they imagined that their parents’ separation was temporary, a vacation, designed to prepare the way for an eventual reintegration into an even bigger house and home. This dream was not to be, for reason more complex than they could ever imagine, or would ever know. There was another dream played out in this choreographed caring for John’s children, one that Tina and Jessica had once had of having children to raise together. They’d promised themselves it would be possible, all those years ago, and, strangely enough, it was.
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