One Trillion Dollars
Date: 2014-08-15 12:19:56+00:00
Keywords: Crime; Roman; German Literature; Contemporary; Thriller; Novels; Police Procedural; Legal; Thrillers; Romance; Fantasy; Supernatural; Fiction; Literature; Urban & Street Lit; Science Fiction; Mystery
Description: Yesterday John Fontanelli was just a pizza delivery guy in New York City. One day later he's the richest man in the world. One trillion dollars ‐ one million times one million ‐ §1,000,000,000,000: more money than anyone could imagine. For generations the Vacchis, an old Italian family of lawyers and asset managers, had supervised the fortune as it grew over five hundred years, until one particular date that the benefactor had stipulated in his will. The youngest male descendant would be fated to oversee the fortune for the good of humanity. John relishes his new life of luxury, rubbing elbows
Publisher: BASTEI LÜBBE
Rights: Bastei Lübbe AG

About this Book

Yesterday John Fontanelli was just a pizza delivery guy in New York City. One day later he’s the richest man in the world. One trillion dollars — one million times one million — $1,000,000,000,000: more money than anyone could imagine. For generations the Vacchis, an old Italian family of lawyers and asset managers, had supervised the fortune as it grew over five hundred years, until one particular date that the benefactor had stipulated in his will. The youngest male descendant was fated to oversee the fortune for the good of humanity. John relishes his new life of luxury, rubbing elbows with royalty, buying up corporations, fielding a flood of beautiful women — until one day the phone rings, and a mysterious stranger tells the trillionaire that he knows what dirty secrets lie behind the fortune …

The author

Andreas Eschbach was born in 1959 in Ulm. He studied aerospace technology and worked as a software developer. He wrote his first novel as a scholar in the Arno-Schmitt Foundation “for highly talented aspiring authors,” and it was published in 1995. He is known for the bestseller “Das Jesus Video.” Andreas Eschbach lives as a freelance author near Stuttgart.

Andreas Eschbach

ONE
TRILLION
DOLLARS

Democracy
is the worst form of government
except all those other forms
that have been tried …

Winston Churchill

Prologue

IN FRONT OF THEM the double-winged doors finally swung open, and they entered a room filled with an almost heavenly light. The middle of the chamber was dominated by a large oval table made of dark wood. Two men stood in front of it, looking expectantly at them as they entered.

“Mr. Fontanelli,” the young lawyer addressed John as he closed the door behind them. “Let me please introduce my partners to you.” He gestured to the pair in front of the table. “First, my father, Gregorio Vacchi.”

John reached out to shake hands with a stern looking man, whom he guessed to be in his mid-fifties. He wore a gray, single-breasted suit and a pair of thin-rimmed gold glasses. His attire and thinning hair made him resemble a typical bookkeeper. Indeed, it was very easy to imagine this man as a lawyer, perhaps specializing in tax laws, standing in a courtroom and dryly uttering paragraphs of law through his thin lips. His handshake felt cool, business-like, and he mumbled something like: “Pleased to meet you.” Even though, he didn’t look like the sort of man who knew the meaning of "pleased.”

The other man was older. His unruly curly hair and bushy eyebrows made his face look a bit grim, yet more dynamic than the former’s. He wore a dark blue double-breasted suit with a very conventional club tie and a neatly folded handkerchief in his left breast pocket. You could imagine him in a fancy bar, laughing as he celebrated a victory in a murder case, a glass of champagne in one hand and pinching waitresses’ asses with the other. His handshake was firm, and he looked so intensely into John’s eyes that it made him uncomfortable. His deep voice said, “Alberto Vacchi. I’m Eduardo’s uncle.”

Only now did John notice another person present in the room. Sitting in a wing-chair in front of a window was an old man. Though his eyes were closed it was clear he was not asleep; but rather as if he was too weary to have all his senses working at once. His wrinkled thin neck emerged from a soft shirt, covered by a gray sweater. He had a small silk pillow lying on his lap upon which his folded hands rested.

“The Padrone,” Eduardo Vacchi said in a low tone of voice when he noticed who John was looking at. “That’s my grandfather. As you see, we’re a family firm.”

John only nodded. He didn’t really know what to say. He was shown a chair to sit on, on its own on one of the long sides of the conference table. Across from him on the other side of the table were four chairs with their backrests pressed against the table in neat fashion. Lying on the table in front of each chair were thin folders, the covers made of black leather with crests emblazoned on them.

“Would you like something to drink?” he was asked. “Coffee, mineral water?”

“Yes, coffee, please,” he heard himself say. He had the same nervous feeling now as when he’d entered the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel only a short while ago.

Eduardo placed the coffee cups on the table, which had been sitting neatly and orderly on a small trolley. Next, he put the creamer and sugar dispensers on the table; all made of silver. He poured coffee for each of them and placed the pot next to John’s cup. The three Vacchis sat down. Eduardo was seated to the right from John’s point of view, Gregorio, his father, next to him, and to John’s left sat Alberto, the uncle. The fourth chair remained empty.

There was silence, broken only by cream and sugar being poured into the cups and the stirring of their spoons. John stared at the wonderful grain of the reddish mahogany tabletop. That had to be wood from the roots — burl wood.

As John stirred his coffee with a heavy silver spoon, he furtively looked around him. Out the window — behind the three lawyers — was a grand, far-reaching view of New York. Sunlight danced between the concrete ravines of the skyscrapers and the East River sparkled a deep blue. Fine-spun salmon-pink curtains hung down on each side of the windows, which contrasted very well with the immaculate dark-red carpet and the snow-white walls. Unbelievable, John thought as he sipped his coffee, which tasted strong and robust, like the espresso his mom usually made for him.

Eduardo Vacchi opened the file that lay before him on the table. The sound the leather cover made seemed a signal to the start for the proceedings. John set his cup on the saucer and took a deep breath; he was ready.

“Mr. Fontanelli,” the young lawyer said. He leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table and hands folded together. His voice didn’t sound so welcoming anymore, but rather official. “I asked you to bring along a form of identification for this meeting, maybe a driver’s license, a passport, or whatever. It’s only for the sake of formalities, of course.”

John nodded. “I’ve got my driver’s license … one moment please.” He hastily reached for his rear pocket and was startled to find nothing there. But then he remembered that he had stuck the license into the inside pocket of his jacket. With a hot, shaky hand he slid the card across the table. The lawyer took the license, glanced at it briefly, and then with a nod handed it to his father. Gregorio Vacchi, however, studied the driver’s license so intently that it almost seemed as if he thought it might be a fake.

Eduardo gave a thin smile, “We also have identification documents with us.” He pulled out two large very formal looking pieces of paper. “The members of the Vacchi family have been residents of Florence for several centuries, and for generations almost every male member has been a lawyer or trust manager. The first document substantiates this; the second one is an English translation of the first, authenticated by a notary public from the state of New York.” He handed both papers to John.

John looked at them, a bit lost. The first document, stuck inside a clear plastic cover, seemed to be quite old. It was written in Italian of which John could only read maybe one out of every ten words. It was written on ancient gray paper, decorated with crests and had a whole collection of stamps and signatures on the bottom. The English translation, a neat laser-printed piece of paper, had the usual official stamps and signatures, and the text sounded equally confusing, being written in typically convoluted legal language; but it basically said what the young Vacchi lawyer had told him; as far as he could comprehend. He put the papers down on the table and folded his arms. One of his nostrils was twitching; he hoped nobody noticed.

Eduardo folded his hands together once more. John’s driver’s license was now being scrutinized by Alberto. He nodded his head satisfied and then pushed it into the middle of the table.

“Mr. Fontanelli, you are the heir to a significant fortune,” Eduardo began again, once more in a formal tone of voice. “We are gathered here to announce to you the sum and the conditions for acceptance of the inheritance; in case you wish to accept it, we must explain what stipulations are necessary.”

John nodded impatiently. “Err, yes — could you tell me who it is that died?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to hold back the answer to that question for the time being. It is a lengthy story. At any rate, it is not a member of your immediate family.”

“And why am I inheriting something?”

“That cannot, as I said, be explained in one or two sentences. That is why I wish you to have just a little more patience. For the present moment the question is; you are supposed to inherit a large fortune. Do you want it?”

John laughed impulsively. “Okay, how much is it?”

“Over eighty thousand dollars.”

“Did you say eighty thousand?”

“Yes, eighty thousand.”

John leaned back and took a large gulp of air. Wow. Eighty … thousand … dollars! Man, oh man, no wonder there was all this fancy acting stuff! Eighty thousand dollars — that is a nice sum of money. All at once! He had to let that sink in first. That meant … that meant … he could go to college … easily, and without having to work a single hour for some stupid pizza delivery service, or some other poorly paid, stupid, mundane job. Eighty thousand … all at one time! Just like that! Unbelievable!

If he … okay, he’d have to watch out and not get carried away. He could stay at the same place, keep sharing an apartment with a few others. That was okay, nothing luxurious, but if he lived a thrifty life style … man, it was still enough to get a used car! Some nice clothes. This and that. Ha — no more worries!

“Not bad,” he finally said. “So, what is it you want from me? If I’ll take the money or not?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got a stupid question; is there a catch to this whole deal? Will I inherit something less nice along with it, or what?”

“No, you’re inheriting money. If you want it you can have it and do with it as you wish.”

John shook his head — he simply couldn’t believe it. “Could you ever imagine me saying no? Could you ever imagine anyone saying no?”

The young lawyer raised his hands. “It is simply a formality. We are obliged to ask.”

“All right, you asked — and I say yes.”

“Good. Congratulations.”

John shrugged his shoulders. “You know, I’ll only believe this when I have the bills in my hands anyhow.”

“That’s perfectly all right.”

But it was not true; he did believe it already, as absolutely crazy as it was. Four lawyers had come all the way from Italy to New York to give him, a poor, untalented pizza delivery driver, eighty thousand dollars. Just like that! From out of nowhere! But there was something about this room that made him believe; made him believe he was at the threshold of a turning point in his life. It seemed as if he had been waiting all his life for this. Crazy — he felt a nice warm, cozy feeling in his belly.

Eduardo Vacchi closed his file, and, as if he had been waiting for this moment, his father opened the one lying before him. What was his name again? Gregorio. John felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck, and an eye started to twitch. This looked way too rehearsed. Here comes the big surprise — here comes the rude awakening. Now he had to watch it!

“For reasons that are yet to be explained,” Eduardo’s father began, his words coming out dry as dust, “your case is unique in the history of our firm. Even though the Vacchis have managed fortunes for generations, we have never been involved in such a case, and may never be again. Considering the circumstances here and now, it seemed for us wise to be a bit too careful rather than too careless.” He took off his glasses and twirled them slowly in his fingers. “A colleague and friend of ours had an unfortunate thing happen to him some time ago. While reading a last will and testament to an heir, the client suffered a heart attack. It may very well have been the sum of money he heard that caused this misfortune. I must add that the sum in question was far larger than my son just mentioned, however, the heir was not that much older than you are. Neither he nor anyone else knew that he had an ailing heart.” He placed the glasses back on his nose, adjusted them in place, and looked John in the eyes again. “You do understand what it is that I’m trying to tell you?”

John, who had tried hard to follow his words, just nodded, and then he shook his head. “No. No, I don’t understand anything anymore. Will I, or will I not inherit eighty grand?”

“You will … don’t worry.” Gregorio looked down over his nose at the files before him. He shuffled the papers. “Everything that Eduardo told you is true,” He looked up to John again, “except for the sum.”

“Except for the sum?”

“You’re not inheriting eighty thousand, but over four million dollars.”

John just stared at him. To him, it seemed as if time had stopped. He simply stared, and the only part of his body that moved was his jaw, falling, bit by bit.

Four!

Million!

Dollars!

He finally managed to say something. “Wow!” He laughed and ran his fingers through his hair. The he laughed some more, like some nut. Four million dollars! He couldn’t restrain himself. He laughed and laughed until the lawyers began to think they might have to call an ambulance.

Four million! Four million!

Then he stopped and looked at the lawyer from Florence, Italy again. The spring sunlight coming through the windows made his thinning hair look like a halo. He could have kissed him. He could have kissed them all! They came here to place four million dollars right in his lap! He laughed again, and again, and then once more. “Wow!” he said again after he caught his breath. “Now I understand; you thought that I would keel over when I heard the amount of money all of a sudden, right?”

“That is one way to put it,” Gregorio Vacchi said nodding with a hint of a smile.

“And do you know what? You were right. I would’ve keeled over. Oh, man.” He put a hand before his mouth and didn’t know where to look. “Did you know that I had the worst night of my life the day before yesterday? And only because I didn’t have enough money for the subway … a lousy dollar and twenty five cents. Now you come here and tell me I’m to get four million dollars …”

Phew. The good Lord knows that was no lie with the heart attack; his heart was pounding hard in his chest. Just the thought of all this money made his circulatory system go wild, as if he were having sex.

Four million dollars! That was … that was more than just money. That was another life. With this amount of money he could do what he wanted. With this amount of money he didn’t have to work another day of his life. Whether he was a student or not — or the lousiest painter in the world — it simply didn’t matter anymore.

“And that’s really true?” he asked suddenly. “I mean, maybe someone will come out of that room over there and say, ‘smile, you’re on Candid Camera!’ or something like that? We’re talking real money from a real inheritance?”

The lawyer raised his eyebrows as if this was an absurd question. “We’re talking about real money. Don’t worry.”

“I mean, if you are joking with me I’m gonna strangle someone, and I don’t know if the TV audience will like that.”

“I can assure you that the only reason we are here is to make you a wealthy man.”

“Okay.” He really wasn’t worried about all this, but he just had to say what he just said. It’s as if he got rid of the danger that this was not true simply by mentioning it. Something gave him the impression that all this was indeed true. It felt hot in here. Odd, when they entered the room it felt cool, as if the air conditioner was set to max low temperature. Now he felt as if his blood was about to boil in his veins. Was he developing a fever? Maybe it was just the aftermath of the night before last, when he had to go home by foot and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, where the chilly moist air blew in from the ocean making him feel like an icicle.

For some reason he glanced down. His jeans suddenly looked shabby to him, his jacket … the ends of the sleeves were a bit frayed. He had never noticed before. The cloth was beginning to wear thin. His shirt was a rag, bought from a second-hand shop. It hadn’t even been a nice shirt when it was new. Junk. Crap. He caught Eduard’s eye, who was grinning at him silently, as if he knew what was going through John’s head. John felt the red in his face … hot, throbbing embarrassment. The skyline outside the windows still looked like a shiny dream made of glass and crystal. So now he was a man of means. John Salvatore Fontanelli; son of a New Jersey shoemaker, has made it, without any personal contribution, without doing anything for it, simply by fate. Maybe he always knew about this deep down inside and that’s why he never made any great efforts. Maybe a fairy whispered to him as he lay in his crib that this day would come?

“Okay,” he said, clapped his hands once and rubbed them together. “And now what?”

“You will accept the inheritance?”

“Yes sir!”

The lawyer nodded satisfied and closed the folder. John leaned back and took a deep breath. What a day! He felt like he was filled with champagne, with many, many funny little bubbles rising inside him and erupting as a silly giggle in his upper chest.

He was curious how an inheritance such as this would be processed. How he would receive the money; he thought it would hardly be in cash. They couldn’t do a bank transfer because he no longer had a bank account. Maybe he would get a check. That’s it! And it would be an indescribable pleasure to take it to the same bank that closed his account, and to shove the four million dollar check under that person’s nose that was in charge of his account, and to see the stupid face he would make! It would be pure, tremendous gratification to act like a stuck up rich bastard!

Someone cleared his throat. John looked up and returned to reality from his pleasant daydream. It was Alberto Vacchi clearing his throat as he opened the folder that was lying in front of him.

John looked at Eduardo. He looked at his father Gregorio. Alberto, the uncle, was next to catch John’s eye. “Now don’t tell me that there’s even more.”

Albert laughed just a bit. It sounded like the cooing of a pigeon. “Yes,” he said.

“More than four million dollars?”

“Lots more.”

John’s heart beat faster again. His lungs pumped like a pair of bellows. John lifted a hand. “Wait. Slow down. Four million was a nice sum. Why overdo it? Four million is enough to make any man happy. More than that would … well, be too much …”

The Italian man looked at him from underneath his bushy eyebrows. His eyes had an odd twinkle to them. “This is the only condition that must be fulfilled to get the inheritance, John. You either take it all … or nothing.”

John swallowed hard. “Is it more than double?” he asked hastily, as if he tried to avert a curse.

“Much more than that.”

“More than ten times as much? More than forty million?”

“John, you must start learning to think big. That will not be easy, and, God knows, I’m not jealous of you.” Alberto nodded encouragingly, almost conspiratorially, as if he was trying to encourage him to enter a house of ill repute. “Think big, John.”

“More than …?” John stopped. He once read about the fortunes of certain noteworthy musicians in a magazine. Madonna, so it said, had around 60 million and Michael Jackson double that. Tops was ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, with an estimated 500 million dollars. He started to feel dizzy. “More than twenty times as much?” He wanted to say “a hundred times,” but didn’t dare. The possibility that he might come into a vast fortune approaching those of such legends, just like that, without doing anything for it and without a lick of talent seemed obscene.

For a moment it was quiet. The lawyer looked at him and said nothing as he chewed his lip. Then he finally said, “Get used to the amount of two billion.” Then he added, “Dollars.”

John stared at him. Something heavy … something heavy as lead seemed to have been placed onto everyone present in the room. This was no fun anymore. The sunlight shining through the windows blinded him; it hurt like the bright light of a lamp used for interrogation.

No fun at all.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” John simply asked with dry lips.

Alberto Vacchi nodded.

John looked around nervously, as if he tried to find a way out. BILLIONS! The number rested on him like a ton of weight, pressing his shoulders down, crushing him, and squeezing his skull together. Billions; that was a dimension he never even would have dreamed of. Billions. That means being on the same level as Rockefeller, the Rothschilds, the Saudi Arabian oil sheiks, and Japanese real estate magnates. Billions. That was more than wealth — that was craziness!

His heart was still pounding. A muscle was twitching in his lower right leg and seemed to not want to stop anymore. He had to calm down. This is starting to be too much for him. Such a thing simply did not happen — not in the world he grew up in. Four strangers show up one day just to tell him that he has inherited two billion dollars? No. It cannot be. Something was wrong here. Although he had no idea how an inheritance proceeding is usually performed, this seemed too farfetched.

He tried to remember how this was done in the movies he’d seen. Dammit, he watched so many films. He spent his childhood and youth more or less in front of TVs and in movie theaters. How was it? A last will and testament was revealed … that’s it! When someone died a testament was read out, in front of all those who were mentioned in it. Then they would hear from the notary how much each person would get. Finally they would all get into a fight over it. That’s how it goes.

What exactly happens when someone died and left a fortune behind? The first ones to get anything are the spouse and the children, weren’t they? How could it be that he got to inherit something and his brothers didn’t? And why was he getting anything at all when his father was still alive?

There was something not quite right here.

His heartbeat and his breathing leveled off a bit. Just don’t count your chickens before they hatch. It was time to be skeptical. John cleared his throat. “I have to ask a stupid question,” he began. “Of all people, why do I inherit anything at all? Why me?”

The lawyer nodded gently. “We have performed a very detailed and thorough investigation. We would have never invited you to such a discussion if we were not one hundred percent certain.”

“Fine … you are sure, but I’m not. Did you know that I have two brothers? Don’t I have to share the inheritance with them?”

“In this case, no.”

“Why not?”

“You have been chosen to be the sole heir.”

“Sole heir? Who in the hell decided that I should be the sole heir of two billion dollars? I mean, my father is a shoemaker. And though I don’t know too much about my family’s history, I’m sure we have no billionaires. The richest person in my family is Uncle Giuseppe, who owns a taxi company in Naples with ten or twelve cabs.”

“That’s correct.” Alberto Vacchi smiled. “And he’s alive and well as far as we’re informed.”

“Okay, then where is all this money coming from?”

“You sound as if you’re not very interested in the inheritance.”

John could feel himself getting angry. He hardly ever got angry, and even less so really angry. But here and now it may happen that he got really angry. “Why are you being so mysterious? Why are you making such a secret out of this? Why won’t you just tell me that so-and-so died?”

The lawyer looked through his papers. It looked like a diversionary maneuver. Like someone who was paging through an empty schedule pretending to have a hard time finding an opening for an appointment. “This is not,” he finally admitted, “a normal inheritance case. Normally, there is a testament, an estate attorney and a probate. The money involved in this case belongs to an endowment. In a way one could say that the money belongs to itself. We have only functioned as its trustees since the testator’s death, which was a very long time ago. He decreed that the fortune is to be bestowed upon the youngest male heir who is alive on the twenty-third of April, 1995. And that is you.”

“The twenty-third of April …” John’s eyes narrowed. “That was the day before yesterday. Why then?”

Alberto shrugged his shoulders. “That’s what it says.”

“And I’m the youngest Fontanelli? Are you sure?”

“Your uncle Giuseppe has a fifteen-year-old daughter. But a daughter does not count. A cousin of your father had a sixteen year old son, Lorenzo. But, as you probably know, he died suddenly two weeks ago.”

John stared at the highly polished burl tabletop as if it were an oracle. It might really be as the man said; his brother Cesare and his wife always got on his nerves at Christmas get-togethers with lengthy discussions how useless and even how criminal it was to have children in this day and age. And Lino — well, his only interest is airplanes. John’s mother told him recently on the phone about a Lorenzo who had died due to something ridiculously mundane … a bee sting or something like that. Yes, whenever his Italian relatives were being discussed, it always involved weddings and divorces and diseases and deaths, but hardly ever children. It might very well be true. “What form exactly does this two billion dollars take?” he asked. “I suppose they are stocks and bonds and oil wells and such?”

“Money,” Alberto answered. “Just money. Money in countless savings accounts in countless banks around the globe.”

John had a sour feeling in his stomach as he stared at him. “And I’m getting all this just because I happen to be the youngest Fontanelli as of two days ago? What sense does this make?”

The lawyer looked at him pensively for a long moment. “I don’t know what sense it makes,” he admitted. “It’s just how it is. Just like so much else in life.”

John felt dizzy. Dizzy and dirty — a man dressed in rags that hardly pass as clothing. There was still this voice inside him that told him he was the butt of a joke or fraud or deception and that he was being scammed. And there was still this feeling very deep inside of him like the granite foundation of Manhattan that was telling him that this voice was very wrong and that it was nothing more than the product of the many hours of watching TV, where nothing so unbelievably good ever happened to anyone like him. The dramatic composition of movies and shows doesn’t allow for such a thing. Something like this can happen only in real life. Wasn’t there a saying? Truth is stranger than fiction.

The feeling he had when he entered these chambers — to be at the threshold of a transition in his life — was still there; stronger than before. Only, now he feared to be crushed by this turnaround.

Two billion dollars!

He could dare to ask for money up-front. If they came to give him two billion dollars, then they could fess-up a few thousand dollars without it hurting anyone financially. Then he could get his own lawyer who would get to the bottom of whatever was going on. His old friend Paul Siegel came to mind. Paul knew lawyers. He knew the best lawyer in town. That’s it. John took a deep breath.

“The question,” Alberto Vacchi, lawyer and asset manager from Florence, Italy, said softly, “is still the same. Will you accept the inheritance?”

Was being wealthy a good thing? Up to today he had always spent his time trying not to be so poor. He had always condemned the wealthy. But on the other hand, life was so much easier and more comfortable if you had money. Not having it meant always making late payments. Having no choice. Having to do certain things — whether you wanted to or not. It had to be true, the old saying that you were better off with money than without. He exhaled. “The answer,” he said, and thought it sounded cool, “is also still the same. Yes.”

Alberto Vacchi smiled. His smile felt warm and genuine. “I congratulate you,” he said, closing the folder.

John felt a surge of relief, and sank back into the cushion of his chair. So, now he was a billionaire. Worse things could happen. He looked at the three lawyers sitting across from him, like an induction committee, and he almost grinned.

It was at that moment that the old man sitting by the window rose from his chair.

$1,000,000,000,000

JOHN’S CHILDHOOD had been full of mysterious men. They came alone, or in pairs, or groups of three. They had watched him from the edge of playgrounds, smiled at him as he went to school, talked about him when they thought he couldn’t understand them or was out of earshot. “That’s him,” they said in Italian and, “We must still wait.” They talked about how difficult it was — the waiting. His mother had been alarmed when he came home and told her about the men. For a long time he wasn’t allowed out of the house alone. From his window he had watched the other children play outside. He started to keep it to himself when the men showed up. One day he did not see them anymore, and they gradually faded into the dim recesses of his memories.

When he turned twelve he discovered that Angelo, his father’s most distinguished customer, had a secret. To John Mr. Angelo had always been like a messenger from heaven. Not only because he always looked so sophisticated, sitting on a stool by the workbench with father, dressed in a white suit, speaking Italian casually with father and his stocking feet resting on the metal bar. No, his first visit of the year meant summer was near; wonderful endless weeks of ice cream, splashing around in kiddy pools on hot afternoons, trips to Coney Island, and warm nights. For his second visit of the year, he dressed in a gray suit, then, when he handed his shoes to his father and wanted to know how the family was doing, then summer was just about over and autumn was near. “They are good Italian shoes,” John heard his father tell his mother once. “Wonderfully soft, made for Italian weather. Fairly old, but very well maintained, I have to admit. I bet you can’t buy shoes like these nowhere these days.”

It was natural to John for heavenly messengers to wear special shoes.

On one particular day, when the summer of 1979 — and more than just the summer — was coming to an end, only no one knew it yet, John was allowed to go with his best friend Paul Siegel and his mother to JFK airport. Jimmy Carter was still president and the hostage crisis in Teheran had not begun yet. It was the summer when Garfunkel sang “Bright Eyes” and the Village People sang “Y.M.C.A.,” and Paul’s father was supposed to return from a business trip in Europe. Paul’s parents owned a watch store on 13th Street. His father could tell exciting stories about the robberies he had been through. There was even a real bullet hole on the wall in the back of the store, covered by a framed photo of Paul as a baby.

It was the first time in his life he had been to JFK, and together with his friend Paul they squashed their noses against the large windows in the terminal to watch the passengers come and go.

“They’re all arriving from Rome,” Paul explained. Paul was very smart. On their way to the airport, Paul told him the history of New York perhaps all the way back to the Stone Age. He told him all about Wall Street, and who built the Brooklyn Bridge and when it was inaugurated and went on and on. “Dad is arriving on a flight from Copenhagen. The plane will be at least a half hour late.”

“Great,” John said. He was in no hurry to get back home.

“Let’s count the men who have beards,” Paul suggested. That was typical Paul. He always had ideas what to do. “Only those with full beards and whoever gets to ten first wins. Okay? I already see one, over there, the one with the red briefcase!”

John narrowed his eyes and concentrated. There was no chance of beating Paul in a game like this, but he had to try.

That was when he discovered Mr. Angelo.

It was him, without a doubt; the light-gray suit, the way he moved, the face. John blinked, expecting him to disappear again, like a phantom, but Mr. Angelo didn’t. He walked along amidst the other arrivals from Rome without looking up and carrying nothing but a plastic bag.

“The man with the brown coat,” Paul said. “That’s two.”

A man in uniform stopped Mr. Angelo, pointed at the bag and said something. Mr. Angelo opened the bag and took out two shoes; a brown one and a black one.

“Hey,” Paul complained, “You’re not even playing.”

“I think it’s boring,” John told his friend without taking his eye away from Mr. Angelo and the uniformed man.

The uniformed man was visibly surprised, and he asked something. Mr. Angelo answered with the shoes still in his hand. The man in uniform then gestured to Mr. Angelo to go on, whereby he put the shoes back into the bag and went through one of the automatic doors.

“You’re just scared to lose,” Paul said.

“I always lose anyhow,” John responded.

Later that evening John found out that Mr. Angelo had indeed been in father’s workshop. He had left some gifts for the children; chocolate and a ten dollar bill for John. When John took the chocolate and the ten dollars he had an uneasy feeling, like discovering a secret that should’ve remained a secret.

“I saw Mr. Angelo at the airport,” he said, nevertheless. “He arrived on a flight from Rome, and all he had with him were his shoes.”

Father laughed.

Mother took hold of John, hugged him and sighed, “Oh, my little dreamer.”

That’s what she always called him. She had just finished talking about Rome; about a cousin who was born to some relatives there. John thought it odd to have relatives in Italy whom he’d never met.

“Mr. Angelo lives in Brooklyn,” father explained. “He comes here sometimes, because he knew the man who had the shop before me.”

John shook his head, but said nothing else. There was nothing else to say. The secret was revealed. He knew that Mr. Angelo would never come again. And he didn’t.

The following year his brother Cesare, who was nine years older than he, got married and moved to Chicago. His brother Lino, who was six years older than John, didn’t get married, but joined the Air Force to become a pilot. In the space of a month, John suddenly found himself the only child at home.

He finished high school; his grades were not good but not bad either. His classmates considered him an inconspicuous and quiet boy, who lived in a world of his own and wasn’t very sociable. He had a certain amount of interest in history and English literature, but no one would have trusted him with organizing the prom. The girls considered him a nice boy, which meant they were not afraid to walk with him down a dark alleyway. The only kiss he ever got in high school was during a New Year’s Eve party. A friend had to practically drag him along and when he finally got there he stood around uncomfortably for the most part. When the other boys talked about their sexual adventures, he simply remained quiet. No one asked.

Paul Siegel was awarded a scholarship and went to Harvard after high school. John enrolled at the nearby Hopkins Junior College, mainly because he could afford it and could stay at home. He didn’t have any plans for the future.

It was the summer of 1988 when the concert for Nelson Mandela was held in London’s Wembley Stadium. It was broadcast around the world. John and a few people from his class went to Central Park. Someone had put up a large screen and speakers, so that people could watch the London concert in the sunshine. They’d all smuggled in various forms to liquor to further enhance the event.

“Who is Nelson Mandela?” John asked.

Although he hadn’t asked anyone in particular, a rather chunky black-haired girl beside him explained that he was the leader of a South African freedom movement who had been imprisoned innocently for twenty-five years.

Before he knew it, he was involved in a conversation, and since the girl had a lot to say, it went very well. The hot June sun shone down on the crowd as she talked, getting them all hot and sweaty. The music blared out of the speakers, interrupted only by announcements, explanations, and appeals to the South African government to free Nelson Mandela. As the day went on the screen became less and less clear.

Sarah Brickman had twinkling eyes and skin as white as fine porcelain. At one point she suggested they retreat into the shade under a tree or large bush, as many other concert goers had done. So they did. Then kissed, their lips salty from the sweat. While the chorus, “Free … Nelson … Mandela … free … Nelson … Mandela!” droned across the field, John unhooked Sarah’s bra. Considering that he was doing this for the first time in his life, and that he had more alcohol in his blood than ever before, he mastered that feat very well.

When he awoke the next morning with a pounding head, he found himself lying in a strange bed. But when he saw the black locks beside him on the pillow, he knew he must have done something right, even though he could not remember all the details. Accompanied by his mother’s tears, he later moved out of his parents’ house and into the small drafty apartment on the West side that Sarah had inherited from her parents.

Sarah Brickman was an artist. She painted large wild paintings in gloomy colors that no one wanted to buy. About once a year she displayed her work for one or two weeks in an art gallery, which charged a fee and took a commission. And every time she either sold no paintings or too few even to pay the gallery. For days afterwards she was hard to talk to.

John found a night job in a laundromat and learned how to fold shirts and use the laundry press. He burned both his hands during the first week, but the money was enough to pay the electric bills and buy food. For a while he tried to keep up with his studies at college, but he now had a long commute, and he still didn’t know what good going to school would do him. So one day he quit, without even telling his parents. They found out a few months later, which led to a hefty argument in which the word ‘whore’ was used, referring to Sarah. John refused to see his family for a long time afterwards.

He was always impressed to see Sarah standing before the scaffold wearing a paint-smeared smock over her clothes and a quirky expression on her face. In the evenings Sarah would drag him to smoke-filled bars in Greenwich Village, where she would talk with other artists about art and business. He had a hard time figuring out what they would go on and on about, but that was kind of cool too. He felt he had found a niche in life. But Sarah’s friends weren’t so ready to share their niche in life with a redneck from nowhere. They laughed at him when he said something, or ignored him or rolled their eyes when he asked questions. For them he was nothing more than Sarah’s lover, her sidekick, her cuddly bear.

The only person in the group he could talk to in was a fellow outsider, Marvin Copeland, the boyfriend of another artist, Brenda Carrington. Marvin shared an apartment with a few other people in Brooklyn, made a meager living as a bassist in various unsuccessful bands, and wrote his own songs, which no one wanted to play. He spent a lot of time looking out of his window or smoking marijuana, and there wasn’t a crazy idea he didn’t believe. He was as convinced of the government’s involvement in hiding the Roswell aliens in Area 51 as he was about the healing powers of pyramids and gems. The only conspiracy theory he doubted was that Elvis was still alive. He always made for entertaining company.

John and Sarah got into fights on a regular basis over her art. It was bad when he thought one of her paintings was good while she disagreed, and it was even worse when he doubted her self-proclaimed masterpieces. One day he decided to learn what made a picture good or bad. Since he had no idea what Sarah and her friends were talking about, he started to read books about art and spent whole days in the Museum of Modern Art, where he mixed inconspicuously with other visitors, following the tour guides, until he began to be recognized and they started asking him embarrassing questions. He paid close attention to the explanations about the paintings, about which he was both enthusiastic and uncomprehending, and he thought that painting could be the one thing in his life he was looking for. Why hadn’t he discovered this before? How could he have, with his father a shoemaker, one brother an IRS officer and the other a military pilot? He started to paint.

That was not a good idea as it later turned out. He thought that Sarah would be happy, but instead she criticized everything he did and even badmouthed his efforts to her friends. John was convinced that everything she said was true, and he humbly accepted the critique and used it as motivation to work even harder. He would have loved to take lessons, but, even if he found time for them, he wouldn’t have been able to afford them.

At one stage there was a painting course on TV. It came on at four in the morning and was hacked up with commercials, but he didn’t miss a single episode. It showed how to paint mountain lakes lined with pine trees, or windmills in stunning sunsets. Without having ever seen them in real life, he found he was able to follow the instructions and do a fairly decent job recreating the scenes; even Sarah didn’t criticize him anymore, she just rolled her eyes.

One day there was a short report about Sarah Brickman and her work in a local art periodical, which she cut out, framed, and proudly hung it over her bed. Not long after that article was published, a young potential buyer from Wall Street with slicked back hair appeared. He wore a wide-striped shirt with suspenders and he explained several times that he saw art as a form of investment and that he wanted to secure artwork from talented artists before they might become famous. He thought this was a great idea. Sarah took him into her studio and showed him her paintings, but he found it difficult to understand them. Only when he saw one of John’s early works, a silhouette of a city done with a wild mix of colors, which Sarah had only scoffed at, did he show much enthusiasm. He offered ten thousand dollars, and John just nodded.

The buyer and painting were hardly out the door when Sarah stomped into the bathroom, slammed the door shut and locked herself in. John, still holding the bundle of money in his hand, knocked on the door and wanted to know what the matter was.

“Do you know that you just earned more money with that shitty cityscape than I have in my entire life?” she cried.

Their relationship was never the same, and it ended a short while later in February 1990. Sarah told John that it was over on the same day that Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

He moved in with Marvin and his housemates. It so happened that an uncomfortable narrow room had just become available. He sat there on the floor with his few belongings, still not understanding what had happened.

Selling the painting of the city’s silhouette was to be his only success as an artist, and the money was spent faster than he could have imagined. After he was forced to move, he had to quit his job at the laundry. After a few weeks of running around chasing job ads, during which his bank account shrank down to zero, he finally got hired as a delivery man for a pizzeria run by someone from India, who preferred hiring young, Italian-looking men to work outside the kitchen. A job like this in south Manhattan meant having to snake your way through the more or less stationary traffic with a bicycle and to know all the short cuts through narrow alleys. It was a job that made his legs and lungs strong, but he still managed to develop a sort of smoker’s cough due to all the exhaust he inhaled. On top of that, he barely earned enough money to survive.

He might have had just enough space to paint inside his little room, but even on sunny days there was hardly enough light, and he also lacked the time to commit to art. His shift often ended late at night and he was so tired that he slept like a log, until his alarm clock would wake him up to start all over again. Every time he took a day off to go to a job interview his bank account would slip a bit more into the red.

This is how Paul Siegel found him when he returned to New York with an awe-inspiring diploma from Harvard in his pocket and a well-paid job at a consulting company that counted nearly every renowned international company and quite a few governments among its clients.

John visited him once in his tastefully arranged apartment in West Village and marveled at the view over the Hudson River while Paul told him — as merciless as only a good friend can — everything he was doing wrong in his life.

“First you have to lose your debts; as long as you’re in debt, you’re not free,” he explained. “Then you have to get some breathing space so you can go in a new direction, but above all you need to know what you want from life.”

“Yeah,” John said, “you’re right.”

But he couldn’t wish away his debts or figure out an idea of what he wanted out of his life.

To set his establishment apart from the others, Murali, the owner of the pizzeria John worked for, got the hair-brained idea to guarantee delivery within thirty minutes for every customer south of the Empire State Building. Anyone who had to wait longer got their pizza free. It was an idea from some book Murali hadn’t even read, but had been told about. The results were devastating. Each delivery man got four “lates” a week for free, after that the cost of the “free” pizza was taken from the man’s pay. During busy times the pizza was already late when it came out of the oven.

John’s bank closed his account, he got into an argument with Marvin because he paid the rent late, and he hardly had anything left over to take to the pawnshop. In the end he sold the pocket watch he got from his father on his First Communion, which proved a bad idea since he ended up feeling too guilty to visit his parents — the only place he was invited to eat for free once in a while since breaking up with Sarah. On some days he was actually suffering from hunger pangs while he transported the flat boxes smelling of delicious pizza.

That’s how 1995 started. Once in a while the men from John’s youth appeared in his dreams; they waved at him and smiled and said things he didn’t understand. London’s Baring’s Bank went broke after one of its employees, Nick Leeson, mismanaged huge sums of money. The Japanese Aum Shiri Kyo sect killed twelve people and injured five thousand others with poison gas in the Tokyo subways, and 186 people got killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. Bill Clinton was still president, but had a tough time after his party lost its majority in both houses of Congress.

John realized that he hadn’t painted for over a year and that time had somehow just simply slipped away. He had a feeling that he was waiting for something, but he didn’t know what it was.

The 23rd of April wasn’t exactly a lucky day. First, it was a Sunday and he had to work. There was a message from his mother waiting for him at the pizzeria telling him to call home. Luckily, the phone in Marvin’s apartment hardly ever worked. John threw the note away and concentrated on his deliveries, which like most Sundays were few. He knew he’d end up barely earning anything for his trips to the craziest addresses. Since he had already used up his “lates” for the week, he pedaled his fastest to be on time. Maybe it was the stress that caused the accident. He rode out from between two buildings onto a street, braked a bit too late and rammed a car that looked like something the Michael Douglas character in Wall Street would climb into. The bike was a heap of junk after the collision, the pizza was ruined, and the car drove off as if nothing happened. John looked after the dark-red tail lights of the car as he rubbed his knee through his ripped jeans and realized it could have ended much worse for him.

Murali was ranting at him when John came limping back. The two exchanged unkind words, and then John lost his job.

John went home with ten cents in his pocket and a bunch of pent-up anger. He walked through a night that got colder the longer he took. During the last miles in Brooklyn, sleet began to pour down, and by the time John got home he didn’t know if he was a frozen stiff, or stiffly frozen.

When he opened the door the room was wonderfully warm with the aroma of eggs and cigarettes. Marvin sat with his legs crossed in the kitchen, his Fender Jazz Bass plugged into the amp and the volume turned up loud enough that it was just audible above the bare strings. Instead of tweaking wildly on the strings like he usually did, he simply plucked them making dull sounds, much like a heart beat; du-dum, du-dum, du-dum.

“Someone was here asking for you,” he said when John went to the bathroom.

“What?” John stopped. Take a leak and go to bed; that’s what he had told himself over and over again on the freezing walk home for the past hour. “Me?”

“Two men.”

“What men?”

“No idea. Just some men.” Du-dum, du-dum. "Two men in fancy suits, ties, tie clips, and everything. They wanted to know if a John Salvatore Fontanelli lives here.”

John took the few steps into the kitchen. Stoically, Marvin kept plucking at the strings. Du-dum, du-dum, du-dum. “John Salvatore,” Marvin said shaking his head. “I didn’t even know you had a middle name. By the way, you look like shit.”

“Thanks. Murali fired me.”

“Not nice of him. Especially since we have to pay the rent next week.” Du-dum, du-dum, du-dum. Without losing the rhythm, Marvin reached over to the table and handed John a business card. “Here, I’m supposed to give you this.”

It was an expensive looking, four-color business card with a fancy looking coat-of-arms on it. It said:

Eduardo Vacchi
Lawyer
Florence, Italy
Currently at: The Waldorf Astoria
301 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y.
Tel. 212-355-3000

John stared at the card. He felt heavy and lethargic from the warmth in the kitchen. “Eduard Vacchi … Can’t say I ever heard the name before. Did they tell you what they want with me?”

“You’re supposed to call him. He said, ‘If he comes home, give him the card and tell him to call me. It’s very important.’” Du-dum, du-dum, du-dum. “Something about an inheritance.” Du-dum, du-dum. “To me it sounds like money; could be cool, maybe.”

$2,000,000,000,000

THE OLD MAN — the Padrone, as Eduardo called him, took the pillow that had been resting on his lap, and placed it on a small table next to his chair. Then he stood up, which because of his rheumatism took a bit of effort. He pulled his sweater together with arthritic hands and smiled gently to everyone.

John sat there stiffly. His mind went blank for the moment.

The old man — or the Padrone — or Eduardo’s grandfather, came closer with silent and measured steps. He slowly went around the table, as if he had all the time in the world. When he went past John, behind his chair, he pated John’s shoulder in a kindly manner; real gently and casually, as if the Padrone was adopting him into their family, so to speak. He ended his casual walk around the table, sat down on the empty chair, and opened the last folder.

John’s mind was not able to figure out what was going on here. Maybe it was like in those IQ tests? We have the numbers 2 — 4 — 6 — 8. What is the next logical number? Right — 10. We have the numbers 2 — 4 — 8 — 16. What is the next logical number? Right — 32. We have the numbers 80,000 — 4,000,000 — 2,000,000,000. What is the next logical number?

But logic ended right there for John. Maybe they weren’t lawyers at all. Maybe they were crazy people, playing a crazy game. Maybe he was the victim of a psychology experiment. Maybe this is nothing more than a form of Candid Camera.

“My name is Cristoforo Vacchi,” the old man said with a gentle yet firm voice, “and I’m a lawyer from Florence, Italy.” He looked at John in such a manner that made John dismiss any idea that this could be a psychology experiment or a TV game show. This was real, was true, this was indisputably authentic.

There was a pause. John felt as if he was expected use his dry throat, and swollen, football-sized tongue to say something, to ask something, to articulate something, but he found no words to express what he felt. The only thing he brought out was a whisper-like utterance: “More money?”

The Padrone nodded compassionately. “Yes, John, more money.”

It was hard to guess how old Cristoforo Vacchi was, but it was safe to say that he was at least eighty. There wasn’t much left of his snow-white hair. His skin was loose and full of spots and wrinkles. But he still looked like someone who was very competent and in control of things when he folded his hands together gracefully and looked at the papers. Anyone who saw this, otherwise fragile looking man, would never get the idea that he could be anywhere near senile. The idea was simply too ridiculous

“I will tell you the whole story,” he said. John now understood that it had been left up to the old man to give it to him, so to speak. “It began in the year 1480 in Florence, Italy. It was then that your ancestor, Giacomo Fontanelli, was born out of wedlock. His mother found shelter for him in a monastery under the leadership of a merciful abbot. The boy grew up amongst monks. When he was fifteen years old on April 23, 1495, Giacomo had a dream, or perhaps it’s better to call it a vision, even though he always called it a dream in his writings. It was a vision so bright and intense that it influenced the rest of his life. The monks had taught him how to read, to write and to do math. Not long after his dream he moved away to become a merchant and trader. He worked in Rome and especially in Venice, which was an economic powerhouse in southern Europe back then. He later got married and had six children — all sons, who later, for the most part, also became merchants. Giacomo, however, returned to the monastery in 1525 to realize the rest of his dream.”

John shook his head. “I keep hearing about a dream. What dream?”

“The dream he had at fifteen was a dream in which Giacomo Fontanelli saw the future of his own life. He saw his future wife and, among other things, what a successful business he would have. But, far more important than that, he foresaw a time five hundred years into the future, which he described as a time filled with misery and pathetic fear, a time in which no one saw a real future anymore. And he saw that it was the will of Divine Providence — the will of God, you could say, for him to bequeath his fortune to the youngest heir alive on the five hundredth anniversary of his dream. This man would be the chosen one to give humanity its lost future back, and he would do this with Giacomo Fontanelli’s fortune.”

“Me?” John cried out.

“You,” the Padrone said while nodding.

“I’m what? The chosen one? Do I look like someone who is chosen to do anything?”

“We’re only speaking about a historic fact,” Cristoforo Vacchi responded gently. “What I told you here you will be able to read in your ancestor’s last will and testament. I only told you what his motive was.”

“Oh. So, God appeared in his vision, and that’s why I’m here today?”

“That’s correct.”

“That’s just too crazy, don’t you think?”

The old man lifted his hands and said, “That’s for you to decide.”

“Give humanity their future. Me, of all people?” John sighed. There you see what visions and holy dreams are worth: nothing! Sure, hardly a person these days saw a future anymore. Everyone was virtually waiting for humanity to go down the drain for any one of a multitude of reasons. The end was near, that was for sure. There were enough reasons for fear: fear of a nuclear holocaust, though that had faded a bit over the years. But plagues and epidemics had been appearing more frequently — AIDS, Ebola, mad cow disease, and so forth. Not to mention the hole in the ozone layer and the expansion of the world’s deserts, and he had recently heard that drinking water would soon become scarce. No, there really was no reason to believe in the future. And he, John Salvatore Fontanelli, was no exception. Quite the contrary; while his peers had at least managed to secure their immediate futures by buying houses, making families and earning stable incomes, he managed to get by one day at a time and even to suppress near future realities like paying next month’s rent. Really, if there was someone less likely to restore humanity’s lost future then John Fontanelli would have liked to have known who it was.

The old man looked at his files again. “In the year 1525, as I said, Giacomo Fontanelli returned to the monastery where he grew up in and told the abbot about his vision. They agreed that this dream had been sent to him by God — a dream like in the biblical story where the pharaoh had a God-given dream, and which Joseph interpreted, telling him that his dream meant seven years of great plenty and then seven years of famine, upon which they decided to do something about it. Giacomo Fontanelli’s entire fortune was placed in the hands of the abbot’s friend, to be managed by him. He was a legal scholar by the name of Michelangelo Vacchi …”

“Oh?” John uttered.

“Yes, my ancestor.”

“Are you trying to tell me that your family managed the fortune of my family all this time simply to give it to me today?”

“That is correct.”

“For five hundred years?”

“Yes. The Vacchis had been legal scholars for five hundred years. The house that is our firm’s main office is the same one as back then.”

Baffled, John shook his head. Baffled by not only the incredible story but also by the stoic and calm manner the old man told it to him. History lessons all but forgotten long ago began to creep back into his mind, sending a shiver down his spine. As Christopher Columbus was sailing back from discovering America, one of his ancestors had a God-given dream and was amassing a fortune. This old man was trying to tell him was that between the time of America’s discovery and man walking on the moon, this family of Italian lawyers had practically done nothing save manage his family’s fortune, based on nothing more than a dream, and all this in the same house! “Five hundred years?” John repeated. “That’s … I don’t know how many generations. Hasn’t anyone ever thought about keeping those two billion dollars for himself?”

“Never,” Cristoforo Vacchi said casually.

“But, no one would’ve ever found out! Even now, after you told me everything, I find it hard to believe.”

“No one would have known — that may be true,” the old man admitted. “But God would have.”

“Ah,” was all John managed. That’s what it was.

The Padrone spread his hands apart. “Perhaps I should set a few things straight. Naturally, your ancestor composed a set of clear and concise rules how our services as fund manager were to be recompensed, which we followed precisely, and we lived very well off of that income, if I may say so. Of course, we still have all the books that contain every transaction to and from banks and our remunerations, which can be examined at any time.”

Yeah, John thought, I bet they can!

“And, of course,” the aged Vacchi added, “the original amount of the fortune wasn’t two billion dollars. There was probably not so much money around back then. The fortune that Giacomo Fontanelli had when he donated it to the fund was three hundred florins. Today, this would be equal to around ten thousand dollars.”

“What?”

The old man nodded, causing his floppy and wrinkly skin on his neck to look something like a dinosaur’s. “You have to consider the exchange rate and the buying power. Three hundred florins was quite a fortune, when you consider what it could buy back then. Today, that amount of money isn’t considered a fortune at all. Our trip to New York alone would have consumed most of it already. Countless types of monies and monetary reforms usually cloud the simple fact that inflation gnaws on all fortunes, large and small. But, Giacomo Fontanelli had a mighty ally,” the Padrone added meaningfully, “and that is compound interest.”

“Compound interest?” John echoed like a dummy.

“Let me explain: In 1525, around ten thousand dollars were deposited in an institute we would call a bank today. There were no banks back then as they exist today, but at that time in history there was a flourishing economy in Europe, especially in Italy, and along with it a well-functioning capital market. Remember that Florence was a metropolis of money during the fourteenth century, controlled by bankers such as the Bardi and Peruzzi, then by the Medici during the fifteenth century. There was a church ban on interest rates, but it was ignored, because a capital market cannot exist without interest rates. No one would loan money if he didn’t get something out of it. When Giacomo Fontanelli invested his fortune, it fit well with the flourishing and well-functioning money market of the sixteenth century. My ancestor, Michelangelo Vacchi, chose to make a relatively unchallenging investment, which brought in four percent interest. That means that at the end of 1525 there was about four hundred dollars of interest from the ten thousand dollars, which was added to the whole. In the following year it wasn’t ten thousand dollars earning interest, but ten thousand and four hundred dollars. And so forth.”

“I’ve read enough credit card statements, I know what compound interest is,” John grumbled, still waiting for the grand finale — the discovery of the Inca treasure, a motherlode, or whatever. “But that’s still only peanuts, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the old man said with a smile. He took a sheet of paper that had long rows of numbers on it. “Like most people, you underestimate what compound interest plus time can accomplish. It is a simple matter to figure out, because, even though the numbers vary slightly from time to time, we still have an effective interest rate of four percent that we were able to maintain over the time period. This means that in 1530, there was twelve thousand dollars in today’s money. In 1540 it was eighteen thousand, and by 1543 the original sum had more than doubled. And, of course, the interest returns as well.”

John suspected something, even though he didn’t know what it was. But it had to be something big … something breathtaking. Like seeing a massive iceberg dwarfing a big ship or a mammoth tree falling over.

“And so,” Cristoforo smiled, “it went on, just like the fable with the chess set and the grains of rice. Four percent interest plus compound interest meant that the money doubled every eighteen years. There were twenty-six thousand dollars in the fortune by 1550, and in 1600 it was one hundred and ninety thousand. It was over one million dollars in 1643. In 1700 it was nine and a half million and in 1800 it was forty-eight million dollars and it reached one billion by 1819 …”

“My God,” John said under his breath and felt the weight on his body again, about to crush him. Only this time it came without mercy; all those big numbers.

“With the start of the twentieth century,” the old man continued remorselessly, “the Fontanelli fortune had grown to over twenty-four billion dollars, dispersed in thousands of bank accounts. When World War Two started it was one hundred and twelve billion dollars and when it ended it was one hundred and forty-two billion dollars. Up to the final day, which was yesterday, the fortune — your fortune — has grown to a nice rounded sum of one trillion dollars.” He grinned smugly. “All down to compound interest, plus time.”

John looked stupidly at the lawyer. He moved his lower jaw without a sound coming from his mouth. He cleared his throat and, like someone suffering from tuberculosis, he croaked: “One trillion dollars?”

“One trillion. That is a thousand times one billion.” Cristoforo looked steadfastly and nodded. “This means that you are the richest human being on earth, even the richest man of all time — by far. This one trillion dollars will earn you forty billion dollars of interest this year alone. There are about two or three hundred billionaires, depending on how you look at it, but you will hardly find ten that can even match your interest gains of this single year. No one has ever owned even close to as much money as you now have.”

“If you want to look at it this way,” Eduardo Vacchi interjected enthusiastically, “you are four thousand dollars richer with every breath you take.”

John was near shock. To say that he could not fathom all this would be a gross understatement. His mind spun around in circles like the blades of a turbine, throwing around memories, fears, and painful experiences, all to do with money — or more accurately — the lack of it. The whole thing released such a flood of emotions that something inside him pulled the cord for the emergency brakes.

“One trillion dollars,” he mumbled. “Just from interest and compound interest.”

“And five hundred years of time,” Cristoforo Vacchi added.

“That is so simple. Anyone could have done that.”

“Yes. But no one did. No one except Giacomo Fontanelli,” the elder Vacchi said, “However, it wasn’t that easy. The banks naturally know about compound interest, and this is why all savings account contracts contain the small yet very significant clause that all interest payments are ceased after thirty years if no transactions were made. And that is exactly what they want to avoid; someone putting a small amount in a bank, forgets about it and a hundred years later someone finds it and has a fortune.” He smiled. “And this is why the Vacchis always made sure that the money moved. It was taken out of here and put in there, then the other way around. This was. In effect, all we did for the past five hundred years.”

“Just move money around in bank accounts?”

“Exactly. And I’m convinced that this is why the money grew, and grew and is still there, while so many other fortunes simply vanished with time. The owners of such fortunes never had so much time, only their own lifespans. They wanted to enjoy their money, so they spent it or took risks in investments. My family did none of this. We didn’t have to take risks; on the contrary, we avoided them. We didn’t want any part of the money, because it wasn’t ours. And, we had time, lots of time and a holy mission.” Cristoforo shook his head. “No, I do not believe that just anyone could have done the same. I believe that this was something quite unique — a one of a kind feat.”

There was a long moment of silence. John stared into space, too stunned from the whole business to do anything else. The four lawyers watched him carefully, observing how he struggled to get a grip on something that each of them had years of time to become accustomed to. They looked at him like some long lost family member who had been gone for years and was now finally back home.

“And now?” John Salvatore Fontanelli asked finally, surprised that it was still light outside, beyond the glass panes. He felt like hours must have passed by since he’d first entered the room.

“There are documents to work through,” Alberto Vacchi said and tugged at his kerchief. “The fortune must be signed over to you, and we will try to prevent inheritance tax and a number of other matters.”

“Your way of life will change,” Gregorio Vacchi said. “Of course we won’t be able to give you rules or regulations on how to handle your money, but since we have prepared for this moment for generations, we were able to develop a list of suggestions, which may prove to be to your benefit. For instance, you will need an office staff to handle the flood of begging letters that are sure to come in. And bodyguards, to prevent you from being kidnapped.”

“This is why,” Eduardo Vacchi added, “we suggest that you leave New York and come with us to Florence — at least for a while, until you’ve got used to your new life.”

John nodded slowly. Yes, all this would really take some time to digest. He would have to sleep on it. Go to Florence? Okay, why not. What was keeping him here in New York? One trillion dollars. The wealthiest man on earth. Really — the whole thing was a joke. “And then?” he asked.

“We’re just as curious,” said Cristoforo Vacchi.

“What do you mean with that?”

The old man made a vague gesture with his hands. “Well, you will have so much money at your disposal that entire countries will shudder at your decisions. That is the power you now have in your hands and what you do with it is your business alone.”

“What did Giacomo Fontanelli see in his dreams that I would do?”

“We do not know. He saw that you would do the right thing. He didn’t say anything else in the notes that were handed down to us.”

“The right thing? But what is the right thing?”

“Whatever will restore humanity’s lost future.”

“And how should that be done?”

The Padrone laughed. “I have no idea, my son. But, I’m not worried about that, and you should not be either. Just remember that we are fulfilling a prophecy, which we believe is divine in nature. This simply means that whatever you do — you cannot make a mistake.”

Susan Winter, thirty-one years old and unmarried, sat in front of Rockefeller Center on a white wire chair by a small table for two, nervously bouncing one leg up and down, above her head a brown eight-sided umbrella. But the man refused to show up … he simply didn’t show. She looked at her watch for the thousandth time. Okay, it was still two minutes until the actual appointment. And then that sculpture, a golden Prometheus — one of the Titans, adorning the building’s façade. Didn’t he do something forbidden, too? Defy the gods? She tried to remember what she knew about antique myths, but couldn’t call them to mind.

The few friends she had, thought her lack of self-confidence was the reason for her not having married yet, and that this also prevented her from dressing nicely and knowing how to put on make-up, failing to let her real beauty show through. On this evening she was wearing baggy jeans and a worn gray sweatshirt. Her hair hung limp on her shoulders. The waiter had treated her like a nobody, and the water she’d ordered hadn’t arrived yet. What her friends didn’t know — what no one knew — was that she was hooked on playing the lottery. She gambled away every bit of money that she could spare, and the money from the few times she won, too. She had admitted to herself a long time ago that it was more an addiction than a passion, but she simply didn’t have the strength to change. Sometimes, when she bought a dozen lottery tickets, she felt as if she was standing next to herself watching, and felt a grim gratification to let this ugly and useless being waste her life. Her grandmother, with whom she had spent her afternoons as a child, always used to say: “Gambler’s fortune, lover’s misfortune!” when she won a round of bridge with her friends. “Luck at gambling brings no luck at love.” That was a German proverb. Grandmother fled from Germany before the war. It was only later on that Susan understood why. During those afternoons when her parents were at work she used to sit beside her grandmother, combed her dolls’ hair, and dressed them up and listened to the old women talk. Luck at gambling, brings no luck at love. She turned that adage around for her own purpose, and wasn’t sure if it shouldn’t be reversed; no luck at love brings luck at gambling. With all the bad luck she had in love, her gambling would surely pay off one day. Even though she had only a vague idea what luck might feel like.

Then the man arrived, punctual to the minute. He stepped onto the terrace wearing an unremarkable black coat and found Susan Winter right away without having to look for her. He held a brown envelope in one hand, and Susan knew that it contained money, lots of money. All of a sudden what she was about to do excited her.

He sat down across from her, stiffly, as if he had sore muscles, laid the envelope down on the table, folded his hands over it, and looked at her. He had a rough, pockmarked face, like he had suffered from pox or at least very bad acne.

“Well?” he asked.

He didn’t tell her his name now, and he never mentioned a name when he called her. She always recognized him by his voice. For the past two years she had supplied him with information she stole from her firm, and he supplied her with money. In the beginning it was only little details: what cases the Dalloway Detective Agency was working on, what clients it had. Then the questions became more precise, and so did the answers she provided. Today was the first time that she actually handed over documents.

She opened her purse and pulled out a thin folder. He reached for it, and she put it in his hand. That was all it took.

Silently, he examined the files. It wasn’t much, only whatever she was able to copy without drawing anyone's attention. The folder had a photo that he was carefully studying now, a few copies of copies, and a few pages of text, which he leisurely read through. She watched him while he checked the papers, and stared at his hairy hands. She felt ugly, little, and miserable. But at the same time she fervently hoped the documents were worth the money he offered her.

“Do you have any information about his family, too?” he suddenly asked.

He reached his hand out towards her, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, but he did it in an assertive, demanding way. She withdrew the second folder and gave that to him too. Again, he looked at the papers. These files were more extensive and contained almost everything the agency had gathered. Some of the information was acquired using less than legal means, but even that seemed trivial to her.

“Good,” he said, casually handing her a brown envelope as if he were handing over a pencil. Susan took it, slipped it into her purse, and felt warmth spread between her legs. He stood up in the same stiff manner and stuffed the rolled-up folders into his coat. “If there is anything else I need in the next few days, I’ll give you a call.”

She felt the money through the leather of her bag.

“If I only knew what could be so interesting about the boy.”

The way the man looked down on her made her cringe. “It is better for you not to understand. Consider that a piece of good advice.”

He left without looking back.

John sat on the bed in the hotel. It smelled of lavender. He stared at the telephone on the nightstand and couldn’t decide if he dared to use it. He was feeling restless inside, as if he was about to break apart. It all had to be a dream. What he wished for now more than anything else was to talk with someone, someone from the real world, someone who would say, “Wake up!” or something to pull him back into reality. Was he allowed to use the phone? They told him that he should sleep here. Now that they had found him after five hundred years, they didn’t want to let him out of their sight. Did that mean he wasn’t allowed to make a phone call? He had heard that it was expensive to use a hotel telephone, and he only had enough money for the subway ride back home.

They bought him a pair of pajamas, pants, a shirt, everything he really needed and everything in the right size. The floor was covered with the clothes they had bought for him, and he hadn’t even opened all the packages yet. In the meantime it had gotten dark outside, and he just kept sitting there in the gloom.

If he was supposed to spend the night there, then would they also pay for his phone call? Maybe. He stared at the flat, light-colored gadget shimmering in the dimness and shuddered. One trillion dollars, a voice inside his head repeated over and over again. One trillion dollars. What about Paul? Paul Siegel could tell him what to think about it all. Paul would help him get his thoughts sorted.

His hands shot forward as if of their own accord. One grabbed the phone and the other dialed. Holding his breath, he listened as the phone rang on the other end of the line and then heard the crackle of static as someone answered.

“Paul Siegel,” a familiar voice said. John wanted to say something, but he couldn’t think of anything, nothing, not even his own name, and then he noticed that he only got the answering machine. “I’m on a trip abroad, but I’m still glad you called. Please leave your name, number, and a message after the beep, and I will return your call. Thank you.”

It beeped. “Paul?” His voice felt odd, like after throat surgery. “Paul, it’s John. John Fontanelli. If you happen to be home then please answer, it’s urgent.” Maybe he was just coming through the door at this very moment, breathless, baggage and briefcase in hand. It was worth a try. Or maybe he was looking for the right key while he heard the answering machine inside the apartment. “Please call me back as soon as you can. I think I’m going nuts. Something totally crazy happened, and I could use your advice. Why are you on a trip now, dammit? Oh, yes, I’m at the Waldorf Astoria. I forgot the number …” A second beep ended the message. John placed the receiver back on the phone and wiped the sweat off it. He sank back into the pillow and passed out.

$3,000,000,000,000

FOR THE NEXT several days Marvin Copeland didn’t hear anything from John. Then he received a postcard, a postcard of New York.

I really did inherit money, he wrote, and not a little. But I will tell you all about it next time. I have to go on a trip now — its business. I will get a hold of you again, promise. I just don’t know when.

See you, John.

The card had the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Museum of Modern Art on it. Written in the margin, in smaller letters and with a different pen, it said: There will be movers coming in the next few days, show them my room so they can pack my stuff.

“And the rent?” Marvin mumbled and turned the card around looking in vain for another message. “What’s with the rent?”

He did not have to worry, because the three huge men who showed up a few days later handed him an envelope with enough money to cover three months worth of rent in large denominations and a short note in John’s handwriting: I will get a hold of you as soon as I know what’s going on. Keep the room empty for me until then, ok? John.

“Come right on in,” Marvin told the muscular men.

They seemed to be a bit disappointed not having to move a piano, not even furniture, there were only a few cartons full of clothes, some books and other odds and ends.

“Where’s he going to?”

“It’s an international transport,” said the man in charge. He handed Marvin his clipboard. On the papers it said Florence, Italy.

Florence, Italy.

John peered out the little window at the airport, glaring in the sunlight. Peretola Aeroporto it said on one building. It was early in the morning in Florence. They had flown through the night; on a ten or eleven-hour flight. He got mixed-up with the different time zones. Of course he flew first class. Two rows ahead he saw a face that looked familiar. It was a small shock when he realized that he was looking at a movie star: a genuine Hollywood star, an Oscar winner even, accompanied by his wife and manager. He asked Eduardo in a hushed tone if it were okay to go up to the man and ask for an autograph.

“Why not?” Eduardo answered and added dryly, “Or you could wait two weeks, then he’ll come to you and ask for an autograph!”

John did not approach the movie star.

Despite the generous size of the seats and the ample legroom, John wasn’t able to sleep much on the flight and didn’t feel rested when it landed. The bright light hurt his eyes. He blinked when he looked toward the hills to a thin line of Italian stone pine trees. He’d never been to Italy before. All that he knew about this country was what his parents had told him.

He thought back to the previous day. His parents were very surprised when he appeared in a black Lincoln. He still had to smile remembering the looks on their faces. He didn’t tell them that much, and they didn’t quite understand what was going on with the inheritance. “How can you inherit something when we’re still alive, son?” his father must have asked at least five times. They did understand that he was now a wealthy man. But he didn’t tell them just how wealthy he really was since it was a short visit, and they would have had a tough time grasping the enormity of a trillion dollars. After all, he still hadn’t fully grasped it himself.

On their way back from Bridgewater, they stopped by Fifth Avenue, right in front of the most luxurious stores. Eduardo, who was like a tour guide showing John the wonderful world of wealth, handed over a gold credit card with John’s name on it, and then they entered the store to get a tailored suit.

It was quiet inside and it smelled of cloth, fine leather, and expensive perfume. The display cases, bags, and coat hangers seemed as old as America. John would not have been surprised if someone had told him that the dark wood in the store was made from the planks of the Mayflower.

A gray-haired man with a slight limp greeted them. With a quick professional glance he measured up Eduardo from head to toe, examining his perfectly fitting, but somewhat too modern tailor-made suit, and then he looked at John, who was still dressed in jeans, a worn shirt, and a jacket that was hardly an improvement. Without changing the expression on his face he deduced John was the man in need of a suit.

“How much should the new suit for the young man cost?” the tailor asked.

“Whatever is necessary,” Eduardo answered.

And then they got started. John tried on different suits while Eduardo decided, made suggestions, and gave orders to the employees.

At first, John was against being dressed-up in new suits, shirts, and ties. It was all too uncomfortable, would get dirty too easily, and he wouldn’t feel like himself in them.

“You can easily afford the best of the best,” Eduardo told him. “And I doubt that they’re uncomfortable, otherwise rich people wouldn’t wear them.”

“Doubtless, you will be able to afford to wear whatever you want,” Eduardo’s father, Gregorio, agreed awkwardly. “But we think it’s important to have a certain type of wardrobe for certain occasions.”

“You are a very wealthy man,” Gregorio’s brother Alberto said with a wink of an eye. “Surely, you want to feel like one.”

Grandfather Cristoforo smiled and said, “Try them on and then see how you feel in them.”

And, indeed, as John stood before a mirror dressed in his first suit, he was quite impressed. My goodness, what a difference! He had felt like a pile of shit when he entered the store, like a lost homeless man, like a born loser. A voice inside his head had told him to run — that he had no business in a place like this amidst such wealth and opulence. And now, dressed in a classic, dark-blue, double-breasted suit, a snow-white shirt, a tie with thin stripes, a pair of shiny black shoes that were so hard and heavy each step was clearly audible, he not only looked like he belonged in this environment, he even seemed to emit a special aura all of his own as he looked into the mirror. All of a sudden he was a winner, a very important person, yes, a VIP! John looked at the miserable pile of clothes that he used to call his own and he knew that he would never wear them again. To wear a suit like the one he had on seemed almost magical. He felt like a demigod, and the feeling almost made his head spin. It was a feeling he could get addicted to. So they bought, and bought, and bought, running up a tab of twenty-six thousand dollars.

“My God, Mr. Vacchi,” John whispered to Eduardo and felt how pale he got. “Twenty-six thousand dollars!”

Eduardo just raised a brow. “So what?”

“That’s a lot of money for a few suits,” John hissed, feeling miserable.

“It took us almost two hours to choose these suits. In case it comforts you, your fortune grew by almost nine million dollars since we walked in the door.”

John simply didn’t know what to say, except: “Nine million? In two hours?”

“I could do the math for you, if you’d like.”

“We could’ve bought the whole store.”

“Indeed.”

John looked at the bill again, and this time the sum seemed ridiculous. He went to the cash register and laid the bill down along with his new credit card. The gray-haired man took them and went to the back behind a curtain, and when he reappeared it was as if he had been given a shot of adrenaline and was ready to help his new customer in any way he could. The shop owner’s change in demeanor left John wondering what the man had discovered just by calling to check on the card.

John decided to keep one of the suits on. Of course it was no problem to dispose of his old clothes, the gray-haired man told him. He did actually say “dispose.” As if John’s old outfit was nothing more than hazardous waste. John could imagine the man waiting until after they left, then lifting his clothes with large metal tongs and carrying them downstairs to the incinerator with a disgusted expression on his face.

Before leaving the store, Eduardo made arrangements to have the rest of the wardrobe delivered to the moving company that would transport John’s other belongings to Florence.

Later on, at JFK Airport, John noticed how different he felt, and how differently he was treated wearing an expensive suit. Security personnel spoke politely to him, and didn’t push him around. Customs personnel believed him when he said he had no goods to declare. The other passengers looked at him respectfully, and seemed to wonder who he was — if they should recognize him from a celebrity magazine.

“Clothes make the man,” Eduardo told him after John mentioned his observations.

“It’s as simple as that?” John wondered.

“Yes.”

“But, anyone could do this! Buy a really nice suit. Okay, a thousand dollars is a lot of money, but if you consider what people spend on cars …”

Eduardo only smiled.

A silver Rolls Royce stood waiting for them in the parking lot in front of the airport. It was a stretched version and shined to a glossy finish that seemed to leave everyone who saw it awe-struck.

A white-haired chauffer stood by the car, slightly stooped, looking at them with an aristocratic expression. His uniform reminded John of old movies, but the man looked proud. When John and the four lawyers came out of the terminal, pushing the baggage cart in front of them, the driver took off his cap, clamped it under his left arm, and opened the rear door with his right. It didn’t surprise John at all that the car was a Rolls Royce. What other choice was there? He was surprised that he was not surprised!

“So,” Eduardo said lightly, “now people will have something to be surprised by.”

“What do you mean?” John said.

“Because, we ourselves must put the baggage into the trunk. Benito has back problems, a spinal disc and a few other things with Latin names that have to do with the back, and he can’t lift anything heavier than car keys.”

And so John and the three younger Vacchis stowed their bags in the spacious trunk. Meanwhile, the Padrone and the chauffer were talking in Italian; so quickly and in such a strong dialect that John understood next to nothing. And indeed, the people who saw them were surprised, and a couple made some comments. Benito really wasn’t the youngest of men anymore. Eduardo’s grandfather almost seemed young and spry in comparison. Whatever it was that they were talking about, they seemed to get along famously.

“Actually, Benito should have retired years ago, and in effect he did,” Alberto explained when he saw John looking at the chauffer and guessed his thoughts. “But he has worked as our chauffer his entire life. He would wither away if he weren’t allowed to drive the Rolls anymore, and that’s why he’s driving it, for as long as he wants.”

After the baggage was loaded up, everyone got in the car and Benito drove away. But before long they were stuck in a traffic jam, just like everyone else.

“We’re going to go out to our country estate,” Cristoforo explained, looking at John from the side. “Naturally, you are our guest until all the required formalities have been addressed and you have chosen your new residence.”

John, irritated by the rude driving habits of the other drivers and the honking and the shaking of fists, looked at the Padrone. “What sort of formalities are we talking about, exactly?”

“The fortune must be officially signed over to you. What we must avoid is inheritance tax, but don’t worry, we will avoid it.”

“How much would that be?”

“Very much. Half.”

Extraordinarily, John felt a hot anger rise up from his stomach when he heard this; a feeling that he interpreted as aggression. Crazy, he thought. Two days ago he had been wishing that the inheritance would have been a more manageable four million dollars, instead of the colossal sum it had turned out to be. Now his anger burned white-hot merely at the thought of having to give half of a trillion away to some tax authority. It was almost as if he had earned every dollar with his own sweat and hard labor. “How do you plan to do that?” he asked.

This was Gregorio’s area of expertise. “We have a sort of gentleman’s agreement with the Italian minister of finance. He is satisfied to collect a symbolic few million dollars and you promise him to let the Italian government tax your capital income for at least one year. This will bring twenty billion dollars into his coffers, which he can certainly use at the moment.”

“Every finance minister could, couldn’t they?”

“Yes,” the lawyer said. “But Italy wants to join the European monetary union that is to begin in 1999, and at the moment it is questionable if the country can fulfill the financial prerequisites. Your twenty billion dollars could tip the scales. This is why the minister is, let’s say, very willing to make compromises.”

John nodded, but with a queasy feeling in his stomach. He still had to get used to these kinds of deals and the idea that whatever he did or said would be significant. What was even more momentous was that it would have massive consequences for many other people’s lives. It was still very difficult for him to come to terms with the power of money.

John’s attention was drawn to one of the stores along the street, not unusual since they had barely been moving faster than a pedestrian. “You say that all this money really is mine,” he said to Gregorio. “Is that the case at this very moment?”

“Certainly.”

“I could spend it on whatever I want?”

“Any time.” He turned to his son. “Eduardo, you did give him his credit card?” Eduardo nodded.

“Okay,” said John. “Please, let me out here.”

In his previous life John had once read an article in which the author said that driving a Ferrari was better than sex.

He was right.

Since they left the autostrada, which went past towns with colorful sounding names like Prato, Pistoria or Montecatini, the roadways were much narrower and wound their way in tight curves around dry hills. In some places stones had been piled up along the fields and time and again they raced past ancient abandoned looking farmsteads. When they drove through a village, bedraggled-looking children would gather and shout and wave to them, and the men, standing by the front doors or working on their tractors, would also wave.

“Take a right up by the next intersection, that’s a shortcut,” Eduardo hollered.

“And what if I go straight ahead?”

“That takes twenty minutes longer.”

“Then we’ll go straight ahead,” John said as he stepped on the accelerator. He enjoyed being pressed against the hard leather seats as the red Ferrari roared down the road, accelerating through the empty intersection like an arrow. Better than sex, really. John had lost track of how many times he’d imagined what it would feel like to drive a Ferrari, but it was far better than he could have ever guessed. Surrounded by sleek, deep-red sheet metal, and the powerful motor in back — you feel the thundering engine, like your own heartbeat, and the car becomes one with your body. You race through the countryside, unstoppable, fast, powerful, chasing along the roadways and round curves, the blood in your veins boiling. You feel the world is your playground, your personal racetrack. He felt awesome, like a movie star — he was a king!

“Will this disqualify me now in your eyes?” John asked as he shot across a bridge that went over an almost dry creek.

“Why?”

“Well,” John said with a tight grip on the wheel and a smirk on his lips, “you find the heir to the Fontanelli fortune, the fulfiller of the prophecy, the one who had been chosen for a half millennium to restore humanity’s future — and the first thing he does is totally useless: buying an extremely expensive sports car.”

Eduardo laughed. “Then you don’t know my grandfather. He took you into his heart. That’s forever. You can do whatever you want.”

John looked surprised. “Oh?” That touched him somehow.

“Besides,” Eduardo continued, “you fit right into a theory that he developed.”

“A theory?”

“He had been following the fate of various people who came suddenly and unexpectedly into wealth. You know, like you might’ve read in some newspaper story or other. He says that those who start to save it soon lose it. But, those who fulfill crazy dreams right away learn how to handle the money later on.”

“So, I guess there’s still hope for me.”

“Exactly.”

He just had to do it — when he saw the showroom window with the red cars inside, and the ridiculous looking mannequins and the logo with the black horse on a yellow shield. He felt something like hunger; he had to have such a car, he had to drive it. Right there and right at that moment.

Things like that always looked so easy in the movies, but on this side of the silver screen a car had to be registered, and had to be insured. You had to go through a thousand different steps in diverse government departments before you could legally drive a car out of the showroom for good.

Eduardo was by his side to help him with all the initial formalities. The man in the store simply nodded; everything could be taken care of later. John would be able to drive the vehicle right away. All he had to do was pull out his credit card and sign the receipt for an unbelievably large sum of lira, which John did without even trying to figure out how many dollars it was. And then came the magic moment; the owner of the dealership, a very well-dressed man with oily, shiny hair, handed the keys over to John. He and Eduardo climbed into the new Ferrari, the large store window was opened, and then John drove out into the street filled with honking cars.

Actually, John had never been a fan of Ferraris. He always thought how ridiculous it was when Tom Selleck drove a Ferrari around in the TV show Magnum P.I. A car like that was too expensive and impractical in his eyes. Naturally, he had dreamed of owning a nice car as a symbol of having made it in the world, just like any red-blooded American, but his dreams were set on a Cadillac or Corvette, not a Ferrari.

As he looked back to the moment when he gazed out the window of the Rolls Royce and saw the Ferrari dealership, it was more like a test to see how much truth there was to all those words the Vacchis had told him. That’s what made him want to buy one immediately — to see if he, supposedly the richest man of all time, could buy a wildly expensive sports car on nothing more than a whim.

And behold! He could.

“Your grandfather really believes in the prophecy, doesn’t he?” John asked.

Eduardo nodded. “Yes, he does.”

“And you?”

“Hmm.” A pause followed, and then he answered: “Not in the same way as grandfather does.”

“What do you believe?”

“I think that my family accomplished something very unique by keeping this fortune intact for such a long period of time. I also believe that it doesn’t belong to us, but to the rightful Fontanelli heir.”

“To me?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you ever think about just keeping it? I mean, who else knows about this money?”

“No one. I know it sounds crazy, but this is how I was raised. You might not be able to visualize this. I grew up in an atmosphere of patience and planning and working and preparing … all focuses on this one very particular date, a date that had been fixed five hundred years ago. The Vacchis' commitment was to care for the fortune, to nurture it and to make it grow up until the day it would be handed over to the rightful heir. Then, as soon as the heir had full control of the money, we would be free. Then our duty would be done.”

John tried to imagine such a life; one where people were tied to a pledge their ancestors made centuries ago, and he shuddered at the thought; it felt so unnatural to him. “Is that what you feel … commitment? Isn’t that a heavy burden?”

“It is not a heavy burden. It was simply our task and only when it is fulfilled are we free to concentrate on other things.” Eduardo shrugged his shoulders. “It may seem odd to you, but you must realize; those things that my grandfather told you about two days ago were stories I have known since I was a child. Fontanelli’s dream was told to me while other kids were told Christmas stories. I know it by heart. Each year the twenty-third of April was like a holiday for us, and we told each other, ‘Now there are only so-and-so many years left.’ I know the sum of Fontanelli’s fortune at any major moment in history. We watched the Fontanelli family down through all those years. We kept track of every wedding and every birth. We knew who held what job and who lived in what city. But, admittedly, we had let it slide a bit during the past years. The closer the final day got, the more confident we were that your cousin Lorenzo would inherit the money.”

John went out on a limb. “Are you disappointed that it was me in the end?”

“You can’t ask me that. I was in the university until last fall and never met him. To observe your family was the others’ job. We need to take a right here.”

John turned and up a small hill. He had to slow down because the road was narrow and winding.

“Who were the other possibilities?”

“You were number two. Number three would’ve been your distant cousin. He is a dental technician in Livorno. He’s thirty-one years old, married but without children, which, by the way, is a frequent occurrence in the Fontanelli family.”

“He will be disappointed.”

“He doesn’t know.”

Now the road offered better visibility. John saw that it led to a village. At bit off to the wayside — the view of the Mediterranean must be grand from up there — stood a large estate, and John sensed that must be the Vacchi home.

“What does your grandfather think about me?”

“That you are the heir Giacomo Fontanelli saw in his dream in the year 1495. And that with your fortune you will accomplish great things for humanity, something that will re-open the door to the future.”

“Quite ambitious expectations, aren’t they?”

“To be honest, I think all of this is only mystical humbug.” Eduardo laughed loudly.

They approached the village. John saw that the road on the other side, the one Eduardo wanted to take earlier, would have been wider.

“But, in the Vacchi family belief comes with age, according to a family proverb,” Eduardo added. “Both my father and my uncle are at a stage in their lives at which, as true Vacchis at least believe, they think that something useful must be done with the money, and they put in great efforts to think about what this might be. My grandfather doesn’t waste any time with such thoughts. You are the rightful heir, and the whole thing is a divine revelation … and if you buy a Ferrari, then it was part of God’s plan, e basta!”

Eduardo gave John instructions to help him find his way through the village with snappy finger gestures that John had quickly learned to “read.” The place looked very peaceful. They got to the estate, drove through a broad, wide open, wrought iron gateway and up to a spacious graveled driveway. The Rolls was already parked in the shade of large old trees. John parked the Ferrari next to it. It was odd not feeling the vibration of the Ferrari’s engine or hearing its sound any more.

“So, what do you think?” he wanted to know.

Eduardo grinned. “John, I think that you have a trillion dollars and that you are the king of the world. If you don’t enjoy that, then you are nuts.”

$4,000,000,000,000

THE ENTIRE PROPERTY was steeped in history. The treetops swayed in the wind coming in from the sea and made shadows dance upon the stoic old stucco walls laced with countless, thin cracks. They had taken only a few crunchy steps on the gravel when the front door swung open. A well-nourished woman in her mid-fifties, who could’ve easily made commercials for spaghetti, came out and greeted them with a burst of rapid-fire Italian.

“You must speak slower, Giovanna,” Eduardo called to her in Italian. “Otherwise Signor Fontanelli won’t understand you.” Turning to John, he said in English, “That’s Giovanna, the presiding angel of the house. She will take care of you, but she does not speak English.”

“At least I understood what you told her,” John said with a grin. “We’ll get along.” John’s father had always wanted his kids to at least understand the fundamentals of their family tongue, but since mainly English was spoken at home, John had had little opportunity to practice. Much of what he had forgotten, however, was slowly being coming back to him.

They went inside the house and entered a cool, dim hallway. An impressive staircase led up to a gallery. Dim hallways stretched off to the left and right, and a heavy chandelier hung from the ceiling high above. Their steps echoed on the terracotta floors. Eduardo once again told Giovanna to speak slowly and concisely to John, which won him only a sour look. He told John “See you later,” and left.

John followed the formidable maid up the stairs and through a light-flooded hallway until they came to a large room she told him was his. It was as big as a living room and had glass doors that opened to a broad balcony, which offered a wonderful view of the Mediterranean Sea over its weathered sandstone balustrade.

“Here is your bathroom,” she said, but John was only interested looking at the shimmering sea. If he needed something, anything, she told him, all he had to do was to dial fifteen.

“What?” John said automatically in Italian and turned around. She stood beside the bed and held the phone in her hand. It was a modern cordless one, and the base stood on the nightstand.

“Fifteen,” Giovanna said again, “if you need something.”

“Yes.” John nodded and took the phone from her hand.

“And if I need to make a call? Outside the house?” he couldn’t remember the Italian word for operator.

“Dial zero,” she told him, being as patient as a mother with a child. John asked himself if she had kids. Then he looked at the phone. It had a small clear plastic tab with a tag behind it. It was his phone number: twenty-three.

“Thank you,” he said.

As soon as she left, he realized he was tired. It had to be jet lag. He had barely slept a wink during the flight and had no impression of what time it could be. He had felt mixed-up, wired, and exhausted all at once. The bed looked good: wide and freshly made. The drive in the Ferrari had given him a jolt of adrenaline, like strong coffee. He was wide awake and ecstatic as he raced through the landscape, but that was keeping him from being able to fall asleep now, even though he felt like it. He knew he wouldn’t sleep a wink. But he could lie down on the bed and rest just a little bit. That wouldn’t be a bad idea.

He woke up with a start and looked around bewildered, and then slowly began to grasp where he was and what had happened. It was still bright out, or was it bright again? But the quality of the light had changed. He ran his fingers through his hair, and then shook the sleepiness out of his head. From one second to the next, he had fallen asleep in his clothes.

Laboriously, he stood up. Where was the bathroom? Who cares? As if drawn by a magnet he went to the balcony doors and stepped outside. The fresh air, smelling of salt and endless distance, cleared his head. The sun hung low over the horizon shining golden-red before him. That must be west, so it must be late afternoon or early evening. He must’ve slept at least five hours.

Now he took note of the layout of the Vacchi estate. There was the main building, which had two smaller wings reaching toward the sea and attached at right angles from the main structure and capped off with a very large terraces. One of the wings housed his room. Blue awnings were stretched out from the opposite terrace, and a large table was being set underneath them. Wild grapevines grew over the balustrade, upon which large pots stood with red, blue and violet flowers. Someone waved to him, calling him over. “Sunset!” he understood and he recognized Alberto Vacchi. The other man sitting there might be his brother Gregorio, and there was also a woman whom he had not met yet. He saw Giovanna and a young girl, dressed in a formal maid’s uniform. They were placing glasses and plates upon the table.

John waved back, but remained standing where he was to enjoy the sight of the sea, sparkling in the setting sun like the picture on a kitschy postcard. A large snow-white yacht plowed through the water, and John felt a bit jealous, like most people probably would who were standing on shore looking at such a beautiful ship. Yachts seem to be built for just such purposes, to bring out emotions.

Then he remembered that he was rich, unbelievably rich. He could buy a much bigger yacht if he wanted. He could buy a dozen yachts. While he was at it, he could buy a private 747, even a fleet of them. And even that would scarcely hinder his monstrous fortune from continuing to grow. With every breath you take, Eduardo said, you have four thousand dollars more. That means it grew faster than he could count, even if he were handed thousand dollar bills. He didn't know why, but thoughts like that made his knees shake. Suddenly, it all seemed too much for him and he started to feel anxious. He feared it would overwhelm him and crush him like an avalanche. How else could he be expected to feel, going from being a poor sucker one day to filthy rich the next?

He turned around to face the house and walked to the open door. He went inside and sank down onto the carpeted floor — just lie here for a while, he thought. That’s how he stayed until the dark fog had lifted from his eyes. He hoped no one would see him like this.

After a while he slowly sat up and waited to collect himself. Then he finally stood up, found the bathroom and put his face under the faucet and turned on the water. When he came back out the air smelled like something delicious was being fried. The smell seemed to be coming into his room from the other terrace. He wanted to take a shower and change his clothes, but he didn’t know if his clothes had arrived or where they would be, and he didn’t want to bother anyone. Besides, the smell of food had woven its spell on him, and so he decided that the shower could wait.

He found his way to the other terrace, which was not that difficult as the house was built symmetrically. The room on this side of the complex, which was located in the same place as his, only on the opposite terrace, turned out to be a magnificent salon. When he stepped out onto the terrace he was greeted amicably.

“Those transatlantic flights sure do a number,” Alberto said waving John over to him to an unoccupied chair, “Especially those going east. The best medicine is sleep. Sleep and good food. Giovanna, a plate for our guest of honor, please.”

They sat at a long wooden table, which looked like it had been built for knights centuries ago. The lawyers sat at one side of the table and a number of other guests at the other. Only the Padrone wasn’t there. Of the other guests, John knew only Benito and Giovanna, who was sitting beside him and gesturing wildly as she spoke to him. Large glass bowls stood in the middle of the table with bright, colorful salads, and baskets with freshly baked white bread, and cast iron pots of fried fish.

The young maid hurried over to bring John a plate after Giovanna gestured to her to do so. He was also given silverware and an engraved crystal glass.

Alberto took charge introducing the guests to each other. The woman that John had seen from his balcony was Alvina, and she was Gregorio’s wife, so Eduardo’s mother. Her English was good, though she spoke with a strong accent. She told John that she was a teacher in the village school. Then Alberto mentioned a list of other names, which John could hardly remember, but he did look at all their faces.

The stocky man with thinning hair, who sat wide-legged on his chair listening to Giovanna and Benito, was the gardener. The two young guys sitting near them, sawing at their fish, had been there cleaning the indoor swimming pool in the basement of the house that afternoon, which they did once a month to earn a little bit of extra cash. And the toothless old man, who sat smiling with an alcohol-induced buzz, holding onto his wine glass, was one of the local farmers from whom the Vacchis got their fresh fruits and vegetables.

“This is a family tradition, you could say,” Alberto explained. “A large outdoor dinner and whoever happens to be here is invited to join us. This way we find out the latest gossip from the village. John, you must be hungry, please, go ahead and help yourself.”

John looked at the bowls and generously filled his plate. The lawyer poured some deep-red, ruby-colored wine into John’s glass from a dark bottle.

“Your father won’t be joining us?” John asked casually and was a bit startled when Alberto’s face turned a smidgen serious.

“He’s asleep. Such long journeys exhaust him more than he admits.” He was quiet for a while, and then added: “His health is not what it once was, but he still wanted to join us on the long trip. That’s how he is.”

John nodded. “I understand.”

“How do you like your room?” Gregorio asked.

John, who had only just managed to shove the first piece of fish into his mouth, nodded as he hurried to swallow. “Good. It’s really nice. Great view.”

“Let him eat first, Gregorio,” his wife said and smiled to John. “It’s the nicest room in the whole house, and it’s been waiting for you for a long time.”

“Ah,” John said, and didn’t know what else to say. And because he couldn’t think of anything to say, he hurried to stuff some salad into his mouth, and while he chewed he listened to the others talking.

Alberto didn’t seem to be married, and for the first time John noticed that he did not wear a wedding ring. He did not really look like someone who was married. Eduardo poked around in his salad and seemed to be elsewhere with his thoughts. Alvina and Alberto were talking about one of her former pupils, who, as far as John could follow, moved to Florence, started a software business, and had recently won a major contract.

The gardener stood up, went over to the Vacchis, thanked them for the meal, and told them that he had to get back to work. He explained that he had taken five bushes out of the ground earlier and they must be put back in, otherwise they’d dry out by tomorrow.

John felt how his tension gradually evaporated. He had not been aware of how uneasy he had been. It was calming to sit here, stripping the white meat from the fishbone and dunking the bread into the delicious sauce, which was oily and saturated with garlic, while all around him life went on as usual. There was something in this blissful atmosphere that somehow made him feel he would not enjoy many such moments of peace in the future. This was the lull before the storm.

And it would be a one trillion dollar storm.

It took John a long time to wake up properly the next morning. It was bright with an unusual light, and he was on unusually nice smelling sheets, on a mattress that suited him, not too hard or too soft. And then he remembered everything again; the inheritance, the flight, the Ferrari, and he did drink quite a bit of wine last night, too.

But he didn’t have a hangover. He got up, placed his feet on the very soft carpet, and looked around the large room, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. The balcony doors were open. He could hear the surf, and he could almost imagine smelling the sea. He looked at the furniture, which was not really to his taste; too dainty, too much glass and too many knickknacks, although they did look solid and he suspected that they were expensive.

He ran the fingers of both hands through his hair, yawned endlessly and tried to stretch. He remembered everything, but only like a dream. Lord knows how he got here, but it all seemed real enough. Here he was, dressed in silk pajamas, and although a little worse for the wear from last night’s drinking, it was definitely no dream.

And now? A cup of coffee would be good. A big cup of coffee, hot and strong, but first he wanted to shower. And even a trillionaire had to go to the bathroom.

The table on the terrace was already set for breakfast. It seemed the Vacchi family-life revolved around this table. Someone had changed the blue awning’s position so that it offered shade from the morning sun, and also a view of the sea.

This time only the Padrone sat at the table. He called John over with a weak wave of one hand and invited him to sit down next to him. “What would you like for breakfast? We here in Italy seldom take more than a cup of cappuccino, but Giovanna is in the kitchen and ready to fulfill whatever wishes you may have. We even have several different types of American cereals, if I remember correctly.”

“A coffee would be a good start,” John said.

She seemed to have heard him, because she appeared with a large cup of cappuccino. She looked like she was suffering from a bit from a hangover.

“Everyone else is still asleep,” the old man continued. “No wonder; a flight over the Atlantic, a long car ride, and then drinking lots of alcohol to finish it off. My sons aren’t that young anymore, but they don’t want to admit it. I bet Alberto told you all sorts of horror stories about my health, right? I stayed away from the dinner table on purpose. You know, I’ve studied many biographies from people who got very old, and learned that reaching a great age has a lot to do with the way you sleep. It’s not the only reason, but an important one. You can grow to be very old even without being in perfect physical condition if you make sure you get enough sleep. Even so, it’s about time Eduardo showed up; after all, he’s your age.”

John sipped his coffee and the bitter, hot elixir that entered his mouth from beneath the light-brown creamy cover and ran soothingly down his throat. Then he took a small pastry from a chrome-wire basket. “As far as I can remember, when I went to bed he went to the basement to get more wine.”

Cristoforo laughed and shook his head. “Then we’ll be alone this morning, I guess.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“That depends on what we make of it. Do you have any plans yet?”

John bit into the pastry. It tasted slightly salty, but good. He shook his head while he chewed.

“That would’ve surprised me,” said the old Vacchi. “This whole thing must be like a dream for you. We yanked you out of your environment, dragged you halfway around the world, and hide you here. It must be quite an imposition.”

“Quite.”

Cristoforo Vacchi stared at John with earnest and benevolent eyes. “How do you feel, John?”

John avoided his look and lifted the cup. “Good, actually. Why?”

“Do you feel wealthy?”

“Wealthy?” John took a deep breath and grimaced. “Not really. Okay, I bought a Ferrari yesterday, at least I think so. Wealthy? No. More like being on vacation — as if my Italian relatives showed up and invited me on a surprise trip to Europe.”

“Would you like to see Europe?”

“I’ve never thought about that before. I think so.”

“For now, I would advise you against it,” said Cristoforo Vacchi. “But sometime in the future it is something you can do, if you want. Having money so suddenly is a learning process. You must learn to handle money properly, even with lots of money. There is nothing material that you can’t buy, but there are other things that you will need to be aware of. The life you had before never prepared you for this, at least not obviously, so you have a lot to catch up on.”

John’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by ‘not obviously’?”

The Padrone looked up at the awnings; his eyes followed the contours and then he re-adjusted his chair to remain in the shade. “The sun is not the same as it was during my youth. I don’t think that it’s due to my age. Back then no one complained about the sun. I really think that it is the hole in the ozone layer. It changed the sun. Of course, I mean the light from it that reaches us.” He nodded vaguely. “The man who invented the spray can never intended that to happen, and maybe he is not the only one at fault. Most of the time there are usually many causes that, taken together, have untold effects, and they’re all associated. It’s a web that is hard to unravel. Now do you understand what I meant by ’not obviously’?”

John thought for a moment, then nodded, even though he had no real idea what the old man was trying to say. “Yes.”

“I believe the way you grew up has a hidden meaning, and also that you, well, let’s just say that from a certain age you slipped out of our sight.” He shook his head and seemed to be laughing to himself. “Five hundred years to prepare and then we cock it up. Can you imagine? After Lorenzo’s death we had nothing on you except your name and a few files at least ten years old.” He tittered to himself again, took a pastry and dunked it into his coffee before biting into it. “We didn’t even know where you lived.”

John forced a smile. “Would Lorenzo have been a more suitable heir?” he asked, involuntarily holding his breath.

The Padrone shook his head. “He would indeed have been suitable. He was intelligent, even highly intelligent. He won several prizes in school for math. He was fascinating to us all, I admit. He would have been suitable — on the face of things. But I already told you that I mistrust the obvious.”

“I never won any math prizes,” John said. “I have problems doing the math for normal interest rates. And I’m about as average in intelligence as anyone can be.”

Cristoforo looked at him. “But Lorenzo is dead and you are alive.”

“Maybe that was a mistake.”

“It was God’s will,” he said. “Do you think God makes mistakes?”

John thought a moment, then said, “I don’t know. Maybe. Sometimes I think yes.”

The old man lifted his cup to his lips, drank, and thoughtfully, as if he didn’t really hear what John had said. “You are still young,” he said suddenly. “You are far too young to recognize this world in all its complexity, John. But don’t worry. Believe me, you are the rightful heir.”

“So why don’t I feel like it?”

“Because you have to learn. To a certain extent you are still in shock. Your entire life has fundamentally changed, and you must first learn to handle this new life. That is perfectly normal. There is much for you to learn, much to understand, much to experience until then. I would like to,” Cristoforo sipped on his cappuccino, “go to Florence with you later on. I want to show you around, but above all I want to show you the archives. They are held in the offices of our firm, where they have been for five hundred years. Would you like that?”

He said five hundred years as if it was the most normal thing in the world and as if he had lived through all of them. As if he belonged to a different race, a race of immortal lawyers. “Sounds interesting.”

“Here in the cellar of the house we have microfiche copies of all the documents,” Cristoforo told him, “but I would like to show you the originals, so that you can get a feeling for the history, for the length of time involved.” He smirked. “Of course, that’s only if I can get Benito to wake up.”

“It’s a long trip to get to work,” John commented as they passed Lucca and a street sign that said seventy-eight kilometers to Firenze.

“Well, we don’t have to work often for this to be much trouble.” The Padrone smiled. “Besides, even Dante described the Florentines as greedy, envious, and arrogant people. It is good to keep a bit of distance from this city.”

“Why don’t you just stay away from the city in general?”

Cristoforo made a vague gesture. “Tradition, I guess. Besides, it looks good on our business cards when we’re traveling abroad.”

John nodded and glanced out the window. “That’s reason enough, I suppose.”

They didn’t speak much during the drive. John was entranced by the views of the Tuscan hills with their vineyards, orchards and whitewashed villas. The old man just stared into the middle distance, lost in thought.

As they came into the city proper, the old man told Benito to drop them off at Piazza San Lorenzo. “It isn’t far to the office from there, and I can show you some tourist attractions along the way. Not the usual ones, though, — the Piazza della Signoria, Uffizi, Duomo, Palazzo Pitti, Ponte Vecchio. It’s not a good idea to do those on a Saturday.”

John nodded. Right, today was Saturday. His sense of time was still mixed up.

The car wound its torturous way through endless traffic jams, past colossal medieval facades before it finally stopped in front of a high, fortified basilica made of brick. Cristoforo told Benito to pick them up at the office at two thirty, and then he and John got out. The Rolls Royce drove away, the crowds in the street gawping at it.

The streets of Florence were busy. The whole area in front of the church of San Lorenzo was filled with brightly colored sales stands. Countless tourists ambled among them, a myriad of languages mixed up with the rattle of mopeds driving past. John followed Cristoforo, who obviously felt very much at home here. They walked up to a monument that stood in the middle of the piazza, surrounded by a thin, black wrought iron fence; it dominated the whole area. It was a larger-than-life sized statue, on a richly decorated base.

“That is the founder of the Medici dynasty, Giovanni di Averardo,” the Padrone explained. He had to talk very loud to be heard above all the noise. “He lived during the fourteenth century, and his son, Cosimo, was the first Medici to rule Florence, mainly due to his wealth. The Medici possessed the largest bank in Europe back then.”

John looked at the figure, sitting there in deep thought, noticing the life-like facial features. The finer details of the reliefs were hidden beneath a black patina of exhaust gasses and dust, which made it look like centuries old filth, but which had probably accumulated over just six months. “Aha,” he said.

“That was in 1434, if I remember correctly. At any rate, he died in 1464, and his son, Piero, who was called Piero the Gouty, died five years later from the disease that gave him the nickname. And that’s how his son, Lorenzo, came to power. He was twenty years old at the time. Yet, despite his age, he ruled the city with such skill that he was called Il Magnifico, the magnificent.”

“I see.” Another Lorenzo. He had always hated such lessons in school, but he guessed there would be no way of avoiding this one.

“In the year 1480 your ancestor Giacomo Fontanelli was born,” the old man continued, looking at the statue. As he spoke, John observed him from the side and realized that these historical events were to him as much part of his life as his own wedding. “Lorenzo had just survived a conspiracy, which killed his brother. He used this as an opportunity to do away with his enemies. And thus Giacomo grew up in a time when Florence was at the height of its prosperity — during the reign of Lorenzo the magnificent.” Cristoforo pointed at the domes high above on the church across the plaza. “Over there, by the way, is where all the members of the Medici have their final resting places. Shall we go have a look?”

“Sure,” John nodded, tired from the heat, the dust, the noise, and all these history lessons. To imagine all this happened even before Columbus discovered America. He’d rather not bother.

They walked in a semi-circle to circumvent the densely packed center of the piazza. “That is the Canto dei Nelli,” Cristoforo told him along the way, which meant nothing to John. They finally reached the entrance to the Medici Chapel and paid a ridiculously small entrance fee, before they were allowed to escape the heated tumult of the streets and enter the cool and quiet crypt.

A crowd of tourists ambled about within with cameras clicking or getting ready to do so. In contrast, he and Cristoforo were quiet and pious and studied the inscriptions of the various Medici family members.

Cristoforo pointed to the last pillar, the one to the right. “The last Medici was buried over there, Anna Maria Ludovica. Here it says, ‘died 1743.’ The Medici ceased to exist after her demise.” They stood for a while in silence, absorbed the quietness, the coolness, and the musty smells of dead centuries. “Let us go into the vestry,” Cristoforo said finally, and added mysteriously, “I think you will like it.”

They crossed the dim crypt and entered a short corridor, which they followed until they reached a large room that surpassed in its splendor anything John had ever seen. Pillars and pedestals of white and pastel marble towered above his head, framing niches of darker marble, with black horizontal bands that created a sense of grandeur and space. John stared up into the great vault of the dome spanning the expanse above like the heavens. It took his breath away. And yet all this opulence was only the background for a row of marble statues that seemed so life-like that they looked as if they would move at any moment.

“My God,” he heard himself mumble. He had no idea that such things existed.

“Isn’t this wonderful?”

John only nodded. He was suddenly embarrassed to think he had once considered himself an artist. “Who did all this?” he asked after a while.

“Michelangelo,” Cristoforo told him. “This was his first stab at architecture.”

“Michelangelo.” This name said something to him, something that went way back, but he couldn’t say what it was.

The Padrone pointed to a sculpture in front of them of a man in a thoughtful pose. “This figure is called Pensieroso ‘the Thinker,’” he explained. “It is supposed to be Lorenzo the younger, the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, whose tomb was never finished.” He pointed to a niche beside the entrance. “Lorenzo died in 1492, and his son, Piero, fled when French troops led by Charles VIII invaded Italy and then Florence two years later. Of Giacomo Fontanelli we know only that he and his mother left Florence to seek shelter in a monastery which had previously offered them sanctuary.”

John stared at the sculpture. He could almost see it breathing; he blinked a few times to dispel the illusion. He was having difficulty following what the Padrone was saying. “Does the monastery still exist?”

“As ruins, yes. It was abandoned at the end of the nineteenth century, used as an arms depot during World War Two and destroyed in an air raid.”

John ambled on through the sacristy noticing the way the light played on the surfaces of the statues making them seem almost alive. “The Medici were wealthy, but the dynasty died. So, apart from these statues, what remains of their fortune?”

“Nothing,” Cristoforo Vacchi said simply.

“So why are there still Fontanellis and Vacchis? And why does the Giacomo Fontanelli fortune still exist?”

Cristoforo shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody from our families ever reigned, ruled, or played any prominent role. Remember that many Medici were killed, and most of their relatives too. The Fontanelli fortune was never invested in business, crusades or bribes. It just sat there and grew steadily, unnoticed by anyone. It was its very inconspicuousness that triumphed.”

The office was only a few streets away, in an ordinary little alley, if anything in Florence could be called ordinary. The alley was a dark, cobblestoned chasm flanked by ancient-looking facades. The front door had been painted dark-green at one time. It was massive and scarred by time and weather, the paint had mostly peeled off, and next to it was a rusty mailbox with the Vacchi name engraved on it. Nothing else.

“How do your clients even find you here?” John asked as Cristoforo pulled out his keys.

“We no longer really have any clients who come looking for us,” the lawyer told him as he unlocked the door.

When he looked around the inside of the narrow building, John realized the dilapidated façade was only camouflage. There were automatic locking bolts made of shiny chromium steel mounted on the inside of the door and a small video camera watching them. Cristoforo went to a wall-mounted keyboard and tapped in at least 10 numbers, whereupon a red LED lamp turned green. Up and down the entire stairwell he heard distant clicking noises, from all the doors being automatically unlocked.

“We have many old original documents stored here,” Cristoforo explained as they climbed the stairs, crooked and aged, perhaps themselves centuries old. “Until now, we really had no reason to fear anyone would break into the office, but, one never knows. The second floor used to be an apartment for one of the Vacchi families until the last century. These days there’s only one real apartment left, in case one of us has a lot of work to do and doesn’t want to drive all the way home; that’s on the fourth floor.”

He opened another door to reveal glass display cases that stretched as far as John could see, inside them endless were rows of dark, old tomes. The glass of the cases reflected the neon light from the low ceiling as John stepped closer to try and read the faded writing on the spines of the books … 1714, 1715, 1716 and so forth. It smelled like a museum: dust, cleaning fluids and linoleum flooring.

“What sort of books are those?” John asked.

“Accounting books,” the Padrone answered with a smile. “In them, you can see exactly how your fortune developed. My ancestors were very meticulous in this respect. One must humbly say that the account books of the Vacchis were much more exact and complete than those of Giacomo himself.”

“Do those still exist too?”

“Of course. Come along.”

John followed the old man through a low doorway, ducking his head just in case, and stepped into a room that was resembled the last. But it was not exactly the same; upon closer inspection he saw that the books here were thinner, more worn and generally looked older, and that the display cases were more solid, practically armored, and with built-in air-conditioning.

“Because of the air pollution,” Cristoforo Vacchi explained, shaking his head sadly. “Down all the past centuries the books hadn’t suffered as much as in the past decades. We had to ensure clean air for the books; otherwise they would have been damaged by car exhaust fumes.”

They went through another door and into a small, almost empty, dark room that resembled a chapel. A crucifix hung on a wall and below it stood a display table, which had a chair standing by it. Cristoforo switched on two lamps that illuminated a compartment inside the glass-topped table. John stepped closer and felt an odd shudder go through his body. He sensed what he saw even before the lawyer spoke.

“This is the testament,” Cristoforo explained, as if referring to something sacred, “Giacomo Fontanelli’s last will.”

The testament consisted of two large, thick, dark-brown sheets of strangely lustrous paper, lying on white velvet underneath a glass plate. The writing on them was small and angular and barely legible. Both sheets were crammed with text and bound together with fragile looking strips of cloth, which had impressive looking seals attached to their ends.

John pulled up the chair, which like everything else here also looked old, old and yet solid. He sat down, leaned over the glass and looked at the documents more closely, trying to comprehend that an ancestor of his had written these words with his own hands, setting in motion this insane project.

“I don’t understand a single word,” he finally admitted. “But I guess that this is medieval Italian, or something?”

“It’s Latin.”

John nodded, stared at the dark-brown elegantly curved lines of the capital letters. It reminded him of a page from an old handwritten bible. “Latin. Did Lorenzo know Latin?”

The Padrone put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t torture yourself with that,” he told him. “His death is no fault of yours.”

“But I’m the beneficiary.”

The lawyer’s hand kneaded his shoulder. “You are the heir. Look here.” He pointed to a part of the handwritten text, where John indeed could see a date written in Roman numerals. “The youngest male descendant who is alive on the 23 of April 1995. Alive — that is you, John. You’re the one.”

John’s eyes wandered further down over the ancient document, and stopped by the elegant signature. Adjacent to it were a few more, smaller signatures; witnesses maybe, or tokens from notaries public, just like the dark, fragile seals. He had no idea if this document looked like a typical testament from the fifteenth century. The Padrone could have shown him just about anything and insisted that this or that was written on it. Only, what sort of sense would it make to falsify something like this? They were the ones who wanted to give him a trillion dollars. They were even enthusiastic about making him the richest man on earth. They had no reason to lie.

What sort of man was this Giacomo Fontanelli? A religious fanatic? His signature looked strong, rounded and confident. The signature of a man in full possession of his senses and who knew what he was doing. John wished he could read the testament. No, what he really wanted was to know what it might be like to have such a clear vision that it would change your life and control your destiny.

Diagonally above the table was a small window that resembled a castle’s embrasure glazed with thick streaky glass. A small part of a dome could be seen through it, and John wondered if it was the chapel Michelangelo had built for the dead Medici. He didn’t know, didn’t even have the slightest idea what direction this window faced.

Michelangelo? Why was this name so special to him that it kept going around in the back of his mind? It was almost as if there was a voice deep within his head that kept saying the name, as if to remind him of something. But remind him of what? Michelangelo. He painted the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Rome, where Lorenzo was born, lived and died.

“How old was I when Lorenzo was born?”

“I beg your pardon?” Cristoforo uttered, startled out of his own thoughts.

“Twelve,” John said answering his question. “About twelve. And prior to that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Before Lorenzo’s death. Who was the candidate?” John knew but asked anyway.

“You.” He said it as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

“Were you watching me back then?”

“Of course.”

Now the memory came back to him, gushing up from the depths of his mind like water from a fountain: an elegantly dressed gentleman, silver temples, a manicured hand that handed him a chocolate bar, a benevolent expression below bushy eyebrows. Now he suddenly understood what this voice inside tried to tell him. It wasn’t saying “Michelangelo,” but “Mr. Angelo!” John exclaimed. He turned around, touched Cristoforo Vacchi’s face, and looked at his hunched, gaunt figure. “You were Mr. Angelo, am I right?”

The Padrone smiled gently. “You remember?”

“I saw you once — when you arrived on a flight from Europe. You had nothing with you except a plastic bag with shoes in it.”

“Oh, that. You saw me then? That was my last visit. Normally I stayed in New York for a few days. After Lorenzo was born, I wanted to see you one more time, but you were not there when I went to your father’s shop. That’s odd. You were in the airport on that day?”

John nodded. He began to recognize more and more about this old gentleman who he had once known. How long ago all this was! No wonder Cristoforo Vacchi seemed so familiar to him right from the start. “Yes. I can’t remember exactly why; I think a friend’s mom or dad had taken me with them — to get out of the house. But I saw you. For a long time I thought you never came back again because I had discovered your secret.”

“Like in the fairy tale. Yes, I understand.” The old man nodded in thought. “Now, in retrospect, I think that we had overdone it with our observations. We couldn’t wait, even though the testament says explicitly that we could only introduce ourselves to you after the specified date. When you were still little we visited repeatedly. Alberto accompanied me initially and later Gregorio came, and in the beginning my late brother Aldo. We watched you on the way to school, at the playground …”

Recollections, like memories of a land beyond the looking glass. “I remember coming across strange men who asked me strange questions. I remember three men in coats who stood on the other side of a fence while I was swinging. A large dark man with hair on the back of his hands …”

“Who that was I don’t know, but the three men by the fence were Aldo, Alberto, and me.”

John had to laugh. “My mother was always worried when I told her about that. First she thought they were some perverts, and then later she thought that there was something wrong with me.” He looked at the testament under the glass, the seals, the signature … “Who would have ever thought …?”

“Come,” Cristoforo told him, “I want to show you something else.”

They went downstairs to the cellar. The ceiling was low and there were no windows, but the whole place was amply lit, the walls finely stuccoed, and it looked almost clinically clean. The short hallway they went through ended with a heavy black-painted steel door. The sound of an electric motor could be heard, similar to a fridge running, which was odd in this house with walls as thick as a castle’s insulating them from all exterior noise. The gadget making the racket was a computer. It was a very large computer, as big as a cabinet, painted blue and bearing the familiar IBM logo. The computer dominated the room, humming, droning and looking old fashioned, like it too dated back to the days of the Medici. Thick gray cables ran to a whole bank of telephone connections along a wall.

“We have a modern unit out in our estate,” Cristoforo said with a raised voice. “This one here was bought in 1969 and we had a program developed just for our purposes, which is able to access thousands of banks and manage millions of accounts doing calculations with monetary exchange rates to help keep the whole system up to date. Eduardo can show you how this is done with all the passwords and so on, but what I actually wanted to show is here … look.”

He pointed with obvious pride at a large, old-fashioned computer monitor that showed nothing but a long number in radar-green color. When John took a closer look he saw that the last few of the thirteen digit numbers were changing in very fast sequence, and the very last digit was so fast that he couldn’t follow it. One trillion and many millions more; it was the current total account balance. Four thousand dollars per breath, Eduardo had said. John watched the racing numbers and tried to make out the details. Yes, it could be — four thousand per breath. But, as he watched closely for a bit, he saw that the number didn’t grow continuously, but seemed to pulsate, growing a bit faster and then a bit slower. One trillion; displayed as a number on a dark-gray computer screen it looked like nothing.

“One trillion dollars really is quite a bit of money, isn’t it?” John said.

Cristoforo stood before the monitor terminal like it was an altar. “An unbelievably vast sum,” he said earnestly. “Each year the American magazine Forbes publishes a list of names of the hundred richest people in the world. For a long time Sam Walton was number one. He had founded Wal-Mart and made it to about forty billion dollars. He died a few years ago from bone cancer. Bill Gates had surpassed him in the meantime with about fifty billion dollars. Not on the list are, for example, Queen Elizabeth or the Sultan of Brunei, even though they should be, and the Sultan in first place, at that. His fortune is an estimated seventy billion dollars. But even if all those hundred richest people in the world where to put their money together, they still couldn’t match what you have.”

John looked at him incredulous. “But that is just crazy,” he said with a dry mouth. “What am I supposed to do with so much money?”

The Padrone slowly shook his head. “I think the key is the exceptional position you have. You, John, are not only a man who is a bit richer than the others, but you are in an extraordinary situation. There is no one on earth who can even hope to approach your wealth. You have more assets than most of the countries in the world. You are not only rich; you are also a financial world power. It is up to you to do something with it.”

John was almost dizzy at the thought. He heard the old man’s last words, but couldn’t entirely grasp their meaning. This was simply too much for him. He wasn’t born to understand the scale of all this. “I don’t know. How do you know that I won’t spend it all on Ferraris?”

“I just do,” the old lawyer simply said. “Besides,” he added with a smirk, “there aren’t that many Ferraris around.”

Later on in the evening after dinner, as a cool breeze blew in from the sea making the candle flames quiver inside the wind-glasses that provided the only source of light on the long table, they discussed the details of how the money would be handed over. John listened mostly, hardly asked anything, and answered “yes” when he was asked for his confirmation.

He stared out into the night, losing focus somewhere in the silver-gray haze drifting over the dark sea. A handful of tiny stars twinkled high above. The wine looked dark in their glasses. The lawyers were talking in quiet voices that sounded similar. Somehow they seemed elated and relieved — as if the fortune had been a burden to them all along, which they could now finally put one someone else’s shoulders.

“It must be as low key as possible,” the Padrone reiterated what they had decided: the transfer of the fortune would be made without any fanfare in the offices of a notary public in Florence within the next few days, as soon as they could fix a date. It would be left up to John if and when he cared to make public the extent and history of his fortune.

John decided that he would buy a house like the Vacchis’. One that had a terrace with a view of the sea, somewhere he could hear the crickets chirping. A terrace made of natural stone that absorbed the heat of day and released it in the cool evenings. I’m starting to get used to the idea that I have money, John thought. He was still a long way from coming to terms with the real immensity of his wealth, but at least he no longer felt poor. He heard Cristoforo Vacchi’s voice.

“Is that all right with you, John?”

“Yes,” John answered.

$5,000,000,000,000

MARVIN COPELAND SELDOM read a newspaper. First, newspapers cost money, and he barely had enough as it was, and when he did have some money he spent it on other things. Second, newspapers didn’t interest him; reports about crimes, baseball games or politics — all that was irrelevant to him. And third, his life was so busy with different jobs, different girlfriends, and his music, that he simply didn’t have any time to read. Reading newspapers and watching TV, in Marvin’s opinion, was for people whose lives were boring and useless.

That was why Marvin had no idea what was the biggest news story on this particular morning. For hours every newspaper and television channel reported on a single topic. Marvin, however, went down the street to Konstantino’s to do some shopping as if it were a day like any other. Konstantino was a vegetable merchant, but also sold many other everyday necessities, like instant coffee, condensed milk, three types of cereals, noodles, sweets, shoe polish, cigarettes, and the other things you needed but constantly forget about. If he had sold alcohol too, then the store would be perfect, but nothing is perfect in this world.

The sun was scorching. Marvin had a feeling that he might’ve missed practice with a new band. No, that was tomorrow, wasn’t it? He had a note with the date and time on it, but it had somehow got lost. Maybe Pete’s new girlfriend threw it away when she cleaned the apartment. “What is this?” she constantly nagged, “an apartment or a monkey cage?” Anyhow, the place looked more than presentable now. Maybe he should invite his parents over. Who knows when it’ll be this clean again?

He jangled the coins in his pocket. Last night they had smoked joints and played cards for quarters, and he won a bunch. A nice change of pace, especially since over the previous few nights he had gambled away all the money John had paid him for three months’ rent. Now he would be able to pay off some of his debts to Konstantino. Besides that, he had gone through all the mailboxes yesterday and fished out all the ads and after twenty minutes worth of work with a pair of scissors he had a nice collection of coupons. He had a bunch of buy-one-get-one-frees or fifty percent offs. He’d go see what he could get for them; the fridge was nearly empty. And it was his turn to get a bottle of dishwasher liquid. The old bottle was empty and had even been rinsed out with warm water to get out every last drop out.

Konstantino wasn’t there; his endlessly moody wife stood by the cash register. That was usually a bad sign, because she hated to take IOUs, and if she did she would make a ruckus out of it, and that was embarrassing. But Marvin had a pocket full of quarters that he could dump on the countertop, which didn’t exactly make her smile either — actually, no one got her to smile — but at least she didn’t complain when he picked out the groceries he wanted and placed them before her. Without a word, she packed everything into a brown paper bag.

Even so, she started nagging him again as he made his way to the door. On the way out he glanced at the newspapers in an old wire display, with headlines so big that even he couldn’t overlook them. There was a big photo too; it may have been the photo that made the bag slip out of Marvin’s hands.

“How could this happen?” Gregorio Vacchi shouted and threw the day’s edition of Corriere della Sera on top of the other newspapers on the table. “How did they find out? I don’t understand it!”

It was weird to read your own name in the newspapers. Especially in the headlines and in large fat black letters. It somehow made this whole thing more real than all the documents and stamps and authentications in the world.

“All they write about is the money,” Alberto said, looking at Repubblica. “Money and compound interest. It seems that they know nothing about the terms of the legacy.”

Giovanna had set the table in the salon downstairs rather grandly as befitted this special day. There were cubed honey melon pieces and real Parma ham and champagne, all set out on a white linen tablecloth, and crystal glasses that sparkled in the sunlight were placed next upon the table. A warm breeze scented with lavender moved the curtains on the high windows. Footsteps sounded on the gravel outside. Benito was polishing the Rolls with a soft cloth. Then Alessandro appeared, a strong young guy, who helped in the kitchen and cellar. He had brought the newspapers earlier and ever since the Vacchis had been in an uproar.

Except for the Padrone; he seemed to find the whole thing amusing. With a quiet smirk he stirred his cappuccino, as calm as the proverbial eye of the storm. “It was obvious that this would happen. They only found out sooner than we all thought.” He looked up to John with a smirk. “You may even outdo Lady Di in the press.”

“Great!” John said. That’s all he needed!

Eduardo, who had been standing to one side, talking into his cellphone, clapped it shut with a loud, “Ciao!” and came over. “No chance,” he said. “They have besieged the notary public’s office.”

“The notary!?” his father said upset. “How in heaven’s name did they find out when and where?”

“They must’ve phoned every notary public. And Nuncio buckled under the pressure.”

“Porco cane! How could he tell anyone about our appointment …”

“Nuncio said that a man called him a half hour ago and told him that he was inquiring for the Vacchi family to see if the appointment could be delayed for a half hour. They knew our name!”

“What? That’s just …” Gregorio’s thin eyebrows went up. “That means that a whole pack of … oh no, the gate! Alessandro, Giuseppe! Quick, we must close the gate and lock it!” He hurried out to the foyer, his clapping hands reverberating throughout the chambers. “Giuseppe! Leave everything as it is and go! Presto!”

Susan Winter read the newspapers every day. It was part of her job. The first one today, the Washington Post, she read over breakfast while sitting at the foldable table in her small kitchen. The second one, the New York Times, she read in the subway on her way to work, and at work she read three or four others, mostly international editions. What she read depended on what her current job demanded — and which lottery she had invested in. The past few days were not very lucky; all the money she got form the stranger was gone. Gambled away!

When she brought in the newspapers on this particular morning and saw the headlines and the photo, she felt an ice cold shudder go down her back. So that’s what all this is about! She wasn’t even upset that she hadn’t figured it out on her own. No one could have guessed something like that. That such a notion was even possible never even crossed her mind. One trillion dollars! The number was printed inside a gray-colored box; a one with twelve zeros. One thousand billion! Fascinated by the entire thing, she read the article, which explained how the money grew over the past centuries through interest and compound interest. The article ended with the words; “It took you about a minute to read this article, and in that time John Fontanelli’s fortune has grown by eighty thousand dollars.”

She forgot the coffee and forgot the donut. She just sat there with the paper across the table and stared at the wall before her. She asked herself what it was the stranger had wanted from John Fontanelli. What he would do with the documents she had given him.

Susan Winter felt that her presence in the Dalloway Detective Agency was not really wanted, and that it would be only a matter of time before they determined she was of no value to them anymore. She worked as much as she could and never complained when she was forced to do unpaid overtime. She didn’t know what her boss really thought of her, and even if someone told her she would not believe it. Her boss actually thought of her as being a neurotic, moody, and unreliable person. But he placed a high value on the first-rate intuition that allowed her to see the motives and intentions of the agency’s surveillance targets. Her ability to make lightning judgments more than made up for her other rather negative characteristics, and he wouldn’t have fired her even if he was forced to reduce the staff by half.

When she mentally went over the information contained in the second folder — the one with the investigative results of Fontanelli’s family — once more, she had one of those inspirations. Now she thought she knew what the stranger was up to. And if it was true then she could turn that knowledge into a lot of money; more money than she could ever imagine. Her luck had turned.

She was so anxious about screwing things up that she had butterflies in her stomach on the way to work.

The first team to arrive came in a Porsche, a man and a woman. The man had a camera shouldered, and the woman was armed with a microphone with the logo of a TV channel on it. They rang the bell at the gate. Benito walked over leisurely and told the reporters that the Vacchi family was not available for interview.

A short while later a second team appeared, four men in a station wagon. They unloaded a bunch of gear: large tripods, cameras, recorders, umbrellas and folding chairs. They shook hands with the first team.

John and the Vacchis were watching all this from behind a curtain in the library on the second floor. To them it looked like bitter rivals shaking hands before the race began. It was beginning to feel as if they were under siege.

The tripods were set up, the cameras mounted on them, and large umbrellas put up to protect them and the gear from the sun.

“If we can keep them here for a few days we’ll be able to let the villagers earn some nice extra money,” Alberto said.

The number of reporters grew constantly. There were no more handshakes and no more friendly chats or waves, only an aggressive and quick staking of claims, fighting over the best spots, elbowing and angry words. A forest of tripods and cameras and microphones quickly sprouted around the property’s entrance.

“We’re probably live on CNN by now,” Eduardo said.

A helicopter appeared. For a moment it looked as if it might try to land in the yard. But it circled the premises a few times and then flew away.

“I’m afraid that if we don’t start answering some questions they’ll be spreading rumors all over the world,” Gregorio said with a sour expression. “The TV stations and newspapers need to be filled with something, after all.”

“I agree,” Alberto said with a nod. “We should hold a press conference.”

“At least officially as the heir’s lawyers,” Cristoforo said. “What do you think, John?”

“I don’t know. I’m feeling a bit sick,” John admitted. “I’ve never been through something like this. A press conference, I mean.”

The Padrone smirked. “You think we have?”

John had watched White House press conferences on TV, seen the president step up to the podium and read a statement, and then answer a thousand questions. It was always such a bore to watch. But the thought of having to stand in front of a forest of colorful microphones, with flashing lights, answering countless questions from a mob, was scary and exciting at once. Do your parents already know about the inheritance? Yes, he would answer. What will you do with all that money? He doesn’t know yet. A bunch of unimportant answers, but each word was written down exactly, recorded and filmed, as if what he had to say was a world-shaking event.

“You’re a prominent person now,” Eduardo told him, making an effort to exude authority.

They had all the furniture moved out of the salon. They built a barrier out of tables to the rear of the room, near a door through which they could escape if that proved necessary. Alessandro and Giuseppe stood ready to cover the retreat, and even looked like they wouldn’t mind getting into a scuffle with the reporters.

The reporters came storming in like crazy Beatles fans finally allowed to meet their idols.

“Why didn’t you just keep the money?” the reporters needled the Vacchis.

“Such behavior,” Cristoforo Vacchi told the reporter coolly, “would not have been compatible with our moral and professional character.”

That statement, by a lawyer no less, made the crowd break out in raucous laughter.

Gregorio officially began the conference by explaining the origin of the money and the details of the testament. The Vacchis and John had agreed not to mention Giacomo Fontanelli’s vision, if they weren’t directly asked. And indeed, no one asked. The main interest was the clause bequeathing all the money to the youngest male on the particular date. What was so special about this date? Nothing, Gregorio said. They asked John if he thought it was right that he should be the one to inherit so much money. No, John told them, but that’s the way it is. Was it justified to exclude female heirs in this day and age? “No one would write such a clause these days,” John said, “but we’re talking about a testament that is five hundred years old.”

His shirt was getting drenched, and sweat was running down his back. All the crap they wanted to know! If he was married, if he was going to donate money to the needy, what kind of sports he liked, where he intended to live, it seemed like the questions would never stop.

Asked about his favorite food, he told them that he’d try to get used to caviar, but so far his mother’s tortellini still held that honor. Then Eduardo picked a delicate looking female reporter with fire-red hair.

“Brenda Taylor, CNN,” she said, and John saw fire in her eyes, her voice, in every movement she made. “Mr. Fontanelli, are you happy to have become instantly wealthy?”

The question hit him like a baseball bat to the face. Everyone was holding their breath, and it was so quiet that one could hear the proverbial pin drop. John stared at the halogen lamps and camera lenses and mikes and understood that the answer to this question would be carried to the farthest corners of the world, and that it would be an essential factor when people would what to think about him.

“Well,” he began awkwardly, with a mind as blank as a whitewashed wall, “I’m not wealthy yet. The official transfer must still be accomplished and so forth. Then … we’ll see.”

But that wasn’t a real answer, and he knew it just like everyone else knew it. She wasn’t satisfied either. The silence in the room seemed to roar at him. All eyes were on him and he knew they wanted more.

“The sole purpose of such a fortune is not to bring happiness to the man who possesses it,” he suddenly heard himself say, with no idea where it came from or what it meant. “It is more of an obligation, and the only way to be happy is to meet that obligation.” He felt like an idiot. How could he say something so soppy? Did it even make any sense? He saw the half-opened mouths, pens on note pads unsure what to write next. Were they about to burst out laughing? Paint him as the biggest fool on the planet?

But instead, someone unseen in the back of this room full of journalists began a slow clap. Others joined in. Soon, the whole crowd was clapping.

Someone pat him on his back. “Wonderful! You did a fine job, John.” What? Wonderful? “That was a fine ending to the press conference, I’d say.”

Who was it speaking? John was so totally confused he could not hear or see straight. The crowd began moving, pushing and shoving, everyone wanting to shake his hand.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you, thank you, that will be all.” Alberto, right?

Then there was a door and the calm beyond it.

Later on he was alone in his room lying on his bed with a wet washcloth on his forehead, staring at the ceiling. Just don’t think, he thought. The memories of the morning blurred into a vortex of lights and yelling. Don’t dare imagine this might be a daily occurrence. Here, at least, it was quiet. The terrace doors were closed. He couldn’t even hear the sea, nothing at all.

He was dozing in a nice, numb state of mind, between drowsiness and sleep, until the phone buzzed him out of it. What? He sat half-way up, startled, elbows supporting his upper body as he stared at the phone next to his bed. That must’ve been a dream. It didn’t really ring. No one in the whole house would have disturbed him now.

Then it rang again — an ugly, irritating buzz. He took the phone, held it to his ear, “Hello?”

“Mr. Fontanelli?” a sympathetic, sonorous voice asked in a British accent.

“Yes.” Did he recognize the voice?

“John Salvatore Fontanelli? Are you in your room?”

What was all that about? “Yes, dammit! Of course, I’m in my room! Who are you and what do you want?”

“You don’t know me, but I hope that we’ll meet one day. For now I can’t even tell you my name. I just wanted to know if I had the right number.”

“My phone number?” John didn’t understand a thing.

“House phone twenty-three. I wanted to see if it was the one in your room. I will explain all this better another time. Oh, and another thing, please mention this phone call to no one, especially to any of the Vacchis. Trust me.”

This guy was completely insane, right? “Why shouldn’t I?”

The unknown stranger at the other end paused for a moment, breathed in and out. “Because you’re going to need help, Mr. Fontanelli,” he paused, “and I’m the one who can give it to you.”

$6,000,000,000,000

THERE WERE ALSO seats in Jeremy’s, but it just wasn’t the sort of place you sat down in. The fake leather seats felt as if someone had spilled some weird gravy on them and hadn’t bothered to wipe it up, so instead it had just dried up, and the dried gunk was flaking off bit by bit. You couldn’t see clearly anyway since the bar’s owner used only green and dark-yellow light bulbs and even then, not many of those. Up front there were tables with stools, but the regulars usually stood at the bar. You could see the TV better from there and catch whatever was going on in the game since the TV was always on the sports channel.

Lino Fontanelli had a smooth, almost child-like face that made him look younger than he actually was. His hair looked like he used lots of grease, but he didn’t. In fact, he hated the way he looked.

He went to Jeremy’s when he didn’t want to run into any of the other officers from McGuire Air Force Base, which was what he wanted most of the time. The beer here wasn’t any worse than anywhere else, the hamburgers a bit better, and he had some peace and quiet. He was in his usual spot, one of the two corners of the bar, where he could read the paper without anyone blocking his view of the TV.

He had been reading a hell of a lot of papers over the past few days. There was hardly anything going on inside Jeremy’s. Sitting in one corner was a fat guy with his fat girlfriend, both eating fattening fries, maybe to preserve their attractiveness. At the other end of the bar sat an old gray-haired black man, who seemed to be a part of the inventory. He was talking with the bartender, who was wiping off glasses and nodding once in a while.

At first, Lino didn’t notice the other man who entered the bar at some point. He stood at the bar a few places away from Lino and ordered a beer. Then the guy pulled one of the bar stools over and sat on it, he’d either never been to Jeremy’s before or he didn’t mind going home with streaks on his pants.

When his beer was half empty and Lino started to read the sports page, the man leaned over and, pointing at the paper, asked “Did you see that, about the guy who inherited a trillion dollars?”

Lino looked up to him grudgingly. The man had on a dark coat and held on to his glass with hands as hairy as a gorilla’s. “I guess everyone has,” he answered indifferently.

“A trillion dollars! Holy shit! I don’t even think God has that much money, huh?”

“No idea how much God has.”

For a moment it looked like the man had said everything he had to say. He stared at the baseball game but without real interest. “I read that the guy has an older brother,” he babbled on again. “Boy, oh boy, I told myself, how does he feel now? He probably wishes that he strangled that little bastard in his sleep when he had the chance. Well, I don’t have a brother, but I can imagine thinking something like that.”

Lino lowered the newspaper and took a better look at the man. His face seemed sallow and pockmarked and looked like he enjoyed brawls as much as alcohol. His eyes looked devious.

He noticed Lino looking at him. “Come on now, it’s only human, isn’t it? Besides, you don’t get punished for what you think, only what you do.”

Lino had a lot of things going through his head when he realized that it was John that the media were endlessly going on about. His little brother John, the kid he always had to look out for when they were younger, the kid who nearly fell under a bus once, all those memories. Now he asked himself if it was just coincidence that this guy was bashing his ears about him.

“Just try and imagine what a pile of money that must be. A trillion dollars. Until the day before yesterday I didn’t know that much money existed! Even those assholes in Washington only talk about billions. And this guy gets a trillion. Maybe I should look through my grandfather’s old papers to see if there’s a savings account from the fifteenth century. What do you think?”

“Sure, you never know.”

The guy pulled out a business card from a pocket and slid it over. “Bleeker,” he said, “Ralph Bleeker. You can call me Randy.”

Lino picked it up. Printed on the card it said: Lawyer Specializing in Family and Inheritance Law. “What’s all this about?” he asked. “What do you want?”

Randy Bleeker looked to the left and to the right making sure no one was listening. “Okay, I was only making a show. I didn’t want you to get up and leave right away. You know what I mean? I know that you’re the brother of John. And what do I want? Well, I guess you could say I want a job.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ll help you get a chunk of that money, and I get a share of your share.”

“The money? What money?”

“What was I talking about the whole time? The trillion dollars, whaddya think?”

Lino’s eyes narrowed. He took another look at the business card: Family and Inheritance Law. Something was up. “I don’t think I want to know what it is you’re trying to sell me.”

“Didn’t it piss you off that fate flew past you like that?”

“Sure. But it is how it is. I have a younger brother, and he happened to be the youngest Fontanelli on one particular date. That’s the way it goes — can’t do anything about it.”

Randy looked at him with something that resembled a smile. “Well,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. “You can do something about it. And it amazes me that you haven’t thought about that on your own.”

The carefully prepared plans had to be completely re-worked. The transfer of the funds would not be done in Florence, but in Rome, directly in the Department of Finance. Strict security measures were put in place and a new date was set for the transfers.

“We should charter a helicopter,” Eduardo said during their discussion. “At least as long as the reporters are camped outside our gate.”

“They’ll let our vehicles pass,” his father argued. He looked like he hadn’t slept a moment since the press mob arrived. “We don’t have to throw money out the window.”

John wanted to tell the Vacchis about the strange phone call, but kept delaying it — never finding the right moment. And the longer their discussion went on the less appropriate it seemed to bring up. Maybe it wasn’t all that important anyway.

One thing in favor of processing the money transfers in Rome was that it would make it easier to deal with the one other official snag they would have to address before John could get the money.

“There’s a small complication,” Alberto said with a wide smile. “In brief, you must become an Italian citizen.”

John’s U.S. citizenship was complicating the entire process. As a U.S. national, Gregorio told him, he’d have to pay taxes on his global income — including the inheritance. At the moment, avoiding this this was their main concern as was no hope of reaching an agreement with the American IRS, the only option that remained was for John to change citizenship.

John wasn’t too keen on the idea. “My grandfather fled from Mussolini. He fought hard for his American citizenship. I don’t like the idea of giving mine away.”

“I do hope you have noticed that Mussolini is no longer around,” Alberto said dryly.

“I really liked my grandfather, you know? He was very proud to be an American. To me, it seems like treason to give up my own citizenship.”

“Your patriotism and sense of loyalty to your family honors you much,” Gregorio told him. “But don’t you think that several hundred billion dollars is rather too high a price for patriotism?”

“It is, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like the idea. And I really don’t like it.”

“You’re taking this too seriously,” Eduardo interjected. “You will be a super rich man, John. Your wealth will be greater than most countries’ gross national product. You will be able to go to wherever you desire. To see things realistically, you don’t even have to honor the agreement with the Italian finance minister. What is he going do if you were to leave the country? Nothing. Think about the significance your citizenship in the gargantuan scheme of things. We’re talking a trillion dollars.”

John gave up. “All right, fine. When is this going to happen?”

“As soon as everything has been prepared; secrecy, personal protection and so on. And the prime minister wants to meet with you after the ceremony,” Gregorio told John. “Next Thursday.” He seemed like he could hardly wait.

John stood by a window in the library and watched the press from behind the heavy curtains. They looked like an audience for an outdoor concert as they sat and stood around in the grass. He wondered about their stubborn persistence, despite being told he would not be giving any interviews until the transfer was officially complete. It was a very odd situation and that he was the source of all this made it even stranger. No, he was not really the cause, at least not personally. It all went back to a dream of limitless wealth — a dream that just happened to have become his reality. No one knew how scary so much wealth could be.

He decided he would tell the world of the burden Giacomo Fontanelli had placed upon his shoulders.

“John? Oh, there you are.”

It was Eduardo. John turned around. Eduardo came in, followed by a man as big as two normal-sized people, a wide-shouldered colossus who was a head taller than John and whose girth would frighten a heavyweight boxer.

“May I introduce you to Marco? Marco, this is Signor Fontanelli.”

“Buongiorno,” Marco said with a deep voice and reached out a shovel-sized hand. John had to force himself to shake it. The man’s arm muscles flexed and his suit looked like it was about to burst at the seams, but the actual handshake wasn’t all that bad.

“Marco is from Italy’s best security service,” Eduardo explained.

“Security service?”

“Your bodyguard, signor,” Marco said.

“My …” John swallowed hard. Oh yeah. The Vacchis did mention something like that. A hundred years ago in another life. Bodyguard. Like a king who needed to be protected from conniving rivals. “Bodyguard. I understand. You’re supposed to protect me.”

“Si, signor.”

The mere presence of this man was scary. No doubt he only had to be there physically to scare off any would-be plotters. A bodyguard; that really brought it home to him.

He looked at Eduardo, who was beaming with satisfaction. “And how’s this going to work? I mean, will he be around me constantly, go with me everywhere …?”

“Scusi, signor,” Marco interjected. “The greatest danger to you is being kidnapped for ransom. Except in situations where bodily force is required, such as getting you through a crowd of people unharmed, I will always be only as close to you as necessary to prevent danger to you.”

John stared at the man. He was suddenly aware that he automatically thought that a guy who had so much muscle wasn’t able to form a complete thought on his own, let alone clearly articulate it. “A kidnapping … I understand.”

“More of my colleagues will be arriving this afternoon,” Marco went on, “they will patrol the grounds with German Shepherds and install additional alarm devices. Our goal is to assure complete safety for your bedroom without requiring one of us to be physically present in it.”

“Oh, that sounds good.”

“You can count one hundred percent on our discretion even right outside your bedroom door,” the bodyguard assured him. He sounded more like a sociology teacher than someone who lifted weights and practiced karate kicks every day.

“Fine,” John said. Then he remembered something else. “May I know your last name?”

The question seemed to take the big guy off guard. “No one has ever asked,” he admitted. “But it’s Benetti. My full name is Marco Benetti.”

“Pleased to meet you,” John said. He nodded once and they shook hands once again.

Meanwhile the estate was being turned into a fortress. Men with shoulder rigs and German Shepherds patrolled the grounds. The outdoor lights remained on for the entire night. Cameras were installed on every corner of the house.

On the other side of the old and massive iron fence the reporters endured their stay. They had campers, sun umbrellas and tents. They aimed their cameras at any bit of activity in and around the house. To John, they seemed more like a pack of wolves with every passing day.

When he walked along the hallways in the house, he could always hear a phone ringing somewhere, sometimes loud and clear sometimes muffled, and far away. Gregorio, Alberto and Eduardo took turns going out to the gate every couple of hours to answer some of the journalists’ questions. It all seemed to John like a flood crashing against the house’s walls, releasing forces that they would not be able to withstand forever.

The same day as the bodyguards had started their work, John was introduced to another person; a small, older man of around sixty with a particularly good posture. He was an Italian language teacher.

“But I speak Italian,” John argued.

“Scusi,” the professor said with a shake of his head, “what you are doing is abusing the language of your forefathers. You speak chewing gum Italian. Your choice of words is grotesque, your sentence structure a catastrophe. Let us begin straight away.”

And so they retreated into the library where the professore taught John Italian vocabulary, the rules of grammar, practiced conversation, the pronunciations of words and whole sentences over and over again. They did this each morning and each afternoon for two hours at a time.

The professore moved into a small guest room in the Vacchis’ house. Another guest room was occupied the following day by a somewhat heavyset yet elegant middle-aged woman. “Signora Orsini is a dance and behavioral tutor from Florence,” Eduardo said with a shit-eating grin. “She once attempted to teach me good behavior. Perhaps she’ll have more luck with you.”

“My concept is as follows,” Signora Orsini said with a warm and welcoming smile, “In the morning we’ll concentrate on proper etiquette, and in the afternoon we’ll practice dancing. You must learn how to dance so you can conduct yourself properly in social gatherings.”

Somehow John expected that she would say something like that. “I have language lessons in the morning,” he informed her.

“Then get up earlier,” Signora Orsini replied.

Once, as he left the language class and went down the stairs to meet Signora Orsini, he saw Eduardo come in with a carton full of letters and heard him tell his father: “We’ll have to establish a secretariat.”

Gregorio took one of the letters and looked at it. “This looks Russian.”

“A big secretariat,” Eduardo added with a frown. “This is probably only the beginning.”

The days began to take on an otherworldly routine all of their own. There were new stories in the newspapers every day, filled with the minutiae of John’s life broadcast on airwaves around the world; details he had already forgotten about. He called his mother, and she told him how upset she was about the intrusive TV people. On CNN, he found out what positive opinions his former classmates and teachers had of him. NBC broadcast an interview with Sarah Brickman, who stared into the cameras and told the reporter, more than a few times, that John was the greatest, the only love she ever had.

A man waited patiently in the hall, until John’s Italian lessons had ended.

“Belfiore,” he introduced himself while bowing, showing his balding head. “I’m here in the name of the government.”

“From the government?” John looked around apprehensively, but none of the Vacchis was there. “Sounds exciting.” This man came in the name of the government, and now he had to talk with him alone?

“Well, I hope I can live up to your expectations. I’m here to …”

John tried smiling the way Signora Orsini had been working so hard to teach him; hospitably and confidently. “Let’s go into the salon,” he suggested gesturing with one hand towards the door; he felt like an actor.

“Yes,” the man nodded thankfully. “Very well.” He took his briefcase and followed John.

Oh yes, refreshment, Signora Orsini would be proud. “May I offer you something to drink? Maybe a coffee?”

“A small espresso, if it’s not too much trouble.”

John rang a bell and Giovanna showed up. “Would you please bring us two espressos?” Dammit, he felt such a phony. But nobody seemed to notice. Giovanna nodded and disappeared. He went further into the salon with this government person. There was no trace of a Vacchi here either. What now? Offer a seat. “Please, have a seat, Signor Belfiore.” He just wasn’t used to entertaining official guests. “So, what is it that brings you here to see me?” It was as if he were reciting some lines he had learned for a school play.

Belfiore pulled something out of his case that turned out to be a map. He spread it apart on the table. “This,” he said pointing to an area on the map surrounded with colored marker, “is the Calmata. It’s a nature preserve. It is a very nice and charming quarter located by the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is about twelve square kilometers in area and barely fifteen minutes away from the nearest airport. These are a few photos.” He retrieved a few large photos that depicted an idyllic wild looking Mediterranean landscape with no roads, power lines or houses.

“Nice,” John said after he glanced at them. “And what does all this have to do with me?”

“Signor Fontanelli, I’m sure that you will want to find an appropriate estate for yourself after the transfer procedures have been accomplished. A villa right here,” he pointed to about the middle of the marked area on the map, “would offer you an exceptional view not only of the sea, but also of the mountains. You’d be surrounded by pristine, unsullied nature, a landscape where you can go riding or for walks: a steep, picturesque coastline right on your doorstep, while the bay over here could be turned into a mooring…”

John thought he wasn’t hearing the man right. “Didn’t you just tell me that this area is a nature preserve?”

The man waved John’s comment away and said: “Yes, but to be truthful not a very notable one. There aren’t any endangered animal species there or anything. We would welcome it if you could accept a few constraints as far as utilization of the area is concerned, but our experts consider it to be of no consequence if the area were to be utilized as a residence.” He leaned over the map. “We allowed ourselves a few suggestions how the road should be planned, along with the water and power lines. These are just ideas, of course, we would not wish to constrain you too much if you happen to have your own thoughts on the matter.”

John blinked a few times and he started to realize what was going on. Italy wanted to keep him in the country. As long as he was a resident he would have to pay taxes here, and in exchange they were willing to offer him a choice piece of land. His gut reaction was to oppose the idea. Though it was something he’d never done, he suddenly felt like he was haggling with a prostitute.

“I must think about it first before making any decisions, Signor Belfiore.”

“It’s a wonderful piece of land, Signor Fontanelli. A true paradise.”

“No doubt. But I don’t have the money yet.”

“We both know that’s just a formality. If you want, we could drive there together and take a look.”

“Thank you, but I won’t leave the premises until the appointment with the notary public.”

“Then, perhaps directly after that?”

“As I said, I must think about it first.”

“May I leave the map and the photos here?” He almost sounded like he was begging — as if he had been threatened with a beating if he should dare to return with a no.

“Certainly,” he said nodding and trying to sound like he dealt with these issues every day. He accompanied the man to the front door and said good-bye the way Signora Orsini taught him. Beyond the gate there was a storm of flashing lights.

Luckily, the journalists had held up the sedan flying the standard of the Vatican on little flags at the front of the car. The guards were busy keeping the horde of photographers at bay as they who attempted to sneak into the grounds alongside the vehicle as it drove in.

“My God,” John said as he looked to Signora Orsini. “How does one address a cardinal?”

She made big eyes. “You call him ‘Your Eminence,’” she told him. “And if you are a devout Catholic you must kiss his ring.”

“And if I’m not?” John looked down into the yard.

“Then you don’t.”

“Thank God.”

Eduardo received the guest in front of the house and brought him into the salon.

“Cardinale Giancarlo Genaro,” he said by means of introduction. “We are very honored.”

“Your Eminence,” John said and bowed his head slightly. A deep bow only for leaders of nations, Signora Orsini had taught him.

The man was dressed in red and accompanied by a young man in a black cassock. The cardinal cut an impressive figure. He was a very large man with ice-gray hair and had a stern face and taunt lips. He seemed to be unsure as to how he should address John, and after a few embarrassing seconds when neither man was certain how to react they simply shook hands.

Say hello, offer a seat, get a drink. John went through the whole ritual of politeness and felt like he was getting the hang of it.

“John, may I call you John?” asked the cardinal, sitting on the chair as if he were on a throne. “I have learned that you are a Catholic. Is my information correct?” The cardinal and his silent assistant, who remained standing beside his chair, looked at him inquiringly.

John nodded slowly. “I was baptized in a Catholic church.”

The face of the high church official twitched a bit. “To me it sounds as if you haven’t been to church since your First Communion.”

“More or less,” John admitted, “except when my oldest brother got married.”

“That is regretful, but it isn’t my duty to judge you on this account.” He smiled graciously. “I assume that you at least stand close to the Holy Roman Church. His Holiness himself requested that I invite you for a private audience.”

John was amazed to see that Giovanna hardly dared approach the man when she arrived with the mineral water, as if she thought it more appropriate to crawl through the room on her stomach.

“A private audience?” John looked to Eduardo, but he was a few paces away looking at the paintings on the wall as if he had never seen them before.

“And the Holy Father also asked me to present this to you.” When the cardinal made a small gesture the pale assistant brought forth from somewhere inside his cassock an illustrated book with a portrait of the pope and handed it to the cardinal. He took it without even glancing at the assistant and passed it on to John. “A gift from his Holiness.”

John held it in his hands; photos from the life of Pope John Paul II. “Thank you very much,” he said, wishing he could have said it with more sincerity.

“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 secretary 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 Africa 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.

“That isn’t one hundred percent certain either, but generally it’s capable of saying who the father is. The samples for the tests must be gathered under proper supervision and so on, but that is no problem. A hair or a bit of saliva is all that’s required for such a test, so this is no big deal even for a small child. It’s more pleasant than having blood taken for a blood test, at any rate.”

“You never performed a genetic test on me.”

“No,” Eduardo said while stirring his coffee in thought. “It is not necessary for children born to a wedded couple. In the case of your brother, we have to take into account the possibility that this is some sort of scam.”

John was glad that at least they suspected Lino was trying to pull something over on them all. But Lino had always been a womanizer; there was hardly a girl in the neighborhood who wasn’t a potential target for him. And he was always sneaky about it. As a kid, when John caught Lino making out with a girl, Lino would give him a look that threatened a beating if John told anyone. Lino was also the one who told John about the birds and the bees when John was nine or ten and Lino was fifteen. Lino always seemed like the kind of guy who knew what he was talking about. It’s very possible that he did father the child. He could even understand that Deborah Peterson would keep the child secret from Lino. John always had the feeling that Lino didn’t treat women very well after he got what he wanted.

“And what if it’s not a scam?” John asked.

“If not,” Eduardo said and licked the spoon off before he placed it neatly on the fine porcelain saucer, “then Andrew Peterson will be a trillionaire.”

The reporters at the gates had gone from a besieging army to an attacking one. They began to shake the iron bars demanding access. Eduardo required three bodyguards just to go as far as the locked gate. He told the journalists roughly the same things he had told John during breakfast — that they suspected Lino was playing some sort of trick to get at the Fontanelli fortune, and briefly explained the next steps of the legal proceedings. The mob went wild with questions.

“I’ll go deaf if I have to do that again,” Eduardo shuddered when he was back in the house. “What are they doing here? Shouldn’t they be covering O.J. Simpson’s trial instead?”

Barely two hours later he watched himself answering the reporters’ questions on NBC, and the angry rebuttal of Lino Fontanelli, dragged out of bed to comment on the Italian lawyer’s claims and repeating that his only motive was the well-being of his child.

The chopper returned, then a second one, and then even a third. The Vacchi employees, who were out to run errands, reported in the afternoon that they were offered large sums of money for any written documents or photos of the Vacchis or the inside of the house, and even more if they would allow a reporter onto the premises.

The guards increased their security measures.

John called his mother that afternoon; it was just before noon on the east coast of the US. She was preparing lunch when the phone rang. The last few times he called she had been confused about what had happened and excited because her son was in all the papers, but now she was really unhappy about the infighting the “million,” as she called it, had brought to her family.

“It’s not a million, mamma,” John tried to explain again. “It’s one million times one million.”

“Non mi piace, non mi piace,” she lamented. “Who needs so much money, tell me that! Is it worth it that brothers are fighting? And now he wants to leave Vera and marry that woman from Philadelphia, just for the money.”

John felt a shudder. Who gets the money when a child dies? The parents? It was a gruesome thought that came to him out of the blue and which he now couldn’t shake.

“But you always wanted a grandchild,” he told his mother, not without some effort. A copy of the Corriere della Sera was lying before him on the table, and big-eyed Andrew Peterson stared at him from the front page.

“Mira was like a grandchild to me, and now I’m going to lose her! Oh, it’s all a disaster. This money brought nothing but disaster.” She kept on complaining, until she remembered that she wanted to put water on for pasta. She made John promise her to call back, or better yet to come back home soon, then she hung up.

Go back home, sure, maybe he could face it all better there. It was true he had always felt out of place here. He was convinced from the start that the Vacchis had been wrong. All this luxury was nice, no doubt, and he could get used to it, but the fact remained that he couldn’t handle money. He couldn’t handle even a small sum of money so he definitely couldn’t handle a fortune. If the real purpose of all this was to restore some lost future to humanity then he was definitely the wrong man. He had a hard enough time thinking about his own future, much less the problems of the world.

He took the paper and looked at Andrew Peterson’s photo. It was a nice-sounding name. Like Andrew Carnegie. They could have him attend the right schools, let him slowly grow into the role; have him properly trained for living with this kind of wealth and power. If you thought about the reality of it, maybe it wasn’t such a bad turn of events after all.

The mood at the dinner table was inevitably somber. The Vacchis tried hard to make conversation and to pretend that things were okay, but their efforts were so obvious that John felt his stomach tighten. Their thoughts were far away with a three-year-old boy on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and the question of whether the true heir and fulfiller of the prophecy had gone unnoticed by them for all this time. Although Giovanna had tried her best, John’s appetite was gone, and he soon withdrew to his room. He went through the kitchen on his way to apologize for hardly touching the meal she prepared.

The darkness in his room was oppressive, but he did not dare to turn on a light for fear of drawing the reporters’ attention. He got undressed in the dark and went to bed.

Why didn't Cesare and Helen have a child? Then it would have been easier for him to accept. Cesare was always so much older, so far above him that it would not have bothered him so much. But no, it just had to be Lino, Lino, of all people, who was always stronger and took advantage of it, Lino, the only one who got good grades in school, Lino, who always won at everything.

Now he'd win again.

And what would John do now? He had never done much with his life, and the little he had done lately was being destroyed. He would go down in history as a tragic figure — the man who was almost a trillionaire. People would stare at him like some circus attraction wherever he went. There was no chance of going back to his previous life, the way things had been before all of this.

His mind went around in circles. He got back up and felt his way by touch in the dark to the bathroom. There was a medicine cabinet with all sorts of medication. He found it, opened it, let his fingers feel their way round, vials and bottles and pillboxes. In the end he had to turn on a light. He found a tablet tube with valium. He took it and opened it.

The next morning the announcement went around the world that the heir to a trillion dollars, John Salvatore Fontanelli, had committed suicide during the night.

The sobbing on the other end of the phone didn’t stop. “What a tragedy … madre mio, dio mio … it brings nothing but tragedy, the money, it destroyed the family, destroyed everything.”

“Mother …”

“And these journalist — the spawn of the devil — have surrounded our house, they come inside and won’t leave us alone. How can they write something like that? I could’ve had a heart attack — it could have killed your father. How can they say that you’re dead?”

“Maybe because they always want to report something sensational,” John told her.

“I couldn’t breathe. Your father isn’t as young as he was, remember that, our family has a history of heart attacks. They said it on the late evening news. We normally don’t watch it. I haven’t slept all night.”

John worked out the time difference. It had to be two thirty in the morning in New York now. “We found out just a little while ago, otherwise I would’ve called much…”

“And that photo of you standing there with 20 valium tablets in your hand!”

“I’ve been trying to tell you what happened. The guy, Jim Huston, all he does is chase scandals — he’s a paparazzo. He had a helicopter drop him on the roof, by rope or whatever. It’s chaotic here, and no one noticed. There is a blind spot up there that can’t be seen from below, and he hid there. In the evening he climbed down to my room window, like some kind of mountain climber, and waited there with his camera. When I went into the bathroom to get a sleeping pill he photographed me. I never even noticed it. Things here have been crazy.”

“But there were at least twenty pills, you could clearly see it!”

“They just spilled out of the bottle, mom.” That wasn’t true. He had wanted to see how many pills there were, because he had the ridiculous feeling that someone might count them to see if he took any.

After calming his mother down, he put on his best suit and went downstairs to show his face to the press along with the Vacchis, to prove to the world that he was still alive.

They shouted a flurry of questions and held microphones on long poles in front of his face: “What will you do now?” “Do you believe that Andrew Peterson is really your brother’s son?” But John remained silent and only shook his head.

Eduardo showed the crowd the rappelling equipment and explained how Huston got the photos. After a few reporters whistled to acknowledge his feat, he warned them of attempting anything similar. “Jim Huston entered the grounds illegally, and we will sue him for trespassing, breaking and entering, fraud and deception, and failure to assist in an emergency. He will be charged and prosecuted to the fullest extend of the law.”

After they went back into the house, John told the Vacchis he thought it would be best for him to return to the States until the situation was clarified. “My parents can’t deal with the pressure of the press. I think it’s best if I’m there to draw their attention to me instead my parents.”

The Vacchis nodded, except the Padrone, who shook his head in disagreement. “Your place is here, John,” he told him. “This whole thing is nothing but a farce that will blow over.”

“Well, I understand John,” Alberto told him.

“I also think that is the best thing to do,” Gregorio agreed.

Eduardo sighed. “If you want, I’ll book a flight for you for tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” John said.

John went to his room to pack. But standing in front the wardrobe he realized that nothing in it really belonged to him. He decided to ask Eduardo to get him something to wear from his own sorry possessions, which must be stored here somewhere in cardboard boxes.

Looking around the room he thought this is how his dream would end. He let himself fall onto the bed and sat there, defeated. He laid back and stared at the ceiling. It had started all at once, from one minute to the next. And it was ending the same way.

He woke up without even realized that he’d dozed off. It had to be sometime in the afternoon judging by the light outside. He felt remarkably well.

How quiet it was! John got up and went over to the balcony that used to be his. He took a deep breath of the salty air blowing in from the sea and closed his eyes. There were insects chirping and buzzing in the bushes below. From a distance he could hear the voices of the crowd of reporters by the gate.

Too bad; he would miss the feeling of being a millionaire. Over the past few days during his introduction to unimaginable wealth, he had never got beyond the idea of being a millionaire, let alone a billionaire or even a trillionaire. But he had begun to feel like a millionaire at times, and he liked it.

The phone rang. He hoped it might be his mother — maybe to tell him that she had slept a little and was feeling better. He went over and answered the call. “Yes?”

“Do you have a fax?” the stranger’s deep voice asked him.

John was startled. He went down on his knees and looked underneath the bed. There was a carton there — Marco must have brought it when he was sleeping. “Yes. Yes, I have one.”

“Is it connected?”

“What? No. Not yet. I think I have to disconnect the phone first.”

“Fine.” The stranger seemed to be smirking. “The phone lines there are probably at least thirty years old, just like the telephone, right?”

“Something like that, I guess.”

“All right; connect the fax machine now. I will fax you a document in five minutes. I guarantee its authenticity. Put it to good use.”

“Okay,” John said. “But I don’t understand. What’s going…” There was a click, then the line went dead.

Five minutes? Oh boy. Maybe he should read the instructions. He pulled the carton from beneath the bed. He tore the box open and peeled the machine out of its plastic and Styrofoam covering. Marco had thankfully even remembered to get a roll of fax paper and an adapter so he could connect the new machine into the old phone outlet. It took him three minutes to get the machine ready to go. He sat the rest of the time sitting before it and staring at the machine and waiting for it to cackle to life for what felt like hours.

Then suddenly something began to click inside the dark-gray gadget. The slot lit up with a blue-green light. With a low hum the paper started coming out. John unrolled the paper as it came out of the machine, trying to make sense of the scraggly lines and smeared letters.

The document, printed on a long roll of thermal paper, was Second Lieutenant Lino Fontanelli’s medical report, prepared by a military doctor at McGuire Air Force Base in February 1991. There was page upon page of EKG, EEG, test results for lung capacity, cardio-stress test, reactionary test, blood tests, analysis of spinal fluid, and so forth. The last page had the check in the box that stated that he was medically qualified to become a pilot, and beside that the illegible signature of the doctor.

John almost overlooked the most crucial remark. In the section headed “Medical test results irrelevant to flight qualification” was a single word: “Infertile.”

$8,000,000,000,000

THE FAX WAS like a kick in the stomach. John sat on the bed and stared at it with no awareness of the passage of time as he tried to grasp the impact. No one came, no one called while he automatically unplugged the fax machine and shoved it back under the bed. No one disturbed him so he had some time to think.

By dusk he had made the decision to keep the fax secret so that he wouldn’t have to explain where it came from. Instead, during yet another gloomy dinner, he mentioned casually: “Can it be determined by a genetic test if someone is fertile or not?”

“No.” Eduardo shook his head as he dissected a dumpling with a silver fork from the eighteenth century. “Why?”

“I remembered a conversation I had last Christmas with Vera, my brother’s girlfriend. She mentioned that she was wondering why Lino had never got her pregnant.” He’d thought up the story in his room. Vera would never have talked to him about anything personal like that, but no one here would know.

“Good grief!” Gregorio Vacchi exclaimed and lowered his fork. What little hair he had seemed to stand on end. “I hadn’t even considered that.”

The Padrone was also staring wide-eyed at him. “Infertility! It’s a common affliction in the Fontanelli line.”

Alberto looked skeptical. “But he can’t possibly think that something like that would go undiscovered!”

Expanding on his fairy tale, John continued, “I don’t think Lino ever knew that Sarah had been trying for a child.”

“This means that this Peterson woman is trying to foist her child upon Lino!” Eduardo guessed.

Eduardo’s father took the napkin from his lap and threw it beside his half empty plate. “I have to make some calls immediately.”

By the next morning the story was a sensation. Lino admitted, with clenched teeth, in front of cameras that he had been talked into the trick by Bleeker. In fact, he had never met Deborah Peterson before. He had no idea he was infertile. In the background yellow police tape fluttered in the breeze on his lawn and police officers were coming and going. Neither Vera Jones nor her daughter was anywhere to be seen.

Deborah Peterson told a reporter how Randolph Bleeker had sought her out and talked her into the plan. She knew Bleeker fleetingly from her previous job at the law firm, but never considered him to be a pleasant man. As a single parent in need of some money she agreed to go along with the scheme. It was Bleeker who got her and Lino together and told them the details of their supposed affair before he went public with the phony story. As it turned out Andrew Peterson was indeed the result of a brief affair, after which his mother never saw or heard from his father again. After Andrew’s birth she thought that she could handle everything by herself and was too proud to mention the father on the birth certificate. When her savings ran out she turned to Randolph Bleeker to find the child’s father and to sue him for child support. Bleeker did find him: The former trucker was lying in a neurologic hospital after an armed robbery went wrong and was in a vegetative state. The young woman’s face reflected felt a mixture of shame and fascination as she explained how the lawyer had set out to use her for his plot. He had actually taken hair and tissue samples from the comatose patient and kept them frozen until Lino was tested, and then exchanged the specimens. She had no idea how he managed to pull off the exchange.

This far-fetched story knocked the Ebola virus off the front pages despite it being responsible for thousands of deaths in the central African town of Kikwit by causing people’s internal organs to disintegrate. To the obvious delight of the reporters, the lawyer, Randolph Bleeker — known to his friends as Randy — had disappeared. His apartment in Philadelphia was found empty, and a camera team that went to Bleeker’s little musty office at the same time as the police only found his unsuspecting secretary who had no idea where her boss had gone.

The Rolls Royce left the Vacchi property at seven thirty in the morning. The curtains in the rear windows were completely drawn shut. It was followed by a large convoy of vehicles with the logos of a myriad of TV channels and news agencies painted on their doors. The majestic luxury car cruised through the villages and towns smoothly and almost silently. As the car turned on to the autostrada just before Florence to head towards Rome, a helicopter appeared above and joined the convoy. From 10:00 a.m., news of the convoy’s trip was breaking into scheduled broadcasts.

No one paid any attention to the delivery van that left the smaller gate on the far side of the Vacchi estate like it did every morning to pick up dirty laundry and bring back the clean sheets and towels. It left the grounds without being harassed by reporters, stopping only shortly at the laundry to throw out the boxes and sacks so that John and the Vacchis would have more room in the van. The Padrone took advantage of this short stop to move to the front passenger’s side while Marco got behind the steering wheel. They all shook the hand of the young driver from the laundry company thanking him for the use of the van and raced off.

The streets were still empty of traffic at this time of day and so they got to the autostrada earlier than planned. There was only light traffic on the highway and Eduardo, who had thought of the idea, grinned, satisfied. They would be finished with the legal procedures before the first reporters arrived in Rome.

As they drove through Rome, John leaned to one of the back windows and peered out. As someone who had always thought the Empire State Building was old, he had been was very impressed by the ancient buildings in the old part of Florence. But Rome — Rome was monumental. He finally understood why it was called The Eternal City. Every street intersection gave him a view of something ancient and important that he knew nothing about. How could anyone honk a car horn in the midst of such illustrious buildings? How could a driver pass other cars in this city where time seemed to have stopped? He could not get enough and even regretted it when they suddenly turned off the main road through a dark gateway into the courtyard of the Italian Ministry of Finance.

Steel doors closed behind them. Uniformed men with walkie-talkies and automatic weapons appeared and watched with faces of stone as John and the Vacchis got out of the vehicle and were silently led them up a set of stairs. Rusted, unpainted steel doors with several locks were unlocked in front of them and locked again after they entered. Their steps echoed in the bare hallway that reminded John more of a prison than a ministry. The ancient elevator only fit four people at a time, so they had to go up in stages.

“When we leave we’ll use the front door,” Eduardo told John. He seemed tense.

They went through a wide doorway on one of the upper floors. There were carpets on the floor, photographs on the walls and frescos and painted stucco on the ceilings. John had lost all sense of orientation by the time they went through a very large door and entered a smaller room, whose walls were painted with a simply overwhelming display of color.

Admiring all the angels and golden wings and rose bushes, John almost failed to notice the men who were waiting to be introduced to them.

“Signor Fantozzi, the minister of finance. Signor Bernardini, the assistant minister of the interior. Signor Nuncio Tafale, the notary public.”

Thinking of Signora Orsini’s lessons, John shook hands with all of them and told them how pleased he was to meet them and so early in the morning at that. Over the previous few days, after it had became certain that he would indeed inherit the fortune, he had imagined this moment. He had imagined a solemn ceremony and realized they were indeed making every effort to give the occasion the importance it deserved. John felt his heart pound, and could feel his blood course through his neck arteries and head and he concentrated on not making any mistakes, not saying anything stupid or inappropriate that would shatter the solemnity of the moment. He felt tense and afraid of messing up — like he was taking his driver’s test. It was long ago and he couldn’t remember anymore if the feeling had lasted hours or days. His only recollection was that he was concentrating so hard that he couldn’t remember where he drove or where he had to parallel park. It was absolute tunnel vision. Stress. And here and now? The same emotions. But why? This was no test. He had nothing to lose. These men had sought him out to give him a trillion dollars, and they were determined to do so. He would have had to say “no” to everything to prevent things from going as planned.

They started with the assistant minister of the interior, placing a document before John, and then another document that looked much like a contract with a red string attached and a wax seal. The Vacchis literally leapt on both papers and studied them carefully, word for word, until they nodded their approval. John signed. His Italian language skill was barely enough to read the newspapers — he’d be lucky to be able to pick out his own names in the legal gibberish above where he signed. Without the Vacchis by his side the ministry could have done whatever they wanted, and he would never have been the wiser.

The assistant minister smiled, more out of politeness than familiarity, and handed him his new passport, a wine-red Italian passport complete with photo and all required signatures laminated to prevent alteration. In exchange, he had to hand over his old, beat-up, blue American passport. The assistant minister seized it as if it were a trophy. John wondered what he would do with it. Didn’t it say "property of the United States of America," inside?

Hand shaking again. Congratulations all around. Now he was an Italian citizen — the same country his grandfather had fled. The assistant minister of the interior smiled at him as if to say “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it,” but the minister of finance smiled even more.

After hands were shook again and more coffee had been poured, the notary took the floor. He produced a piece of paper and read from it in a manner that made clear nothing could be valid unless he personally had authorized it. “Rome, on this the sixteenth day of May, 1995, appearing before the certified notary public, Nuncio Tafale, for the official transfer of the Giacomo Fontanelli fortune, are the following persons: John Salvatore Fontanelli, Italian citizen, born on the first of September, 1967, in New York, USA. Cristoforo Vacchi, Italian citizen, born …”

And on it went, until John didn’t understand anything anymore. There were words like “estate” and “bequeath” and “unrestricted disposal” that trickled through from the myriad of incomprehensible legalese drivel. Then the Vacchis read out their own documents that were written in an old fashioned and formal Italia. Yet they made the documents sound like sophisticated poetry compared to the notary’s convoluted language. Thus it went back and forth, until John found himself wondering why he was even there.

It wasn’t until he had to sign again that he remembered this was the solemn occasion he wanted. It was total nonsense, but John had to identify himself — with the same passport he had only just been given. The notary public took his job very seriously and studied the passport as if John might have altered it while the notary was droning on. Officials! The same witless pinheads no matter what country they are from! After that, there were seemingly endless forms to sign; one document after the other, most for John but some for the Vacchis as well. For minutes all you could hear was the noise of fountain pens scratching on thick official paper. Stamps were pounded on the documents, ink dryers rolled, seals applied, and the finance minister’s smile grew a tooth wider with each step.

He was also the first to jump up to shake hands and congratulate John with the words; “I thank you for choosing Italy!”

Then the Vacchis congratulated him too. More hands appeared from nowhere to be shaken. It seemed like half of all Italian officialdom had gathered in this modest room.

“Now you are definitely and legally the richest man on Earth,” said Cristoforo Vacchi. “There is no reversing it.” He seemed relieved.

The timing was excellent. The Rolls Royce pulled up majestically to the steps outside the ministry, and the horde of journalists photographed an empty rear seat as Benito opened the back door. It took a few moments before the first reporter saw John and the Vacchis standing on top of the stairway outside the ministry’s front door. An outstretched arm pointed, and then a shout sounding like a war cry and the mob raced up the steps. John stepped into a storm of flashing lights and questions with a smile on his face. Without knowing why he triumphantly lifted the leather briefcase with the legal documents high above his head.

It was an image that would go around the world.

After the notary ceremony the next item on the agenda was an official reception with the Italian prime minister. The Rolls was escorted by an honor guard of motorcycles to the seat of government, where the prime minister was already waiting on the steps for John’s arrival. Standing in the middle of the red carpet amidst countless flashing lights, Prime Minister Lamberto Dini and John Fontanelli shook hands and smiled into cameras and into the crowd. Countless police officers formed a cordon to keep the press of journalists and the cheering crowd at bay. It seemed as if John himself had done something amazing.

“Wave,” the prime minister said, a man in his mid-sixties with a face like a sad bulldog. John waved and the cheering grew even louder.

There seemed to be no functioning government in Italy on this day, because every minister was present to shake the new trillionaire’s hand. It was impossible to remember all their names. John smiled and shook the hands presented to him, feeling like he was in the middle of a storm. “You can call me anytime,” almost everyone told him, and John nodded, promised to remember and wondered what reason he would have to personally call an Italian minister.

On their drive back from Rome, John felt oddly restless. Time and again he had the feeling that he could no longer sit in the car as it drove through the rolling landscape in the warm afternoon sun. He had to do something but he had no idea what it should be.

Now it was official; he was the richest man on earth, richest man of all time. He was unbelievably wealthy and hadn’t done anything to earn it. No special talents or skills of his own. Just a vision-induced idea from a forefather who would have been long forgotten if he hadn’t dreamed up this plan. Did John feel differently now? No. He glanced at the briefcase that contained a bunch of incomprehensible documents. Not that his wealth depended on him actually possessing any these papers; there were enough notarized copies in the possession of the notary public, not to mention the finance ministry, the Vacchis and who knows how many other locations. He could throw the case into a bonfire and would still be the richest man on earth. The case, filled with papers stamped and signed and sealed, listing bank accounts and balances all proved one thing that was otherwise totally abstract: he was wealthy. He didn’t feel any richer than he did when he woke up at four in the morning to go to bathroom. What had the ceremony changed? Nothing. Before the ceremony he had been the guest of a family of lawyers he had not known a month ago. That’s what he still was.

As the roads grew narrower and they eventually drove into the village, hundreds of people stood along the streets, clapped their hands and threw confetti. Out on an open field John saw tents and carrousels that were not there that morning. It must be a country fair, no doubt in his honor. As if he had done something to deserve it.

At the Vacchis, there was a table in the foyer that was filled with champagne glasses and a dusty bottle resting in a glass cooler filled with ice.

“We’ve taken the liberty,” Cristoforo explained, “of throwing a small party in your honor. That means it was actually Eduardo who took care of everything.”

John nodded apprehensively feeling as if he had ants in his veins instead of blood. He watched as the glasses were filled and wanted to just run away, somewhere, anywhere, to do laundry or even deliver pizza if it meant he could get away.

Alberto Vacchi lifted his glass. The last rays of sunlight shone through the windows over the balustrade and made the tiny bubbles look like little pearls. “I would like to claim that we bought this bottle on the day of your birth,” he said, “and saved it for this day, but that isn’t so. I purchased it only last week. However, it is the same age as John — twenty-eight year old champagne, one of the best that money can buy. A votre santé!”

John felt rather uncomfortable all evening. Eduardo showed him how to wear a tail-coat properly, and he was startled by the almost overly dignified appearance it gave him. But he was glad to be wearing what he was when he saw the distinguished men dressed in similar attire, and the ladies in breathtaking aristocratic-looking dresses, and even Marco and the other bodyguards were dressed in elegant suits.

John still felt odd. Even later, while a pianist and two violinists played gentle background music and everyone stood around talking, holding their glasses and small snack plates, John still felt as if he was a laboratory rat being put under a microscope. Men laughed out loud at his jokes. Women smiled broadly as they leaned towards him exposing impressive cleavage, all just because he was now wealthy. Everyone he spoke to made an obvious effort to impress him and to win his sympathy, simply because he had more money than anyone else on this planet. Not a single one of the people present tonight, here and now, would have even looked at him six weeks ago as he walked through New York hungry and frozen, with only ten cents in his pocket. The only things that made a difference were his clothes, his haircut and the amount in his bank account. Well, the amounts in his two hundred and fifty thousand bank accounts to be more exact.

“How does it feel as a trillionaire?” one man around fifty wanted to know. He wore a suit with a leopard fur collar and a sapphire ring with a stone the size of an ox’s eyeball, and, if John remembered correctly, he was a famous film producer.

“I’d like to know that too,” John answered. “I mean I can only eat until I’m full and wear one pair of pants at a time. Actually, I think that it’s far too much money for a single person.”

Somehow, this wasn’t the answer the man wanted to hear. “You’re far too humble, Signor Fontanelli,” he told John, giving him a critical look. “But you can’t fool me. God knows, I know the way people think.”

John looked after him as he went off to mingle with the guests and he asked himself if there were people who not only saw him as a number with a lot of zeroes behind it, but something akin to an idol. The richest man on earth — if he isn’t happy then happiness doesn’t exist.

Or something like that.

“How does it feel to be a trillionaire?” a woman wanted to know. Her hair was piled high and her dress was closed in the front but cut so low in the back that very little was left to the imagination. She was the daughter of an industrial magnate and married to another tycoon, who was flirting with a black-haired model at the other end of the room.

“Like a billionaire,” John answered with a smile. “Only a thousand times better.”

Her mouth was half open as her tongue provocatively licked her lips, and smirked: “That sounds terribly exciting. With all your money, you must have quite a stamp collection? Maybe you’d like to show me…”

Oh, brother. “Sorry, no,” John hurried to tell her, “but if I ever think of starting one, you’ll be the first to know, signora.”

He escaped from her and went to the bathroom. Eduardo was in there combing his hair, and John told him about his encounter with the woman.

Eduardo grinned as he looked in the mirror: “Then make sure she doesn’t find out where your room is.”

“Are you serious? I mean, her husband was barely twenty meters away…“

“And was flirting with another woman, I bet. Everybody who knows those two also knows that it’s a normal occurrence for them. Just ignore her.”

When John returned to the salon the woman was gone. She reappeared, looking a bit disheveled. John decided to follow Eduardo’s tip and tried to put her from his mind.

The minister of finance had also been invited. “In case you are looking for any investment tips for your fortune,” he said in a jokingly conspiratorial tone of voice, raising his glass, “I highly recommend our government bonds.”

John had no idea what government bonds were. It was only small talk, no doubt. “I will think about it,” he promised the minister, clinking glasses with him. Later, John ran into Albert and asked him what government bonds were.

“It means that you loan money to the government,” he explained, holding two drinks at once. “It is money you give them for a definite amount of time earning a certain amount of interest. It is a quite boring yet safe way to invest, unless you chose to do this with some banana republic that is close to being bankrupt.”

“Does this mean that the government borrows money from private individuals?” John whispered confused.

“When a government presents its budget plan it allows so and so many billions of new debt, then they issue bonds for that sum. Anyone can buy them. Banks do and private individuals can too.” With that he left John for the company of a blond woman who, along with all the others here, seemed to John to belong to a different planet from all the women he had ever met.

When he bumped into the finance minister again by the buffet it seemed their earlier conversation had been more than just small talk, because, while John piled pieces of salmon and truffle pate onto his plate, the minister mentioned the bonds again and if John had thought about it.

“I don’t know,” John said hesitantly. “Is this a safe investment? I mean, you are the state, and if you decide not to repay the debt then I’m shit out of … I mean, I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.”

“I beg your pardon!” All the humor he'd had before drained from his face. He straightened his back. “A minister of finance would rather reduce his mother’s pension than not to honor a loan. No government can afford to be known as the one that doesn’t repay its debts. That’s like not paying the rent.”

Quick as lightning, the image of podgy Miss Pearson, his landlady, came to mind, the way she used to bitch and rant with Marvin by the door when they were late with the rent payment. How long ago was that? A few weeks maybe, but it felt like a hundred thousand years. John knew what the minister meant; a government that didn’t re-pay its debts would not find anyone else to loan it money. It made sense, actually. “I, ah…” he uttered and tried to smile, “I haven’t had time to think about … an investment … um, strategy yet. But, I will consider your offer.”

Later, John spoke with a Nobel Prize winner about the weather, with a banker about Jacques Chirac’s election as France’s new president, and with a soprano singer about the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He accepted business cards, promised to look into investment opportunities and at some point during the evening he switched from champagne to mineral water as the buzz he was enjoying threatened to grow into something sinister.

“How does it feel to be a trillionaire?” a woman with a mass of carefully curled and set red hair asked. Her equally red sequined dress was almost transparent if you looked closely enough in the right light.

John recoiled when he found his nose almost in her cleavage. “It feels,” John slurred, “as if all the women in the world were throwing themselves at you.”

“Oh really?” she said with a peeved expression.

John had finally found the best answer to the question he had been asked more than any other. This time it was the questioner who sought to escape.

Outside, the sky was already turning to the pastel colors of dawn as John closed the door to his room and stood leaning against it with unsteady legs, enjoying its substance and the sudden quiet.

The richest man in the world? He felt like the most exhausted man in the world. The freshly made bed was extremely enticing. He opened the door of a wardrobe with a mirror on the inside and stared at himself in his drunken state. Not such a bad suit, this tail thingamajig. He liked it. He could get used to it. And being a trillionaire. Whether or not he could get used to champagne was another matter. He dimly remembered drinking to “brotherhood” with a bunch of people, but had no recollection who they all were. Eduardo was among them, he remembered. He went after the woman with the red sequin dress, and John didn’t remember seeing any more of him. Or the woman.

His bow-tie had suffered; it was stained and hung crookedly. He took off the cufflinks and, wobbly on his feet, got undressed. As he unbuttoned the vest he heard a garden gate squeak.

At this time? He weaved over to a window. The Vacchis had a small structure annexed to this side of the estate house that looked like a workshop or a former shed. There was a walled-in courtyard on the side of the complex closest to the road, and it was the rusty gate to this area that squeaked.

John took off his vest and frowned when he saw a van parked on the road and a man he had seen several times before running errands for the Vacchis unloading cartons. There was a light on behind the windows of the annex, and he saw a woman sitting at a table. When the man reached the door and knocked, she got up and helped him carry the rest of the cartons inside.

John unbuttoned his shirt. The starched front also had various sorts of spots on it, so he threw it into the laundry basket. Odd for somebody to already be up at this time of morning working. Maybe it wasn’t good to be thinking about such things with so much alcohol in his blood. John wobbled over to the bed and succumbed to its irresistible allure.

The containers looked like colorful building blocks from afar, but when you looked closer they were nothing but dented and scratched junk. The container crane, working hard during the day, stood stoically there at night quietly rusting away. Railroad tracks ran parallel to each other or crisscrossed here and there over potholed streets and roads and a few ancient piers that jutted out into the Hudson River, waiting in vain for new freight to arrive.

Susan Winter was fifteen minutes early for the meeting. She ambled out onto one of the piers and watched the game of light and shadows play among the skyscrapers of Manhattan. She was thinking what she would do with eight hundred thousand dollars a year. At seven o’clock she turned around and wondered to herself if there was a place to eat nearby, but that was not a thought that could compete with her fascination of her future riches.

When she sauntered back to the containers a man stepped out from between them, just like the first time she had agreed to break the law to earn money. He was wearing the same dark coat he did every time they met, including the last time at Rockefeller Center. He still moved as if he were suffering from rheumatism. And his face didn’t look any more handsome either. More familiar, and at least she knew his name now.

“Hello Randy!” Susan Winter said a little derisively. “I’m sorry that you had to come here, now that everyone is looking for you. But today I have a meeting with your client.”

“I know,” Randy Bleeker told her with an ugly smile. “He gave me certain instructions that concern you.”

Picking up on his menacing tone, she suddenly realized she was there alone and unprotected. She could analyze anything, just not her own life. She stared at Bleeker and her eyes widened with dread. This time it wasn’t an envelope full of money he pulled out of his pocket.

$9,000,000,000,000

THE SUN HUNG high in the sky when they met the next day. Giovanna had put up a small breakfast table in the library; one of the few rooms that hadn’t been devastated by the party. People from catering services were bustling around all over the ground floor, getting things back in order. Through the open window they could hear the distant sound of the fairground rides being dismantled.

“Quite something, being rich,” John said.

“Without a doubt.” Alberto Vacchi sipped his espresso tiredly.

His brother Gregorio had red eyes and looked just as moody and tired. Eduardo’s face looked really bad, as if he hadn’t slept a wink. He sat silently drinking one coffee after another. Only the Padrone looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He had gone to bed early, as usual, and had already been for a long walk this morning.

“But now,” John went on and stared at the black as night liquid in his cup, “it’s up to me to give all the money to the needy, right?”

A sudden silence filled the room. John got the impression he had said something terribly wrong.

“That’s what I understood. Isn’t that so? The money isn’t there for me. I’m supposed to do something with it; alleviate hardship — poverty — something along those lines.”

The Padrone closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again. “It is your money, John,” he said. “It belongs to you. There are no conditions.”

“You may do what you want with it,” Alberto added.

“But, there is that clause in the testament! That I’m supposed to give humanity back its future or something like that.”

“That is not a clause,” Cristoforo Vacchi corrected him. “It is a prophecy. You don’t have to — you will. There is a world of difference.”

“Does that mean that I could keep it all if I want to?”

“You are totally free. You may keep it, or you may give it to the poor — whatever you wish.”

“Although you might like to ask yourself who the poor really are.” Gregorio dourly interjected.

For the first time it dawned on John that maybe the fortune really had nothing to do with him at all, maybe he was just some kind of straw man, that all along there had been some secret plan for how the fortune would be used. “Well,” he started lamely, “all those people who are suffering from hunger — they could be considered poor, couldn’t they?”

“Agreed.” Gregorio stood up and went over to one of the bookshelves. He pulled out a thick book and from its title it must be an almanac or something like that. Unerringly he flipped through the pages. “That would be about … one point three billion people. How much should each one get? Approximately …” John, of course, could not figure that out in his head. He was never good at mental arithmetic, and worse than ever with a hangover. John took a calculator that was always in the library and started to push buttons. “One billion divided by …” He paused. The calculator, like many, had only an eight-digit capacity. One trillion, however, has thirteen digits, more than it could handle. John stared at the thing in annoyance: a simple calculator in beige plastic with black rubber buttons; a gadget he’d seen on shelves for just a few dollars. For most people it would be more than enough. It would even suffice for a multi-millionaire. It was still difficult for his mind to grasp that he was moving in a realm that went far beyond normality — that went beyond the average calculator.

“Almost seven hundred and seventy dollars,” Gregorio said, who had done the math with paper and pencil. “Seven hundred and sixty-nine dollars and twenty-three cents, to be exact. But, of course you have more than a trillion dollars by now; however, you must take away the money it would take to distribute all this money all over the world. So it’s nonsense to calculate it so exactly.”

John looked at him and thought he was hearing things. “Seven hundred and seventy dollars? Per person?” That was crazy. He looked at the math and thought about what this could mean.

“That’s not very much,” Gregorio reasoned. “The money they got would be gone within a year, even if food were very cheap.”

In the end, was a trillion dollars, more money than anyone ever had, in reality so inconsequential? John felt dizzy. He had to stop thinking about it. “Maybe that isn’t such a good idea.”

The Padrone handed him the chrome basket with the pastries. “If you would take a little advice from me,” he said with a kind smile, “don’t even think about how you can get rid of the money for now. First get used to having it.”

The Learjet that Eduardo had chartered for the flight to London had a calming pale-gray interior. There were seven leather seats, a stereo with CD player, and for each passenger a lightweight headset. A sweet stewardess served them coffee and cold drinks.

They took off at nine thirty in the morning from a private airport near Florence. It was a small, inconspicuous airport that looked like one of the old fashioned kinds that never get used anymore. There were no lines of people in front of the check-in, no self-important ground personnel, and no departure lounge. They simply got out of the car, walked over to the plane, where they shook hands with the pilot and co-pilot. And after the three passengers were seated — John, Eduardo and Marco — they took off. No lecture about oxygen masks or life jackets.

“You need to buy some tailor-made suits,” Eduardo decided. “The best in the world.”

Despite all the press photos flashed around the world in the past week, no one took note of the three men as they strolled along Savile Row in the early afternoon. John had imagined the ritzy street with all the high-class tailors would look more impressive. The rough cobblestones, the colorful facades partially broken and stained, and all the garbage bags on some of the street corners made this road look like any other in Westminster. But, on the other hand, there were more Union Jacks of all sizes fluttering here over the sidewalks than anywhere else and ad banners for the local firms and a few more marbled entryways than other parts of the city.

Marco followed the two men keeping a discrete distance as they looked in the windows of firms like Henry Poole & Co., Gieves & Hawkes, J. Dege & Sons or Kilgour, French & Stanbury. They studied the finely tailored suits in conservative colors worn by headless mannequins. They finally stopped in front of a façade colored in a shimmering pale purple. Written in golden letters above the large display windows, through which one could see large balls of dark cloth lying on tables, was the name Anderson & Sheppard.

“It is said that Prince Charles has most of his suits tailored here,” Eduardo told John. And whatever was good enough for the British heir to the crown seemed to be at least worth looking into for the richest man in the world. They entered.

The man in the tailor shop on 5th Avenue looked like a choirboy compared to the man who greeted them here. Eduardo told him briefly who they were in a subdued tone of voice. What they wanted was obvious. The man didn’t display the slightest change of expression. He seemed used to having the beautiful, wealthy, and famous of the world ring the bell on the door of his shop. But it was different when Eduardo told him that they needed a dozen suits for the most diverse occasions. That did the trick and conjured a thin smile from the man.

John was led to a well-lit room. White tailor’s chalk, a measuring tape and a work-order book with pale green pages lay on top of a chest with a vast number of drawers. An elderly man with a bald forehead and thin-rimmed eyeglasses entered from a storage room out back carrying a few samples of cloth.

The cloth was draped over John’s arms or clamped below his chin while the others discussed at length various types of cut and other details — padded or unpadded shoulders, vest or no vest, the fit of the trousers on the hips, belts or suspenders, the type of pockets, buttons, flaps, stitches, there was no end to the details that needed considering. Then a puffy-cheeked young man came in and took notes as John was measured. Odd code-words were used, such as DRS or BL 1, which were carefully notated. The whole procedure reminded John of a ritual, like the initiation into a brotherhood, perhaps the Royal Society of True Quality Suit Wearers.

John was surprised that the store did not demand a down payment and they did not even ask for an address. Only his name was recorded and an appointment for the first fitting. In six weeks; if this would be all right?

“That would be excellent,” Eduardo told the man on John’s behalf.

Since they were in London already, they went to another tailor, Turnbull & Asser, on 71 Jermyn Street, where they went through similar procedures and made an order for over six dozen suits, which would be sent to him within 12 weeks. They also stopped by John Lobb at No. 9 St. James Street, to order 20 pairs of custom made shoes. John refused to have a top-hat tailor-made at Lock & Co. Instead he purchased two Panama hats and was surprised to see them sold rolled-up in cylinder cartons.

They spontaneously decided to stay the night. The jet crew was notified of the plans, and then they booked the Royal Suite at the Savoy Hotel. Just before the store closed they got a can of Malossol quality Beluga caviar at Fortnum’s. John thought that the price for the fish eggs was in lira instead of pounds sterling. They ate them in the hotel.

“You eat it plain,” Eduardo told John as he carefully pushed the tin further into the ice in which the dry champagne was cooled. “People who eat caviar with sour cream, anchovies, chopped capers, hard boiled eggs or whatever, don’t realize that they are destroying the taste they paid so dearly for. At most I’d accept a thin slice of toast with unsalted butter, but, as I said, pure is best. And never,” Eduardo added fervently, as if to prevent John from committing a terrible sin, “never smear caviar on a piece of toast with a knife, because this is just as barbarous. The trick with caviar is the put the fish eggs into your mouth intact and to crush them between the roof of your mouth and tongue to get the explosion of taste; that is the point of the entire exercise.”

John glanced at the dark mass in the open can that looked like a bunch of slimy black pearls. “Then what is the right way to do it?”

“You take a spoon,” Eduardo said and held up two plastic spoons, similar to those used to feed babies with. “In the early days spoons made of horn, wood, or ivory were used, but plastic is best — lightweight, soft, without sharp edges, not to mention hygienic and disposable.”

When John put the first spoonful into his mouth, he realized that this tiny pile of fish eggs in his oral cavity cost more than what he earned in a month only a few weeks ago. Crazy. Even obscene, he thought. Then he did what Eduardo had explained. Hmmm, on the other hand…

The next morning they went back to shopping. They walked from Piccadilly to Burlington Arcade, studied the immaculate display windows and bought jackets and sweaters made of pure cashmere, money clips made of sterling silver, platinum cuff links, and tie clips that cost a small fortune.

“What about ties?” John asked.

“For that only Paris or Naples will do,” Eduardo explained. “Hermes or Marinella.”

“Oh,” John said nodding slightly.

They bought sunglasses, silk handkerchiefs, gloves made of deer leather, shawls of wool and silk, socks, coats and umbrellas, the latter by Swaine, Adeney, Brigg & Sons Ltd. They, Eduardo told John keenly, supply the royal family. Their ever-growing bounty was delivered to the airport by obliging stores’ employees and loaded onto the charter plane by the crew members who were still wondering when they would take off again. Eduardo and John visited a horse race … just because they felt like it.

At first John was not so very enthusiastic about this type of sport; a bunch of excited people and once in a while a few horses that run in a circle. They walked over the ever-growing number of thrown-away betting slips after each race. More out of boredom than interest, John thought he would see what it felt like to gamble away some money. After he had the bet procedure explained to him he placed a wager for one hundred pounds on a horse that was considered to have no chance of winning.

Even though he had placed such a relatively tiny bet, it still made him much more enthusiastic about the race. All of a sudden the whole event, with the thunderous hoof beats, the nervous spectators with their binoculars, tweed jackets, and betting slips, became an exciting experience. To make matters even better, John’s horse won the race, and they left the racetracks with a much thicker bundle of bank notes than they had come with. It was hard for John to believe. It almost ruined the experience.

In the afternoon they flew on to Paris to buy ties. Eduardo took John into a small but exquisite restaurant to let him taste Perigord truffles. He, of course, promised John that they would also try white truffles, but they grow only in Italy, in Piedmont, so they were frowned upon in France and they’d have to wait until their return home to do so.

“And?” Eduardo asked as the jet flew back to Florence later in the night. “How does it feel to be a trillionaire?”

John glanced at him askance and sighed. If only he knew the answer. “At the moment I feel like I’m in some kind of Disneyland for the wealthy.”

The media’s siege on the Vacchi property had meanwhile ended. With the reporters and camera teams gone, they could once again enjoy their meals out on the terrace. When John returned to his room the next morning he saw that someone had put delivered everything he had bought in London. There were dozens of cartons, paper bags, and items wrapped in colorful paper. At first it felt like Christmas unpacking all these boxes, but then when he was finished and was surrounded by umbrellas, diamond studded tie clips and cufflinks it all seemed rather pointless.

He was sitting on his bed feeling worn and at a loss when the phone rang. He answered it absentmindedly.

“Good morning. How are you feeling?” It was the stranger.

John first took a lungful of air and tried to clear his mind. “Fine, thanks,” he said vaguely. “I’m doing well, I think. Thank you for the fax, by the way.”

“My pleasure.”

It seemed ages ago, even though it had been only last week. “It was — how should I put it — something of a surprise. A last minute rescue, you might say.”

“Yes,” the dark voice said calmly.

“I suppose there’s no point asking you where you got that medical report?”

John heard a dark, suppressed laugh that seemed extremely relaxed. The man on the other end of the line hadn’t even bothered to say “no”.

“Well, I’m in your debt now at any rate,” John told him. “In case you place value on that.”

For a moment it was so quiet that he thought the connection dropped. Then the stranger said, “That means very much to me. Maybe we’ll come back to that at some point.”

The way the man said it made John feel uncomfortable. Or was it that he had reawakened memories of Lino? The fact that his own brother wanted to cheat him? He wasn’t sure.

“Now that you are the wealthiest man in the world,” the stranger said, “what will you do next?”

There it was again. He had managed not to think of it for a while. You could forget a whole bunch of things when you travel across half a continent for a shopping trip. You could even forget prophesies and holy missions, especially so, in fact.

“I don’t know yet,” he said hesitantly, thinking that he was not obliged say anything to a stranger on the phone, who wouldn’t even mention his name. “At the moment I’m still getting used to having the money — shopping spree in London, dinner in Paris; those sorts of things.”

“Understandable. And you deserve it. But have you thought what you’ll be doing next year, or in five years, or in ten years? Where will you live? How should the world around you look?”

John stared at the mountain of pullovers and scarves and hated them all. “I … uh … haven’t decided yet,” he explained, feeling suddenly breathless. Was that what he had meant to say? At any rate it sounded better than, “No idea!”

“You haven’t decided yet. That’s understandable? What alternatives are you considering?”

“When you have a trillion dollars you can do whatever you want,” John answered rather more cheekily than he had intended. “There are a hell of a lot of alternatives.”

“Certainly.” If the man was upset by John’s wisecrack answer, then he didn’t show it. “Decisions, decisions, I guess you could say. People who don’t have the liberty of making their own decisions scarcely know how hard it can be.”

“Exactly,” John said and nodded, feeling totally confused.

The stranger went on. “But, it seems that the prophecy is causing you headaches. Am I correct?”

This guy seemed to know everything. “What prophecy?” he asked anyhow.

“Don’t joke around with me! The prophecy made by your forefather Giacomo Fontanelli; the heir to the fortune will restore mankind’s lost future. I would be sorely disappointed in you if the question of what exactly he meant by that wasn’t going round and round in your head.”

I haven’t even read the prophecy in the original, John thought. Because it’s written in Latin, and the heir to the Fontanelli fortune had never have learned the language. John didn’t say that, though; he simply remained quiet.

Again this low-key laughing, like it was far away, maybe from the heights of the Himalayas? “John, you will require my help once again. Think about it.” He hung up.

Every day John got invitations from banks, opening events, receptions, soccer games, gala events. He was asked to sponsor philanthropic organizations, got offers to join the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, or other exclusive circles. Cristoforo enjoyed reading these invitations over lunch. Then he would put them aside and say: “You’re not ready for that yet, John. It’s better to stay out of the limelight for now. Wait until things have settled down. Take your time to grow into all of this.”

However, Eduardo had an invitation to a theater premier in Florence for this Saturday evening and tried to talk John into joining him, and since John had nothing else planned, he agreed.

It turned out to be a very small and avant-garde theater located in a part of Florence that most tourists didn’t even know existed. The play was also very avant-garde, which meant that the young eccentric actors shouted seemingly senseless dialogues at the audience, crowded into a tiny space with barely room for one hundred people, and then pounded on barrels once in a while and poured colorful slime over each other. When the play was almost finished they tore their clothes off their bodies, and by the time the whole thing was over most were nearly naked as they bowed to the applause, which was virtually endless not least because the mostly male audience couldn’t get enough of the sight of bowing, bare-breasted actresses.

Very sophisticated, John reflected ironically. He didn’t understand anything during the show. Maybe he’d have to take his language lesson with the professore more seriously.

There was a reception after the performance, which included theater critics, friends of the house, and guests of honor. The play’s author was answering questions from the press. He was a rather timid man with a wild hairstyle, John Lennon glasses, and bad breath. After a while, the stage technicians, lighting people, and the freshly showered actors and actresses joined the get together. Alcohol flowed like a stream and the reception turned into an endless party.

An agile guy dressed in black, like most of those present, was up on John, although he was trying to play it cool. He worked hard not to mention the word “money,” talking instead about “overhead” and John soon came to understand that the man managed the theater’s finances. All of a sudden he felt people saw him as nothing more than a walking ATM.

A while later he got involved in a conversation with the director, whom he could not seem to avoid. Trying to get past the guy to grab a drink was like trying to get around the Great Wall of China. The director asked him if he could imagine having his life story made into a theater play.

“But I’m still alive,” John told him. “It would be rather an incomplete play.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” the director told him.

In the course of the evening John lost track of time and how the night progressed. Someone offered him some coke. Marco was constantly there, silent and sober. One of the actresses insisted that she and John repeat the play, at least the part where she gets her clothes ripped off. John ignored the flashing camera lights.

On Monday morning the photo was in all the newspapers. The Vacchis only grinned, but John decided that something had to change in his life.

$10,000,000,000,000

“AND THIS is how you adjust the Venetian blinds,” the real estate agent explained. He was a small, agile man with immaculately styled hair. He pointed to a high-tech looking console mounted on a wall. “Of course, you can also let the automatic system take care of it.” He was putting a lot of effort into his sales pitch, visibly irritated by Eduardo, who stood around with an unsatisfied look on his face and found reasons to criticize everything.

John looked up at the slanted windows. They had blinds with snow-white lamellae that went up or down and could change their angle with a silent hum, depending on how the sun was shining into the giant living room. Impressive, like everything else in this house, but this was not really a house or even a mansion, it was a dream palace.

“It was designed by one of the best architects in the country, as I’ve mentioned,” the agent told him for at least the third time.

Everything was white and glistened in the sun. In front of the high windows was a terrace with an artistic, wavy balustrade, and beyond that was the Mediterranean Sea sparkling in unreal azure-blue, which would have almost looked like kitsch on a postcard. A narrow path led to the beach, which stretched for miles, shared only with the few other owners of similar palaces.

“Nice,” John said to himself. He had for a moment forgotten the presence of the others. This could be his house if he wanted. All he had to do way say yes. Odd — never before in his life had he thought about buying a house. He’d simply never had the money — or even a job where he’d be able to save up enough for the down payment on a mortgage. But now, flush with money, he could buy this mansion and, if he wanted, even the whole stretch of coastline too. But still the feeling of ownership seemed to refuse to sink in.

One trillion dollars. Since the day he had entered this strange cosmos where he had more than enough of everything, the world seemed to have changed into a giant playground. He could do whatever he wanted, and it still did not seem to make a dent in his wealth. No matter how much he spent, the money there was more money when he woke up than when he went to bed.

But how could he ever consider something to be his when he never done anything to get it or worked for it at all? Maybe, John thought, I will turn into an asshole that will go around feeling like THE big shit and when I feel I haven’t been treated accordingly, I’ll just buy the whole corporation for the fun of firing the employee who acted like an ass.

“Who did this house belong to before?” John asked.

The real estate agent went through some papers in a folder. “A famous music producer,” he told him enthusiastically. “I just can’t remember his name. He had a big hit with that song — how did it go again?” he hummed some sort of melody that John did not recognize. “Anyhow, he invested in a movie with one of his female singers, which was a total flop so he lost the house to the bank.”

“Aha,” John said. So that could happen too. He looked around again and tried to imagine how the place would look furnished and decorated. He wondered if golden records had once adorned the immaculate white walls or if valuable carpets had lain on the light-colored floors, which looked as smooth and glossy as liquid. Maybe famous musicians had strolled up and down the bottle-green marble stairs, which led up to the entryway. Maybe highly talented pop stars had been entertained in the dining room, or signed record deals here. And who knows what went on upstairs with the countless bedrooms, bathrooms, and the fitness studio?

All this could belong to him, John Fontanelli, the man without a lick of talent. It was hard to believe.

Eduardo went over to John. “It’s a little cramped for the wealthiest man on earth. Don’t you think?” he said. “I knew we’d be wasting our time in this neighborhood.”

“I like it.”

“What?” Eduardo was visibly upset. “John — please, don’t tell me you’re really thinking about this. This kind of mini-mansion is a dime a dozen around here. There is nothing special about this place. I mean, not even a billionaire would be satisfied.”

John had to chuckle. It was downright touching how Eduardo was concerned with John’s image.

“No, really,” Eduardo went on. “Portecéto!? Portecéto is a hick-town. Not a soul has ever heard of Portecéto. You can’t even find it on most maps.”

“Maybe that’ll change when I live here.”

“I think you should buy the Calmata, if the offer is still on the table, and build a mansion there, designed by the best architect in the world.”

“I will not move into a nature preserve. I would feel like a straight-up asshole.”

“Then buy a nice old palazzo and have it renovated.”

“I can still do that any time. But this would be a start.”

“A start?” Eduardo said with a touch of hope. “Yes, alright, I guess it’d a start…”

After seeing the newspapers on Monday, the Padrone had stopped reading invitations. On Friday, however, he held a plain looking card with something scribbled on it in the air, and asked, “Does the name Giovanni Agnelli mean anything to you?”

“Isn’t he an Italian businessman, or something?” John guessed.

“You could say that. Agnelli is a bit like the uncrowned king of Italy. He’s the head of FIAT and the richest man in the country — well, he was the richest man in the country — and he has holding in virtually every industry.” Cristoforo stopped and was lost in thought. Then he went on; “I once met him in the university. He’s a bit younger than me, but he also studied law. Even back then he was a very charismatic man …” He waved the card around again. “He wants to invite you to La Scala, in Milan next Saturday. ‘La Traviata.’”

John must have had a confused expression, because Alberto hurried to explain, saying: “It’s an opera by Verdi.”

“It sounds as if you think I should go,” John said.

“If only as a contrast to the little event you attended last Saturday.”

“I thought I was supposed to take time out? Besides, I’m not too keen on operas.”

“The opera is actually irrelevant. I think it would be good for you to get to know Agnelli. He is an interesting man. He has style, grandezza … a real gentleman. He could be an example to you of how a wealthy man handles money, power, and influence.” He smirked. “He owns Ferrari too, by the way.”

The Teatro alla Scala rose before him like a light-brown and yellow palace as he drove up in the Rolls at just before two thirty. Uniformed pageboys opened the doors and guided him and the bodyguards past the crowd and into the foyer. Hanging between the Roman pillars were banners announcing a special performance to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Collaborazione Fernet-Branca, and smaller signs pointing out that it was reserved for invited guests. Despite being a bright afternoon, the building was dim inside and the crystal chandeliers were lit, their lights reflecting on the highly polished floors. General murmuring and chatter reverberated from the stone walls. Small glasses filled with darkly colored herb liqueur were served from silver trays.

John had the feeling quite a few of the guests recognized him, but with furtive glances pretended not to. They ascended the red-carpeted staircase to get to the walkabout hallway and VIP boxes. There were very tall, old-fashioned panel doors with handles placed high, as if the people who made them were giants. Then they saw Agnelli, who was surrounded by what looked like an entourage of servants. He greeted John.

“It’s an honor,” said the billionaire, and it sounded as if he really meant it. He had graying, wavy hair, almost like the Padrone, but he seemed more energetic and dynamic, a man who could still fascinate women despite his age. Countless fine wrinkles on his animated face testified to a wild youth. “I don’t envy you,” Agnelli explained as they entered their box, and the bodyguards behind them made their arrangements. “I know what it means to inherit a fortune. Often, it seems as if the money owns you, instead of the other way around. You’ll have to fight. You really must put in an effort.”

“I already have one fight behind me,” John said spontaneously. “Maybe you heard.”

“Yes. With your own family too. That was bad. But you can take my word that that was only the start.”

The box was surprisingly small. Only two chairs fit inside. And the rest of the theater, with all the red cushioned chairs and six rows of boxes above them like chicken cages, also looked small to John.

Then there was the one thing he could not avoid: the opera. Agnelli listened intently but John was bored to death. The stage looked imposing, though, and the actors wore impressive costumes, and the conductor, Signor Riccardo Muit, as John read in the program, gave his best. But still, John would have preferred a rock concert — maybe the Rolling Stones or even Bruce Springsteen.

He and Agnelli talked during the intermission. Agnelli told John that he would be retiring soon and his nephew, Giovanni Alberto, would be heir to his fortune. “You too will have to think about such a step one day,” he told him. “It’s not easy. My son, Eduardo, for example, would be totally unqualified to succeed me. He hasn’t got the character: he would ask astrologers or clairvoyants for advice on every decision and in no time everything would lay in ruins.”

It didn’t feel as if Agnelli was about to retire however. On the contrary, it seemed the whole business world revolved around him. Time and again distinguished gentlemen, accompanied by elegant ladies, would come over to shake the magnate’s hand, and he would introduce them to John Fontanelli. Courteously, John shook all their hands; firm ones, greedy ones, weak clasps, brutal grips, and kissed the hands of the ladies, just like Signora Orsini had taught him. He looked into kind eyes and aggressive ones, into interested eyes and ones that were dull or disdainful, and into friendly eyes, too.

“Guignard,” a Frenchman introduced himself. “Jean Baptiste Guignard. I’m very pleased, Signor Fontanelli.”

“Jean,” Agnelli explained to John, “has made his passion into a living. Is that how you’d put it, Jean? He owns a wharf in Cannes where he builds yachts.”

Coney Island popped into John’s memories. How they had played in the sand on the beach and looked out over the ocean and saw the sleek shapes of yachts and the tiny people on them. They knew those were rich people — mythical creatures. They weren’t human beings who you could just walk up and talk to. Wealthy people were separated from the normal ones in a fantastic way, closer to the angels than humans. And they lived on yachts.

“Pleased to meet you,” John said and shook the yacht-builder’s hand.

“A yacht?”

Gregorio Vacchi looked over all the brochures, magazines, and books lying across the table as if it were a collection of porn material. He had spoken at normal volume but the harsh tone of his voice made it sound like a scream. Even the guard dog out on the lawn lifted his head.

“Yes, a yacht. So what?” Eduardo responded angrily. “John is a wealthy man and a wealthy man needs a yacht.”

“Nonsense!” his father explained in bad grace. “It’s a pointless luxury. To own a yacht is like standing in the rain and ripping apart thousand dollar bills, someone once said.”

“John can tear thousand dollar bills until the end of his days and still be rich if he wants.”

“I can’t see how this could help fulfill the prophecy in any way.”

Eduardo rolled his eyes. “That’s just ridiculous! You can’t possibly insist that a yacht is too expensive for John. He could buy the Queen Elizabeth if he wanted to!”

In a single moment of precious clear-sightedness, like in a lucid dream, John realized that this might turn out to be a crucial moment in his life when he made a certain decision that would characterize the rest of his life. He leaned forward, seemingly in slow-motion, and pulled out one of the brochures from the pile, one that had caught his attention earlier. It was a folder made of heavy, glossy white paper with golden letters, and it had a photo of the largest ship in the catalogue, described as a 53-meter ocean-going yacht with two dinghies and a helicopter landing-pad. It came with a 12-man crew. The purchase price was astronomical as the operating costs. He clapped the folder open and held it in the air. “I,” he said in a voice that resounded loud and clear, “have decided to buy this ship.”

They all stared at him; Eduardo with large eyes and Gregorio with dropped jaw. No one said a word. Finally Gregorio reached out and took the brochure and studied it. He didn’t say a word but his expression showed his displeasure. He handed it back with the words, “It’s your money.”

Yes, John thought as Gregorio went to the door. Exactly!

The scenery was perfect. The moment was perfect. The view of the bay of Cannes from the ship broker’s office with its large windows, as clear as crystal, was perfect. Standing on the snow-white marble before the building and in the shade of a palm tree was the Mercedes that had brought them from the airport. They sat in luxurious leather chairs in front of the desk, made of dark burl wood and as large as two pool tables. The painting hanging on the wall in the back was three by four meters in size, bright, bold, and absolutely not a replica. The broker was wearing a suit by Ermenegildo Zegna, had carefully manicured hands and a beaming smile.

“Naturally, we’ll take care of everything,” the broker explained with the perfect mix of nonchalance and enthusiasm; it instilled confidence to be dealing with someone who knew what he was doing. “We’ll arrange a berth for you in the yacht harbor of Portecéto and a membership in their yacht club if you wish. By the way, it is a very exclusive club. We will also take care of all official documents with the authorities; put the crew together and arrange the necessary insurances. All you have to do is call the captain and tell him when and where you wish to go to.”

“Wonderful,” John said and nodded. He felt great.

The secretary who brought the contracts was tall, blond, and had breathtaking long legs and an enormous bust. The tube dress she wore was more to show off her assets than to cover them.

“Wonderful,” John said found himself saying again.

The sales contract was printed on watermarked paper. The broker placed it on the desk before John and handed him a Mont Blanc fountain pen, which felt thick, heavy and expensive.

It is sweet to be rich, John thought as he signed the papers. He had done a bit of math and knew that the paper he was signing at this moment would cost him a hundred times more than everything else he had bought or rented so far, including restaurant visits and chartered private jets. By just signing his name on a line at the bottom of a piece of paper he could move millions of dollars. This is better than sex!

The broker allowed himself a subtle smile. The palm leaves above the Mercedes swayed lazily in the breeze and the sky was deep blue.

“Now,” the broker said as he opened the appointment book, bound in water buffalo leather, “we should set a date for you to take possession of your yacht.”

By the time they returned, John felt great. He felt as if there was champagne flowing in his veins instead of blood. Life was great. The way the gravel crunched as the Ferrari rolled into the Vacchis’ courtyard sounded great. The blue sky, the pale reddish-brown walls, the multi-green of the trees and bushes — it was great! All the colors in the world suddenly seemed more vibrant than ever before.

I’m rich! John thought and went up the stairs two steps at a time. I am king of the world! As he stepped into his room the chambermaid, a young thing with black curly hair, was making the bed. He pat her on her rear as he went past her. She was startled, and then she giggled; “Signor Fontanelli!”

John glanced at the clock. It was time to call his mother. His parents were about to celebrate their wedding anniversary, and they always did so with their children. This year would be special, an unforgettable celebration, he would make sure of that. He took the phone and dialed the long number.

“Ciao, mamma!” he said when his mother answered the phone. “It’s me, John!”

“Ciao, John.” She sounded somewhat miserable. “Have you heard yet? Lino got orders for Alaska. I just found out. This means he won’t be here for our wedding anniversary.”

“Oh, he’ll get over it,” John told her dismissively. “Do you know what I thought about? We could do something really special for your wedding anniversary. All of you can come over here to bella Italia, with a private jet, of course, and then we can celebrate on my new yacht. What do you think? I bought a yacht today and I can’t think of anything nicer than to have you here to christen it.”

For the next moment it was so quiet on the other end that John thought the connection dropped. Then he heard his mother say with an icy tone in her voice, “I am not having a son of mine acting like some cheap show-off. We will celebrate here, in our house, where I brought all of you into this world. We will have saltimbocca with broccoli and Parmesan cheese, like always. And in the afternoon we will go out for coffee, like we do every year. Whether you come or not.”

It was like a slap in his face — right across the Atlantic. “Yes,” he said, feeling a rush of blood in his ears. “I understand. Of course I’ll come, mamma, I’ll be there for sure.”

When he finished the phone call his knees were so wobbly that he had to sit on the bed. Fuck! He was well on his way to becoming an asshole. Dammit! Today he had bought a yacht to impress the whole world. What would he do tomorrow? Would he start giving away Cadillacs, like Elvis did once? And would he end up just like Elvis, fat, gluttonous, hooked on pills, surrounded by yes-men freeloading off his wealth?

He felt as if he had been drunk all day and suddenly sobered up — as if someone had slapped him in the face. Tipsy? No, he was drunk, drunk stupid with money and with the feeling of being notable and important. Bad money drives out good, he thought, or money is the root of all evil, right? The sayings have some truth in them. He would have to be careful — very careful! No one else was going to take care for him.

His mother had managed to get his head out of the clouds. But she might not always be able to do that, and she won’t be there for him forever.

And … fuck! The watch! He touched and stared at his new watch. It was a Patek Philippe, and it cost fifty thousand dollars. He bought it because Eduardo talked him out of buying the Rolex that he actually wanted. He told him that it was too ordinary … a pimp watch. He could never go back to his parents without the watch that his father had given him … the one still in the New York pawnshop.

He had to think of something.

$11,000,000,000,000

“NO PROBLEM,” EDUARDO told him. He went out and came back before long holding a list several pages long that he handed John. “There you are; phone numbers and addresses of everyone you know.”

“A list of all the people who I know?” John thought he was hearing things. “How did you get a list of all the people I know?”

“From Dalloway. That’s the detective who was supposed to find you. I’ve been meaning to show it to you for some time now to have you check to see if it’s complete.”

The detective had done good work. Most names on the list were at least vaguely familiar to John, but after a while he realized that it included names of classmates from elementary school, his parent’s neighbors and people from Sarah’s group of friends. Murali and his pizza service were also on the list as well as the Laundromat where he used to work in and even Miss Pearson, his former landlady.

“What in the world do you need such a list for?” John asked astonished.

Eduardo grimaced. “Well,” he said, “there’s a dark secret that you don’t know about.”

John got even more confused when Eduardo took him over to the little annex structure he had seen from his window, and wondered what went on in there. As they crossed the dusty courtyard Eduardo told him the low-built structure had, for centuries, been the stables but had been turned into a workshop after the war. The wooden door was old, heavy, and crooked, but the lock was brand new. The interior floors, walls, and ceilings were all lined with plywood but he could still smell goat shit and machine oil mixed with the wood. A small, narrow hall led into a small office with three desks. Three women sat behind the desks working. The rest of the room was taken up by wooden shelves piled high with boxes and cartons.

“This,” Eduardo explained, “is your office staff.”

“My what?” John asked astonished.

Eduardo went to one of the women. “Signora Vanzetti. She’s a qualified business correspondent and speaks and writes English and French. She’s in charge here.”

She nodded to John with an unsure smile. He recognized the woman as the one who helped unload the cartons after the big party. “Buongiorno,” John said. “Eduardo, what is the meaning of this?”

“This is Signora Muccini,” Eduardo said continuing the introductions. “She’s good in English and Spanish and knows some Portuguese, but it seems that doesn’t matter so much. The woman looked like a typical robust Italian mamma. She stared at the floor like an embarrassed teenager in John's. “And this is Signora Tronfi. She’s fluent in Russian and Polish and knows other Slavic languages well enough to decipher the letters you keep getting.” Signora Tronfi gave a friendly laugh.

“Letters?” Only now did he notice that tons of letters were stacked on the desks.

“Since the day your name appeared in the papers,” Eduardo explained, “we’ve been swamped with letters. Thousands of letters, addressed either to you or our law firm every day.

“Roughly speaking, there are three types of letters. First, marriage proposals.” He pointed to several white boxes in a group, each with a heart drawn on it with magic marker. “Keep these here. There are hundreds of women of all ages who want to marry you. We could produce a porn magazine with the photos that some send. The second type — aggressive letters.” He lifted a carton that had a skull sticker on it similar like the ones on bottles with poison. “Death threats, threats to kidnap you, to do your family harm, every type of psychopathic crap. Those types get thrown in here and delivered to the police daily. I think Interpol has formed a special unit by now that deals only with your cases. The third types are begging letters.” He pointed at boxes with dollar signs on them. There were stacks of them, rows of them, countless.

“Begging letters?”

“From people whose only child needs an operation that they can’t afford. People who have lost their homes by fire and weren’t insured, unemployed people, single mothers who don’t know how to feed their children, men who got injured at work and got no compensation.” John saw that the boxes were subdivided into different categories. Eduardo pointed to those with $$-A, and then to those marked $$-B. “Business people who are close to bankruptcy who can’t borrow money from banks anymore. Inventors who need money to develop their ideas to bring them to market and promising you fantastic returns if they are successful. Real estate owners who want to sell you land where oil reserves are suspected, or gold, or platinum, or uranium … But the vast majority of letters,” Eduardo continued and went over to the cartons with symbol $$-C; there were more of those types than all the others put together, “are from charities all over the world. Every charity you can imagine is represented here; helping the blind, feeding the poor, Salvation Army, projects in African villages, bible missions, helping homeless children, UNICEF, Bread for the World, World Hunger Assistance, Caritas, pregnancy assistance, war graves, prison rehabilitation, children with cancer, fair trade with the Third World, AIDS assistance, Alzheimer’s, drug addiction, tuberculosis, protection for mudflats, international city partnerships, and, not to forget, the Society for the Preservation of the Rhaeto-Romanic language.”

“Society for the Preservation of the Rhaeto-Romanic language?” John echoed and looked at all the cartons and boxes with bewilderment.

“This is a real business,” Eduardo said glumly. “Don’t be fooled. You call it fundraising in the US. There are even classes on how to write begging letters, fundraising consultants representing organizations for the poor, anything that will tug on the heart strings.”

John randomly chose a carton, opened the lid and took out a letter. It was a thick envelope with a brochure. The subject matter was the preservation of wildlife and biosphere, and he was asked to donate a double-digit million dollar figure for a project in the southern Amazon region. For starters.

Eduardo looked over his shoulder. “Animal protection activists,” he sneered. “They are the most fervent of all. Even though it has nothing to do with mankind’s future.”

John tried to sort things out. Thousands of letters; incredible! “Let’s say someone I know wrote me a letter. Won’t it get lost in all this?”

“Let’s hope not,” Eduardo said, “that’s why we have this list.” He pointed at the sheets of paper that John still held in his hand. “Each letter that comes from one of the people on the list will be forwarded to you.”

“But no one has done so yet,” Signora Vanzetti chipped in.

“There was one today!” mamma Muccini cried out, reaching into a small bright red box. “Here!”

She handed John a pale blue envelope from Hopkins Junior College, New Jersey. John tore it open and read it quickly.

“That’s just totally crazy!” The school inquired about offering him a degree honoris causa and wanted to throw a large celebration to honor him as the school’s most distinguished student. John shook his head and put the letter along with the list of names into his pocket.

By the time they left the shed he felt like he’d been run over by a steamroller.

Cristoforo Vacchi rose from the table after dinner, as usual, and left the room. But as he passed behind John on his way around the table he placed a hand on his shoulder, just like he had done once before in New York a long, long time ago, and he leaned down to him and said: “There’s something else I want to tell you, John. Even when you move into your own house soon and go your own way in life, you will always be welcome here with us. Anytime, John, and it does not matter what happens. Please, do not ever forget this.”

Bewildered, John looked up to the wrinkly face with the tired eyes and pupils as deep as a canyon, and promised. The Padrone gave him a warm smile, and gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze, and then left the room.

Alberto was the next to go to bed. “I would just be glad if you visit us once in a while.” He bat an eye. “It isn’t that far away — in your Ferrari. And having been lucky enough to see our family role to its completion, I’m naturally interested to see how things go from now on. If you know what I mean.”

Then they were four, sitting on the terrace with only the stars and a few lanterns for light; John, Eduardo, and his parents. Gregorio’s wife told them a few funny anecdotes from her school. Naturally, the role of the Vacchis in the Fontanelli fortune affair had been known to all in the village. And so it had been inevitable that she had to illustrate to the children in the lower classes how much a trillion was, and to those in the higher classes what interest and compound interest was. “So far, ten children,” she smiled, “have decided to put their allowances into a savings account and to leave it there for their descendants in the twenty-fifth century. Maybe we don’t have to worry about the future after all.”

Gregorio swiped his hair from his face as the sea breeze tousled it. “I have another bit of business for you to consider, John,” he said with a strained expression. His wife had her arm around his shoulder and plucked at his shirt and a little on his ear, obviously trying to get him to go to bed. “You will continue to need lawyers, and I want to offer you my services. My father has never told you before, but we had other clients in addition to you and your ancestors. Not because we needed the money, but to keep in practice and keep up to the newest trends, so as to be the best possible lawyers … the best possible for the wealthiest man in the world.”

John nodded obligingly. “Of course, no question.”

“Good,” Gregorio said satisfied. Then they said good night to each other. John saw him kiss his wife with more passion than he would have attributed to the man, and the two disappeared into the darkness of the house.

Eduardo took a long drink from his wine glass and chuckled in a low tone. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave yet, and when I do I won’t make a parting speech. We only do things the theatrical way we did back in New York when we have practiced in advance.”

“You guys practiced that?”

“Just like actors, I can assure you of that. You would’ve done the same thing after a twenty-five-year old died right before your eyes from a heart attack because he inherited a few million dollars.” Eduardo shrugged his shoulders. “That happened in front of my father back when he was a student at a notary public’s office. It’s been a long time since.”

They hauled two chairs over to the metal railing to put their feet up on while they looked out to the sea, brought a table over for the glasses, the wine bottle, and the lanterns. A cozy, warm, fragrant wind was coming in from the Mediterranean and the crickets chirped in the dark.

“To be honest,” John said after a while — he realized there was indeed truth in wine, “I have not the slightest idea what I should do. Not just about the prophecy, but in general. What am I to do: move into that mansion, walk once through each of the rooms just for the sake of it, then what? What do I do next? How am I going I spend my days? Give me your opinion.”

“Oh boy,” Eduardo said and poured some more wine.

“I mean, I can’t keep going shopping all the time.”

“Right.”

“I could give the money away.”

“To whom? You have boxes full of candidates.”

“Sure, but I have the feeling that that’s not the answer either.”

“In any case, even your money might not last too long at that rate. Miss. Vanzetti is keeping a tally; the letter writers are requesting quite a bit. I think you could get rid of around five hundred billion that way already.”

John took his glass and poured the extremely expensive Chianti down his throat, as if he had to drown something. “You know, I ask myself what wealthy people do all day. What do you do when you aren’t forced to work but still need the feeling that life must have some kind of meaning?”

Eduardo took in a deep breath. “Well, you could do volunteer work; pro bono. That’s what we do. I find it reassuring not having to work for a living.”

“But you are educated. You have knowledge. I don’t even have a real qualification; the only things I learned were to deliver pizza and to iron shirts.”

“You can learn anything you want now. You could study and get a diploma if you wish. The whole world is there for you.”

“Yeah, sure, but I never wanted to study anything, and I still don’t want to. It would seem so artificial and forced now, as if I were looking for a toy.”

“You used to paint; what about that? Become an artist.”

“I started to paint because I had a girlfriend who painted. The longer it’s been since we split up the less I understand why I ever started. No, I’m no artist. I have no talent for art.” John sighed. “I have absolutely no talents at all. I don’t even have the talent to be rich.”

“Oh brother,” Eduardo said, and then they stared out into the dark-silver sea saying nothing for a long while.

The wind blowing inland gradually got cooler. The stars twinkled far above. An animal rustled in the bushes.

“Do you feel wealthy?” Eduardo asked suddenly.

John got startled out of diverse thoughts. “What?”

“It may be nonsense, but I just wondered if you really felt rich.”

“Hmm, do I feel rich?” He thought for a moment. “How do I feel? No idea. This whole thing just overwhelmed me, you know? A month ago I was a poor pizza deliveryman, and right now I don’t feel that much better. Okay, I know how caviar tastes and have suits that make Brooks Brothers look shabby hanging in my closet. But it still seems like such a dream. It’s all so unreal, I feel like it could all end tomorrow.”

“Maybe that’s why,” Eduardo guessed and let the wine swirl in his glass, as red as blood in the candle-light. “You know, for my whole life I‘ve been dealing with things like this — wealth, poverty, having money and not having it. Since childhood. I’ve learned that wealthy people think differently than other people. They aren’t better people, — they aren’t worse either — but they think differently. I don’t know why, maybe because they don’t have to think about surviving on a daily basis. Making monthly payments, buying Christmas presents. When you’re rich, money is simply there, like air and water.”

“Are you trying to tell me that rich people never think about money? John looked at him skeptically.

Eduardo frowned. “You’re right, that isn’t what I tried to say. Some of them think of nothing else, but they are still poor in a way. If, deep inside, you feel like you don’t have enough, then you keep working hard to get more. Some have twenty million but try to make forty million, and so forth. There are more than enough of those types of people, right.”

“But this doesn’t have anything to do with how much a person really has,” John said. “There are fears and hopes to be taken into account, issues of character. Someone who still feels poor with twenty million should go to a psychiatrist.”

“Exactly.” Eduardo put his glass down and stretched. “But not everyone is like that. There are people who deal with their wealth very well. But something else just occurred to me. You are wealthier than the next hundred wealthy people in the world combined. You are in a class all of your own. It just struck me that maybe one day — when you’ve really got used to being rich — you’ll come up with something, something really out of the ordinary, something that no one has yet thought of; and that will be the fulfillment of the prophecy.”

John took a deep breath and exhaled. “Do you think so? I can’t even start to imagine what that could be.”

“If it only were that easy, then I’d know it too,” Eduardo admitted. “After all, I’ve been working on this my whole life. But who knows — maybe Giacomo Fontanelli’s vision was nothing more than a less frightening nightmare and there is no such solution. Maybe he was just eccentric, and all my ancestors were too, and we’ve all been working simply to make you rich — pointlessly rich.”

“That’s just great,” John sighed and suddenly he had to laugh. It was a deep laugh that somehow forced its way out him. “You know, never in my whole life would I have ever guessed that a day would come where I sit around depressed because I’m too rich! Isn’t that the epitome of ingratitude?”

“I guess so,” Eduardo said with a wry face.

John devoted so much time to his studies over the next few days that it surprised even him. One day he got Eduardo to show him the secrets of the computer printouts, which were stored in the cellar of the house that looked something like a control center from a James Bond movie. Just to get inside they had to deal with a formidable array of locks. Then they sat underneath neon lights by a white table with a small modern computer on it. The computer screen showed rows of colorful numbers with many, many digits. They were the bank account balances from all over the world, Eduardo explained. This computer terminal drew the data from all the banks in similar fashion as the old one over at the law firm, only here a single gray cable leading from a wall outlet sufficed for the data transfers.

From the way Eduardo typed on the keyboard and handled the mouse, it was clear he knew his way around computers. “Data backup,” he explained while he shoved a data card into a gadget with an LED light that went from green to red. “If we were to lose all the passwords and so on, you’d have to travel all over the world to the banks, identify yourself personally at each one and fill out mountains of paperwork. Can you imagine the time required to do this for two hundred and fifty thousand bank accounts?”

John was impressed. “You know your way around computers, don’t you?”

“Dad insisted that I learn all about this,” Eduardo told him. “Computer operating systems, programming, business applications, long distance data transmission — ask me for something and I can sort it out. This was even more important than my law studies. The others agreed somebody in the family had to be able to do it.”

John looked at the computer screen with awe. “Did you program all this too?”

The computer hummed and blinked. Eduardo gave it a slap and the blinking stopped. “No. Most of the programs are original. They’re pretty sophisticated programs too, by the way. I only transferred some of the more useable and newer ones from the old IBM unit to this one, adjusted the monitor, improved a few graphic applications. Nothing that a real pro would be the least bit impressed with.”

“And who did the original programming?”

“Someone from IBM. I’m not sure — that was before I was born. I think there were a few problems with this guy back then. He started to ask questions and things like that. That’s when they said someone from the family had to take over.”

“And now you do it?”

“Yes, I took courses that cost a hundred thousand dollars, did on the job training for a network company, and helped to do programming during a winter in some smoky hacker hole — and now I can do it,” Eduardo grinned. “But it’s actually not that difficult. When the security company is finished with the safe in basement of your new home and all the phone lines are installed, then we’ll move everything out of here and set it up in your place, then I’ll show you how it works.”

John gulped. He wasn’t as enthusiastic about all this as the young lawyer. Then he remembered something. “What’ll happen to the old unit at your law firm?”

“We’ll junk it.”

“And what if … my house collapses? Will I be poor then?”

“Nonsense,” Eduardo said. The gadget peeped and he took out the data card and locked it back in the safe. “All the accounts are in your name. If you need money then you go to the bank and identify yourself. The rest, well you’ll see.”

“And how do I know to which bank I have to go to?”

“That almost doesn’t matter, because you have millions in practically every bank there is in the world. But you were given documents that contain the lists.” Eduardo looked at him derisively. “Maybe you should take a look at your paperwork some time.”

John blinked his eyes. “So what do I need the computer for then?”

“So you can wake up every morning and see how many millions richer you are. To get a warning when in one country the inflation is higher than the interest rate, so you can put your money elsewhere on time. To…“

“So I can transfer money with the computer?” he interrupted. “And whoever breaks into my place can do it too. He could transfer a billion dollars onto his account without me ever knowing it.”

Eduardo leaned far back and folded his hands behind his head. “No, he can’t. I already told you that it’s a sophisticated program. You can transfer money, but only between the accounts that belong to you. This limitation is put in place by each bank, so that even the best hacker doesn’t stand a chance of stealing money that way.”

“Hmm,” John said as he watched the huge number on the lower part of the monitor, growing bigger and bigger with the last digit changing as fast as the beating wings of a fly. “You guys thought of everything, right?”

“We at least did our best.”

A few moments of silence followed. Cool, nice silence. John had to think about the interior designer, a petite blond woman virtually glowing with enthusiasm when she showed him some of her ideas for the more important rooms of his new house. All he had done was point at the illustrations that he liked the most, which in fact was all of them — the woman is a genius — and then said, “Like this!” And then he signed the list authorizing the required materials. Since then an army of craftsmen had been at work to create what he had seen on paper, turning the house into what would be the ultimate in elegance without him ever having spend another moment thinking about it.

And whatever it cost, the number on the bottom of the computer monitor would still constantly continue to grow.

The setting sun hovered just above the horizon and made the sea shimmer in a soft golden tone before Portecéto as the yacht came into view. To see it plowing its way through the sea, gleaming white and with elegant lines as graceful as a sailboat almost took John’s breath away. Even Eduardo, who had thought out loud about having a yacht built for him too, pat John on the shoulder with gusto.

“Here it comes!” he cried out.

“Yeah,” John whispered. It was beautiful, and it looked even bigger than he remembered when it was moored in Cannes. It seemed endlessly long as it moved past them to moor nearby. Now the Italian flag was fluttering from the backboard instead of an English one. In the back they could see a small motorboat underneath a tarpaulin, and above on the highest deck sat a helicopter, looking like a giant insect ready to fly away. A young man in an elegant uniform waved at them from the second deck and they waved back.

In no time the yacht was moored and the gangway put out. The captain met them as they came aboard. He was about forty years old and a Frenchman named Alain Broussard, whom they had already got to know in Cannes. He saluted them and then they shook hands.

“Do you want to go for a short trip?” he asked in English with a strong French accent. “I’ll have your bags brought on board, and then we can sail into the sunset.”

The captain gave a signal, and the young man who had waved to them earlier appeared as if out of nowhere. John handed him the keys for the Ferrari so he could get their bags out of the small compartment that would be called a trunk in a larger car. They followed the captain on a tour of the ship.

John didn’t think that seeing the yacht again would overwhelm him the way it did. Everything was so spacious. When they came into one of the tastefully lit salons he just couldn’t help but run his fingers over the wallboards made of fine-grained wood, and over the backrest of one of the sofas, which was part of a set with easy chairs and glass tables. Throw pillows in matching colors and with Indian looking designs were scattered on the sofa. There were valuable looking Tiffany lamps with heavy golden bottoms standing on end tables made of light-gray marble. The dining room had walls with inlaid mahogany, and they were so highly polished that the antique table, set with silverware and crystal dishes, reflected perfectly upon the surfaces. Large windows allowed an unobstructed view over the sea, where the fire-red ball of the sun was now slowly sinking behind the horizon.

In short, it was a floating palace that could have been a movie set for a tale from One Thousand and One Nights.

When they went up to the bridge — their hands gliding along the gold-plated staircase railings since, according to the captain, brass needed to be polished more often while gold always shines — they passed a spot where they could still see the old name of the yacht, given by the previous owner, an English businessman: Shangri-la. The letters had not been removed from the wall, but simply painted over.

“I want this completely removed,” John said as he tapped against it.

“Pas de problème,” the captain assured him. “I will have it removed. You wish to re-name the ship?”

“Yes,” John said, nodded and peered out over the darkening sea. “I want to name it PROPHECY.”

$12,000,000,000,000

THE UPS MAN rang the doorbell, dragging Marvin out of his bed early in the morning, and then he even wanted to see a form of identification.

“A driver’s license, passport, anything with a photo of you and your name on it,” he told him distractedly, holding the package wedged underneath an arm.

“Man!” Marvin mumbled, who still couldn’t open his eyes all the way. “I live here. Don’t you see?”

“Sorry, I gotta see something … insured parcel … rules, you know.”

Marvin thought for a moment of just slamming the door on the guy, but his curiosity to know who sent him something won out over his moodiness. The mere sound of it: insured parcel! He shuffled back to his room and got his driver’s license, afraid that the old photo on it wouldn’t look like him, and he might be wasting his time. But the deliveryman was satisfied just to have an ID number to write down and to get a signature before handing Marvin the package. By the time Marvin managed to decipher whom the package came from he heard the delivery van’s engine rev up and drive away.

“John?” he read stumped. “John Fontanelli. From Florence, Italy. I’ll be damned.” The thought of going back to sleep vanished. He closed the door and took the package to the kitchen table. He dug around in the drawer to find a sharp knife so he could slit the wrapping and box open. Inside, carefully wrapped in Styrofoam, was a mobile phone.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Marvin uttered. He checked the addresses of the sender and recipient and it all seemed okay. It was his name and his address. No doubt. And in the notes it said delivery by 9 a.m. “Does he want to torture me or what?”

He took the phone out. Attached to it with tape was a small folded card. It was a note in John’s handwriting reading:

Hey Marvin,

The battery is charged, the SIM card is in the phone. The PIN number is 1595. Please turn it on and wait for my call.

Best regards, John

“What the hell?” Marvin glanced to the clock. One minute before nine. “I wonder what the heck he wants.” He pressed the green button. The phone made an audible beep and turned on. He tapped in the code number and the gadget beeped again and said “Ready” on the display.

It rang at nine o’clock on the dot.

He pressed the “accept call” button and put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“Hello, Marvin!” John greeted him cheerfully. “It’s me, John.”

Marvin took a breath. “What’s going on, dude? What are you trying to prove with all the theatrics?”

“I couldn’t get a hold of you any other way,” John explained with a laugh. “Your phone is disconnected, as usual. So, how else am I going to talk to you?”

“Man,” Marvin muttered still puzzled. “I feel like James Bond. Okay, who am I supposed to kill?”

“Did you check underneath the Styrofoam? There should be an envelope with a thousand dollars and a plane ticket.”

“This is getting better all the time!” He lifted the Styrofoam packaging, and grabbed the envelope. “Yeah, man, got it. Wait a sec.” He put the phone down and tore open the envelope. He looked in and saw a bunch of dollar bills and a first class plane ticket to Florence with Marvin’s name on it. He took the phone and asked, “Looks like you want me to come for a visit, huh?”

“Yes, but before you come I have a favor to ask you.”

“Nothing comes for free in this world,” Marvin sighed. “Okay, shoot.”

“Do you remember my pocket watch?”

“Your pocket watch? No. I could’ve sworn that you never had one.”

“I had one, but then I pawned it in Manhattan. The problem is that the pocket watch was a gift from my dad, but I lost the pawn ticket, and the retention period runs out next Friday.”

That was a bit too much for this ungodly hour in the morning. “Slow down, dude,” Marvin said. “I gotta write this down. He pulled a pencil from a cup half filled with cold coffee, wiped it off with a sticky dish cloth, and then took an empty corn flakes box from out of the garbage can and tore it apart so that he had something to write on. He put the phone back to his ear. “Okay, I’m back. Now, one thing at a time. Where is the pawnshop, what does the watch look like, and how can I reach you?”

After John finished the phone call with Marvin and returned to the sun deck, he could already see the thin gray-brown line of southern France’s coastline on the horizon. A steward was setting a table underneath an awning for afternoon coffee. Seagulls glided majestically in the air.

“We must decide if we’re going to make port in Nice or Cannes,” Eduardo said. “There’s a fine restaurant in Nice where I’ve always wanted to have dinner. What do you think?”

“Why not?” John went over and joined him by the railing. Since yesterday evening they had sailed around Corsica and were now cruising through the Ligurian Sea. It was a calm journey. The Mediterranean Sea lay there glittering silver-blue and made no waves that the ship’s stabilizers couldn’t handle. “Sounds good.”

One hour later a dark object appeared in the sky that was not a seagull but a helicopter. First they ignored it. Yet as it got louder and headed straight for them they couldn’t resist the urge to take a look.

“It seems to be the press,” Broussard informed them over the onboard telephone. “There is a man hanging out of the back of the helicopter with cameras equipped with long lenses.”

John’s expression soured. “I suppose we have no flak on board?”

The helicopter flew around the Prophecy like an angry wasp. At times the chopper made such daring maneuvers that everyone wondered how the man taking photos at the open door in the back didn’t fall out. After a while either the rolls of film were full or the fuel tanks empty; the helicopter flew away towards the mainland.

“Should we even continue; go to the restaurant I mean?” asked John while looking after the chopper. “Without bodyguards?”

“A few crew members look pretty impressive. We could have them come along,” Eduardo thought. “Hey, you’re not going to let them ruin our day, are you?”

“It’s starting to get on my nerves. What the hell do they find so interesting about me?”

Eduardo laughed. “You are rich, so you’re interesting. Money makes a person sexy, which, by the way, you’re not taking full advantage of.”

“Should I?” John looked at the coastline, with the roads that had been boldly built along the cliffs, and the sprinkled white specks of the houses.

“Listen, John, there’re tons of women who would like to know what it’s like to sleep with a trillionaire.”

“Won’t be much different than with any other man.”

“Sure, but let them find that out themselves.” Eduardo grabbed the onboard phone. “I see that you still need lessons about how to enjoy life. I will call the restaurant now, have them send us a car. From what I heard only millionaires eat there, so I bet they’ll how to keep the press away. And then we’ll be able to enjoy ourselves.” It sounded like an order.

There were already a handful of reporters standing on the pier as they made port. Incredibly, by the time the Prophecy was properly moored, the handful had grown to a mob. The four biggest crewmembers on the ship had to work hard to clear a way to the waiting car. There were even TV crews among the pack.

The driver, besides knowing the area well, seemed to be a former racecar driver. At least he drove like one. He sped through the streets like a maniac and eventually managed to get rid of all the pursuing press people. Only the journalists on motorcycles kept pace, and he got away from them only by sheer luck; their car sped through a changing traffic light barely within the speed limit. A police car at the intersection kept the motorcyclists from running a red light. As they drove up to the restaurant everything was quiet, and the sun was promising them a beautiful evening on the terrace.

The restaurant belonged to a luxury hotel. It was old, refined, exquisitely furnished and decorated, and offered a divine view of the bay. It was a place where it was impossible not to enjoy your dinner, John thought.

John noticed four older gentlemen sitting at a table next to theirs, and without a doubt they were lifelong millionaires. But what astounded him was that they managed to do exactly what he thought would be impossible in such a beautiful setting; they didn’t enjoy themselves at all! The white wine wasn’t the right temperature, the meat was too tough, the vegetables a bit mushy, nothing was good enough for them. One of them raised a finger to his frown-wrinkled chin and within thirty seconds there was a waiter by his side. God in heaven, what had become of the world? John didn’t understand any French, but to judging even by the deliberately understated manner of their complaint there was no need to understand the language to recognize their dissatisfaction. As he glanced around the restaurant he discovered others with the same attitude, nitpicking over their food. There might be nobody but millionaires eating in here, but not a single one was enjoying themselves, and John would venture to bet that despite the superb food no one else was even in a good mood.

“Peccato,” Eduardo uttered. “I guess that’s an example of what you don’t want to become.”

“Indeed,” John agreed. “If I should ever turn into one of them,” he told his friend, “then do me a favor and shoot me, please.”

Midnight. As John closed the door to his room he considered the fact that this might be the last night he would spend under the Vacchis’ roof. He took off the blazer, hung it on a coat hanger and enjoyed the feel of solid ground under his feet again.

They hadn’t dallied long in Nice and returned to the yacht after having dessert and watching the sunset. The journey back to Portecéto was a short one, lasting only four hours at full speed.

He was about to take off the yachting shoes when the phone rang. Maybe Marvin, John thought and went over to answer the phone. It was just after six p.m. in New York now.

But it wasn’t Marvin; it was the stranger.

“I want to congratulate you,” he said, in a sarcastic voice, “on your new yacht.”

“Thanks.” John wasn’t impressed — the man had probably seen it on television.

“A nice yacht. May I ask how much it cost? I’d guess twenty million? Or was it thirty?”

“What do you want?” John asked in a surly voice.

“Give you some advice on what you could buy next.”

“I’m listening.”

“You have a yacht and you have a house and obviously you could buy other residences anywhere in the world, but you already know that and I don’t want to bore you with such observations. However, I could suggest something more unique, like a castle. There are countless old castles in Europe and lots of them are for sale. Did you know that? Of course, you’d have to invest millions more to make them comfortable enough to live in, but that’s hardly a problem for you. Another way to invest and to draw attention to yourself is to buy a soccer team or something like that. Have you thought about this yet? You could buy and sell players for millions to get your team up into the top league. Or you could collect things, like old oil paintings, for example; van Gogh, Picasso, Monet — the names everyone knows. Another idea: collect old jewelry or antiques. Not only would it be a bit of fun finding things worth collecting, but then you’d have to hire guards and buy safes and get insurance and stuff. Lots of things to do.” The stranger paused. “Do you need any more ideas?”

John rubbed the top of his nose. He was tired. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“To draw your attention to the fact that you are rich enough to be able to buy knickknacks for the rest of your life. But with this behavior you’re only running away from Giacomo Fontanelli’s prophecy.”

“You call me at midnight just to tell me this?”

“You weren’t there earlier, and someone had to tell you.”

“What are you trying to accomplish? Why this game of hide and seek? Why won’t you tell me who you are and what you want?”

A short pause. “Believe me, there will come a day when you will understand that I had to do what I’m doing. Provided you don’t break our deal, we will meet one day and I will explain everything. Otherwise you’ll ask yourself for the rest of your life what it was that I had to tell you.”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“You’re moving, right? I’d like to suggest you give me your new phone number.

The phone suddenly felt moist in John’s hand, or was it him, sweating? This would be an opportunity to get rid of the stranger: just give him a false number. Real easy.

“There is one more thing you should consider, John,” the dark voice said. “I am the man who knows more about you than even you know about yourself. I know what your true task is. I know how you can accomplish it. If you are tempted to break off contact do so only when you are sure that you will never need to ask me about the prophecy.”

Endless silence.

This was a trick, wasn’t it? John stared into space. He saw nothing and knew even less what he should do. It could well be a trick, but, on the other hand, what’s the big deal? He could change his phone number anytime if he needed to.

John pulled the nightstand drawer open. On top was the letter from Hopkins Junior College, then a begging letter from an endangered species charity. He must’ve stuck it in his pocket by accident. He finally found the letter from the phone company. “Okay,” he said and had to clear his throat. “This is my new phone number…”

Eduardo talked John into going for another cruise on board the Prophecy. When Eduardo showed up at the agreed time he had a girl with him.

He introduced her to John. “This is Constantina Volpe. We studied law together in the university. I hope you don’t mind that I invited her to come along?”

John stared at Eduardo. It was quite clear from his shit-eating grin that his plan was to hook John up with the girl. He looked at her; she was a lot easier on the eyes than Eduardo. It was hard to believe that Eduardo knew women like this. It was hard to believe that women like this studied law, instead of becoming top models and earning a fortune from their looks. Constantina had long black hair and the breeze from the sea blew the long strands into her face as she stood there. It was a heart shaped face with large green eyes and luscious lips. Her figure could have stopped a train. John had to clear his throat before he could say something, and then he could only utter an awkward “Welcome on board” and a clumsy “Pleased to meet you”.

The crew also ogled her. A few might have been drooling. The steward, who brought champagne as a welcoming gesture, could hardly keep his eyes off her. The captain left the bridge just to say hello to Madame Constantina, his strong French accent even more pronounced than normal.

The Prophecy left the port and anchored in the mouth of the bay off Portecéto, close to the picturesque cliffs jutting up from the sea, where seagulls and other birds were nesting. A Jacobs ladder was let down from the backboard side along with a slide, and a diving board was mounted jutting out over the water. A warm, relaxed day on the sea could begin.

John was naturally quartered in the main cabin, which was all the way to the front of the yacht, and he had a corresponding long way to go. That’s why he wasn’t surprised to see Constantina already dressed in a tiny black bikini and sitting on a towel rubbing tanning lotion on her smooth skin when he got to the sundeck. He did wonder what was keeping Eduardo.

“Would you be so kind and put some cream on my back?” she asked as she looked up at him, making him feel like a clumsy schoolboy, despite his wealth.

“Yes, sure, of course, yeah!” Was that his voice? Whatever. He took the bottle that she held towards him and started to apply the white cream on her back.

“Please, under the straps too,” she said. “Should I undo them?”

“No,” he shot out. “I’ll manage.” He enjoyed going underneath her straps with the gooey stuff. How far to the side could he go before he reached a breast? Where was Eduardo?

The sun was burning down on them, and the universe seemed to melt together on the gleaming white deck as he touched her skin and smelled the lotion.

“Thank you,” she said at last. “And now you.”

John was thankful to lay on his stomach as she rubbed his back with soft yet firm strokes. He had to stay on his stomach for a while longer after she was finished. Luckily, Eduardo finally showed up and drew her attention away from John, who stubbornly remained on his stomach a while longer.

Later, they went down the ladder to get into the water, slow and careful because the water was cold enough to take their breath away as they climbed in. But then it was wonderful to swim in with the mysterious depths below, the sea stretching far beyond them and the gleaming ship above.

A half an hour later they were slithering down the slide, screaming and shouting like children, and then Eduardo made the first dive from the board.

Later they were lying tired on their towels upon the hot deck to warm up from the chilly water. The anchored ship swayed gently up and down with the waves soothing them into a wonderful state of sleep and numbed awareness. The hot sun felt good, warming their skin. Nothing mattered anymore, no wealth, no prophecy, nothing but this wonderful day, this content existence, the warm soothing sun and the seagulls calling out high above them in the endless blue sky.

“We also have water skis on board,” Eduardo said suddenly startling them out of the peacefulness. “Does anyone feel like water skiing?”

“No thanks,” Constantina mumbled lazily. “Nothing strenuous for me.”

“Me neither,” John murmured, who had never water skied before in his life and never even considered trying.

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Eduardo said and got up.

His idea got the crew moving, and the sudden activity chased away the general peace on the ship they all had enjoyed. The larger of the two motorboats was freed from the tarpaulin and heaved into the water with the davit. The water skis and the ropes were put into the boat, and soon it was speeding over the waves as it pulled Eduardo after it gliding over the water on the skis.

“Are you a lawyer too?” John asked trying to start a conversation now that they were awake and alone.

Constantina swiped hair from her face and smiled. “To be exact, I work as a junior lawyer with the DA. I suspect that Eduardo is keeping in touch with me, hoping to get first-hand information from the enemy.”

John didn’t agree with her suspicion but said nothing, mainly because he couldn’t think of anything smart enough to say.

“A nice ship,” Constantina said after a while.

“Yes,” John agreed nodding, “It really is.”

“It’s so nice to be out here and to have the sea practically all to ourselves.”

“Yeah.” He felt like a buffoon.

As if to get John out of his awkward situation, the steward suddenly stood there with the phone and explained: “A call for Signor Vacchi.”

They got up, jumped, and shouted to draw Eduardo’s attention. They finally got the boat to go alongside the yacht again. He seemed to guess what the call was about, because he took it with a troubled expression.

“Pronto!” he said and listened for a while. “And where is he now?” he asked and then said, “Ah, I understand. No, don’t do anything. I will come as soon as possible.” He handed the phone back to the steward, then told John and Constantina: “I’m terribly sorry, but I must go to Florence. One of our few cases, actually our only problematic case, with probationary requirements and so forth. I must see to it right away.”

“Too bad!” Constantina said. “It’s so nice out here now…”

“No, no, of course you can stay here,” Eduardo hurried to explain. “The motorboat can take me to Portecéto. It’s not so far. I’ll go and get changed.”

John felt suspicious as he looked after Eduardo going below deck. That just sounded like so darned rehearsed. That conniving little…

“That’s just an excuse!” John hissed at Eduardo a short while later as he went down the ladder.

Eduardo grinned from ear to ear. “Shush,” he said and then added, “Be a good host now.”

And the boat roared off towards the coat. John looked after it with an odd feeling in his loins as if they already knew more about what would happen than he did.

After the boat was no more than a tiny speck, John sat back down on the towel and avoided looking at Constantina. She sat there too he saw from the corners of his eyes, leaning forward on an arm. Her breasts looked full and round in that position.

“It’s pretty hot in the sun. Don’t you think?” she asked with a soft voice that didn’t sound at all like that of a future DA’s.

“Yes,” he said dully. “Pretty hot.”

“Could we go in for a while?”

“If you want…”

It was nice, cool, and downright dark in the salon after being out in the bright sun.

“Would you show me around the ship a little?” she asked him.

“With pleasure. What would you like to see?” John thought showing her the bridge, the machine room, or the galley.

Constantina looked at him with her big eyes. “I would love to know how your cabin looks like.”

So that’s how it works. John only nodded and went ahead. His cabin, his stamp collection; could he be hooked-up so easily? They went through the long corridor to the front going over carpets, past panels made of burl wood, and under gold-plated lamps. All paid with the same money that made him so sexy now. But maybe it’s only his imagination. Weren’t men programmed to see in women’s behavior what they wanted to see? It was he who thought that Constantina was sexy, just like any other healthy man would. And now he was interpreting all sorts of things according to her behavior. . It would be better for him to get his feet back on the ground and act like a normal person.

“Here it is,” he said and opened the door.

“Amazing!” she breathed and stepped inside. She looked around turning in a complete circle to take in the room and all its furnishings; the leather on the ceiling, the subtle lighting, the cabinets with their valuable adornments, just everything. “And a round bed!” She sat down on it. On this ridiculous, giant round bed that looked like a playground for some Arab prince. She stretched out on it and lolled around in the silk covers. John’s jaw was at its lowest possible position as he watched her.

She stopped and lifted her head, looking at him with a mysterious expression. She reached behind her back and undid her bikini top. John could only stare. Every fiber in his body was glowing from the sun. Or was it desire? Hard to say. When was the last time he was in bed with a woman? A long time … months!

“What …” he uttered and wet his lips, and then he tried again, with a dry and weak voice. “What are you doing?”

She kept her eyes on him and dropped on her back. She pulled her bikini bottom over her thighs, knees, ankles — and off.

John’s heart was pounding in his chest, and blood rushed to his head — though less so than other parts of his body. The thought that had gone through his mind before, about being set-up, was barely there anymore — subdued beneath pounding boiling blood. There she lay with her long legs, long hair, naked and desirable. To hell with Eduardo and his games. To hell with it. This was all rehearsed, honed, and recited. And how she was lolling around, the way she was looking at him, and the way she smelled of the sun, of salt from the sea and suntan lotion. And how she glistened, there, where she opened her legs.

To hell with it, John thought and pulled his trunks off.

$13,000,000,000,000

HE WAS DREAMING that his bed was swaying, and when he awoke with sticky eyes it was still gently swaying. His great round bed. John sat up and realized that he was still on his ship. The bare arm beside him, and the black hair spread out over the white satin sheets like an octopus’ tentacles proved that what he remembered had not been a dream.

The motion of him sitting up had woken her. She looked at him with her unfathomable green eyes. “Buongiorno,” she mumbled with a sleepy voice.

“Buongiorno,” John answered scantily, still trying to clear his head. He turned to the side, reached for the phone on the bed’s edge and dialed the bridge.

“Broussard, where are we?” he asked the captain.

“The same place we anchored yesterday, sir,” he answered.

Was he imagining things or did the Frenchman sound more respectful than usual? He’s impressed because he knows that I slept with Constantina, John suspected. He turned and looked at her. She was half up, leaning on an elbow, her breasts hanging pertly in the way that took a man’s breath away. She looked like an invitation to repeat what they had done last night; to get into her until he was exhausted. He could. And why not? This was his realm and he was its absolute ruler. He was the one who decided what should or should not happen here.

“Broussard?”

“Yes, sir?”

His tongue almost refused to move, feeling like treason to go against his body’s desire. “Set course back to Portecéto.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

He saw astonishment in Constantina’s expression, even pain almost as he hung up the phone. “Don’t you like me?” she asked in a soft voice. Her breasts moved a little to the side. It was a sight that electrified his whole body. He had to look away.

“Sure,” he said awkwardly. “I like you. I think you are amazingly sexy and more exciting than any other woman I’ve ever seen. The problem is,” he fixed her eyes again, “that I don’t love you.”

She looked confused.

“I don’t love you,” he repeated. “Not in the least. It was a great time and all, absolutely, but this morning I woke up with a feeling of having done something wrong. I don’t want to wake up like that. Do you understand me?”

Constantina pulled the sheet up over her breasts and nodded. “Yes.” She studied his face. “I didn’t know that men exist where this would matter.”

John sighed. “I only found out today,” he said.

The move into his new home went without a hitch. All John had to do was to pack all his papers into a briefcase; everything else was taken care of by the moving company. He said his good-byes to everyone at the Vacchi’s estate and graciously accepted a few well-intentional pieces of advice from the Padrone, affectionate wishes from Alberto, and not so affectionate, but doubtless sincere wishes from Gregorio. Eduardo would go with him. He wanted to organize the moving-in party. John promised he’d pay someone to kick Eduardo’s ass if he ever tried something like Constantina again.

The men with the shoulder rigs and guard dogs moved with him to Portecéto. The armed bodyguards made the delivery people feel nervous when they arrived to deliver the supplies and prepare for the party.

It was hard to tell if the interior decorator was nervous about the security guards or getting John’s approval of her work. At any rate, her hands clamped onto her clipboard during the inspection of the house as if it were a matter of life or death. She showed John everything, and he liked it all. The large room with the swimming pool down below, from where you could look out to the sea, had a whirlpool built in. It had an electrically operated partition that could change the area into a calm private room. The numerous guest bedrooms were each done in different styles. One bedroom was like a New England cottage, while the next one was kept in a modern Italian fashion, and the one after that had a far eastern Zen vibe. The kitchen gleamed with stainless steel, the dining room was appealing, and the salon’s view was majestic.

One could literally feel a weight being lifted off of the interior architect with every satisfied nod that John made. After he signed the documents of acceptance and said good-bye to her, Jeremy appeared as if out of nowhere. He offered John to introduce him to the house personnel, in case John had time for this.

“I do,” John said with a nod.

Jeremy was an original English butler. Actually, he was a Spaniard, and the first name in his passport read Javier. But since he had attended the Ivor Spencer International School for Butler Administrators, he could act more British than the Prince Consort himself. Eduardo had found him, and John was impressed by him. He hired him on the spot and left it up to Jeremy to find and hire the rest of the personnel, who would be working under his supervision.

John was introduced to Gustave, a former chef in a French hotel who also happened to always be in a good mood. Sofia, the housekeeper, was from Naples and had worked only for royalty thus far in her career, she told him. There was Francesca, the chambermaid. She was pale and petite and could barely look him in the eye, smiling only for one brief second. Finally, there was the gardener, who was unusual because woman filled the position. Her name was Maria and she took care of a few other gardens in the area, and she lived in her own place in the center of Portecéto, which was very convenient because, other than the guards’ gatehouse cabin, there were only enough apartments for four house employees.

“Wonderful,” John said smiling and wishing he could get rid of the feeling of being an actor playing the role of a rich man.

Someone had put the cartons with his New York possessions into his bedroom. He had almost forgotten all about them. He heaved the top box off the stack and ripped the tape off. Amused, he took out some kitchen utensils that he had used for a few years and now, after being rich for just a few weeks, it all seemed like worthless crap. The designs on the plates were garish and looked cheap, the silverware was practically pressed sheet metal, and the cups were chipped and had awful looking designs. The pots were cheap and beaten and burnt, not even good enough to be used as feeding bowls for dogs. The effort of shipping this garbage across the Atlantic had been a wasted one.

He put the carton away, out of sight; it’s the past. But then he lifted another lid and took out a plate and looked at it as if it were an archeological relic. How could it be that this plate had been good enough for him for years, and was now just the thought of having to eat from it was revolting? What was happening to him? If now he was in a situation that didn’t allow him to go back, go back to where he came from, then he had become a prisoner, a captive of wealth, dependent on luxury and money. Would he sell his soul if it meant never having to eat pork and beans from a can again?

He put the plate away and opened one of the other cartons; there were not many. His entire life’s possessions, collected in twenty-eight years of life, it all could easily fit in the bed of a pickup truck. There was some painting equipment: dried paint in messy cans, paintbrushes with bristles as hard a rock after not being washed out, empty glass bottles that used to contain turpentine, long since evaporated, a canvas with an unfinished sketch on it, and, hey, a box of unused oil paints! Where did they come from?

He could have the cartons put into the cellar. Who knows what the future had in store for him? Maybe all this magnificence would be gone one day, and then he could load this old but paid for stuff into a car and drive away without debts or responsibilities.

Exactly! That’s what he’d do.

His books should be somewhere here. He could use them now. And his address book too. The box with his letters, and there was the other one with photos. He dug through the boxes, which were carefully packed but not systematically. It was a weird feeling to dig out his old jeans or the worn-out sneakers, the red-and-black-checkered shirt he had bought for three dollars in a second-hand store. He had sewn on some of the missing buttons himself after Sarah had shown him how it was done. His mother had patched the sleeves; the patches were barely visible.

Thus John dug out of the boxes one memory after another; until Eduardo burst unexpectedly into his room.

“Hey, here you are,” he said in a party mood. “What’s wrong? Do you want to hide here the whole day with your old junk? Your guests are waiting!” The sound of music came from the first floor along with the clinking of glasses, laughter, and the cackle of people talking.

His guests? They were really Eduardo’s guests. He had invited them all: young artists, young business people, young university lecturers. John didn’t know a single soul there, except for Constantina, and he already saw her flirting in the garden with a dark dressed man, and that was more of her than he really wanted to see anyway.

“Yeah,” John said. “Maybe I’ll do that — hide here the whole day.”

“No, no, you won’t. That’s your party, man! Those are your guests. They’re plundering your fridge and demolishing your house. You should at least go down there and say hello. Who knows; maybe you’ll meet someone who’s worth meeting.”

“But I’m not in a party mood right now.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Whose idea was this anyhow? Who said, ‘Eduardo, let’s throw a housewarming party’?”

“Yeah, I know. It was a mistake. All this partying … that’s not what this prophecy is about.”

Eduardo looked at John with a sour expression as if he had dropped an anvil on his foot. “Boy!” he uttered and rolled his eyes. “What are you going on about?” He threatened John with his half full champagne glass. “I know what’s the matter: you’re infected. The Vacchi virus got you full on.”

“Just because I want to do something else with my life instead of being a jet-set playboy?”

Eduardo gestured with his glass, spilling a few drops. “Enough now,” he commanded. “I’ll give you a half hour to get changed and to come down in a good mood. Otherwise, I’ll send Constantina up here to get you.” He giggled at the idea and closed the door, leaving John behind in blissful peace.

After Marvin landed at Florence airport and had finally got through passport control, he found the driver John had hired to pick him up. He fumbled around in his pocket and felt for John’s pocket watch. Since getting John’s watch back from the pawnshop only cost fifty dollars, he had plenty of cash left over, despite the money he had spent on other necessities along the way.

They drove along the highway for a while, and then endlessly along country roads that wound through the hilly landscape. It was all pretty nice, but Marvin wondered how such roads could be built. It was a nightmare for him every time another vehicle came their way, and when they drove through the villages he had the feeling that they were going through the people’s living rooms. Europe! The continent of dollhouses!

It seemed like a hundred years later when the thin blue band of the sea appeared, shimmering in the distance. They went up a gently sloping hill, and then they drove honking through an ancient little town with a harbor filled with luxury yachts. Five minutes later they got to a neighborhood with a bunch of mansions, and as was to be expected, the car stopped in front of the biggest one.

Marvin handed the driver a twenty dollar bill as a tip, took his bag, and ambled over to the house. There were a bunch of vehicles parked in the driveway, all luxury cars. They must belong to the guests of the party John had told him about on the phone. He got there right on time. He would show them money bags how to party hard!

Suddenly a sort of living cabinet blocked his way and talked to him in Italian at machine gun speed.

“Non capisco,” Marvin told him. “Sono Americano!”

“Who are you?” the big guy asked in fluent English. “And what do you want here?”

Marvin put the bag over his other shoulder and took a step back to see this big guy better. “Copeland,” he told the guard, “my name is Marvin Copeland. I’ve just arrived from New York, and if this is John Fontanelli’s mansion then I’m being expected by him personally, and this with great yearning.” Since the mountain of meat still didn’t want to drop on his knees in awe, Marvin added: “I happen to be his best friend.”

“Do you have an ID?”

“Sure do.” Since John got in touch with Marvin, he had had to identify himself more often than ever before in the past ten years. He held the passport under the giant’s nose, who then put a walkie-talkie up to his mouth and spoke in Italian to someone. Marvin heard his name being mentioned among the other gibberish.

“Okay,” the cabinet finally said and stepped out of the way. “You’re expected. Just go straight ahead through the front door.”

“Thanks,” Marvin said. “Thanks a mil, and keep a keen watch out here.”

He saw the first few guests from out in the foyer, bunches of them. They were dressed as if they were in a fashion show, especially the women. He was going to stick out like a sore thumb dressed in his not so nice jeans and his by now quite rank tee-shirt! Hopefully they didn’t gobble up the whole buffet yet! But there didn’t seem to be a great party atmosphere here at all. There was no music, and everyone just stood around looking glum. From Marvin’s vantage point coming up the driveway, the party looked more like some post funeral get-together. Well, he was being expected, so in he went.

A young smartly dressed dude who seemed to be a bit confused came over to him as he stepped into the foyer, took his hand and shook it. “Eduardo Vacchi,” he introduced himself. “I’m Mr. Fontanelli’s lawyer.”

“That’s one thing he can sorely use, from what I hear these days,” Marvin told him. “I’m Marvin Copeland. I’m John’s friend from New York.”

“Yes, I remember. John mentioned you.”

“Great. Where is he? I’d like to say hello.”

“Well, you see …” Eduardo seemed to be feeling a bit uncomfortable. He unconsciously put a finger in his collar and pulled around on it a bit, scratched his neck, and looked around some, as if he was being stalked. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit for that.”

“Did I have to make an appointment from New York, or what? I mean, he flew me over here.”

“No. We have just found out that John has disappeared and no one knows where to.”

After the half hour was over, Eduardo got the entire crowd to chant, “John! John! John!” and then, fired up by the throng, he and Constantina went up the stairs in an attempt to yank him out of his room together. But, when they opened the door there was no one inside. Most of the guests thought that this was a successfully executed party gag, and enthusiastically joined in to search for him throughout the house and out in the garden too. But as they saw the bodyguards talking constantly into their radios with grim expressions, they realized that this was no gag. John’s Ferrari was gone too. Now everyone knew that this was serious.

“How can the Ferrari just disappear?” Eduardo wanted to know. “It was parked in the driveway on guarded grounds.”

Marco had fine beads of sweat on his forehead. “One of my men saw him being driven out about twenty minutes ago. He said that someone from the catering service was sitting behind the steering wheel. One of the waiters.”

“And? Was it one of them? Is one of them missing?”

“That’s being checked right now, but it doesn’t seem so.”

“Just great!” Eduardo rubbed his neck. Somehow the shirt seemed to want to strangle him. “Do you know what’ll happen if we have to call the police?”

The guests were just standing around staring at them. Someone had turned off the stereo. There was an ominous silence in the air.

“The Ferrari has a GPS unit in case of theft,” Marco explained. “We could locate him with that. Besides I had the chopper come over from the yacht.”

Eduardo cracked his knuckles nervously. “We need an ID check of all people on the premises, especially the delivery people. I personally know all the guests.”

“We’re already on it.”

To Marvin, all this was no reason to let the good stuff still at the buffet go to waste. After all, there were no lines there, and he could fill his plate in peace. And boy, was there food! There was salmon, caviar, pickled eggplants, dried salami, black olives, steaming filets in brown crusts, and a bunch of other stuff he had never even seen before. Great!

He noticed her just as he took the first bite. She glanced in his direction, only briefly, and then looked away again. Marvin stopped chewing and just stared. Man, oh man! Legs a million miles long! Super curves, and that dress! Tight as skin and black like her hair. What a smoking chick!

He checked the situation out for a moment. If she was with that dude, then he’d have to strangle him in the bathroom or something like that. But it didn’t look like they were together. It probably didn’t look so cool either the way Marvin walked straight over to her. Oh well, there was no time for fine details at the moment. He stood beside her now and followed her eyes to a couple of bodyguards who were yapping into their radios. Totally boring! He looked at her and said, “Hi. My name is Marvin.”

Her look was cold as ice as she examined him slowly from head to toe, as if trying to assess the chemical composition and value of his clothes in lira. “Hello.”

“I’m John’s best friend,” Marvin told her. Just talk, he told himself, “from the old days. You understand? He had me flown here from New York just for his party. And now he’s not here. Weird, or what?”

Now there was an interesting look in her eyes. She pulled her hair behind an ear with such a smooth move that he almost dropped his plate, and smiled at him. “Aren’t you worried about him?”

“What? No way. He’s done far worse before.”

She still smiled as she said, “I’m Constantina, by the way.”

Pinning down John’s position with the GPS was harder than they had thought. An hour later, after most of the guests had gone home and the disappointed catering team cleared away the food, some of which hadn't even been touched, Eduardo couldn’t stand the tension anymore and went back upstairs to John’s room to have another look. Marco was against him doing so, because he was already thinking about the police having to examine the room for traces of a crime. Eduardo went anyway.

Lying on a chair next to the window with the rear of the backrest to the door so that one couldn’t see the seat when you came in the room, was the light linen suit John had been wearing; jacket, trousers, and shirt. The shoes were on the floor.

“We’ve located the Ferrari,” Marco said, but stayed outside the room. “It’s parked on the outskirts of Capannori. The helicopter is on its way.”

Eduardo lifted the jacket to show Marco. “He changed clothes before he left.” He pulled the closet door open and looked at the long rows of suits. “We could ask the butler if a suit is missing.”

“I’ll get him up here,” Marco said and spoke into the walkie-talkie.

But instead of the butler, it was the odd New Yorker who appeared in the hallway first and, to Eduardo’s irritation, was accompanied by Constantina who seemed to have hit it off with Marvin. Without a care, they both traipsed into the room, and Marvin looked around with curiosity.

“Not bad,” he commented as if there wasn’t anything to worry about. He looked at the cartons, most of which were open. “But all this junk here doesn’t quite fit in, does it?”

Jeremy the butler entered the room with brisk stiff steps. He examined the cabinet and determined that nothing was missing.

“But he will hardly have gone dressed only in his underwear!” Eduardo said.

The butler agreed. “I would very much doubt that too.”

Eduardo grudgingly watched Marvin step to one of the cartons and pull out a washed-out green tee-shirt with the text Smile if you like sex.

“Maybe he’s wearing some of his old stuff,” the scruffy looking American suggested.

“Why would he do that?”

“He could have wanted to get away and mix in with us common folk.”

“He had a party here with over a hundred invited guests; hardly a proper time to go do something like that.”

The person with the greasy hair and a tee-shirt was fit only for checking engine oil made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, come on now! If I were to kidnap someone like John I’d sure as hell wouldn’t do it durin’ a party, with a thousand people runnin’ around here an’ a million things that could go wrong.” He turned to Marco. “If I were you I’d look for him in a Burger King or somethin’ like that.”

Indeed, they did find John later in a McDonald's! Located in the center of Capannori. He was wearing jeans, worn sneakers, and a red-and-black-checkered shirt patched up more than once, sitting at a less than immaculate table and shoving the last of his fries into his mouth as they walked in: Marco, Eduardo, and two bodyguards wearing bulgy jackets.

“What are you guys doing here?” he asked as he slurped his Coke. “Shouldn’t you be at the party?”

“The party is over, John,” Eduardo explained. “We thought you were kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped? Hell no. I just wasn’t in the mood. Besides, I wanted to find out if I still like the taste of a Big Mac.” He smiled satisfied. “And look here, it still does!”

Eduardo stared at him, and everyone could tell that he was trying hard not to say what he’d like to say to John. Several were already staring at the group of men wearing fine suits and standing around a young totally innocent-looking man. It probably looked to all of them like a mafia thing, and the manager of the restaurant was tempted to call the police.

“I was damned worried about you,” Eduardo told him. “You should’ve told me.”

John didn’t smile anymore. “I also wanted to know if I could go somewhere without telling anyone.” He crumpled the napkin and threw it on the tablet. “Now I know. Let’s go.”

$14,000,000,000,000

THE BEACH BELONGED to people who didn’t have time to use it, so it was usually empty and quiet. This morning even the sun remained hidden behind a thin layer of clouds. The sea lapped at the gray and sandy slope. The houses standing beyond the dry embankment stood indifferent, lifeless.

Anyone who had been interested might have noticed a man walking up and down the beach for the past few days, hours at a time, several times a day. A second man would follow at some distance, as if the two didn’t belong together even though the second man seemed to mimic what the first one did. They would wander along the beach, but slowly, because of the sand. They would go north for a distance, up to a point where the beach got narrower and became rocky. There they would turn around and head back. Further south the beach ended by a large concrete water outlet from the sewage system, and that’s where they would turn back around and head north.

On this morning a third man was suddenly there hurrying after the first two. He had little chance of catching them, because he was carrying too much weight, and he often had to stop to catch his breath and pant. He tried to shout and wave and eventually managed to draw the other men’s attention. They both turned around and hurried back.

“Thanks for coming,” John said to Alberto Vacchi when he approached. They shook hands. “If I’d known how fast you would be here, I’d have waited in the house for you.”

“It sounded very urgent on the phone,” the lawyer said and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“No, I only said … Hmm, did it really sound so urgent?” John looked contemplatively. “Well, maybe it’s more urgent than I realize. Come on, let’s go back to the house.”

A neutral observer would’ve noticed the bodyguard letting out a sigh of relief. Lately, the guards had been casting lots to see who would have to accompany John Fontanelli on the beach. The loser would have to go.

“And?” Alberto Vacchi wanted to know as they went back. “How do you like your new house?”

“I like it, thanks. I still have to get used to the fact that there’s constantly someone around to clean up after me, but there are worse things in life.”

“I’m surprised that Eduardo isn’t here with you. You two have been together constantly the past few weeks.”

John smiled briefly. “I think he’s still a bit upset over my little adventure to Capannori.”

Alberto nodded understandingly. “That’s what I thought too, but he’ll get over it.” He turned his head and briefly glanced to John. “But that’s not the reason why called me, is it?”

“No.” John stopped walking. He looked out over the gray sea, chewing on his lip, and then he turned his head to Alberto. His gaze was intense and it seemed as if he had to force himself to speak. “What sort of person was Lorenzo?”

“What?” the lawyer said. He was very astonished by this question.

“You knew him. Tell me a little about him.”

“Lorenzo …” Alberto lowered his head, looking at the tip of his shoes and the sand on them. “Lorenzo was a delicate child. He matured early, was intelligent, musically talented and well-read. He developed diverse allergies; hazelnuts, apples, nickel, and so forth. He got rashes and sometimes he had to lie down because his circulatory system would collapse. But the biggest problem was his allergy to bee stings. He once had to be taken to a hospital immediately after being stung. Well, and you know about the five stings he got later; four where inside his mouth. The doctor suspected that he had bitten into a fruit that had bees inside it. Perhaps a pear, because he liked them, and it was one of the few types of fruits he could eat.”

“Didn’t he take care to avoid bees?”

“Sure, he did. You can’t even imagine. He was terrified of insects. Well, maybe that’s a little overstated; he was very careful about avoiding them. He hardly ever wore shorts and always had long-sleeved shirts on when he went outside, and he never, ever, went barefoot.” Alberto sighed. “And then such a freak thing happened. It’s tragic … really tragic. I liked him, you know.”

John nodded slowly, trying to imagine what sort of boy he was. Lorenzo Fontanelli. “You said he was gifted musically?”

“What? Yes, that’s right — very musical. He played the piano and the flute. He took some lessons and played in the school orchestra for a while. Overall, he was a good student. There were never any problems, and he was practically a wonder at math. When he was twelve, he found a book about calculus in his grandfather’s things. He took it home and learned it all by himself. Maybe that’s why he fascinated me so much. Anyway, not long after that he took part in a math contest and won first prize. He even had his picture in the newspaper about it. I kept the article; you can see it some time if you wish.”

“Yes, please.”

Alberto looked at John who was gazing out into the distance lost in thought. “I think that perhaps it would’ve been better not to tell you all this.”

John just stood there; his thoughts were heavy. “He was the better candidate, wasn’t he?”

“John, you should stop beating yourself up about it.”

“But you were convinced, weren’t you?”

“What difference does it …” Alberto paused. His shoulders drooped. “Yes, we believed it, we all did. There were times when we simply could not believe that the heir to the Fontanelli fortune seemed to be so very suitable and seemingly capable of doing good things with the money we had taken care of for so long.”

John smiled thinly, almost painfully. “And then you suddenly had me. It must’ve been a disappointment.”

“That’s not what we think, John,” Alberto Vacchi said. His voice was suddenly warm and concerned. “You know my father. He believes in you, he has as much faith in you as he has in the sun rising and setting each day. And we believe in him.”

“Yes, I know.” John faced him, touched his arm and looked deeply into Alberto’s eyes. “I want to thank you for telling me the truth, Alberto. It may seem odd, but now I feel better.” He gestured with his head. “Come on, let’s go into the house and have a cappuccino.”

Serbian forces stormed the television complex in Sarajevo. For the first time in thirty-five years, local government elections were being held in South Korea, which ended in a triumph for the opposition party. The American space shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian space craft Mir for the first time. In Berlin the Reichstag was still under wraps.

It was more out of boredom than real interest in current events that had John reading the papers. Ever since Jeremy was around to take care of him, even reading the newspaper seemed more enjoyable. He found out why when he asked him; the butler ironed the newspaper every morning before John it was brought to John! It made it easier to handle, and the ink didn’t smear as much, he told an astonished John, who was happy to keep receiving ironed papers and eventually grew quite accustomed to it.

“I do beg your pardon, sir.” Jeremy stood stiff as a stick by the living room threshold. “A certain Marvin Copeland is here and wishes to speak with you.” His manner suggested he doubted that John knew the guy. “I remember him from the moving-in party, sir.”

“Marvin?” John put away the ironed newspaper. “He’s here?”

“In the foyer, sir.”

And there he was, standing crooked and pale with his bag over a shoulder. “Hey, John. I hope I’m not interrupting any business or anything.”

They embraced as friends do, like the good old days. “Hi, Marv. Where were you?”

“Well …” he began, dropping the sack on the floor, “I met this girl at your party, Constantina; that’s where I was.”

John nodded; Eduardo had already filled him in.

“Thanks for bringing me the watch.”

“No big deal … anytime.”

“Come on, let’s go into the salon. Do you want something to drink? Are you hungry?”

Marvin followed, dragging his feet. “Somethin’ to eat would be great. I’ve been neglecting food a bit lately.”

“No problem; I’ll tell the kitchen staff.” John took the nearest phone off the cradle and dialed the kitchen. “What do you want?”

“Don’t matter; just good and plenty.” He touched a sideboard made of cherry wood. “You got a really nice place. I didn’t really notice it that much at the party. Nice and roomy. Do you think I could stay for a couple of days?”

“Dude, I have enough guest rooms for a football team. You can stay as long as you want. Gustave?” John said when the cook answered the call. “I have a guest who is half starved. Could you throw something together, something good and plenty? Thanks.”

As he turned to face Marvin, his friend stood there making an odd expression. “You’re quite the boss,” he told John. “This commanding voice, I mean. How you boss your servants around.”

“You think so?” John paused for a moment and tried to remember exactly what he told Gustave and the tone he used. To him it seemed all very normal, and he wasn’t sure what he could have said instead.

“Forget it,” Marvin said waving it off.

Just as they went into the salon the venetian blinds were automatically going up, letting them see the breathtaking view of the sea and the sun, which was fire-red and touching the horizon. Marvin stopped where he was and gazed out looking like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“What do you want to drink?” John asked him casually.

Marvin snapped out of it. “What do you mean with want?” he asked and seemed a bit dazed. “I need a drink. I can’t stand it otherwise.”

“What?”

“Whisky, if you have any. Oh, you probably do; you have everything now.”

John had meant something else, but he let it go.

While John poured the drinks he looked at his friend in the reflection of the bar’s mirror. Marvin seemed to have changed. Constantina probably threw him out. Why else did he show up with his backpack? And that is probably what was bothering him, perhaps more than he wanted to admit. John decided not to push the subject.

“On Monday morning I’m flying to London and then later that afternoon to New York,” John told Marvin after they sat down. “My parents are celebrating their wedding anniversary. You know, there’s always a party and a family get-together. You can stay here if you want, it’s no problem.” John had to go to London to try on his suits.

Marvin nodded, lost in thought. He looked at John with the same ominous expression as earlier. He downed his drink in one gulp, set the glass on the table, leaned back, and said: “Watch out, John. Watch out that the money doesn’t change you.”

He wore his old watch for the trip to his parents. He did it for his dad, but he would feel like a hypocrite if he pretended he was still living the life he had before, that was why he chose the rest of his wardrobe as he saw fit.

As he gathered his papers for the journey he found the letter from the organization for wildlife preservation again. They seemed adamant in pursuing a donation. He decided to take it with and to read it during the flight; after that he could decide to throw it away or cut them a check. Since he decided to start thinking seriously about what to do with the money and the prophecy, this might be as good a starting point as any.

It was a normal scheduled flight to New York. There were comfortable seats in the first class section in the upper deck of the 747, making it look like an overfilled living room. His bodyguards had insisted that he rent an armored limousine from a reputable New York security agency for the drive to New Jersey.

He read the letter.

It was from the WWF — the World Wildlife Fund — and it asked for financial support for a campaign they called The Living Planet. Their goal was to preserve 200 of the most important habitats in the world. The regions were described as areas with especially significant natural features such as endangered plants and animals. Most were thus far untouched by man making them rare, valuable, and vulnerable. Preserving these areas, the letter went on, would save eighty percent of the planet’s biodiversity.

Biodiversity, John learned from another pamphlet in the letter, was basically the number and variety of living organisms found within a particular geographic area. He also learned that the rate species had been dying out over the past few decades was matched only by the meteorite impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Currently, and John had to read it twice because he found it difficult to believe, one species went extinct every twenty minutes. That meant that each year twenty-six thousand plant and animal species were disappearing forever from the face of the Earth. About one fourth of all vertebrates were considered endangered, and one out of eight plant species. This drive to extinction was not only happening in distant rain forests and affecting bizarre looking grasshoppers or rare orchids, but even certain domesticated animals. There were, for instance, around 500 different types of cattle, but only about 20 were being used for breeding, leaving the rest to disappear one by one. Only about 10 percent of corn varieties were being used for cultivation, with the ones giving the highest yields being preferred, even though they were more susceptible to disease. The gene pool was being dramatically reduced.

The foundation of human existence, the pamphlet explained, was dependent on a well functioning ecosystem. Healthy food, clean water, a stable climate, and so forth, depended on the oceans, which functioned as buffers for the temperature and moisture of the atmosphere and provided an environment for fish. They depended on massive forests to absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen, so that there would be enough wood, and on having enough insects to decimate pests that harmed human crops, on microorganisms in the ground, without which no farmland could support crops.

All these complimentary services that an intact ecosystem furnished was worth an estimated 30 trillion dollars, the pamphlet said, double the GDP of the entire planet.

John stopped reading and looked out the little window. They were flying over a bright white layer of clouds. This was the first time he’d come across a number that he could compare to his own fantastic wealth. The gross global product was worth around 15 trillion dollars. In other words, with his money, John could buy one fifteenth of the world’s products and services that were produced and offered in one year. Hard to believe! What could he do with all that? The prophecy had to entail some incredible invention or innovation, something it would cost a fortune, and which would be the crucial factor for change. But what?

He sat there thinking for a while, but all there was in his mind was a fog of uncertainty and no great idea to cut through it. He continued reading. So the earth’s ecosystem was worth 30 trillion dollars.

It was remarkable to have this explained in such a manner. The other arguments he had kept on hearing all his life were for the most part emotional: how wonderful nature was, how terrible it is to have it destroyed — this sort of tear jerking stuff. There is no doubt that was true, but the discussions people had didn’t go to the core of it. Of course it was terrible when a forest cut down for a highway or factory, but when emotions went up against money, then money usually won.

But hadn’t the true worth of the ecosystem been ignored? For instance, let’s say that one wanted to build an ecosystem on the moon or some planet that had nothing but space. Then all those things that are free on Earth would have to be either transported there or created. Things like water, air, plants, animals, fertile soil, and so on. All this would cost unbelievable sums of money. The costs would be astronomically high to even re-create an average village with its average-sized fields on the moon. And if all this were so, then there was a huge error in the math that assumed the Earth’s natural resources were there for exploiting. Maybe it meant that all those ecologists were wasting their time blocking excavators or singing songs at some demonstration? The destroyers of nature could only be beaten with their own weapon. There needed to be a reconfiguration of the calculations made to figure out the ecosystem’s real value and the true cost of destroying it so the world could see the actual bottom line.

But John couldn’t do that on his own. And there certainly were no generally accepted methods to calculate the worth of a forest, a lake, or an animal species. In its closing words, the pamphlet emphasized that ecosystems did not begin or end at international borders, that solutions had to be sought at multi-national levels, and that the WWF was the body to do this. If he was to donate at least a hundred million dollars to their cause, they would hold a special ceremony in his honor.

John put the letter away, ordered a fruity, low-alcohol cocktail, and stared thoughtfully out of the window.

What was the reason for the mass extinctions? The disappearance of untouched nature? Over time, man had stepped into every part of on earth, explored them and eventually made use of them. Humans chopped down trees, built houses, and used fertilizers, pesticides, and machines to grow crops. At the root of all mankind’s problems was the constant growth of the world population. More and more people who had to eat, who had to live somewhere, who would again make more children, and so on.

This whole thing was so complicated … and so hopeless. Should he use his wealth to provide condoms and the pill to the entire world’s population? That was the source of all the problems: humans, many, many, humans, armies of humans — a flood of people, growing ever larger in numbers on a planet that stayed the same size.

He glanced around the first class cabin, which, though a bit cramped, was luxurious compared to the restricted space of the tourist class a deck below. He thought about his mansion by the beach, the large fence around his property, the guards, private stretch of beach and the yacht. It was like the sudden onset of a toothache when he realized that rich people spend a lot of money to keep the flood of people at bay — to have space.

He had been afraid his parent’s house might have become alien to him, underprivileged, and cheap, like his old dishes. But when they arrived, and he stepped through the doorway it all was so familiar. It was home. He hugged his mother in the hallway that smelled of the leather and shoe wax that practically oozed from the workshop, even though his father had closed it for today’s special occasion.

The living room smelled of tomatoes, basil, and hot water thanks to the pasta being prepared in the kitchen. John and his father hugged while his mother could hardly get over how grand John looked and what a tan he had.

Everything was the way it had always been. There was the same wallpaper in the hallway still getting darker with age, the stairs leading up and the creaking third step, and his room, which hadn’t changed a bit since he had left and moved in with Sarah. He would sleep in a museum tonight. And there was still this unidentifiable odor upstairs that reminded him of his childhood more than anything else.

But there was a new TV in the living room. He sat down on the sofa, which had needlework doilies on the armrests, and told them he was well. Mother set the table. His father told him that she’d been having problems with her legs lately. He didn’t let John see that he noticed him wearing his old pocket watch, but John hadn’t expected him to.

A little while later Helen and Cesare arrived. They brought a big bouquet of flowers. The way they greeted John seemed constrained, as if they didn’t quite know how they should act around him. Helen looked like she always did, like the intelligent philosophy teacher she was, with her hair loose, and dressed in elegant black. She looked as if she had found a magic trick to freeze the march of time. Cesare, on the other hand, had even less hair than the last time John had seen him, making him look like well over forty although he wasn’t even thirty-eight. John spotted stern looking wrinkles by his mouth, which he hadn’t noticed last Christmas. Cesare was still gaunt and didn’t look very happy either.

“How many anniversaries have you had so far?” Helen asked as they sat at the table. No one mentioned Lino; his chair wasn’t there either. “Thirty-nine? You’ll have to plan something really special next year!”

John noticed that his mother took a quick look at him following Helen’s comment. “We’ll see,” she said simply.

The saltimbocca tasted so good it was unbelievable. John looked down at his plate and wondered if he ever had tasted anything so good in all the ritzy expensive restaurants he’d visited lately. Or did it only seem like that because he grew up with this kind of cooking?

“John,” his mother said in a low tone of voice, “do those two men have to sit out there in the hallway?”

He didn’t quite understand what she was talking about. His previous life seemed so far away, like a dream. “They’re only doing their job, mamma.”

“Is it okay if I bring them some food?”

The bodyguards were convinced by mamma to go to the kitchen and to eat by the table.

“They have weapons underneath their jackets!” his mother exclaimed as she came back.

Over dessert John remembered what it was he wanted to tell everyone. He announced to his gathered kin that he wanted to make every person in the family financially independent. “And Lino too, of course,” he added. Everyone is to receive ten million dollars; an amount of money that would rid them all of any future financial worries; in fact they could live purely off the interest.

“There will be a gift tax to be paid,” Cesare said in typical official tone.

Father cleared his voice distinctly, took the napkin from his lap, placed it beside the plate, and wrinkled his forehead above his bushy brows. “That’s very fine of you, my son,” he said. “But I won’t stop working.”

“But you won’t ever have to work again!”

“A healthy person must work. That’s life. John, we can’t just live from the interest! There must be someone there to bake the bread and to repair shoes to make sure everything gets done. I will accept the money and say thank you. I will stop worrying about the future. That will be a relief, yes. But I honestly believe that I have such worries only because the world is set up in such a weird way that a person can’t live from doing an honest day’s work anymore.”

John looked at his father and felt as if he had made an absolutely ridiculous suggestion. To make matters worse, Helen said with a taught mouth: “We won’t accept your money. I’m sorry. I know that you mean well, but we don’t need it. Both of us have careers, earn enough, and have everything we need.”

“I understand,” John said calmly and looked at his older brother, who nodded affirmatively, but there seemed a gray shadow in his face that he hadn’t noticed before. John wondered if Helen had decided this on her own. He would have asked, but could hardly do so with her around.

“A few years ago,” father began to say, “a man from the neighborhood had won the lottery. Gianna, do you remember him? He always went for a walk with his poodle that had this white curl on its forehead. He was a Russian … Malkov, or something like that …”

“Malenkov,” mother said, “Karel Malenkov. But he was from Poland.”

“Malenkov, you’re right — that was him. He won the lottery, two million dollars, I think. He was a bus driver. Anyway, he stopped working and only went for walks. I always saw him from the little window in my shop when he was walking his dog. Half a year later I hear that he was dead. His wife said it hadn’t done him any good just lollygagging around all the time. At some point his heart had got so lazy that it just stopped beating.”

“Wealth makes life more complicated,” Helen interjected. “You might not realize this yet. Now you have a large mansion, cars, a yacht, and staff, and you have to take care of all these things. That takes time, time that you don’t have for yourself. Have you ever asked yourself whether maybe your wealth really owns own you?”

“Well,” John said carefully, “I used to deliver pizza the entire day so I could pay the rent, and after that I was totally exhausted. I had far less time for myself then.” He felt like telling her that she had no idea how it was to be rich.

“And guards!” she exclaimed. “Good heavens! John, I’d hate to have bodyguards around me all the time.”

“I admit that to own a trillion dollars is a little weird, but when you actually do have that much than bodyguards are a must.”

“No, no. Up until now I earned every dollar on my own. I would lose my sense of independence if I were to accept your money.”

John shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody is going to make you take it It’s up to you.” Nobody mentioned what Cesare might think.

On their way to the very same café where their father had proposed to their mother, Helen asked John why he didn’t simply give his money to all the charities. “Like you said, you could keep ten million and live off the interest. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about being poor and or about being super rich.”

“I have other worries,” John admitted. The sun stood high and made the mailboxes and street lantern wires twinkle in its light. There was a lot of traffic.

Their parents walked a bit ahead arm in arm, and John told his brother and his sister-in-law about the prophecy. He explained the relationship between the fortune and the prophecy and that he felt he had to keep the money together because whatever it was that he must do to fulfill it, it would most likely be possible only with lots of money. He added that he had no idea what it was that could fulfill it.

The owner of the café had reserved the same table for the family’s special occasion as he did every year.

“Here is where I sat,” mother said with a melancholy smile, “and your father was there, right on that chair.”

“Of course, it’s not the same chair today as it was back then,” father grumbled and sniffed to cover up his emotions.

“We had cappuccino.”

“Wasn’t it coffee con latte?”

“And we went to the movies on Fifth — the one with the little blue tower that got torn down. It was a Cary Grant movie.”

“To Catch a Thief. That was the name of the movie.”

“I can still remember; I was all engrossed in the movie. Then he asked me right there and then if I would marry him. Can you imagine that?”

“I was afraid that if I didn’t ask you then, I never would.”

“Back then he looked a little like Cary Grant, your father.”

“Oh really?”

“And I said “yes” right away, without a second’s hesitation.”

He took her hand in his, worn with age spots now. “Would you marry me again if you could turn back time?”

She put an arm around him. “Any time.”

They kissed then stopped abruptly, as if it were an improper thing to do, and laughed when they realized how old-fashioned they must seem.

Everyone ordered cappuccino, except for Helen who wanted espresso and a piece of cake. John thought he saw tension between his brother and his sister-in-law. The old couple’s display of love and affection clearly was having no romantic effect on Helen.

To John’s surprise, during their walk back home, Cesare began chatting to him about football, which Helen thought was boring so she walked together with her in-laws. John had a feeling that Cesare was deliberately letting the others get in front.

“I want to touch on the subject of money …” Cesare said changing the topic suddenly, but his voice faded when he didn’t know how to say it.

“Yes,” John said as encouragingly as he could.

“A few months ago I was told of a surefire stock investment. It really did sound good, like a sure thing, and that’s why I thought I’d risk it.” Cesare hesitated. “Helen knows nothing about it, and, of course, it didn’t work out as I had hoped and now I’m having problems with the mortgage payments and…“

“No problem. I only need your bank account number.”

“You know, my job doesn’t allow me to earn much extra money, that’s why I thought … I mean, since you made the offer…”

“Cesare, you don’t need to explain. Helen won’t find out. I promise.”

John’s brother turned around and when he was satisfied they were still far enough away from his other half, he stuck a note into his brother’s pocket, which he must have written in the café restroom. “And John, no ten million, please.”

“Why not?”

Cesare mouth twitched oddly. “Like I said, there would be taxes and I couldn’t keep it secret form Helen.”

“Got you, then how much?”

“The max without paying taxes is ten grand a year. If you give me ten thousand now, and next year another…”

“Twenty thousand? That’s it? Are you serious?”

“Only enough to make up for my losses. I don’t need more than that.”

“Alright, will do. No problem.”

“Thank you.” Cesare sighed. “I couldn’t handle ten million to be honest. I don’t know how dad will manage with it. And how about you? How is it you’re not going nuts!”

John shrugged his shoulders. “It may still happen.”

They had to fly back home that evening, because Cesare had only one day off work. They said their good-byes and hugged and kissed. Mother’s tears flowed too, of course. They waved as the taxi drove away. The two bodyguards stood nearby like shadows, one by the front door and the other near a streetlight.

Then they went back inside the house and into the living room. Father opened a bottle of Chianti. He poured a glass and said, “You know, John, I’m a happy man. I know … I don’t always look like it; you can be happy and sometimes forget about it and act like an ox. When my mind is clear I know that I am a happy man. And it’s not only because I married your mother and that we have a happy marriage, even though that is very important, of course, but also because I love my work. You know, you can love your wife, and that is nice, but how much do you see her during the day? Maybe one or two hours? But work, you are there for eight hours a day or even longer, and that’s why it’s important that you like it. And I love my work. I love leather … the way it feels and smells. I love to cut leather, to puncture holes in it and the sound of the hammer when I nail on a heel, and I love to sew on a sole with the machine. I admit that I’m not the best shoemaker in the world, for sure I’m not. And I haven’t made a pair of shoes in a long time; I only repair them these days. Once upon a time, I made my own shoes. How long ago was that? Ten years? Maybe even fifteen. Never mind, it don’t matter. But what I’m trying to say is that I feel good when I’m in my shop with all the shoes, the tools, the machines that smell of oil, and the cans of wax. Sometimes I get a visitor or a customer, and then we chitchat. Then I’m alone again and let my mind wander as the old hands work almost by themselves.” He took another drink and smacked his lips. “Do you understand now why I don’t want to quit? I really enjoy it, so why should I stop only because it’s called work?”

John nodded. “Yes, but you will still take the money.”

“Yes, I said I would. You can invest it for me, and I will be happy not to worry any more. Do you know the kind of worries I had? I worried that the money I earned in my shop wouldn’t be enough and that I’d have to work in a factory. I was lucky to have bought the house and that it’s paid for, because I couldn’t pay the rent they’re asking for these days. I don’t know how little stores can survive, but, oh well, that’s over my head and something for others to worry about.”

“Now, let the boy say something,” mother told father. “Tell us, John, what kinds of worries do you have over in Italy?”

John held on to his glass like a crystal ball and looked at the dark-red liquid. The thirty-year-old ceiling lamp made sparkles of light on the liquid’s surface. The wine smelled strong and spicy. “Tell me,” he began thoughtfully, “what you know about Lorenzo.”

$15,000,000,000,000

SHE SAT IN her seat like a stone statue, stiff and dazed, staring straight ahead, as the function of the seat belts and oxygen masks were being explained. She barely noticed the plane accelerate and take off. She knew only that there were people around her and heard noises and that it was all over.

It was as if she had known it all along. It was supposed to be a surprise. By God, it had been a surprise all right! If only she had cried! More than anything else she wished she had been able to cry over what had happened. Her heart was still pounding, as if hadn’t been hours ago that she had gone ballistic and screamed and bit and scratched until the hotel staff had to drag her away. If she’d had a knife in her hand she would have committed murder. Even now she felt this endless hatred, this incredible desperation that hemorrhaged out from her and it felt good to imagine ramming a knife into his throat, cutting his balls and dick off, stabbing the knife into his flesh.

Ursula Valen, a twenty-five-year-old history student and freelance journalist from Leipzig, Germany, was single again and had been for exactly two hours and fifty-five minutes. She closed her eyes. It hurt so much. It felt like a wound in her stomach, in her soul. As if he had cut out a piece of her heart. She felt like curling up in the fetal position like when you do when suffering from a bad stomachache, to cry for the rest of her life. But she knew she wouldn’t. She would go back to work tomorrow and not let anyone see her pain.

The worst part was not when she had opened the door and saw him naked, not even seeing another woman in there, naked too, of course. No, it was the way he had treated the other woman. It was the way he talked to her, the way he moved and the tone of his voice and his gestures. All the things that were supposed to just be for her, given to someone else! What she had considered to be his love just for her. What seemed to be a one-of-a-kind thing in their relationship was nothing but his routine trick to get himself laid.

How much money had she spent, how many contracts had she rejected to be with him in New York as much as possible? Enough to buy a decent car, but she was the one traded in for a newer model.

Breathe, just breathe. In. Out. And don’t think. Feel the seat pressing against your body. Take in the cold air from the ventilation system. Listen to the engines roar, to the conversations of the people around …

“Listen, John is a fairly educated American and this in our time and age.” It was the voice of a woman … impatient, sharp and hard. “How can anyone like him believe in such a thing … a prophecy?”

“I didn’t get the impression that he believes in it.” It was the voice of a man … unsure, soft, and reluctant. “He only noted that it existed and wondered if there was something to it.”

“No, no, my dear, he clearly said that he needed to keep the money together to have the entire amount available to fulfill the prophecy!”

“Is that what he said?”

“Yes it is!”

There was still that voice inside Susan that insisted she had suspected it all along. When did she get the assignment to write a background story for the automobile’s one hundredth anniversary? In December? It was clear back then that her research would take her to Chicago and Detroit. And how often had they seen each other or talked on the phone since then? She hadn’t let him know anything, just taken a flight from Chicago to New York to surprise him. But maybe it hadn’t been the spontaneous decision she tried to convince herself had been. Maybe months of festering jealousy had planned it all. What does he do when I’m not around?

Now she knew. He fucks young students.

“Well, maybe you’re right,” said the man. It was as if he only wanted peace and quiet. “Maybe he really does believe in it. But I don’t think that’s so bad.”

“It gets on my nerves. Just like when Marjorie won’t leave the house if her horoscope is bad.”

He had been such a handsome man when she first met him at the press ball of the International Historic Society. Doctor Friedhelm Funk was fifteen years older than her. His mother was an American and his father a German; he had grown up in Germany and built up a splendid scientific career in the US. He was now working as a teacher of history in New York and was an advisor to the United Nations. He was the one who wrote the synopsis of the historical background of conflict in the Balkans, which the secretary-general consulted before making any decisions about the war in Bosnia. How could she not have felt charmed by his interest in her? How could she have resisted his praise for her work?

But he had only really admitted her to the ranks of the harem parading through his bedroom.

“The one thing I do understand is that this Giacomo Fontanelli believed in his visions. He lived during the fifteenth century. It was a normal enough thing back then. But today? Please!”

What is this woman talking about? Fontanelli … she had heard the name before, in a different lifetime, in a life filled with dreams and blind love. Wasn’t he the young guy who had inherited a trillion dollars? She always thought that it was only a meaningless rumor, but obviously not. Interest and compounded interest and five hundred years time. All the magazines had done the math right down to the penny. Since then the savings accounts that were set-up for newborn babies had tripled in Germany.

Ursula Valen briefly glanced at the two passengers beside her. The man looked familiar. Of course! She had seen his picture in the Bild newspaper. He was the older brother of the trillionaire. The only one of the three brothers that was married.

If this man had a son, then he would be the richest man on earth, the newspapers wrote in their inimitable way. But instead, he’s only an IRS employee with an annual income of around forty thousand dollars.

The woman beside him must be his wife. But prophecy? What prophecy?

Ursula Valens cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said and smiled as warmly as she could. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation … your name is Fontanelli, right?” The skeptical expressions the two had melted, especially the woman’s when Ursula added: “I’m a journalist from Germany. May I be so very bold as to ask what sort of prophecy this is?”

On the return flight to Europe, John decided that he would pay a visit to Lorenzo’s family. He didn’t know what good it would do, but he had this strong desire to learn as much as he could about the boy he had never met.

When he arrived in Portecéto, Marvin had disappeared without leaving a note or letter. Jeremy told John that Marvin had used the telephone on Monday morning, and then left without saying a word, taking his backpack with him. Sofia, the housekeeper, thought she had seen him getting into a car a bit further down the street. Francesca, the chambermaid, said she had already cleaned his room. “Everything is straightened up,” she said. She bit her lip as if it were her fault that the guest from America had left.

“Very odd,” John said. He had been looking forward to spending an evening together with his friend. But it looked like Marvin must have got homesick being all alone in the big house and flown back.

The rest of the day John avoided going near the telephone, deliberately delaying the call to Lorenzo’s relatives in Rome. After all, they didn’t even know him. It would seem to them that he had profited from Lorenzo’s death. It was already late and the sun was low, casting the room in an orange glow by the time John finally pulled himself together and dialed the number.

And what a surprise! The woman on the other end of the line, Lorenzo’s mother, the wife of his father’s cousin, was very happy to have someone interested in her son. Yes, of course he could come, anytime he wanted. Tomorrow was no problem, she was at home anyhow.

John was relieved when he put the phone down, and his armpits were soaking wet. The deep red sun sank behind the horizon. The heavens above were clear and the first stars were shining. He looked up at the tiny twinkling spots of light, and thought how insignificant even his life and vast fortune were compared to the hugeness of the universe. The stars would keep shining whether he saved humanity or not.

To John’s surprise, he found Marvin lounging on the white sofa in the salon the next morning looking through an English music magazine.

“Hey,” he said to John without looking up. “Nice weather in New York?”

“Yeah, sure,” John answered. “Nice enough.” He slumped into an easy chair. “I’m surprised that you’re here. Last night I thought you’d flown back home.”

“No way. I like it here. I’d like to stay a while longer, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. That’s what I said.” It irritated John that Marvin didn’t look at him while they talked. And he couldn’t ignore Marvin’s clunky black shoes resting carelessly on the armrest. “Good,” John said and tried not to let his irritation show. “So, what do you plan to do here in Italy?”

“What I always do; try to get along with life.” Marvin was concentrating on a photo of a black lacquered bass guitar. He scratched his back, causing his shoes to rub on the sofa; John almost felt it himself.

“Hey, dude, could you take your shoes off the sofa.”

Marvin looked up. “Hey, are you getting stuck up on me, or what?”

“That’s alpaca leather. I can see the black streaks you’re getting on it from over here.”

Marvin didn’t budge. “I don’t think that you’ll land in the poor house if you have to buy a new one.”

“That’s right, but I won’t buy a new one,” John said with a sharpness that surprised him. “Someone put a lot of work and effort into making this sofa. Even as rich as I am, I don’t have the right to let you trash his work.”

“Okay, okay, calm down!” Marvin took the shoes off the armrest and let them plump on the floor, causing him to lie in an awkward position. “Satisfied?”

John wondered what it had become normal now for him nearly to start a fight over a sofa made of delicate leather. “Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Marvin responded generously. “Honestly, I understand that. You’re a rich dude now, and rich dudes have nice stuff they take care of.”

John didn’t reply. With dismay John realized that they were not the same type of buddies they had been only three months ago and probably would never be so again. For some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on when the money had become a barrier between them.

“By the way, I was at Constantina’s,” Marvin told John unexpectedly.

John said, “Oh, really.” And when Marvin said no more, he added: “That’s nice. I … well; recently, when you arrived … I thought that … it was only a sort of a one-time thing.”

“It is. Well, it’s one time, then another time then another time, know what I mean? You can’t imagine how crazy she is about me.” Marvin turned the page. “Last week we almost screwed the shit out of each other, and I thought that taking a break for a few days would do us some good.” He cackled. “A future DA. She was pretty stunned when I offered her a joint. I guess she never smoked one before.”

John blinked his eyes. Marvin must be crazy to carry marijuana around. “What about Brenda?”

Marvin made a dismissive gesture. “Forget her. We’ve had our problems for a while.” He put the magazine away, stretched, and then looked around the sunlight-flooded salon as if judging the worth of the furniture. “Hey, do you have a job for me?”

“A job?” John asked surprised.

“I thought that maybe you could hire me as your personal executive secretary or whatever,” Marvin explained. “You know, your man for everything, like getting your dad’s watch, that kind of thing. You gotta admit, I did a good job with that, didn’t I? If that pawn dude had seen your name engraved on the backside of the watch, those thousand dollars you gave me would’ve never been enough.”

John just stared at him. He felt taken by surprise. “I don’t know…”

“You need someone like that, man!” Marvin’s voice had that singing tone to it that he used when he talked Konstantino into extending his credit. “You’re rich now, and you’re famous. You can’t go anywhere without bodyguards. People stare at you wherever you go. Your money is your golden cage, man, and that’s why you need a personal secretary, someone like me, smart, inventive, and trustworthy. Someone you can send off to do your dirty work.”

John felt cornered. For some reason he didn’t have a good feeling about the idea. Marvin had told him some crazy stories about his previous jobs and how he had been taken advantage of and treated badly. He had always doubted that Marvin was as innocent as he had let on. On the other hand, the more Marvin talked to him about it the more it seemed like the inevitable next step. As if this was a new way to touch base with his friend. “Okay, you’re hired,” he said, not fully enthusiastic about the newest staff member.

“Hey, I knew I could count on you, buddy!” Marvin grinned. “I take it that it’ll be okay for me to live here. You need your secretary within hollering distance, right?” He must’ve noticed the shadow in John’s face, because he added quickly: “For the time being, of course. I figure that Constantina will want me to move in with her soon anyhow, she just can’t get enough of me. And, oh, by the way, how much do you pay?”

John didn’t feel like thinking about that now. “How much were you thinking about?”

“How about five grand a month?”

“Okay.” What was five grand for him? He made that much in the time it took to draw breath. Besides, Marvin would no doubt be at Constantina’s more than anywhere else.

Then something occurred to him. He got out the notepad that he had had with him on the plane and read the scribbled sentences. “I’ve got your first errand right here,” he told Marvin.

“Well, looky here,” Marvin said with somewhat unconvincing enthusiasm.

“I need books in English. I can’t send Jeremy — he’s a Spaniard and knows only the English as he needs to be a butler. And I’d like to avoid going myself with the bodyguards and all.”

“Books?” Marvin said and looked as if he had never heard of this word before.

“I need everything you can find about the environment, world population growth, greenhouse effect, air pollution, species extinction, the ozone layer, and so forth. I want a complete library concerning humanity’s future.”

“Wait,” Marvin mumbled. “I have to write all that down. Do you have a pen and paper?”

John handed him his pen from his notepad and Marvin started to scribble on the cover of the magazine. “Okay, what was that … environment and what else?”

John told him again. “And books on the economy and finances — whatever you can find.”

“You’re gonna need a bunch of bookshelves, I guess.”

“Yes. Get those too while you’re at it. And you can put them up. We’ll make a library in one of the smaller salons in the back.”

Marvin looked concentrated. “Any ideas where I can find English books in spaghetti-land?”

“No,” John admitted. “I’d start looking in Florence. That’s a university town, after all.”

“Will do. Can I take the Ferrari?”

“I’ll need it later,” John said. Marvin would take John’s toothbrush if he let him have everything. “You can use the little delivery van. Sofia’s got the keys.”

“Is that the housekeeper?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Marvin got up lethargically. “This is all a bit faster than I had imagined. I suppose I should set up a bank account and stuff okay?”

“Go ahead. Give Jeremy the number. He’s in charge of the staff.”

“I see — everything is properly organized here.” As he went out he stopped and turned around with an unsatisfied expression. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You would’ve paid me ten grand if I would’ve asked for it, wouldn’t you?”

John shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know if he would have.

“Shit,” Marvin mumbled and left.

When the phone rang a short time later John knew that it was the stranger. He just knew it.

“Did you think about what I said?” the dark voice wanted to know.

“I’ve thought of nothing else,” John answered and suddenly felt like getting on the guy’s nerves. “Did you happen to fly from New York to Paris yesterday?”

“What? No.”

Now there was something, it wasn’t impossible to rattle his composure.

“I just thought I recognized you.”

There was a moment of silence, and then a subdued laugh. “Nice try.” He did very well regaining his composure. “But now let’s get back to your plans. What will you do with all the money?”

“My best idea so far is to start a global birth control measure.” Why was he talking about this? But on the other hand, why not? It was a lie, after all. The truth was that he was still totally confused. And he didn’t want to tell the stranger that.

“Remarkable.” That almost sounded like a compliment. “May I ask for what reason?”

John went over to the sofa and sat down. With a moist finger he tried in vain to remove the scuffmarks from Marvin’s shoes. “I think that all of mankind’s problems are intertwined. Certain problems develop out of certain situations, which are the product of other situations. And when you look deep enough, sooner or later you get to the root of all our problems, which is the ever-expanding human world population. Saddam Hussein would probably have called it the ‘mother of all problems’.”

The stranger seemed amused by the expression. “I agree with you so far.”

“I don't think any of these problems can be solved on their own, but maybe only if the roots are eradicated.” It did John good to think out loud like this. Up until now he hadn’t even worked through the things he was now telling the stranger. He surprised himself. “And the problem of overpopulation can only be solved with birth control.”

“Nice. Basically correct and close enough to the truth. But I can’t give you any bonus points for the originality and depth of your thoughts on the subject, unless you can describe concrete details how this project could be implemented.”

John’s forehead creased at those words. “Concrete details? Well, birth control means contraception. People all over the world are going to have to be provided with the means of contraception and taught how to use it.”

“What people are we talking about? Men? Women? And what types of contraception do you want to provide? The pill? Condoms?”

“Those are merely minor details.”

“Right. But, in life it’s the details that often make the differences. What will you do about countries that forbid this sort of thing? What to do with countries that are ruled by fanatical mullahs, or are under the influence of the pope? And what about those people who want lots of children? You are wrong if you think that children are unwanted in underdeveloped countries.”

“Hmm,” John hummed. He really did have to think about those details. So far his ideas how to fulfill the prophecy was little better than barroom talk.

“I think it may be time for us to meet,” the stranger said.

“First you’re going to have to tell me who you are.”

“You will see when we get together.”

“I won’t meet with you without knowing your name first.”

Stalemate.

The dark voice said, “Very well then, we won’t meet. But remember one thing, Mr. Fontanelli; I know what has to be done. You don’t. If you wish to find out, then you’ll have to meet with me. That’s the very least you’ll have to do.”

He hung up.

John looked irritably at the phone. “Who the hell does he think he is?” he murmured.

The next morning John raced down to Rome accompanied only by Marco. At one point, after John had slammed on the brakes, Marco told him dryly that he could protect him against assassins and kidnappers, but not against collisions with trucks.

They got to the outskirts of the city just as the first stores were opening. John got a large bouquet of flowers in one of them. The florist assured him that the flowers were appropriate for bereavement.

Lorenzo’s mother was a pretty woman in a mournful sort of way. She was slim, had fine facial features, and was at most forty years old. She greeted John solemnly but with warmth. John introduced Marco to her and explained who he was. She invited them to come into the kitchen.

“You look like your father,” she told John and put coffee cups on the table. After John, who was unsure of himself, called her ‘Signora Fontanelli’ again, she shook her head, and told him, “John, please call me Leona.”

She didn’t look as if she had been crying all morning; she looked as if she had been crying incessantly for the past three months and decided only a few days ago to try and get her life back to a normal life. Her skin looked soft, almost translucent, but her long dark hair hung straight down, dull, and lifeless.

“He didn’t come home that evening,” she began to tell him in a flat voice, staring into thin air. “He had gone out after lunch to meet with someone, a school friend. I can still see him going up that hill. You can see it from the kitchen window. Sometimes … I expect him to come back down any moment, and then I stand here and wait for him … It was a sunny day. I put some flowers outside in the afternoon …” her voice faded. She sat there quietly — lost in her thoughts.

Then she came back to the present, looked at John, and asked: “Would you like to see his room?”

John had to swallow hard. “Yes, I would.”

It was a large room located up on the second floor, but it was so full of dark, old-fashioned furniture and a piano that it still seemed small and cramped. There was a stack of sheet music on the piano and on top of them a case for a flute, which lay open, the silver instrument half-covered with a cloth. There was a picture frame hanging on the wall behind it with a certificate.

“That’s the certificate he got after winning the math contest,” Leona explained with her arms crossed. “And he also got five hundred thousand lira, which he promptly spent on books.” She gestured over to the bookshelf. John cocked his head and tried to read the titles of the books; lots of math books, some on astronomy, a handbook on economics, and a well-read copy of the Reports on the Club of Rome.

“May I take a look at this?” John asked Leona.

“Yes, yes. He read that one a lot, even when he was much younger. I don’t even know where he got it from.”

John opened it. Every page was full of markings underlining the text in different colors, and comments in the margins, or scribbled over the illustrations. John flipped through the pages. His Italian wasn’t enough to skim the text and all he could really understand were the captions. But that was enough to see that for years Lorenzo had been studying the very same topics that John had recently stumbled upon. The entire book was marked, from front to back.

John felt empty and sad, like some swindler about to be caught. A terrible mistake had been made. Fate had got it wrong; the fortune had gone to the wrong individual. It had gone to him, and he didn’t have a clue what to do with it.

A piece of paper slipped out of the book and fluttered to the floor. John quickly picked it up. It was a newspaper clipping. It showed a boy of about twelve or thirteen standing before a chalkboard filled with math problems and the kid holding a certificate, the same one framed and hanging on the wall. The boy looked sincerely and self-confidently into the camera.

“Oh, that’s where he put it,” Leona exclaimed and took the cutout. “I’ve looked everywhere for this. Thanks.”

Seeing Lorenzo had thoroughly shaken John. It wasn’t enough that Lorenzo was intelligent and well educated, but on the photo he also beamed with self-confidence and determination; features John had always wished he possessed. He had no idea how to describe Lorenzo: self-confident maybe. He was someone who had a hold on his life, had a certain charisma.

He now understood too well why the Vacchis had been so sure about this boy. What I don’t understand is how they can possibly see me as the true heir, he thought bitterly. But maybe they really don’t. He felt like an idiot. He was a daydreamer, just like his mother always said. He had no goals and no drive. And he most certainly wasn’t the one who the prophecy meant. He only wore Lorenzo’s suits, drove his car and lived in his house.

Leona rolled back the lid of a writing desk, to reveal a typewriter. It was small and black and almost looked like it belonged in a museum. “He sat here a lot and wrote. Of course he wanted a computer, like all the boys. He got this typewriter from his grandfather.” Her fingers ran smoothly over the keys.

“What did he write?” John asked because he felt he was expected to. He actually felt like running away. Disappearing into thin air.

“All sorts of stuff. I’m not sure. I’ll look through it all some day. Once he showed me a play he had written. I don’t know if it’s good. He wrote a lot of letters, to all sorts of people, and school newspaper articles too, all kinds of things.”

“School paper articles?” For some reason this interested John.

“There was one in the last issue, wait …” She looked through a small stack of booklets with odd drawings on the covers, “here.”

John took the booklet. The title was Ritirata — toilet. He went to the table of contents. The main article was titled Humanity’s Path into the 21st Century, by Lorenzo Fontanelli. John felt his pulse race.

It was unbelievable. It was really and truly a long article that dealt with the problems of mankind on the threshold of a new century in just ten pages. “Could I make a copy of this?” John asked with a dry mouth.

“You may take the whole booklet with you. I have a couple more copies. Please, go ahead, I’d really like that.”

He wanted to say thanks, but he somehow couldn’t get it out of his dry throat. He flipped to the last page and read the last paragraph. He read it again, scarcely able to believe what he was reading:

The world has many problems at once and at first sight it all looks pretty grim for humanity. However, I will demonstrate that this is only a simple flaw in the way our civilization is constructed, one that we ourselves can also eliminate. So, don’t commit suicide yet, and stay around to read the next issue of Ritirata!

$16,000,000,000,000

AFTER HE FINISHED the call, Cristoforo left the phone lying on his lap a while longer, looking out into the distance; he smiled silently.

Gregorio cleared his throat, bringing him out of his reverie.

The Padrone sighed. Young people just didn’t understand when subtle forces are at work behind the scenes and the seemingly objective reality around us, he thought. “You’re in a pensive mood?” he asked his son.

“Definitely. I’m wondering whether you know what you are doing.”

Cristoforo put the phone away. “It is time to come out with the whole story.”

“That is against the agreement.”

“Perhaps I just can’t resist the temptation to tinker with fate.”

“Nothing!” said Marco defeated. “It’s not there.”

John stood among the papers like a general among his troops and looked at the empty shelves and the equally empty drawers. “We didn’t miss anything?”

“No,” the bodyguard sighed.

Reluctantly, Leona had allowed John to hunt for the manuscript of the second part of the article. But she had to leave the room, she had told him. John got Marco to help since his Italian was far better. Together they had gone through every piece of paper they could find in the room. They found poems and the play Leona had mentioned and a few pieces of prose, typed lists of books that Lorenzo must’ve borrowed from various libraries, a few disrespectful essays on religious themes, summaries of school work on biology and geography, but none of it organized in any particular order. Two thick folders were filled with math calculations that meant less then nothing to John.

They did come across a few manuscripts obviously intended for the school paper; a collection of quotes from teachers, over-the-top critical comments on the state of society and government, a bit about human rights and animal welfare.

But the second half of the article remained elusive.

Marco said, “Maybe he’d already submitted it.” He sat on the floor next to the bed like a tired bear and didn’t look at all interested in reading through all those papers a third time.

John nodded. “We’d better clean up.”

The office for the student newspaper was in the basement of the school. It had small windows high up on the walls, leaving lots of room for shelves laden with torn-open packs of paper, empty beer cans, cigarettes, and Coke cans as well as books with loads of page markers in them, and tons of binders. The chairs were just as worn as the tables, the monitor of the only computer was on, the phone belonged in a museum, and the printer was making strange squeaking noises. The whole place stank of cigarette smoke, unsurprisingly seeing as the gaunt, straw-haired youth with bright eyes behind thin-framed glasses who introduced himself as the editor-in-chief was either rolling a cigarette or smoking one at the same time as his nimble fingers scribbled notes.

“What an honor, what an honor,” he said greeting them and cleared cartons and ashtrays off two chairs. “Please, have a seat, Signor Fontanelli. Unfortunately, I can offer you only this humble chair to sit in, which is not to say that I would turn down a small donation to improve the furniture situation …”

John sat down. Marco preferred to stand by the door with his arms crossed.

“On the phone you were, how should I put it, mysterious, which caught my interest. But all I really gathered was that Lorenzo was you cousin, right?”

“His father is a cousin of my father,” John. “I‘m not sure if there is a proper term for my relationship to John.”

“Ah, I see, ‘second cousin once removed,’ maybe? But whatever, you’re looking for something Lorenzo wrote?” He pulled out a small tape recorder from underneath a stack of newspapers, large envelopes, and a dusty cap. “Do you mind if I record our conversation? An exclusive interview with the richest man in the world could give a new lease on life to our nearly bankrupt little newspaper. And to be honest with you that’s my main problem at present.”

John hesitated. “I’m not sure …”

But the youth was already fingering with the buttons, and then said into it: “Interview with John Fontanelli, trillionaire, in the afternoon of the … where’s the calendar? No idea what date it is today — Maybe July 7?.” He placed the tape recorder on the table between them. “Signor Fontanelli, you are a distant relative of our deceased fellow student Lorenzo. If I remember the newspaper articles correctly, Lorenzo would now be the heir of the vast fortune if he hadn’t died before the set date. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” John said slowly. He somehow had been blindsided again. “That is correct.”

“You found among his papers an article from the most recent issue of Ritirata written by him, which describes the problems facing mankind, or so you told me on the phone. You have come here to the editorial office to look for the second part of the article, which is supposed to outline the solutions to the said problems. Please allow me to ask, Signor Fontanelli, are you searching your cousin Lorenzo’s estate for ideas to help you do something useful with your fantastic wealth?”

John realized this boy was pretty darn sharp and a sly dog to top it. He pointed at the recorder. “Turn it off.”

The eyes behind the glasses blinked a few times as if he had a speck of dust in them. “Signor, it is no big deal. I’m only asking a few questions … He saw Marco move, not much, maybe an inch or two, but it was enough to make him reach for the recorder and turn it off. “Alright already.”

“Okay,” John began, “what about the manuscript for the second article?”

“Well, that’s a bit of a problem,” the editor, whose name was Antonio or something — John had already forgotten — said. “Thing is: I don’t have it.”

John and Marco briefly exchanged looks. Then John said slowly, “If it’s a matter of money, I see no problem in making a substantial donation in exchange for this favor.”

“Well that would be great, but the thing is, I published the first part only because Lorenzo promised me that he had the second part as good as finished and would send it to me as soon as possible. He was always dependable like that so I didn’t give it a second thought. I mean no one could guess that he would stuff a pear full of bees into his mouth and … But to get back to the point, I don’t have the second part. In the next issue we’ll print an obituary instead.”

“He told you he would send it?” John asked. “Didn’t Lorenzo attend this school?”

“He did, but he never came to the paper’s office. I think he didn’t like the air in here — the smoke, which I’m afraid we need when we’re working. He and I mostly talked on the phone and out in the schoolyard sometimes. He had always sent his manuscripts. I guess he felt more like an author that way.”

“How long ago was it when he said he was going to send it?”

“Hmm … yeah, wait. The last time I talked with him was three or four days before his death, so I’d say it was about two months ago, probably more.”

John looked disturbed. “Then it can’t be in the mail system anymore.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Anything is possible with the Italian postal system. My dad once sent a love letter to his first great love, but she didn’t receive it until after she gave birth to her first child, from another man, of course. Because she got married in the mean time and…”

“In other words,” John said interrupting the flannel, “the second part probably doesn’t exist.” They’d been on a wild goose chase.

The youth’s nimble hands crushed the cigarette he was smoking into a half-empty Coke can and promptly reached for the tobacco. “I’ll happily take another look. How much did you say you’d donate, a million dollars?”

“I didn’t say,” John said and stood up. He handed the boy his business card. “In case you find it.” John would have to tell his office staff to make sure any letter from the school reached him.

The high windows of the office building looked down on Hamburg swamped by rain, an ocean of gray, wet rooftops, skirting the dank overcast harbor. Ursula Valen took the visitor’s seat, which Wilfried van Delft had cleared off for her, and she waited while the head of Stern magazine’s department for entertainment, media, and modern life found somewhere on the overstuffed shelves in his office to put the stack of books and cassettes that he moved from the chair.

“It’s always frustrating …” the man sighed. He was in his mid-fifties, with thinning reddish blond hair and had a remarkably good figure for someone who sat behind a desk all day. “Who coined the word information explosion? Somebody with foresight in any case. A prophet, I’d almost be willing to say.” He finally gave up and put everything in a big pile in one corner of the room and sat down behind his desk. “How was America?” he asked with folded hands.

Ursula Valen looked up in surprise. “How did you know I was in the States?”

“Oh, I follow your work with the greatest of interest. You do know that, right?” He smiled like a magician who had just performed a good trick. “Besides, the editor who sent you there, might work for another magazine, but he gets his paycheck from the same account as I do. That’s how it is these days in the world of publishing: one dragon, many heads.”

Ursula nodded slowly. She always found it hard to keep track of who owned what in the world of media conglomerates. She didn’t like to think about it, because it reminded her of the way things were in the former East German press. “It was very informative,” she told him. “I’d be happy to send you a copy of the article, if you wish.”

Van Delft raised his hands. “Please, don’t. Please, only articles I’m allowed to print.”

“That brings us to the point. I stumbled onto something that may turn out to be a sensational story. I’d like to investigate it further.”

“You told me the last time we spoke that finishing your studies was your first priority.”

“I know.”

“Alright. I’m all ears.”

Ursula told him what had happened on the plane. She changed a few minor details, because she didn’t want to explain what she had been doing in New York, which hadn’t had a lot to do with the history of the automobile. “The thing is,” she said at last, “why would they have lied to me? They didn’t know who I was, so it would not have made any sense. On the other hand, a prophecy would be a reason why this family of lawyers had kept this unbelievable fortune for generations, nurtured it, and actually handed it over in the end.”

Van Delft had started to play around with his large letter opener — a habit he had when he was thinking hard. “And you’re certain it was Fontanelli’s brother?”

“Absolutely.”

He swiveled his office chair around and looked at the wall calendar, full of notes and scribbled over so that it was as colorful as the kindergarten drawing by his granddaughter hanging above it. “It is interesting, you’re right about that,” he admitted. “But you do realize that this story would have to be bulletproof before we can publish it?”

“Naturally,” she nodded.

Twelve years earlier Stern magazine had fallen for the fake Hitler diaries, a fiasco from which the periodical still hadn’t fully recovered.

He ran a finger along the edge of the opener as he said: “I wouldn’t consider a casual conversation between two fellow travelers you eavesdropped on to be a trustworthy source.”

“I realize that. The first thing I’d do is to go to Florence and take a look at the original testament. If it looks like there’s a grain of truth, I’ll do some research on Giacomo Fontanelli …” She paused, because van Delft was grinning at her as if she had just said something totally idiotic.

“My dear child, do you even realize what you are going up against? This family — the Vacchis, they have isolated themselves from the press in a way I have never seen before. The list of journalists who’ve come back empty-handed would reach from here to the Alster River. I think it might be easier to get permission to photograph Michael Jackson in the shower, than to get a look at the Vacchi documents.”

“Really?”

“Really. American newspapers have already offered millions. But the Vacchis are rich enough already. There’s no way.”

Ursula leaned back and grinned. “Interesting,” she said. “I spoke with Cristoforo Vacchi yesterday and told him what I wanted, and he asked me round. Next Tuesday. He’s even picking me up from the train station.”

Van Delft almost cut his finger with the letter opener. “You can’t be serious!”

“I’ve just come from the train station where I was checking the connections. All I have to do is book the ticket.”

“And you are sure that you spoke with the old Vacchi?” When he saw the expression on her face he waved a hand. “Alright, that was a stupid question. But tell me, what in the world did you tell him?”

“Only the truth, that I’m a history student and that I work for a newspaper part time.”

Wilfried van Delft shook his head. He was visibly impressed. “And you told him that you want to see the testament?”

“Of course. He only wanted to know if I knew Latin.” Ursula bit her lower lip when it dawned on her what van Delft’s reaction would be. She took a breath and said, “I’ll offer you rights to be the first to print the story after I finish writing the article.”

“First rights?” he echoed.

“For Germany,” she added. She thought feverishly where she had put the business card of the press agent she had met at a publisher’s reception. She would need his help. And everything had to happen fast. “Not exclusive rights.”

“I didn’t know you were such a tough business woman,” Wilfried van Delft said sourly.

The library took longer to set up then John had expected. It had been a week already, and all Marvin put in the little salon that John had told his personnel to clear out the day they discussed it was one lousy shelf with a measly thirty books on it. They all had esoteric titles about UFOs, prophecies of the end of the world by Nostradamus, or calling for the world’s population to return to life as nomads.

“I wanted scientific books! Books about physics, biology, sociology, economics, and not this junk!”

Marvin was lounging on the sofa reading a book called The Great Conspiracies. “They’re ordered, calm down,” he said without looking up. “That’s all the bookstores had and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to get them. This way you can get acquainted with a bit of blue sky thinking?”

John looked at the covers of the two books he was holding. “Neither UFOS nor Nostradamus are exactly blue sky thinking.”

“This here, for one, is pretty informative,” Marvin said holding up the book he was reading. “If it’s true what it says in here…“

“Which it isn’t, luckily,” John grumbled.

“Then you really are a victim of the conspiracy!”

John rolled his eyes. “Somehow I knew you would say that.”

“The date says it all, the twenty-third of April. The number twenty-three is a symbolic number for the Illuminati — the most secret conspiracy in the world. They have infiltrated everything to gain worldwide power.”

“If they are so secret then why can you read all about them in that book?”

“Well, information seeped out every once in awhile. Kennedy, for example, posed too much of a threat to them — that’s why they had him killed. It was on a twenty-third to demonstrate their power to everyone who knows about them.”

John looked at him skeptically. “If I remember correctly then the assassination happened on the twenty-second of November.”

“Really?” Marvin stared. “Weird. Maybe they made a mistake. They had it all done by assistants, you know, and maybe they didn’t stick to the instructions exactly.”

“Oh sure,” John said. “I can imagine what problems they have with their personnel. Have you set up a bank account yet?”

“Nope, forgot.”

“Well if you do get round to it, don’t bother giving Jeremy the number, okay?”

When John looked at the solitary bookshelf he realized it would start a riot if the others he employed knew how much he was paying Marvin for sitting on his ass. He would pay him without Jeremy’s knowledge from another bank account. Luckily he had more than enough of them.

But he wasn’t happy about it. It would mean he was punishing those doing honest work for their money. Just like his father had said.

Marvin nodded as he yawned. “Gotcha.”

Later on, after Marvin left to go meet with Constantina, John went out onto the terrace, which he had arranged for himself underneath a taut yellow awning. There was a table, chair, writing utensils, an Italian-English dictionary, and a copy of Lorenzo’s article. He had decided to translate the text into English on his own. He thought that that way he would make sure he really understood it.

In recent years so much has been written and said — most of it highly depressing — on the subject of the ‘Limits of Growth,’ the future of humanity and so on, that people don’t want to think about it anymore. Nobody wants to read books or articles like that, therefore, none is being published. And because none is being published, people think the situation is no longer as bad as it was.

But this is wrong. Our parents’ generation, those born shortly after the war and who fell in love to the sounds of David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and Abba, and warned off sexual intercourse by Pope Paul VI, lived through mankind’s Golden Age. Their quality of life was higher than ever before and than it ever will be again. We, my friends, are seeing the end of this era.

The reason for its decline is the same as for its rise: industrialization. Technological developments had spurred on an increase in living standards that would seem like pure magic to people from previous centuries. But those inventions alone didn’t cause all our problems, this happened only through mass production. A car for everyone, telephones and color TVs in every home. It was industrialization that made this dissemination possible. Antibiotics must be mass-produced to have them available all the time and everywhere. Agricultural methods today have virtually nothing in common with those of only a hundred years ago. Machines, artificial fertilizers, and pesticides have increased agricultural output to such an extent that we artificially restrict it.

Medical advances have cut infant mortality rates and increased life expectancy, which has led to an extremely rapid growth in the world’s population. Up until now, agriculture has been able to keep pace with the increasing number of humans. World hunger is a distribution problem and not one of production. However, agriculture is eventually reaching the limits of increased production; to make matters worse desertification is causing a loss of arable, maybe forever.

Industry too is reaching its maximum capacity. Raw materials are becoming scarce, and the environment is already suffering tremendous damage.

You may say that you don’t see or hear anything about these problems. Everyday goods are readily available and some are getting cheaper rather than more expensive. The predicted catastrophic pollution of air and water haven’t happened yet. Somehow things are still manageable, aren’t they?

But let us imagine that we could raise the standard of living overnight for every human in the world to the level we enjoy here in Italy or in the other industrialized nations. A billion Chinese driving cars, a billion Indians with suburban homes and a barbeque grill and so on. The negative environmental consequences of this are easy to imagine.

There are about four times as many people living in underdeveloped nations as in the developed ones. But one person from an industrialized nation pollutes the earth ten to twenty times as much as someone from the Third World. This means that higher living standards would cause at least ten times more pollution in a world which already has too much!

That would be the end.

To cut things short: the limits have been reached. If the way we live in developed countries is not possible for everyone else on earth, then we are simply taking more of the pie than we have a right to. The only reason we don’t notice this calamitous state of affairs is because we have made sure the problems exist in far away countries. For a long time now, Italy has been using more raw materials than exist within its territory, and this is the case in other European nations as well. Our continuous growth is possible only because we steal the raw materials from Third World countries at knockdown prices. We have even found a way to get rid of our garbage: we send it to them.

And we’re still not satisfied. Even though Italy’s population growth is practically stagnant, we remain hell-bent on growth. We want more of everything and want it bigger and better and cheaper. Nobody seems able to say, “STOP! Let’s be satisfied with what we already have.”

Where is this going to take us, this constant economic growth, which seems more important to governments than anything else? They whine when it’s only two percent. Let’s say it was five percent — a lousy five percent. Do the math if you paid attention in school, but if not, this means a doubling in sixteen years. Or twice as much use of raw materials, twice the environmental burden, and so on. Even one percent of economic growth will add up to gigantic growth over many years — more than you can imagine.

John nodded when he got to this part of the article. That’s how his fortune grew. That had also been a gigantic growth.

Naturally, this cannot go on forever. If a family ten years ago had one car and now has three, it doesn’t mean that every family will eventually have a hundred. All these things, raw materials, environment, health, reproduction, living standards, climate and so on, are intertwined with each other in many ways. A change in one will affect the others. What could happen to a network of systems under constant strain for a long time is an eventual and sudden collapse. When one system in a network breaks down it will cause the others to break down too — a sort of domino effect. A minor example we know of happened in northern European lakes; they had pollutants pumped into them for a long time until their entire ecosystems collapsed; they are now biologically dead — no aquatic plants, no fish, and no amphibians. The same thing can happen to the giant system that is Planet Earth and maybe there will be intelligent insects 65 million years from now wondering why we disappeared so suddenly, just like the dinosaurs before us.

The world has many problems right now and at first sight it all looks pretty grim for humanity. However, I will demonstrate that this is only a flaw in the way our civilization is constructed, one that we ourselves can also eliminate. So, don’t commit suicide yet, and stick around to read the next issue of Ritirata!

That, John thought as he went through his translation again, was maybe not brilliant, but quite a feat for a sixteen-year-old. The last paragraph sounded very bold, nevertheless. But most of all he found it depressing that he hadn’t the least idea what might be in part two!

$17,000,000,000,000

IT WAS GETTING to be a regular ritual. Just as John was about to go to bed the phone rang in the bedroom. As usual the caller wanted to know how his thoughts were coming.

“I think that industrialization itself is the root of the problem,” John told the stranger, leaning back on the little sofa deliberately positioned to allow him a view of the wide, dark, empty beach, and the silver breakers. He enjoyed talking like this, speaking aimlessly to someone on the other end of the line who listened attentively. He realized the conversations gave him new ideas. It was like in the past when he used to go to confession. Or as if he were lying on a couch next to a psychiatrist — at least that’s how imagined it might be. He had only been to a therapist once in his life: as a child, because his mother was worried that he was a dreamer who lived in a world of his own imagination. The therapist made him play with little toy dolls and invent stories about them. Then he told his mother that her son was definitely a dreamer, but didn’t have much imagination.

“Industrialization? Aha. And based on this knowledge what do you plan to do?”

“We must find a way back, back to nature. I realize this isn’t a very original plan.”

The dark laugh almost sounded disparagingly. “It’s a deadly plan. It is industrialized civilization that keeps many people alive. If you remove artificial fertilizer and domesticated plants you’ll have the streets strewn with corpses.”

“Of course not all at once; I was thinking of a slow change to agriculture based on sustainable food production methods, the use of solar energy, you know, the whole gamut of alternative ways and means.”

“You can smoke cigarettes produced by sustainable agriculture, but they are still cigarettes. Or you can simply quit smoking. That is difficult. What you must keep in mind is that without technological aid, this planet can support maybe five hundred million people. You cannot forego the use of technology until you’ve reduced the world’s population to that level.”

John sighed. “All right, I have no plan. What do you suggest?”

“I know what’s to be done.”

“Then tell me.”

He sounded as if he were smirking. “I’d be glad to, but I can’t on the phone.”

What kind of plan could that be? He’s bluffing, just like Lorenzo. There was no such plan. There was nothing to be done. That was the truth.

“We must meet,” the stranger said, “as soon as possible.”

“I’ll think about it,” John said and hung up.

He felt restless, locked in a golden cage, the fortune crushing him like a monstrous invisible weight. One trillion dollars … an unimaginable amount of money. One thousand times a billion. One million times one million. But to do something really effective with such a sum was like forcing the steam train of history onto different tracks.

And what was the most effective thing to do? Was there anything at all, or was it already too late to change the way things are?

He walked restlessly around the big house. He tried to find relaxation in the whirlpool, but got back out before the water had even warmed up. He stood on the terrace and looked blankly out over the sea.

In a dark moment he thought, when the shit hits the fan at least it wouldn’t affect him. With his money he could effectively protect himself and those dear to him. He would still have clean water as war raged all around. He could buy a piece of land and have it defended to the bitter end if necessary. He could have bunkers built if he wanted to. He would have access to the best medical care. He could buy, hire, bribe, and whatever else no matter what happened.

In one of those dark moments it was suddenly clear to him what the prophecy meant. Humanity has lost its future. This meant that there was a fearful premonition that from now on everything would get worse and would eventually end. Rather than face it, people looked back through rose-tinted glasses at the past or lived today’s hectic busy life to the fullest, simply so they wouldn’t have to think about the future. And it was a black hole that humanity was rushing into.

Humanity had lost its future. At some point, somehow it had got lost. People had lost their faith in the future. They said faith moves mountains? It was also possible that it would cause a civilization to go under.

All people cared about was money-grubbing: me, myself, and I. For as long as possible. No matter what comes afterward, nothing comes afterwards anyway. Get whatever you can. Live as well as you can before it all ends.

Was this really the basis of our civilization? If someone started to guess what it would be like in 2100 people laughed at him, didn’t they? What else could there be in 2100 except a sooty sky, stinking water, and maybe a few cockroaches that could survive everything, even atomic fallout? To think otherwise was a sign of utter naivety.

Somewhere during his restless wanderings through the house, John found a bottle. It was a bottle of old, strong port wine that was probably very expensive, and he emptied it somberly pouring one glass after the other as the sun was setting. The alcohol finally brought the carousel of thoughts in his mind to a standstill.

Among the books delivered by the box load, John found one about earth’s overpopulation that was written when he was five years old. Marvin must’ve found it in an antique shop. He couldn’t ask him, because his glorious-yet-never-available-secretary-for-all-and-no-occasions was unavailable at the moment, just like the promised bookshelves.

He leafed through the book and looked at the many diagrams and formulas, read a bit here and there. He didn’t understand much, only that the author must’ve been an authority, who questioned everything that was considered to be the truth on overpopulation. He posed the question: what exactly is overpopulation? Why was Calcutta considered overpopulated but not Paris? Bangladesh had the same population density as Malta, so that on its own could not be a criterion to define a country as being overpopulated. Is a country overpopulated when in reality it is nothing more than utterly poor? If the people in underdeveloped countries weren’t so terribly poor they could afford the price of food. Then the increased investments for machines and so forth in agriculture would pay off.

To speak of a world population problem, the author wrote, is to make an inadmissible generalization. It had already been determined that the world’s population would at some point settle down to a fixed level, perhaps around twelve to fifteen billion, and it was even possible that it would go down again. This had happened often before in the past in certain limited localities. What is being described as overpopulation is in fact a category of poverty, or to be more exact, impoverishment.

Misery is a symptom of hard crisis in the economic and social systems. To see a race between the stork and plow, as Robert Malthus postulated in the nineteenth century, is misleading and may lead in the end to a Lebensraum ideology, the concept of a people without living space, as happened in the Third Reich.

John turned the book over and read the text on the inside cover and the author’s biography. Was he exaggerating the situation, or a lonely voice of reason in a sea of hysteria? If only he didn’t have such a hangover this morning! He felt as if he had destroyed half his brain, yet wherever he opened the book he found it written clearly and concisely and with cool calculating analysis. It was reassuring. Perhaps the whole deal wasn’t so dramatic after all? He had no idea anymore.

The inheritance would restore humanity’s lost future.

What else did it say in the testament? He had never actually read it because he couldn’t read Latin. He never thought about having someone help him with this. But he would need help. This thing was simply too big for him to solve alone. He had always admired the cool, hyper-intelligent super heroes in the movies; the Tom Cruises and Arnold Schwarzeneggers who took on overwhelming odds to save the whole world and who always knew what was to be done and were always right in the end and always won. If such dudes really existed in this world, he certainly wasn’t one of them.

He called Eduardo. He asked him to accompany him to the firm’s archives in Florence, to help him read the testament, word for word. And everything else that was from Giacomo Fontanelli. “And then afterwards I want us to either have dinner together, or to get drunk, or to beat the shit out of each other.”

That at least made Eduardo smirk; since the incident at Capannori he had barely any contact with John. Maybe this was a way to patch up their friendship. “Why is everyone suddenly so interested in the archive?” Eduardo wanted to know. “Am I missing something here? Is today the International Old Paper day, or what?”

John asked him what he meant.

“Grandfather is there today with a history student from Germany who is interested in the Fontanelli prophecy. Didn’t he tell you?”

“No,” John answered, irritated. “How did she even find out about the prophecy’s existence?”

“Good question, isn’t it?”

“I can’t understand what’s written in those old books, really,” Eduardo told John as they drove to Florence. “It’s dusty old paper, nothing more. I sometimes get irritated how we are bound and live by words that were written five hundred years ago. What right did he have to lay down the law to us?”

“No idea,” John said. “But right now you don’t sound like a Vacchi.”

It was his first ride in the armored Mercedes that Marco insisted on. It took special training to drive such a vehicle properly, which was why Marco was driving it. The interior still smelled brand new, of leather and money. And somehow it felt as if all the potholes in the small roads were filled up overnight.

“I was the last keeper of the Fontanelli fortune,” Eduardo said grimly. “We have fulfilled our solemn vow. Now the Vacchi family is finally free.” He looked out the window. “And will probably die out.”

Florence was full of tourists, as usual. The traffic wasn’t moving. Pedestrians tried to see through the car’s tinted windows when it was forced to stop again in a jam. John found out what an advantage it was to have curtains in the back window. Luckily the law firm was located in a small street without buildings of any architectural and historical significance, so it was very quiet there. John had got used to the procedure of exiting the car; Marco stopped right by the entryway, despite it being a “Strictly No Parking” area, got out with his right hand in his jacket, looked all around, and then opened the rear door. He got back into the car only after everyone was safely inside the house. He would park the car elsewhere and come back when he was called on the car phone.

Inside the house it was still cool and smelled old as usual. They could barely hear voices. So the Padrone and the female student were already here. They went upstairs to the second floor. The door was half open and the lights were on. The voices could be heard more clearly now, chiefly the female voice. There was something in her tone that made John feel edgy, but he didn’t know why. Had he heard this voice before? No, that’s not it. Maybe he felt slighted by the senior Vacchi; that he had brought someone else here to these chambers and to these documents without asking John or even informing him.

The two didn’t hear John and Eduardo approaching the room. Padrone and a young woman with light brown hair sat together hunched over further back in the room, concentrating on the testament beneath the glass. She had a little dictionary, notepad and pen and repeated what she was writing down. “… and thus it happened in the night of the twenty-third of April in the year of our Lord 1495 that I had a dream in which God spoke to me …”

Herewith I, Giacomo Fontanelli, born in the year of our Lord 1480 in Florence, declare this to be my last will and testament. I declare this and write this down in presence of witnesses who will attest to this. Furthermore, I do declare that I am at full bodily strength and as far as can be determined by my fellow man am far from being on the threshold of death. I further declare that I will abnegate all my fortunes and worldly goods and from this day forward will devote myself to the service of God our Lord in Heaven, which I have long intended to do. I humbly do declare this.

I was appointed to this by a dream that I dreamt as a child, a dream more lucid and clear than any I had before or since. And this dream came on the night of the twenty-third of April in the year of our Lord 1495, wherein God spoke to me. I humbly declare that it was as if God allowed me a tiny view of His omniscience, and it was truly wonderful to see. I saw myself lying on the bed in the chamber of the domestic servant house in which my mother and I lived and although every detail I saw was clear, I still knew it to be a dream. I looked up and saw the land and the city of Florence, but I did not only see to distances that are usually visible to the human eye, but also the past and the future. I saw the end of God’s rule in the Prior Savonarola and that he would burn before the town hall, and that brought forth great fear in me, since I was a boy of fifteen and tried to lead a pious and devout life. But I remained calm in my dream, at the same time I was serene and untouched by the wants of this world and with my eyes and mind I was even able to see further into the future. I saw wars and battles, famine, and pestilence, great men and cowardly treason, and saw so many faces that I wrote them down in another place to serve as a guide.

As I finally saw a time that I knew was five hundred years from now and was on the threshold to the next millennium, I saw a world unimaginably splendid but terrible at the same time. I saw millions of people live as opulently as the Medici and do things with machines that I fully understood in my dream yet cannot describe anymore today, only so much that it is to us like magic, but it was not magic, and the children too could use some of them. But it was not paradise that I saw. There were also wars that raged, people marched over the land like ants and devoured the land, where the sun itself could be flung down upon an enemy, and all were frozen with fear that this power might be unleashed and that a war would break out that could engulf the earth itself so mighty had mankind become. They had turned away from God and worshipped Mammon in his stead, yet they lived in screaming misery and awful fear and none of them saw a future. Many believed in a second Flood and that mankind would be wiped from the face of the earth for good, and many people lived under the yoke of this expectation.

But I saw that God loved His people truly despite their deeds and whether they turned from Him or not and that it is not God who punishes them but that they punish themselves enough by turning away from love and seek their salvation in worldly things. I saw this so clear and impressionably that I wish I could be more eloquent than I am and able to have you share my wonderful certitude, but alas I cannot.

I then saw my own life develop in front of me and saw what God wanted of me. I saw myself leaving the monastery and going into apprenticeship with a merchant who would be my patron and teach me well and who would make me his partner. I saw myself go to Venice and Rome as a merchant and saw the lucrative businesses and those that I would avoid with luck and saw how my wealth would grow. I saw in my dream even the woman who was destined for me, and I saw it so as it would happen later. I saw that I would have six sons and have a happy life which others could be jealous of, but I also saw the sad moment that I would never forget in all the years, in which I would have to carry my loving wife to her grave.

And now this has happened, I know that the time had come to fulfill the plan of providence. Thus I make this declaration. I bequeath all my fortunes to be kept in custody with Michelangelo Vacchi. He shall keep it to preserve it and he may increase it by loans and interest, yet I do not decree it as his property, but rather it shall be preserved and multiplied and bequeathed to my youngest male descendant who is living on the 23rd of April 1995, since he shall be the chosen one to return the future to mankind and he will do this with the help of this fortune.

Because I was born out of wedlock, I decree that he who is born out of wedlock and is the youngest male heir be included but a child not born of family blood but merely taken on shall be excluded. In my dream I saw that Michelangelo, although he may not believe this, will have children and that his family will not be extinct in the coming five hundred years, and they will do their duty. His family may keep the thousandth of a tenth of the fortune and all my papers. This document and this endeavor must be kept secret until the aforementioned date.

“…must be kept secret until the aforementioned date,” Ursula Valen finished translating the testament. “Hereby signed in the year of our Lord, 1525. And there’s Fontanelli’s signature and those of the witnesses down on the bottom.” She looked up and saw the old man beside her with a kind smile on his face. “That is simply unbelievable!” She was being economical with the truth. For any historian this entire archive was a sensation. This was an archive that had been well cared for and preserved for five hundred years, just waiting to be examined and assessed! It was as if generations of intelligent attentive people had done preliminary work for the scientific community of today.

The account books alone were a treasure trove of information about old currencies, their period of use and their buying power. She had seen notes in the books where one Vacchi had described world politics to help explain why he took money from one region to bring it to another. They was a five-hundred-year-old diary of the finances and economics of Europe and the known world of the time; this is what was had lain hidden in all those leather-bound, consecutively numbered tomes: far more material than she would need for her thesis. She would do anything possible to write her paper here. At the very least. This was a find that a scientist could examine for a lifetime.

And then there was still the little matter of an article to write for the Stern.

“Do you think you make do something of this?” Cristoforo wanted to know.

Ursula laughed helplessly. “You need to ask? It is … what can I say? It is unbelievable. Absolutely fascinating. ‘Whether I can make something of this?’ What a question! If I can’t do anything with all this then I’m in the wrong profession.”

Even an explosion couldn’t have startled her more than the dry throat clearing behind them.

“May I ask what you want to do with all this?” an impatient voice asked.

John had a strong, irrational feeling that this woman was after his money. She was slim and graceful and her hair framed smooth, but otherwise unremarkable face with big eyes dark as onyx. She looked like a dark, quiet angel at first, yet there was something about her that made him shudder, made him fear her with a nameless inescapable fear.

She had a delicate hand on her chest. Her breasts rose and fell as she breathed. They had an arousing shape; the nipples could be seen through her blouse. It was clear he had startled her.

She said something in German, something automatically said when startled. Then she recovered and said in fluent English: “I intend to do scientific research with this. That is, I will write treatises for history magazines and maybe even a book. And I will also write an article for a German magazine. I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Fontanelli. I would appreciate it if you knocked the next time.”

Why was she so disturbed? “An article? What sort of article?”

“About the historic background of your fortune,” she answered with cool certainty. “Apart from a load of dull stories about interest and compound interest the media has published nothing very remarkable.”

“I don’t think that I can agree to that!”

“Why? Are you hiding something?”

John struggled to suppress the impulse to get into an argument. He turned to the Padrone, who seemed only slightly irritated by their appearance. “Why wasn’t I informed about this?”

Cristoforo Vacchi frowned. “Oh, sooner or later I would have introduced you to each other. Signora Valen, this is John Fontanelli, the heir mentioned in the testament, and this is my grandson, Eduardo. John, may I introduce to you Miss Ursula Valen. She’s a history student from Germany and a part-time journalist.”

John nodded curtly. “Do you think it’s a good idea to allow a journalist in here to view the documents?”

“Yes,” the Padrone said. “I thought it appropriate.”

“Don’t I have something to say about this too?”

“I’m sorry, John, no. The archive is our property, the property of the family Vacchi, a record of our achievements. It is natural that we want recognition for this.”

Ursula Valen studied Fontanelli. What an arrogant asshole. He seemed to think he was something superior. Sure, he was the chosen one, God’s tool, a messiah if you will. He was somewhat tanned, slim, almost too thin, and dressed expensively as elegantly. But he had an ordinary-looking face. No one would have turned to take a second look at him if it weren’t for his expensive clothing. The erotic aura he had must be the money.

One trillion dollars stood there in front of her. Madness! An example of what incredible achievements people were capable of when they were driven by a vision, a prophecy, and an unbending belief — and how little such prophesies were worth even if they had their origins in a divine vision.

But the old lawyer seemed to be on her side. And the question of who owned the documents was clear. She wasn’t going to let an opportunity like this be taken away by some ill-tempered, bad-mannered upstart. She would never allow anything to be taken away from her again. She had grown up in a communist state, and was the granddaughter of a declared Nazi. As a result she had been barred from most aspects of social life in East Germany, from joining the communist party youth organization, and from attending university. But then the state that kept her from studying history collapsed, and she was able to study after all, even if a little later than she had intended. No, she would never be intimidated again.

The Stern article, bylined Ursula Valen, appeared the following Thursday as a title story and brought the news magazine the second-highest sales in its history. The following day, the article was reprinted by practically all the world’s important newspapers. Months later Ursula Valens was still getting royalties from the story thanks to the syndication fees. She was even getting payments in such unusual currencies as Thai baht and Vietnamese dong and from such countries such as Nauru and Burkina Faso. The money she earned from the photos of the testament alone was enough to allow her to pay back her student loans.

The night was darker than usual; it wrapped around him like a black, impenetrable cloak. There were no stars, no moon, and the sound of the surf sounded like the wheeze of a giant.

“You must do something now,” the dark voice said. “You can no longer wait and hope that God will tell you what to do.”

John looked down on the wrinkled, well-read newspaper lying on his lap. It was a copy of the Corriere della Sera, and it featured the Stern article from Ursula Valen, which detailed the Vacchi accomplishments concerning the Fontanelli fortune. And the article made him, the heir, sound like a stupid, ignorant, no-good and a clueless, arrogant man not worth the effort, and on whom generations of intelligent, faithful Vacchis had, in retrospect, wasted their time.

“You need help,” the stranger insisted. “And no one except me can help you, believe me. It is time that we meet.”

“Alright, you won. Tell me where, when, and how.”

“Come to London. Be discrete, please. Take a normal scheduled flight. Only you.”

John let out a sound that sounded like half a sigh and half laugh. “Alone? Why on Earth should I do that? I don’t know you. You could be a wanted mass murderer or a cunning kidnapper.”

“You may be accompanied by your bodyguards, of course. What I meant was that I won’t show myself if you bring a Vacchi or if the press catch wind of this.”

“Alright.” Was that smart? He would know afterwards. But what was he risking? A flight and a day. So long as he didn’t know what to do to fulfill this prophecy every day was a lost day anyway.

“Good. Get something to write with. I will tell you the time and the flight number for you to take.”

The following morning John and Marco flew from Florence to Rome and from Rome to London.

$18,000,000,000,000

AS THEY GOT off the plane at Heathrow, just two passengers among many traveling business men with thin leather briefcases, John noticed that he was starting to feel nervous. He took off the fake glasses Marco loaned him and shoved them into his jacket pocket. As they were riding the endless moving walkways he watched for anyone who seemed to be looking out for him, but this was an airport, and many people were on the lookout for one thing or another.

Suddenly there was a man standing in front of him who reached out a hand and said: “Mr. Fontanelli?” with the same dark voice he knew all too well by now. He was half a head taller than John, about fifty years old, had thick dark hair and eyebrows, and had the build of a boxer. “My name is McCaine. Malcolm McCaine.”

They shook hands and John introduced Marco. “This is my bodyguard, Marco Benetti.”

McCaine was a bit surprised to hear the bodyguard’s name, but he also shook Marco’s hand.

“Come with me, I have a car. We can talk in my office.”

He walked ahead, so briskly that John had a hard time keeping up. People instinctively got out of the three men’s way as they all but marched down the hall. Outside the main airport entrance stood a Jaguar in a “no-parking” zone. McCaine unlocked the doors. He pulled the parking ticket from underneath the wiper blade, crumpled it into a small ball and tossed it over his shoulder.

He drove away. John watched the man surreptitiously, or so he hoped. McCaine was wearing an expensive Savile Row suit and custom-made shoes, but he still somehow looked carelessly dressed, even unkempt, as if he had only the most casual dress code, but McCaine didn’t seem to care. His tie had a sloppy knot and his shirt was wrinkled because it had slipped too far out of his pants. Only the shoes shone like new.

“A bit of preliminary information for you,” McCaine said with eyes focused on the traffic. He used every opportunity to make a lane change just to be a bit faster. “My office is in the city. I have an investment firm, Earnestine Investments Limited. Earnestine is my mother’s middle name, just as an aside. I don’t have much imagination as far as names for my firms are concerned. I always name them after family members. The firm’s net worth at the moment is around five hundred million pounds, which is not much when compared to the big firms, but enough to join in on the fun and games.”

John felt frustration welling up in him. Was this all it was about? Just another money shark? The only difference from the others was the cunning way he drew John’s interest. He sank deep into his seat, already figuring that the day would be a waste. He already knew that he would say “no” to everything this guy had to offer, be it wheat commodities, pig stomachs or pension funds, and fly back as soon as possible. And change his home phone number.

They moved past high rises with shiny facades and old buildings made of hewn stone. He barely took note. They finally drove down into a spacious and well-lit underground parking garage. The car was parked in a reserved spot not far from the elevator, which took them higher and higher. As the polished elevator doors finally swooshed open they stepped out into a very large, well-lit open office area. There were rows of desks full of telephones and computer monitors. Men and women of every skin color sat before them, making phone calls, sometimes with several phones at once never taking their eyes off the changing and flashing numbers and diagrams on the screens for even a second.

“We deal mainly with stocks,” McCaine explained as they weaved their way through the maze of desks and office chairs. “A few of my people also deal with currencies, but we basically don’t have the finances to make enough from it. We do it simply to keep in practice.”

John smiled sourly. So that’s the problem. Currency trading; he had learned that meant buying and selling large quantities of money in the currency of one country or another and trading when there was enough difference to make a profit. To make it worthwhile, investors had to put in very large sums of money; hundreds of millions per transaction or more. It wasn’t hard for John to guess what McCaine was after.

They got to McCaine’s office, which was separated from the huge, main office by a glass wall and glass door, and was almost half the size. It had a splendid view over the city. Lying on the floor was a somewhat worn Persian rug. The giant desk with giant office chair behind it looked expensive but tacky. Neither the conference chairs nor the book and binder shelves matched with the other office furniture.

“Please, have a seat, Mr. Fontanelli.” McCaine said and gestured to the couch. “Mr. Benetti, may I please ask you to wait outside with my secretary? Miss O’Neal will bring you a coffee or whatever you wish.”

Marco looked at John. John nodded. This wouldn’t take long anyhow. Marco went out to where a couple of uncomfortable looking visitor’s chairs stood next to the secretary’s desk. McCaine closed the door and it was as if all noise from outside had been turned off; the glass walls and door were apparently soundproof.

“So,” he said as he let the Venetian blinds down some. “Forget the investment company. That’s only a toy. It’s my training ground, if you will. I certainly didn’t ask you to come here to offer you any investments. If there is one person on this planet with enough money then it is you.”

John looked at him, surprised, wondering exactly what this all about?

“I know a whole lot about you, Mr. Fontanelli, as you’ve no doubt noticed. I think it’s fair if I told you a little about me.” McCaine sat on the edge of the desktop and crossed his arms. “I was born in 1946, here in London. My father, Philipp Callum McCaine, was a high-ranking officer in the Royal Air Force. This was the reason why my family, this means my parents and me as I have no brothers or sisters, lived in fourteen different cities in eight different countries and explains how I learned five foreign languages fluently. I don’t quite remember any more how many different schools I attended, but I was done with school at one point and was drawn to companies with international operations, mainly because I’ve never developed a sense of nationality, due to the all the traveling we did. After trying this and that, I ended up with IBM and was trained to be a programmer. That was in the mid-sixties, when punched cards and magnetic tapes were still in use and a computer cost millions. By the way, I have never given up programming. My broker,” he gestured to the venetian blinds with his head, “sometimes works with programs that I wrote. The quality of programs can be a deciding factor in this business. Some of the big broker firms on Wall Street make billions in profits and re-invest up to a third in data processing software! But I doubt there is a boss anywhere else that does the programming himself like I do here.”

John looked with amazement at the man who seemed so full of energy. He just didn’t look like a person who could find a computer’s on/off switch, much less to do programming. “I understand,” he said lamely just for the sake of saying something.

“Fine. Then back to the beginning,” McCaine said with a vigorous movement of a hand. “Due to my knowledge of foreign languages, I was sent abroad by my company; all over Europe. I was in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain. I was in all those places writing programs for IBM customers. Back then computer systems that were connected with others across international borders mostly belonged to banks, and that’s how I became an expert in transnational computer projects. And that’s also why I was chosen in 1969 to work on a contract from Italy. It was a very special and challenging contract.” McCaine looked at John with penetrating eyes. “The client was very unusual. It was a law firm in Florence.”

John gulped some air. “You …?” he unintentionally uttered in surprise.

“Yes. The original version of the program with which you manage your bank accounts was written by me.”

Marco was leafing through an uninteresting magazine, all the while keeping an eye on his charge, who was still visible because the blinds were drawn only halfway down. He looked up when he saw John jump to his feet and pace around the office gesticulating. Even McCaine started to walk around, looking more like a mad bull in an arena. The bodyguard asked himself what was going on in there. At least it didn’t look like they wanted to strangle each other. His muscles relaxed, and he leaned back again.

“Would you like another coffee?” the secretary asked, a pretty young woman with pale skin and red hair done in a beehive. Marco was unable to conceal his attraction.

“No, thank you,” he said smiling. “But maybe a glass of water?”

“This contract changed my life,” Malcolm explained. They were both now sitting on the chairs in the conference corner of the office. McCaine was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He kept his eyes fixed on John. “The Vacchis were very secretive and didn’t want to tell me what it was all about. For a while I thought that they wanted to launder mafia money with the system I programmed. But regardless of what it was they were trying to keep secret, if they needed a program to be written then I had to know exactly what for. The programmer is like a priest during a confession: you must tell him the things that you would otherwise keep secret, like the IRS or other officials, otherwise the program won’t work. And I had to test the program, and when I saw a sum of three hundred sixty-five billion dollars pop up on the screen, my eyes almost popped out of my head. You can probably imagine.”

“Three hundred sixty-five billion?” John echoed in surprise.

McCaine nodded. “Your fortune almost tripled in the past twenty-five years.”

John opened his mouth but nothing came out; he couldn’t think of anything to say. He closed it again.

“They had to be honest with me,” McCaine went on. “Until then, when I was in the house, the Vacchis were always careful to have all the doors locked except the one to the cellar. But, I had already told you of my suspicion that it was mafia money, or even drug money, so I threatened to go to the police unless they showed me the archive and Giacomo Fontanelli’s testament.” McCaine paused and shook his head. “I was absolutely fascinated. That was the most incredible thing I had ever heard in my entire life. At that moment I was convinced, absolutely convinced, that I had found my true calling. I quit my job at IBM, went back to London with my moderate savings and studied economics, political economics, and business administration — all at once. I lived in a cheap little apartment without heat, wore the same trousers for years and the same jacket. I never went out, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and lived like a monk. I gobbled down what I learnt like a starving man, sat up front in class, torturing the teachers with questions and passed all my tests with top grades. When I got my diploma I went to work as a broker at a bank. There I learnt, firsthand, everything there is to know about stocks, bonds, currency trading and so on. Then I started my own firm with my own money, plus a loan and what I had inherited from my father. I worked day and night until I was able to hire my first employee. I kept working like a dog until I turned my first significant profit, and went up from there. In all those years, in bad times and in good, I longed for this day, for the day I would sit across from you, the heir of the Fontanelli fortune, the heir of what I calculated would be a trillion dollars by the time it reached you.”

John just now noticed that he was staring at this man with eyes wide open. He probably looked ridiculous. McCaine, exuded so much energy such determination that John almost physically felt it, like sitting across from a hot oven.

“I’m afraid,” John said slowly, “that I’m still having a hard time understanding all this.”

“My mission, my task in life,” McCaine explained with determined look in his eyes, “has been to be on your side and to help you fulfill Giacomo Fontanelli’s prophecy. No more, no less. Everything I had done so far, my studies, the firm, were all preparation for this day, a sort of training, practicing, shadowboxing. To be of any help to you, I needed to know how to handle money, lots of money. I had to know how to act effectively within the realm of high finance. This was the only reason. Wealth doesn’t interest me. I don’t care if I drive a Jag or walk. Twenty-five years ago I acquired a freedom that only obsession with a goal, a vision, can provide. Since then I have known why I was born. I’m so very sure that it was fate — not a coincidence — that brought me to Florence all those years ago. I’m as sure as the knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. This talk, right now, has gone through my head a thousand times. I’ve worked towards this day for the past twenty-five years. All I had was a certain date — the twenty-third of April 1995 — and a phone number. It was the telephone number of the guest room in the Vacchi villa that had been prepared for the heir. I saw it on a list by that the telephone technicians, who had also put in the phone lines for the law firm. I knew the Vacchis wouldn’t change this number. So now,” he concluded with orgiastic satisfaction, “the moment is finally upon us. You are here!”

John swallowed hard. He didn’t know what to say. This man was either totally insane, or a genius. Or both. He asked, “How did you know the Vacchis wouldn’t change the phone number?”

McCaine smiled a short dark smirk; is eyes remained neutral. “Well, the symbolic meaning of the number twenty-three was obvious. The day in April. And they didn’t know that I knew the number. I took care not to be caught. It was clear to me that I had to do this secretly.”

“Why?”

“Because my intentions would question their competence.” He paused and took such a deep breath that John thought he mustn’t have drawn air since he began talking. “I regret what I am about to tell you, because I understand that you feel warmly towards the Vacchi family. They made you a wealthy man, and improved your life in a way that no one else could even dream of. And they want nothing for it. No favors. Not even a thank you. They are satisfied to have fulfilled the vows of their forefathers. Truly noble people, one would think.”

John nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly the way I see it.”

“But actually,” McCaine explained further, “they have their dark side. No doubt about it, they achieved a tremendous feat. But it is precisely the characteristic that made them capable of achieving it, which is now standing in your way. The Vacchis, Mr. Fontanelli, are people oriented in the past. They believe in tradition. They created a paradise in their village, a Shangri-la, where they are the kings. But if you ask yourself, totally unbiased, what the Vacchis have done concretely then you will find that they were not able to help you, not concerning the prophecy. They have full confidence in you. You will accomplish it. You are the heir. You are the one that Giacomo saw in his vision. You will restore mankind’s future — somehow. You were left alone with this, right? The Vacchis cut you off from the world, shielded you, drew your attention to all the nice sparkly toys money can buy. The truth is, they don’t want things to change. There’s nothing wrong with that. The Vacchis are simply incapable of anything else. This is what allowed them to keep a tradition alive for five hundred years, a tradition of studying law and keeping the fortune as stipulated without being tempted to take it. And this same feature in their character prevents them from helping you bring about the changes the world needs.” He jumped to his feet, stood in the middle of the room with his arms stretched out, waving them like some Old Testament prophet, and said: “Do you see it now? The incredible twist of fate that made somebody like me aware of the prophecy, just at the right moment to be able to make the necessary preparations, to be able to stand by the heir’s side? Someone who thinks, feels, and acts in a different way from those that had guarded the fortune? Everything is happening the way it must. One cog turns another. I waited twenty-five years for you, waited and prepared, and now you are here. It has come to pass. Today is the day that will be remembered as the beginning of a new future.”

John stared at him. He looked away and put a hand over his eyes. “All of this is a bit too much,” he had to admit. His heart felt like that of an old man’s that could not handle excitement anymore. “And I still don’t know what your plan for the future looks like. The past, okay, I got that. But what would you do? What would you actually do with one trillion dollars to save the future?

“One moment,” McCaine said and lifted a finger like a teacher. “That was another one of those errors of reasoning by the Vacchis: to believe that someone could suddenly appear, analyze the complicated global state of affairs and produce a revolutionary idea to solve those problems. No one can do that; not you, not me, and Albert Einstein couldn’t have done it either. But don’t forget, I’ve had a quarter century to think about it. And lots of time equals ingeniousness. I had time to think and to plan, and I had time to look around to see what others had to say about this problem. I saw that an army of highly intelligent scientists had analyzed the problem for a long time and from all possible sides. You don’t need to dream up some vast new vision, all the reasoning has been done, it’s all been thought through and published. The problem is not so much knowing what to do, but that it’s not being done. All that has happened is that time has passed and nothing has happened.”

John watched him walk over to an office cabinet and look around in it. His mouth was dry. McCaine hadn’t thought to offer him a drink. Maybe he thought everybody, or anyone of importance, was as immune to human needs as he seemed to be.

“Here,” McCaine said holding a book. John couldn’t see the title from this distance. “I would start with this book. Before this book appeared, there were only the doom-mongers and they contradicted one another for the most part, all of them written by illogical publicity seekers. Then there were serious studies and real insights. The Limits of Growth; that is the title of this book and it was published in the early seventies. The authors were Dennis Meadows and Jay W. Forrester. Forrester was an MIT scientist and developed the theoretical basis for system dynamics, which is a branch of cybernetics studying the behavior of highly interconnected systems. Meadows created a computer program called WORLD2, which was very simple and limited, but was still capable of showing what humanity’s future could roughly look like, and, based on this, how different measures could affect the outcome of this prediction.” McCaine sat down and placed the book on the table. John had never seen a book so worn from reading. McCaine must’ve been reading it for years. “You will understand why this caught my attention, being a programmer too. You must know that back then, programming computers was an occult science surrounded by myth. I copied Meadows’ program to experiment with it. Back then I had to use the computer at the university and had to drag cartons of punched cards around and do all this at one in the morning, because it was only time of day students could use the computer for free. Today you could do this with any home computer. But no one does it any more.”

He opened the book and shoved it to John so he could see the diagrams. John wondered why McCaine never thought of buying a new copy. Almost every sentence was underlined or otherwise marked, and some pages were coming loose.

“This is the so-called standard flow,” McCaine said as he tapped a finger on a primitive looking diagram that had five wiggly lines going up and down. “The development of the five major variables; population, quality of life, pollution, raw material reserves, and invested capital, under the assumption that no measures are taken to change any of them. That was in 1975, not to forget. Today we know that nothing was done, and so this graph actually works — it predicted what has really happened. Do you see this line that I drew in at 1970 and 1995? If you look only at this, things don’t look so bad; a slight increase in pollution and strong population growth, a small reduction in raw materials and quality of life, as we have observed, right? The hole in the ozone layer opened and the world population grew even faster. It is now almost six billion. And so forth. Now see where this is all leading; a collapse in the year 2030, brought about by lack of raw materials.”

“But that is unlikely,” John argued. “Raw materials are getting cheaper. New reserves are continuously being discovered and replacements are also being found or developed. Just recently I read that it would take only a truck load of sand to make a fiber-optic network for an entire country, whereas once it would have taken many tons of copper to do the same. “

McCaine folded his hands together. He had obviously heard this argument before. “First, this is a simple model. What was meant by raw materials was simply everything; copper and crude oil and so on. This line is only a very, very rough approximation. Second, concerning the prices of raw materials — yes, one can replace many things with others, and many raw materials, like iron and aluminum, are plentiful. But you are missing the same points everyone misses: it’s the raw materials that are largely unknown and that are very essential to certain industrial processes that are becoming scarce forcing the prices to go up continuously. They are materials such as molybdenum, tantalum, palladium or hafnium, germanium or niobium, and so on. And third,” he said, taking the book and leafing through it to another graph; he seemed as familiar with the book as a priest with the bible, “all this is part of an interlocked system of networks. All factors are dependent on other factors. Your argument, Mr. Fontanelli, is a typical argument of linear thinking. A certain problem appears, and it is addressed without realizing that the solution could give rise to an even worse problem. If, for example, you remove the problem of raw material scarcity, which is easily done in the program by increasing the known reserves by, say, a factor of five, then other problems will suddenly appear. See this chart; if the consumption of raw materials decreased, the limiting factor that would cause a sharp collapse of the system around the same time is rapidly rising pollution.”

“Oh.” John turned the page. This diagram looked worse than the previous one. Whatever one tried, it always ended in catastrophe. Even reducing the output of pollutants would delay the breakdown by only two decades. However, after the catastrophe, visible by the rapid decline of population, which obviously meant millions upon millions of deaths, some of the lines went back to acceptable limits. As if it were followed by a period of relative calm.

McCaine noticed John’s expression and seemed to read his mind. “Forget those lines shown after the catastrophe, regardless how they look,” he told him. “Principally, they really shouldn’t be put in after the great breakdown. What comes afterward is incalculable. It might be the end of humanity as a species.”

“All this looks pretty hopeless,” John said.

“That’s because it is,” McCaine replied dryly. He flipped the pages and stopped by another section, opening it wide. “This is what we could have achieved if proper measures had been taken back in 1970; a condition of equilibrium. A strong limit to population growth should’ve been implemented, pollution drastically reduced and utmost restraint taken in use of raw materials. What this might have meant in detail cannot be ascertained here, but it is clear that that the basic foundations for such a condition would have meant the end of economic and population growth, but at a high standard of living for a long time.”

John remembered Lorenzo’s article. His cousin had hit the nail right on the head: the constant, endlessly worshipped totem of perpetual economic growth. “The end to growth,” he repeated in thought. “And how do you do that?”

“The question is why hasn’t it been done already? Growth doesn’t happen by itself. You have to work hard for growth to occur. It costs sweat and labor. The real question is: why not stop when there’s enough?”

“Okay then, why not stop when there’s enough?”

“Because no one wants to be the first to do it. It’s like an arms race; each side is afraid to take the first step, because he’s afraid to be left vulnerable. You don’t stop because the others don’t stop.”

John stared at the worn book lying before him. He had a headache. “Okay, what does all this have to do with me?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“No.” John put his hands in the air. “I have no idea.”

“Alright,” said McCaine, leaning back and folding his arms before him. “Mr. Fontanelli, how do you get wealthy?”

“What?” John batted his eyes a few times. “How to become rich?”

“Yes. How does it work? Why do some people get rich and others don’t? Not counting inheritances.”

“I never thought about that.”

“Just like most people. But you do realize that there must be certain criteria?”

“I think much of it is coincidence. Besides, I don’t see the connection with our previous topic.”

“You will.” McCaine stood up, suddenly seeming to be moving a bit awkwardly. “Lean back, relax. I will explain it to you.”

Her name was Karen, and the more Marco joked around with her the more he liked her. Once in a while he’d look through the glass door, but both men were still deeply involved in their conversation and Mr. Fontanelli didn’t seem to be in any danger.

The red-haired secretary didn’t seem to have much to do today, despite her impressive array of computer, monitor, printer, and phones.

“Sometimes there are days like this,” she told Marco. “And there are others were all hell breaks loose. It depends on what happens in the stock market.”

“That’s beyond me,” Marco admitted.

Karen convinced him to have another coffee and even found some cookies for him. They told each other about themselves as they ate.

“I could show you London,” Karen offered him. “The next time you’re here.”

Marco’s eyes looked furtively at her figure. “I would really like that,” he told her, and then added sadly: “But I have no idea when I’ll be here again.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll be here more often,” she said with a smirk. “My boss would like to work with your boss, and he can be very persuasive.”

“Wealth is first a matter of income, and second a matter of spending,” McCaine explained, standing by the window overlooking London. “If you spend more than you earn you will grow poor, and if you earn more than you spend you will grow rich. As far as spending is concerned, you can reduce it only so far — at least if you want to live a normal life in our society. This leaves you with increasing your earnings. So far so good?”

John nodded skeptically. “So far so boring, to be honest.”

McCaine didn’t seem to have heard him. “The possible level of earnings follows a certain hierarchy. Work is at the lowest level of this hierarchy — you do something for someone and he gives you money for it. That can be as an office employee or as an independent tradesman, that doesn’t matter. It is commonly known as honest work, and the earnings you achieve will never be significantly more than your spending. Taxes have a lot to do with this. The government wants your money, all of it if it were possible. But since you’d starve and wouldn’t make more babies who will grow up to pay taxes, you are left with enough to survive on. No country, no government is interested to seeing its population become financially independent. So, honest work, which is what most people earn their livelihood doing, will secure only the average standard of living, no more.”

John thought back to his days at the laundry. How he spent sweaty nights at the steam press. His weekly pay was just enough for the essentials.

“The next level of income,” McCaine went on, “is specialized work. The worth that a type of work has, as with everything else in a market economy, is based on the laws of supply and demand. If you learn the same stuff as everybody else, and are as skilled as everyone else, then there’s no reason why somebody else couldn’t do your job, and your level of income is correspondingly low. Your income will rise if you are willing to do what others are not — to ruin your health, to work very hard, to work nightshifts or on weekends — or if you can do what others cannot, as long as it’s something useful. You might even have to find a market for your skill; a regular teacher will always earn the same, but if he or she is really good, it is possible to earn more in a private school. On the other hand, there are trade unions, bar associations, and craft guilds … structures that would also be known as cartels in the industry, which assure their members a certain level of income. But since the free market is being bypassed, in a way, the result is a reduction in turnover, because a service at a higher price won’t have as many sales as one with a lower price. At any rate, the more specialized your service is and the more it is needed, the more your earnings can grow, significantly. A lawyer can make five hundred dollars per hour and a famous pop star twenty thousand for a one-hour performance. Yet, there is a limit. The lawyer, for instance, has his office and secretary to pay, and the pop star has an agent, and travel costs, and an appropriate wardrobe, practice sessions, autographs to sign, besides the fact that he or she may have earned close to nothing for years before being famous.”

John remembered Paul Siegel, who used to be his best friend; the one who went to Harvard and learned something that made it worth companies’ interests to pay him twenty thousand dollars an hour for his time. John remembered well the time Paul told him how much he could command, and the immense gap that had opened up between them.

“Now the next jump, the one that gets you real leverage. This next level in our hierarchy is trade. Trade means to buy something cheap and sell it expensive. To put it bluntly, the trader eliminates the difference of supply and demand through his efforts and profits from this. The leverage here is the dependency of the income on the value of the goods being traded, and not the effort to deal with the goods, per se. If you sell a watermelon you might earn ten cents, if you sell water desalination equipment for a factory you might earn ten thousand dollars. But the effort involved might be the same. You aren’t being paid for your labor, but your ability to satisfy a want or need. The span of possibilities at this level can be very large. You may earn little or nothing by trading, but you might also get fabulously rich. A book salesman may keep thirty to forty percent of the profits per book, but the owner of a boutique may add two to three hundred percent to his buying price. Sales provisions may range from ten to fifteen percent, which may be quite a lot if you sell a machine worth several million dollars. Especially if you only made a few phone calls and invested an afternoon’s worth of wheeling and dealing.”

John didn’t say anything. The gallery owner, with whom Sarah and the other artists displayed their artwork, probably fell into that category. She was the middleman, or rather woman, between those producing art and those wanting to buy it and cashed in from both parties. No wonder she drove a large car and the artists came by subway.

“The next step is one in which you sort of reproduce yourself. You don’t work any more; instead, you get others to do the work for you. You are then an entrepreneur. A person who is doing what you want him to do, will get paid by you for this. You will try to buy his work as cheaply as you can, because now you are on the other side of the market mechanism. Everything you pay your workers from the profits that your company makes will reduce your own income. Starting your own business is always fraught with risks and always very hard work. But it makes it possible to reproduce your own capabilities to almost any size. You can train people who will train more people who will train even more people, and so on. And when you’re well represented in the market place, then the money you pay your people will be one of the very best investments you can make. In human resource management, an employee who brings in one point three times what he costs is worth his money. In other words an actual yield of thirty percent! There is no other way to easily achieve this sort of return in the long run. The large companies are an example of how far you can push this principle, and the bosses of such companies may earn ten million a year or more, which, even assuming they have a heavy workload, comes out at thirty thousand dollars per hour.”

Murali sprang into John’s mind; he never baked a single pizza in his life, much less delivered one, but he knew how to hire cheap pizza bakers and delivery guys. He was in the store from morning to night, bitching and grumbling and hollering and kept everything going. Thousands of people in south Manhattan got their pizzas thanks to him. That’s how Murali earned his living, even though John had no idea how much it was.

“I hope you’ve noticed the role money that’s already available plays in this level. The more money you have the easier it is to get into the next category of income. If you’re poor it will be almost impossible to get a higher education that will allow you to get out of the lowest category. If, on the other hand, you have a fortune it will be far easier to do trade or to start a company than it would if you have to depend on borrowed money. The more money you have the easier it is to make more.”

“But that’s not fair,” John interrupted without thinking about it.

“Nature is cruel,” McCaine countered. “The world is not fair. Justice or fairness would mean balance, but life is out of balance, a network of reciprocally multiplying imbalance, that’s why you have fundamental injustice in income.” He lifted a finger, like a dark Mephistopheles standing before the bright buildings of the city. “And finally we get to the top level of income, to the ultimate leverage, the ultimate self-reproduction. This is the level where your money alone earns you more money. We’re talking about the money market, pure finance. Owning a company can be lucrative, but it may become more difficult to manage as it grows, as if there were invisible forces working against growth. But not with money. The effort is always the same regardless if you put a million, a hundred million or a hundred billion dollars into the worldwide financial markets. You, Mr. Fontanelli, are in this top category. You don’t have to work at all, because your money is working for you, and it earns you more money in a single year than the total wealth of the next richest person. Do you even notice it? Are you putting in any effort? Not in the slightest. It can go on infinitely. From here there are no more limits.”

McCaine moved away from the window so suddenly that it startled John. He paced back and forth in the office. “Money,” he said, “is the strongest power on this planet. If you have money you have everything else too. You have a name. You have esteem. You enjoy respect. You’re loved! Sure, I know the saying money can’t buy you love, but this is like many other proverbs — absolute bullshit! Of course you can win a woman for yourself without being rich, but then you’ll have to be kind, attractive, and attentive to her needs. You must put in an effort. And you can be as attractive and loving as can be, but there will always be certain women that are out of reach for you if you are not wealthy. Name a single model who is married to a carpenter or a hotdog salesman. There simply aren’t any. Do you think that Onassis was able to marry Jackie Kennedy because he was so good looking? Bullshit! He was ugly, but still was able to fuck her, because he was one of the richest men in the world, that’s how easy it is. Money makes you sexy.”

“Hmm,” John mumbled and thought about Constantina. But also that German journalist, the supposed history student, Ursula or something like that. To her, money didn’t seem to be so sexy at all.

“You don’t have to be attractive when you’re rich. You don’t even have to be intelligent or talented, because you can buy intelligence and talent. It is better to be rich than to be an artist, because you can buy art — oh, what the hell, you can buy artists!” McCaine stopped talking to catch his breath and looked at John. “You don’t have to be a good salesman when you have lots of money, because you could force your competition out of the market. You don’t have to be a good businessman, because you don’t have to go through the difficulties of starting a business, including the long hours involved at the beginning and the weekends and the fear that customers won’t pay their bills. Instead you can buy a business that’s ready to go! Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? Do you know what money really means? Money, Mr. Fontanelli, is power!”

John noted his mouth was gaping open and closed it.

Slowly, McCaine came closer; his hands dramatically stretched out towards John. “You are in an absolute incomparable position, Mr. Fontanelli. You can be the most powerful man in the world. Your money, your thousand billion dollars are more effective than all the nuclear missiles, because money is the lifeblood of the world, the decisive element. If you have power over money you have the world by the balls.” He pointed at the book still open on the page with the diagram that showed the world reverting to a sustainable existence. “This here won’t ever happen on its own. I know it, you know it, and everyone else knows it. The past twenty years have proven this beyond any reasonable doubt. The only chance that still exists, and the reason why things have happened the way they have, is that someone will come along with the power to say this is the path we must take. Mr. Fontanelli, you can make it happen, you can force it to happen.”

$19,000,000,000,000

“THAT’S YOUR PLAN?”

“Yes.”

”Use force?”

“There is no other way.” McCaine was staring at him with eyes that looked as if they could burn holes in the furniture. “It’s not nice, I admit it, but the alternative isn’t nice either.”

“Force change … can I even do that?” John looked skeptical. “I mean, okay, a trillion dollars is a huge chunk of change, but is it enough?”

McCaine nodded.

John shook his head. “I’ve read about banks that have balances of four or five hundred billion. Citibank, was it? And Some Japanese banks, but I can’t remember their names. There are insurance companies with hundreds of billions in reserves…“

“Yes,” McCaine nodded again. “But your trillion, Mr. Fontanelli, is not only unique, it has one very crucial advantage: it belongs to you!” He started to wander around the room again. John realized now why the carpet was so worn. “Banks, insurance companies, and investment bonds are slaves of the market, and believe me, I know what I’m talking about. They are the servants of wealth. The billions that they move around are only entrusted to them, and when they stop earning money, it is taken away from them. That not only restricts their flexibility, it also robs them of power, almost completely. What decisions can they make? Whether to buy this stock or another? Their decision depends on which one will earn them the most and/or is the less risky. I manage five hundred million pounds with my firm. What do you think would happen if I were to take that money and buy land in the Amazon to save the rain forests there? The investors would promptly take back their money, and I’d either go to jail or the loony bin. An investment like that would benefit their children and grandchildren, but it wouldn’t earn money, wouldn’t pay dividends. Do you understand? Do you see the difference? The banks have the money, but they cannot use it freely. They’re only tools, service providers, the collection pools of the investors, nothing more. No, don’t confuse possession and ownership. Ownership is what counts.”

He went behind his desk, lifted the blotter pad, and pulled a small note from underneath it, a note that seemed to have been waiting for precisely this moment. “Now to your second question: what is a trillion dollars? I have written down a few numbers as an aid. These figures, by the way, are difficult to come by, and they’re not exactly up to date. These numbers here are from 1993 and taken from a list of statistics of the Financial Times. According to them the gross sales turnover of the world trade for that year was 4.5 trillion dollars. One trillion of that was in services. If you add overseas income and international monetary transfers, then the total capital involved was 5.8 trillion dollars. The total worth of all US companies traded on the stock market was 3.3, and Japan’s was 2.3 trillion dollars. Worldwide it was 8.8 trillion dollars.” He looked up. “One trillion, Mr. Fontanelli, is a lot of money. Not enough to buy the world, but enough to say which direction it should turn.”

John rubbed his forehead. This was just too much, too hard to grasp, too depressing. “But what does it all mean in concrete terms?” he asked, angry with himself because his voice sounded so weak and feeble, more of a whine. “I go out there and say, ‘From now on everyone does this and that?’”

“No, of course not.” McCaine smiled and stuck the note into his pocket. “Power isn’t the same as blackmailing. No, what you have to do is to buy companies. This is something I haven’t explained to you yet. You don’t need to fully own a company to have control over it. It’s usually enough to have fifty one percent, sometimes even less. And once you own a company you can buy others with its money. This way you can increase the influence of your money exponentially. Add the fact that today’s decisive production factors, such as intelligence, know-how, and personal engagement, are being completely incorrectly assessed because we still think in terms of the early days of modern capitalism and the value of the stock inventories, the machines, and so forth.

“Now imagine finding a small company whose founder has a brilliant idea and needs only enough money for a few computers, then with fifty thousand dollars or a hundred thousand and a loan of a few million, which you will even get paid back with interest, you gain control over a company that may be worth billions within five years.” He folded his hands together. “Okay? Obviously there is no point in investing in video stores or fast food chains. You have to grab a chunk of strategically important branches of industry, foodstuffs, for instance, or finances, information technology, media, raw materials, energy, and so on. When Shell or BP wants something, don’t you think that they’ll get it? There are people who are convinced that oil companies were the reason behind at least half of all wars in this century. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, just the fact people believe it might be shows how much power they wield.”

John’s pressed his lips together, where had this headache come from? He was thirsty too. “I just can’t imagine that owning a few companies gives you so much power,” he told McCaine. “I mean look at the kind of influence that the president has; to be able to make certain decisions.”

McCaine crossed his arms and thought for a moment. “I understand what you mean.” He thought some more, and then said, “Perhaps I’m getting too far ahead of myself. I’m dumping on you all at once knowledge that it took me decades to acquire. There is a historic example.” He came back over and plunged into the easy chair across from John. “Have you ever heard of the name Fugger?”

“No.”

“I thought so. This name should actually be as well known as that of Napoleon or Genghis Khan, but historians seem to be blind to the financial side of history.

“The Fuggers were a family of merchants based in Augsburg, a city in southern Germany which still bears signs of their influence to this day. They started out as weavers, but by the time they reached the epitome of their power they practically ruled the known world. Their long arm reached from the west coast of South America, across Europe all the way to the Molucca spice islands. They maintained control over this vast empire with an efficiency that any large corporation today could only dream of, and this without telegraphy, satellites, or computers. They effectively dominated every aspect of the economy back then. They were the greatest landowners, the most important bankers, and the greatest trading house that had ever existed. Furthermore they were the greatest mining company, the largest employer, the most important arms manufacturers — they simply ran everything. For a time they owned almost ten percent of the entire collective wealth of the Holy Roman Empire. You can’t even imagine a corporation these days with the same might, relatively speaking, as the Fuggers possessed. Such a company would have to incorporate the sixty largest firms in the world. The mightiest companies in our times, be it General Motors, Mitsubishi or IBM are mere dwarves compared to the Fuggers.”

McCaine nodded, narrowed his eyes, took a breath of air, as if he needed a lot of it to say what he was about to say. “The name of the man who I was thinking about in particular is Jakob Fugger, head of the family during its zenith. He was known as Jakob the Rich. And that’s what he was … rich. Rich and powerful. When you consider the period he was born in, he was the most powerful man who ever lived. Never before and never after did any individual unite so much power and influence. Jakob Fugger was the one who decided when a war was to be waged and when peace was to be made. He had princes deposed if they hindered his business. His wealth decided who was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and it was he who paid for the emperor’s armies. When the Reformation burned across Europe, he hesitated for a while over which side to join. And only because he had good business relationships with the pope, he decided to go with Rome, and the rebellious peasants were bloodily put down. I’m convinced … had he sided with the Reformation, the Catholic Church as we know it today would no longer exist.”

McCaine put his fingers together and there was a glassy sheen in his eyes reflecting an obvious fascination with this period of history. “The Fuggers, Mr. Fontanelli, and this is what makes them so interesting, were contemporaries of the Medici. While the Medici lived in Florence and fostered the fine arts, the Fuggers lived in Augsburg and hoarded money. And they were the contemporaries of your ancestor. Jakob Fugger was a mere twenty years older than your forefather Giacomo Fontanelli, who no doubt, as a merchant, felt the overpowering might of the Fuggers in all markets. Fontanelli knew where the real source of power lay during his times, who the true decision makers were in politics. There is no doubt that he knew this. They all knew it back then.” He took a pause and looked at John. Had he noticed a sudden change in his expression? “Have you never asked yourself what made Giacomo think that the person who should get mankind back on the right track would need money of all things to do this?”

John agreed that this was indeed a good question, but one he had never asked himself.

“Fontanelli didn’t have a vision of some wandering preacher going barefoot through the countryside urging a turnaround with the mere power of his words,” McCaine told John. “He saw someone with money — with lots and lots of money. Don’t forget, he was a merchant. Interest and compound interest were his daily livelihood. He was able to calculate how much his fortune would be worth after five hundred years. How unbelievably great it would be. And it was this huge sum of money he wanted to bequeath to his descendant. This and the prophecy. Why? Because he knew money was power. And because he, however he came upon the idea, knew that there would have to be someone to make a change in the distant future.”

Before John could say anything McCaine jumped up, turned to face him and put a finger on John’s chest. “You are the first person in five hundred years able to continue where Jakob Fugger left off. You can become as powerful as he was back then. And you can only affect a change according to the prophecy when you have enough power. For the moment, Mr. Fontanelli, your trillion is nothing but a pile of money that’s lying around uselessly. But if you use it to gain economic influence, you may be able to force the world to change!”

John looked down at the finger resting on his chest, his face tense and pale. He moved the finger away from his chest, like the barrel of a pistol, and then he wiped his own fingers on his pants. McCaine’s finger was cold and moist. John cleared his throat and asked, “How exactly do you think this can be achieved? I buy IBM, or Boeing? And when I have them, what should I do with them?”

Musing, McCaine went away and walked over to his cabinets. “The truth is, Mr. Fontanelli,” he explained slowly, faced away from John, “is that you won’t be able to do this alone. You can buy a yacht, but you can’t buy a company, and you certainly can’t manage one. I don’t want to be critical of your person or your competency, but you’ve never learned the necessary skills for an enterprise on this scale, nor do you have the experience of a quarter century of financial management. If you attempt to take the path I have just illustrated to you on your own, then all you will do is risk your fortune.”

He opened a cabinet filled with binders. “These are the current financial statements of the most important companies in the world. Can you read them? Could you find out which ones are healthy and which ones are ailing? Could you follow the discussions during a supervisory board meeting, or what is said in a conference of the central bank council? Could you negotiate with the International Monetary Fund?” He closed the cabinet again. “I haven’t invested twenty-five years of my life just to tell you in what direction the solution lies. I did it to accompany you on your path. To do the detailed work. What you must do is make the big decisions.

“Mr. Fontanelli, when you decide to use my services and call me, I will drop everything else, sell my firm, and tear down all bridges behind me without batting an eye. When you call me I will be there for you one hundred percent. All you must do is to decide that that’s what you want.”

John had unconsciously begun massaging his own cheeks. When he noticed it he stopped and put his hands on his knees again. He was still thirsty and still had a headache. “But I don’t have to decide right now?”

“It is up to you; whenever you call me I will be ready. But don’t call me until you are sure.”

“All this was a bit much for one morning. I will have to think about it.”

McCaine nodded. “Yes, of course. I will call a car to take you back to the airport.” He glanced at his watch. “There should be enough time to catch the next plane to Rome. Please, don’t think me rude if I don’t see you back to Heathrow. I said what I had to say and don’t want to pressure you into a decision. Please see it as a discrete withdrawal on my part.”

“Yes, I understand.” It was okay with him — very okay even. Another history lesson and his head would explode. If this McCaine worked the way he talked — nonstop, without even considering his bodily needs — he might really be able to force the world to its knees if he had a trillion dollars behind him. “I need to think about this in peace and quiet. I’ll have to sleep on it.” And he would get a bite to eat and something to drink together with Marco at the airport.

“A day more or less won’t matter.”

“Maybe it would be a good idea to give me your phone number, now that I know your name.”

“I was just about to do that.” McCaine went to his desk and took out a laminated business card. Malcolm McCaine, it said, and a phone number, but nothing else. “One more thing before you go,” he told John as they shook hands, “please don’t wait too long. Even if one day more or less is no big deal, time is still running out for us. I believe in humanity and I’d like it to have a future, and I think that Giacomo Fontanelli’s plan is the last chance we have.”

John closed his eyes as the plane took off. It felt good. And he didn’t open them again for most of the flight. He didn’t sleep, and he didn’t think either. McCaine’s long talk seemed to reverberate in his mind until the words finally faded away.

He opened his eyes when the food was served. Marco leaned over to him as if he had been waiting for this moment. “Signor Fontanelli, may I ask you something?”

John nodded tiredly. “Sure.”

“Were your talks successful?”

John thought for a moment; what should he tell him? What was there to say about the talks? “I’m not really sure yet.”

“Might we be visiting London more often?”

“Hmm.” John thought again. “Yes. It could be.”

Marco gave him a broad smile. “I wouldn’t mind it. I like London.”

John looked at him a bit confused. “How can you? You’ve practically seen nothing of it.”

Marco still smiled. “I saw enough to know I liked it.”

$20,000,000,000,000

“WHAT WOULD YOU do with the money if you were me?”

Eduardo picked up a flat stone and threw it out to sea. It skimmed twice over the waves before it sank. As if in response a foamy wave rolled up to lick his shoes. “No idea,” the young lawyer answered. “I, at least, wouldn’t worry about some silly prophecy of an old superstitious merchant from the Middle Ages. I mean, there are more than enough sensible projects that you can support. Like helping some of the poorest countries economically and such. Splurge several billion on that, you can’t spend all your money in your lifetime anyhow. A hundred million or so is still enough for a great life,” He grinned mockingly at John, “especially as you still live too modestly, if you ask me.”

“What would you do with the money?”

Gregorio Vacchi nodded thoughtfully. One hand was resting on the hard cover of a law book, which he had been reading before John entered the room. And now his fingers drummed on it. “I’ve often asked myself this,” he said with a pensive expression. “What exactly could you do with a thousand times a billion dollars, to fulfill the prophecy? Once, I thought the solution would be to initiate a worldwide educational program, to make the people aware of our global problems. On the other hand, we have enough education in the industrialized nations and still nothing is being done. So such a program wouldn’t help any either just because it was done on a worldwide scale. Another idea was to buy licenses for environmentally friendly technology and give them to the underdeveloped countries, so that they can avoid making the same mistakes we did during our industrial development, or to get the Chinese to build cars with catalytic converters from the outset. But, in the end, I told myself that all these measures were only a drop in the bucket, and are far from being key solutions.” He shook his head. “I must confess that I just don’t know. I cannot be of any help to you, John.”

“What would you do with the money?”

Alberto Vacchi reached into his gardener’s apron, pulled out a pair of pruning shears, and cut off a dry sprout from a rose bush. “I’m glad that I’m not in your position,” he said to John. “Honestly. So much money and then the prophecy. I understand what a burden this must be. It would be for me, that’s for sure. I think I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. That amount of money, of course, gives you enormous power, but the question is what you want to achieve with it to improve things. To be honest, I don’t understand the complexities of today’s global economy. What company belongs to whom, who has how many shares of what …” He stopped talking and tied a rose branch in another direction. “Today’s world economy — what am I saying? I’ve never understood it, not really. There’s something in my head that tells me that this has nothing to do with my happiness in life. It is hopeless, I will never understand it.”

“What would you do with the money?”

Cristoforo Vacchi sat on a bench. He had his hands resting on a walking stick with a silver grip, and his eyes were closed. “Do you hear that, John? The bees humming? From here it sounds like a chorus, a chorus of thousand voices in the far distance.” He was silent for a while, listened and then he opened his eyes to look at John with watery eyes. “I thought a lot about this question when I was younger. But I finally came to the conclusion that it was not our duty to have a say in this matter. And do you know why? Because our duty was only to safeguard the money. We never could’ve accomplished this deed if we had not been a family of guardians, of preservers, if we hadn’t developed such an absurd level of antipathy to changes of any sort down the generations. Whoever would fulfill the prophecy had to be someone who embraced change, and this type of mentality is as distant from the Vacchi family ethic as the North Pole is from the South Pole.” A smile appeared on the old man’s face, an expression of almost unearthly confidence. “But, I’m certain that you will do the right thing, John. Everything that Giacomo Fontanelli saw in his vision came true, so this too will come to pass.”

That evening they sat on the terrace, just as they had done in the early days when John first arrived in Italy. The table was laden with bowls and pots, giving off delicious aromas of meat and garlic and fine olive oil. Alberto was pouring strong red wine into rotund glasses and wanted to know what John was doing these days in Portecéto.

“I was in London recently,” he told him while chewing.

“I see … to augment your wardrobe.” Alberto nodded.

Gregorio said sourly, “There are great, world famous tailors here in Italy too, if I may say so while we are on the subject!”

“I had a discussion with an owner of an investment firm,” John went on to explain.

“Can I have some of that gravy?” the Padrone asked, pointing to a dark brown container at the other end of the table.

Eduardo reached it to him and said: “I would have thought you had enough money already?”

“His name is Malcolm McCaine,” John added.

Thunk! The gravy container fell on the table.

Thunk! The wine bottle thudded on the table.

For the next moment it was deathly still at the table.

Then everybody began speaking excitedly at once.

“That swindler! I hope you didn’t believe a word he said! I warn you, you can’t trust that man as far as …!”

“I knew he would show up again one day! I told you right from the beginning. We have nothing but …!

“John! For heaven’s sake! How could you? What made you want to go to …?”

John was almost afraid they were going to attack him and beat him up. He practically shrank in size as the Vacchis shouted at him. He stared at the four angry faces twisted in rage and couldn’t say a word.

“Be careful with McCaine, John!” Alberto told him. “He is the craftiest liar I have ever met in my life!” His nostrils flared.

“He tried to get his hands on the fortune way back when he first found out about it setting up our computer systems!” Gregorio said angrily. “He wanted to convince us to break our vow and spend the money!” Furiously he stabbed a defenseless piece of meat with his fork and shoved it into his mouth.

“I must warn you against this man,” even the Padrone said and cocked his white-haired head doubtfully. “It doesn’t matter what impression he made on you. Believe me when I tell you that McCaine is a psychopath. He’s obsessed … a very dangerous man!”

“John, you can hire any financial advisor in the world, even a Nobel Prize winner if you want,” Eduardo told him. “But not McCaine!”

John was close to agreeing with them, forgetting McCaine, and leaving things as they were. Without a doubt, this Englishman was no ordinary character, but then neither were the Vacchis — none of them. However, if there was something that he didn’t want even more than an argument with his benefactors and patrons, then it was to go back to the clueless dithering of recent weeks.

Gingerly, John placed his knife and fork beside his plate, and just as tentatively said: “For the first time since I’ve learned about my forefather’s prophecy someone outlined a scheme that might just offer a real opportunity to fulfill it. I understand that you’ve had an unpleasant experience with McCaine, but that was twenty-five years ago, and I must admit that he impressed me.”

He saw hostility in the four pairs of eyes staring back at him.

“McCaine can be very persuasive. I remember that well,” said Cristoforo coolly. “But he is an amoral person through and through. I would even go as far as to say he’s capable of serious harm.”

“Okay, I was still a baby when he was working for our system,” Eduardo said shaking his head. “I only know his computer programs, but they were sometimes damn strange. I wouldn’t risk it, John, really.”

“Keep away from him, John,” Alberto warned. “I’m willing to bet anything that you’ll regret it.”

Gregorio’s expression was caustic. “I want to make one thing clear: if you decide to work together with McCaine, our paths will go separate ways.”

The moon’s sickle reflected on the calm waters of the dark sea. John stood by the railing and listened to the voice on the phone. It was odd to be able to combine it with a face and a story now.

“If ever I got to know people who managed to fabricate their own religion, then it was the Vacchis,” McCaine told John in a calm voice. “They go to church on Sundays and pray to God, but in reality they believe in the money and Giacomo Fontanelli’s vision, and the holy task their family was entrusted with.”

“But you must’ve done something bad to them to have them so upset with you — still upset.”

He gave a short sinister chuckle, with no mirth in it. “Oh yes, I did do something. I committed sacrilege. I dared try to convince them to forget their holy mission and the holy date and to do things with the money that would have been important and sensible back in 1970. After all, the fortune back then was about three hundred billion dollars, and if that had been invested in renewable energy, the protection of arable land against erosion, and in programs for contraceptives, then much of the misery that prevails today could have been avoided.”

“The Vacchis are so angry with you just because you made such a suggestion?

“I presented them a complete plan. That’s just how I am. I do what I do one hundred percent.” McCaine sighed with what sounded like exasperation. “So much time has been wasted, so much valuable time, and only due to the stubbornness of the Vacchis. An important signal could have been given back then, but no, they had to wait for the date. Each day an animal species goes extinct, each day thousands of people starve to death, but these lawyers had nothing else in their heads but their forefather’s vow.”

John couldn’t sleep that night. He lie in bed awake, staring at the telephone which seemed to glow in the darkness. He thought about Paul Siegel again, and the collapsed house on the same street where Paul’s parents had their watch store. The ruins used to be their meeting place during the warm parts of the year. They sat for hours on the dusty walls, let their legs dangle over the sides, watch the people walk past, and talk about anything and everything. Sometimes they did their homework there, the books lying on the cracked concrete and the bits of remaining tile flooring. Paul always helped him, and could explain everything to him better than the teachers ever could. And it didn’t matter if it was about the Civil War, trigonometry or what Salinger was trying to say in The Catcher in the Rye. The only things they were both equally ignorant about were girls. He always told Paul things he heard from Lino, their faces red with embarrassment.

But that was ages ago. Here and now the phone still wasn’t ringing off the hook. Maybe Paul was jealous of him … jealous of his wealth he had been handed on a silver platter, without having to get a scholarship and study books for endless nights and take endless tests. Maybe that’s why he never called back.

John reached out a hand to the phone but then stopped. What time was it in New York now? Early evening. Maybe still too early, but he could at least leave a message on the answering machine. He took out the address list from the nightstand’s drawer and dialed Paul’s number.

There was no answering machine; only an automated voice that said the number was no longer in service.

“Signora Sofia! Caffè, per favore! E presto!”

That came from the kitchen, and although it was Italian it sounded like Marvin’s voice. John stood at the bottom of the stairs with a hand on the railing wondering if he should go see his guest. No, not really. But there again, he was at a point in his life to make changes, and perhaps it wasn’t a bad idea to start with Marvin. He forced himself to open the aluminum-colored door to the kitchen.

Marvin sat at the other end of the large kitchen table. He had got Sofia to make him real American pancakes for breakfast, and they were virtually drowning in maple syrup. Sofia was just pouring him some more coffee with a sullen look on her face.

“Good morning, Mr. Secretary,” John said, standing behind the backrest of a chair at the opposite end of the table. “Long time no see.”

Marvin looked up with thick cheeks chewing. “Hey gweat mafter,” he mumbled with a few pieces falling out of his mouth, which he didn’t even notice. He pointed to the table and said, “Haf a seat.”

John did not appreciate being invited to sit down in his own house. “May I ask where you’ve been for the past few days?”

Marvin swallowed and waved a hand around. “Here and there. I tell you, Constantina is a wild thing. She’s insatiable. It was high time for me to get away and gather some strength again. Know what I mean?”

“Jeremy told me she called to talk with you, so you could hardly have been at her place the whole time.”

“Hey, she’s not the only woman in Italy, okay?” He leaned back and casually put an arm over the chair’s backrest. He grinned. “Man, if I would’ve known how musicians here admire someone just because he’s from New York, then I would’ve come here a lot sooner. That is really cool, you know? I bought a bass with my first paycheck, a Steinberger. It’s the ultimate, I tell you. I jammed around a bit in the area. It was real cool. A babe here’s got a boyfriend who looks just like a cousin of Bon Jovi, and she left him just because she loves my New York accent. Can you believe that?”

John wasn’t interested in believing anything. “Speaking of first paycheck,” he said in an extra cool tone of voice, “I’ve noticed that the library still has boxes full of books standing around and that there still aren’t any bookshelves.”

Marvin looked at John dismissively, grabbed the bottle of syrup and poured a big gob over his pancakes. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t realize that this job would involve such hard labor. I thought we had an agreement among buddies; that one had a ton of luck and shares a little of it with the other.”

“That’s what I thought too at first, but that was a mistake. I can’t pay you for doing nothing, because it would be unfair on everyone else who does do honest work for their money.”

Marvin made a crafty face and said: “Hey man, I let you come crawling to me after Sarah threw you out. I shared joints and beer with you. But that’s all pretty easily forgotten, it seems.”

He still knows which of my buttons to push, John thought, and he felt his anger rising. He had thought this would be easier. He was not only angry but also disappointed in himself. If he couldn’t solve this problem, how could he ever hope to solve the problems of the world?

“I haven’t forgotten that,” he told Marvin. “But we need to find another solution. I won’t be able to keep you on as an employee.”

Marvin stuffed pancakes into his mouth as if he feared that they would be taken away from him. He stared at John … just stared. It was enough to drive John nuts.

“I could give you some financial assistance,” John suggested finally. “I’ll give you a certain sum of money you can use to build a future.”

Marvin cocked his head. John’s mouth went taught; he won’t say another word. Then Marvin finally said, “Okay … a million dollars.”

John shook his head, his jaws clamped shut. “Out of the question. One hundred grand max.”

“Not exactly generous? Is that what happens when you get rich?”

“A hundred grand and you have to agree now and move out today.” John took a breath. “One of your countless admirers will no doubt take you in.”

Marvin closed his eyes and started to pluck away on an imaginary bass. He hummed some indefinable melody, and then said: “I’m thinking about starting a music career in Italy anyhow. I’ve already met someone with a studio guy who knows a bunch of producers. He’s a real cool guy, except that his English is really shitty. Oh well. But I could start a band. To hell with New York. It’s overcrowded anyhow.” He opened his eyes. “A hundred grand it is and a plane ticket to New York so I can get my songs and a few things. Gimme that and you’re rid of me.”

John stared at him and felt as if his head was empty.

“A first class ticket, if it’s not asking too much.”

“Deal,” John said before Marvin thought of anything else to add.

An hour later, from a window in the library, John watched Marvin get into a cab with his duffel bag, a check worth a hundred and five thousand dollars, and a million lira in his pocket. He sighed with relief when the taxi disappeared through the gate and down the road.

Over. Not exactly a heroic deed, but it’s done.

So, first blood was drawn, it was time to complete the massacre. He lifted the phone, which he had been holding a while, and dialed McCaine’s number. “I accept your offer,” he simply said.

“Good,” the dark voice said, “I will arrive tomorrow.”

Then, with trembling hands he dialed the Vacchis’ number. “I’ve just hired McCaine,” he said straight out, before he lost his nerve.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Gregorio said coldly. “This means we can no longer be friends.”

$21,000,000,000,000

HE WOULD REMEMBER this day as the day his life shifted into high gear. From then on it was full speed all the way, although he had no idea where he was headed, nor what he was fleeing from.

McCaine called once more to tell John that he’d arrive on a chartered jet and that he wouldn’t need to be picked up from the airport. He’d take a cab.

All morning he waited anxiously. The sun was hot, the wind still, and the sea was calm. Even the shrubbery, normally so noisy and bustling with animal life, was quiet. John thought it might be the heat, but it was if the cicadas and birds shared his impatience. Time and again he stepped out onto the little balcony of one of the guest rooms to get the best view to the driveway and the street. The air glimmered with heat above the asphalt. He still saw nothing. Then he would breathe in and go back inside the cool house and ask himself if he had done the right thing.

The taxi arrived just when he had gone into the kitchen to get a drink of water. From the kitchen window he saw the car door open and McCaine’s massive body get out. He was carrying only a briefcase, and still managed to look slovenly, even dressed in a four thousand dollar suit.

“Mr. Fontanelli,” he called out as John stood by the door.

“Just call me John,” he told McCaine.

“Malcolm,” McCaine said in return and shook his hand.

He wasted no time on the house. John led him into the living room. McCaine went straight to the coffee table as if every minute was precious. He opened his case, took out a map of the world, and spread it out across the highly polished alabaster surface.

“Which city,” he asked, “should be the future world capital?”

“The what?”

“The firm’s headquarters. We will create a holding company, and it must have an official address. Of course we’ll have branch offices all over the world, that’s obvious, but we need a central office. The question is where.”

John looked at the map a bit confused. “Which would be most suitable?”

“Any. You are John Salvatore Fontanelli, the wealthiest man of all time. Where you are will always be number one.”

“Hmm.” He didn’t really want to decide here and now, just like that, so to speak. But McCaine seemed to want precisely that. He had once read that a ready desire to make decisions was a key characteristic of leadership. “How about Florence?”

McCaine nodded, but a bit reluctantly. “Florence, okay, that’s a good as any other place.”

“It actually doesn’t matter to me,” John added quickly.

“May I suggest London? Not because I live there and my old mum lives with me in my house. That could all be arranged differently, and, of course, I’ll go along with whatever you want. But London is an important financial center, a city with tradition. If we made London the capital, there would be a symbolic value.”

John shrugged his shoulders. “Fine, London is okay with me.”

“Wonderful.” McCaine rolled the map up.

“Then we’ll set up Fontanelli Enterprises with London as its headquarters.” He looked around briefly. “It should not be difficult to find a house suitable for you there.”

“What’s wrong with this one?”

McCaine raised his hands. “Nothing, absolutely nothing, this house is okay. Please don’t misunderstand me.” He went silent, as if considering what to say next. “The Vacchis made you see things from their point of view at their own level. As nice as this house is, it is a house for a common millionaire not that of the richest man who ever lived. From the viewpoint of a billionaire at the bottom of Forbes’ list you live like a poor crud.”

“I really don’t care. I like it here.”

“That’s not the point. For someone in your position, just liking a place is hardly the aim, that’s something you take for granted. A starting point, if you like.” McCaine was sitting on the couch while John stood at the other end of the coffee table, but the Englishman still managed to look at him like a stern teacher bending down to a first grader as if trying to make him understand something. “Here we obey other rules, John. We’re not talking about money here, we’re talking about power. And in the world of power you have to follow the rules of power, and whether you like it or not, one of these rules is to brag. You must impress others, show them their place. You have to become the biggest gorilla in the pack, the alpha male who is followed by everyone else.” He tried to smile, but his eyes remained deadly serious, the expression of a general about to lead his troops into a hard battle. “And you will. Trust me.”

For a moment you could’ve heard a pin drop. They heard a seagull cry, breaking the silence. John nodded, although he couldn’t say that he trusted him. But he had chosen to go down this path, and that’s what he was going to do.

“But there’s nothing to stop you from keeping this house,” McCaine then said with a shrug. He opened the briefcase and took out some papers, a paper calendar, and a mobile phone. “All right, let’s go!” he said, making it sound like a battle cry. John sat down on the armrest of the easy chair and listened to McCaine call a notary public in London. McCaine talked until eventually he persuaded the notary to meet him and John this evening to set up a limited liability company.

“Go get a few things packed,” McCaine told John. “I’ll see to everything else.”

John was glad to escape the man’s magnetic field for a few minutes. He’d have to get used to the tempo of McCaine’s work. He called Jeremy and told him pack a travel bag.

“For how long, sir?” the butler wanted to know.

John shrugged his shoulders. “A few days. I don’t know. Could be longer.”

“Shall I notify the bodyguards? When are you departing?”

“Today. Later on. Yes, tell Marco.”

The butler nodded with a stony face and went upstairs. John stopped in the hallway, McCaine’s voice still ringing in his head: the way the man had badgered, cajoled, laid down the law, insisted on things, made subliminal threats. The man was a bulldozer. He would flatten everything in his way with a trillion dollars behind him.

“Bank account statements!” McCaine called from the living room.

“What do you want?” John shouted back unsure if he was meant with the demand.

But the Englishman appeared himself. “You need to make copies of your bank statements and bring them with you. I take it that the computer is here in the cellar?”

“Yes, but I have no idea how to print.”

“I can show you.”

They went down to the cellar, which a specialist company had fitted out with armor-plating and the latest security technology. McCaine turned around when John punched in the code. He nodded when he saw the computer and the new programs on it. “Not bad,” he said. “Who wrote the program? I take it that the young Vacchi wrote it? What’s his name? Eduardo?”

John nodded. The figure at the bottom of the screen was spinning as fast as ever. It was now at one trillion and thirty billion dollars.

“Very nice. May I?” He sat down on a chair before the computer and clicked around with the mouse. “Just what I thought, he based it on my program. But it was well done, I must say. Well, then let’s see what we can print out …”

“Won’t that be a lot of paper?” John asked.

“With one line for each account, it’ll be about twelve thousand pages,” McCaine said nodding. “That’s about thirty binders full. That’s too much, of course. We’ll print an overview by countries and type of investment. That’ll come to about forty pages.” The printer started to hum and spit out sheets of paper. “This reminds me of something; the computer in the Vacchis’ law firm still exists, right? We must have it turned off. It’s not as if I mistrust the Vacchis. Their integrity is unquestionable, but I don’t like them having an open window on our finances. Do you understand?”

“Hmm,” John said. He wasn’t happy about McCaine’s use of the term “our” finances, but perhaps he’d said it without thinking.

The foundation of Fontanelli Enterprises Limited was accomplished with, if possible, even less fanfare than the handing over of the original fortune. The skies were growing dark over London as they entered the notary public’s office. It had dark wall panels and high ceilings that seemed to embody something of the old British Empire. The notary, a distinguished gray-haired man with the build of a polo player, looked and acted as if he was related to the queen herself. He explained to John in precisely articulated upper-class English, which sounded as if he had a hot potato in his mouth, the contents of the documents. The notary lost a bit of his composure when he realized that the sum involved was one trillion dollars. But he recovered right away and continued as normal. John would, he explained, be the sole shareholder of the company and Malcolm McCaine would be the chief executive. He went on page after page reading paragraphs. Then he wanted to see the employment contract for McCaine.

“That’s not important now,” McCaine said impatiently. “We will sign a run-of-the-mill contract of employment later. We can do this between the two of us.”

“As you wish,” the notary said and cocked his head a bit to show his displeasure.

McCaine glanced to John. “He only wanted to charge more money for that,” he told him in Italian.

There were more stamps, signatures, and carbon copies, but no champagne and no congratulations. A thin, pale-faced woman waited by the door to take copies for the notary’s records, and then the notary handed John his copies with a handshake. He shook McCaine’s hand too and that was it. Five minutes later they were back in the car, heading to John’s hotel.

John had expected to see the hotel surrounded by a mob of reporters the next day, but to his relief when he awoke and peered through the black curtains he saw not a single mobile satellite dish.

Yet their evening visit to the lawyer did not go unnoticed. McCaine appeared with a bunch of newspapers clamped under an arm as John was eating a remarkably bad breakfast in the dining room of his suite. The Sun had a lengthy article with the title ‘Trillion dollar boy has new toy’. The Financial Times had decided on a two column report about it, on the front page no less, but at the bottom and with the acidic sarcasm the paper was so well known for: There was no indication what branch of business Fontanelli Enterprises was interested in. Perhaps, to fulfill the prophecy, some land in the Amazon might be bought to prevent further decimation of the rain forest to preserve earth’s green lungs?

“They’ll see who laughs last,” was McCaine’s only comment.

John flipped through the stack of papers. “What about American papers?”

“It’s still too early for them,” McCaine answered. “Only CNN will do a special report a half hour long at some stage. But I wonder what they think they can fill a half hour with, speculations, no doubt.”

“Is that good or bad?” John asked and looked at his soggy toast, which he decided not to eat.

McCaine gathered up the papers and tossed them into the garbage pail. “Any publicity is good publicity doesn’t just apply to Hollywood stars. A lot of people this morning will have their appetites ruined by this news.”

The coffee, John determined, was just as bad as the rest of his breakfast. “Can we go someplace where I can get a decent breakfast?”

They were still in the hotel’s elevator when McCaine started calling real estate agents to help find a suitable location for the new company’s head office. “A whole high-rise in the City if possible,” he explained to one of his business partners as they rushed through the foyer. “And I’ll pay in cash if need be.”

John noticed with surprise that McCaine did everything from memory. He knew all the phone numbers by heart, remembered addresses that were given him by phone and didn’t seem to need a city map to find them. He did not even have one in his car.

“I think branch offices in New York, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Sydney and Kuwait will be enough for the start,” McCaine said as he maneuvered his messy car through the center of London.

Marco, Carlin, and the third bodyguard whose name was also John, drove in an armored Mercedes rented from a local security company.

“As soon as the company is up and running we’ll need branch offices in every capital city.”

“Kuwait?” John asked, still wondering about it from McCaine’s previous sentence.

“Oil,” McCaine simply said.

“Oil? Is that still so important these days?”

McCaine looked at him astounded and debasingly. “You mean compared to genetic engineering?”

“Maybe. I mean, we’re talking about the future here, and that is going to depend on industries like that, or at least that’s what you read in the papers.”

“Forget all that. Sunrise industries … sure, you can make a lot of money in genetic engineering, medicine, and computer software. If you believe the stock markets then Microsoft is worth more than all of Russia. But do you really believe that? A few buildings and computers are worth more than the largest country on earth, with all the oil and other raw materials and endless land? That is not reality. That is only the way the markets see things and they are nothing more than gambling shops. The only difference is the high stakes on the stock markets.” McCaine was watching the traffic like a warrior in a battle. He changed lanes abruptly. “Things look different in real life. In real life only food and energy count. Did you know that the world reserves of wheat, rice, and other grains are at their lowest level in twenty years? You won’t see that in the news, of course. They’d rather report on a shootout in Bosnia. And the prognosis for this year’s crops is bad, which means that the world reserves will sink to below the fifty-day mark of world usage. And while the world’s population grows, arable land shrinks through erosion, salinization, desertification, and urban sprawl. Each year on Java alone twenty thousand hectares of land are lost to new roads, housing, and factories. That’s an area that could feed over three hundred thousand people, while at the same time Indonesia’s population grows by three million each year. Why do you think that the US is determined to remain the world’s biggest exporter of grains? Because that means power. Sometime in the future silos filled with grain will represent more power than silos filled with rockets.”

“Are you trying to say you want to coerce governments with food?” John asked.

“No. You don’t coerce. Most of the time it is enough to make it clear to the other party what could happen. McCaine smiled. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon see how this works.”

A week later, John signed away an awe-inspiring number of British pounds for an awe-inspiring high-rise in the City of London that used to belong to the NatWest Bank. The old sign with the bank’s name was just being removed when John and McCaine arrived to look at the building.

“It’s not like they’re poor,” McCaine told John. “The bank has another five tall buildings around here, and most are bigger than this one.”

Even empty the building still exuded power, wealth, and the centuries-old tradition of the bank. Their steps echoed on the bare stuccoed walls as they walked over old, solid wooden floors and looked out over the city through tall windows.

McCaine seemed very pleased with their new headquarters, right in the middle of enemy territory, as he put it. “Look outside, John,” he said when they got to the top floor. “This is the City of London. It is independent of the rest of the metropolis, has its own administration, its own jurisprudence and its own police. It’s almost a state within a state. Over there is the Bank of England, and over there is Lloyd’s of London. The London Stock Exchange is there. Practically every important business in the world is represented here. You won’t find a wealthier square mile anywhere else in the world. This is truly the Vatican of money, and we’re right in the middle of it.”

John looked at London’s skyline, the dark meandering Thames River, and he thought about the number of zeros on the check he signed and was not quite as impressed. “So, what now?”

You could wake McCain in the middle of the night and he would still be able to outline every detail of his plans. “We will start hiring people,” he told John, without a second’s hesitation and never taking his eyes away from the breathtaking vista in front of them. “Analysts, for a start, to examine every company in the world and to help work out which ones we need to buy, people with expertise in management to help build the organization, lawyers to put everything on a solid legal foundation, and so forth. We could bring over a few people from my old firm, but they won’t be enough. I’ve put ads in all the important newspapers, which will appear in tomorrow’s editions, and I also contacted personnel consultants to find good administrators.”

“Personnel consultants?” John echoed, wondering aloud what on earth McCaine meant.

But McCaine thought John was worried about the cost and quickly added: “The success of every company depends on its employees. You might think that is the best kept secret in the economy, but it really is no secret. Everybody will tell you that, but hardly anyone understands it. It is especially the people looking for work who don’t understand. If they did the world of labor would be a different place.”

A while later John took a walk through the Vatican of money. Alone for the first time since — he could hardly remember when he last went anywhere alone. McCaine assured him that nothing would happen to him. Indeed, there were video cameras on every corner and the police with their special insignia on their helmets keeping watch. Everything was spic and span, also very dull, despite all the golden coats of arms and splendid facades. There were few people out and about and there didn’t seem to be many tourists among them.

He discovered a sign on a narrow one-lane street that said N. M. Rothschild & Sons. He looked into the entryway and saw a large painting of Moses and his people receiving the Ten Commandments.

“Sir?” A security man dressed in a dark uniform suddenly stood beside John. “Would you please move along?” he asked him politely but firmly.

John looked at him and thought that he could buy this bank and have him fired. He saw his reflection in the glass of the vestibule. Wrong outfit. He had left his suits at the hotel and was wearing a pair of jeans and a thin windbreaker. It had also cost a lot of money, but you couldn’t tell. He most definitely didn’t look like a customer of N. M. Rothschild & Sons. “All right all ready,” he said. “I was moving along anyway.”

The real estate agent was gaunt, talked down his nose, had a crooked face and dirty-red, unruly hair. But his cologne smelled expensive, and he had a gold coat of arms on his business card. And of course he drove them to the “property,” as he called it, in a Rolls Royce.

“The property,” he said in a nasal whine as they drove towards a giant wrought-iron gate, “used to belong to the eighteenth Earl of Harrington-Keynes, who died without heirs, unfortunately.” He pressed a button on a remote control. As the gate majestically swung open he pointed out the coat of arms on it. “Naturally you’ll have to remove the insignia if you should buy it.”

“Naturally,” McCaine said. “If.”

They drove through the gate. The old walls surrounding the estate looked like they dated back to the Norman invasions, and the trees inside looked like they might once have provided shade for Henry VIII. They hadn’t even seen anything of the house yet. The car passed through a landscape that looked like a hunting ground or a rustic golf course.

“For years, the countess has lived in a nursing home and couldn’t take proper care of the place,” the agent explained. “Two years ago she decided to sell.”

They went over a rise and the view improved. They saw the castle before them looking like something from a different world. Made of gray basalt, it was built to last for centuries. It had three wings, each several floors high and which faced a symmetrical pond. There were little turrets at the corners while the projecting roof over the front entrance had clearly been added later. The car pulled up to the entrance, and they got out.

Turning his head slowly, John was speechless as he looked at the castle from one end to the other, which took a surprisingly long time. This place was larger than the entire block where his parents’ house, which he had grown up in, was situated. He wondered if anyone ever counted the windows.

“Well, John?” McCaine asked with so such enthusiasm it seemed like he built the place with his own hands. “What do you say?”

John turned around and looked back from where they had come from. “It’ll be a long walk to the mailbox, I guess? Especially when it rains.”

The real estate agent looked shocked, but McCaine only laughed, and said, “Let’s go inside.”

The entrance hall was big enough to play tennis in. Dead, pale-faced earls looked down upon them from huge oil paintings in golden frames.

“The portraits of the ancestors are destined for a museum,” the agent explained. “So you should imagine this hall without them.”

“Happy to,” John responded.

The hallways were endless. Most doorknobs were dusty. The dining hall looked like the inside of a church.

“Absolutely first class,” McCaine said.

“A little gloomy,” John thought.

The windows were tall but narrow and the electric lighting was a definite understatement.

“One American historian reckoned this house was exactly ten times the size of the White House,” the agent told them, and then added, “I haven’t checked it myself yet.”

McCaine nodded. John swallowed hard. They wandered through the different rooms. When they met again, McCaine took John off to the side and asked him in a low tone: “So what do you think? I think this is an appropriate estate for the wealthiest man in the world.”

“It’s a castle? Isn’t that overdoing it a bit?”

“Nonsense! All the top rock stars have something similar. Should I show you Mick Jagger’s estate? Or the one where George Harrison lives?”

“But I think it’s so terribly … big!”

“John,” said McCaine and looked him straight in the eyes, “you must learn to think big. This here is only the beginning. Look at it as an everyday matter.”

Thus John Salvatore Fontanelli, wealthiest man in the world, bought an English castle dating back to the fifteenth century complete with nearly four square miles of land, servants’ quarters, stables, garden houses, forest pergolas, a gatehouse and a chapel. A consortium of construction firms went to work renovating the place. The head of the architectural firm in charge of the project would inspect every three days and then submit a progress report and discuss details. Enough of the work should be completed by Christmas for John could move in, he said.

McCaine insisted that no costs were too spared to get the place as magnificent as possible. The ground floor of the north wing was to be converted into an indoor swimming pool, complete with whirlpool, saunas, steam baths, a massage room, and a winter garden with exotic plants. The stables were to be converted into garages for the luxury cars McCaine insisted John should buy — a Rolls Royce, a Jaguar, a Mercedes-Benz, and a Lamborghini — and there would also be an auto-repair shop. There would be around two hundred people employed to care for house and grounds. The task of hiring the personnel was given to Jeremy, who had put Sofia in charge of the house in Portecéto so he could fly to London. A Frenchman who had won several prizes was chosen as kitchen chef. He brought along his entire team, from gravy maker to vegetable slicer and was given an almost unlimited budget for the specialty equipment of the kitchen.

A helipad was constructed complete with floodlights on part of the estate. During the following spring they found out that the noise of the helicopter was acceptable within the house. Only the ornamental peacocks, which they had brought in to strut around the flowerbeds, were irritated by the chopper’s noise.

$22,000,000,000,000

SUDDENLY JOHN’S LIFE was more stable than it ever had been before. He got up at six thirty in the morning, showered, had breakfast and at seven thirty the car was waiting to take him and a troop of bodyguards, which seemed to grow in numbers daily, to the office. They changed routes every day. This way he at least got to see different parts of London. The rest of his time he spent with the obsessive McCaine, whose mere presence seemed like a drug.

Hordes of workers were dispersed inside the office building putting in new phone lines, computers, and security checkpoints, new flooring, a new heating system. They tore down walls here, put up new ones there, put up paneling or painted walls, put in marble where there had been teak and gold where there had been stainless steel.

John found himself in a new office the size of a large apartment and had a vista of the city he could have charged admission for. McCaine got a similar one at the other end of the building. Between the two offices was a huge conference room that looked like it belonged in a James Bond movie. It had a table as large as a tennis court, figuratively speaking, a bunch of portable movie screens and projectors and Venetian blinds as well as plenty of other luxury details. It had more seating capacity greater than the Houses of Parliament. The rest of the floor had a reception area with large, leather easy chairs, glass tables, and large hydroponic plants, all to allow masses of people to wait in comfort before being allowed to see one of the bosses.

Six beautiful secretaries would be busy at work to receive visitors behind a large reception desk made of snow-white marble. But there were no visitors yet, so McCaine had them write letters and make phone calls.

Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and John could almost physically feel his world changing. Signs were erected next to the elevators and stairs to help people get around. A personnel department was put in the floor below John’s office. The analysts and economists were assigned to the three floors below his. The rest of the building was still empty, but there were already plans for them. Deliverymen came daily to bring office furniture, and it was obvious that by the end of the year this place would be bustling. It was like a million ton freight train that started to move, very slowly at first, barely noticeable, but became unstoppable once it got up to speed.

They had discussed getting John an apartment for the time being, but he had no desire to drive around with real estate agents so he decided to stay at a hotel. The suite he had there was large enough to allow him to delay moving into the castle for the moment, and, in any case, it was more luxurious. Even the breakfast got better after he made a small comment to the manager. Every day for the next week the chef would come out in person after the dishes had been cleared away to ask John if there were any improvements he might make. The pancakes became so fluffy, the coffee so good and the toast so crispy that John looked forward to breakfast when he went to bed.

He had some more suits sent to him from Portecéto, but then he remembered McCaine’s words to think big, so he called the tailors who already had his measurements and had his wardrobe expanded here in London. No waiting for six weeks this time, but pronto! And oh what power money has! No one took longer than three days to deliver the suits, shirts, and other clothes directly to the hotel. No one bothered him with bills, it was all handled without John’s involvement, and it really didn’t interest him that much.

The days that turned to weeks were filled with bustling activity without a break for weekends or holidays. McCaine dragged him to meetings, gave him plans, drafts of contracts, and endless lists of numbers for him to read through. John got balances and economic statistics, signed checks, purchase contracts, rent contracts, employment contracts, and a seemingly endless array of official documents. When John had time between all that he would sit behind his mighty desk and read newspapers, financial reports, and stock market reports, or he would read one of the books that McCaine suggested to him, on national economies, business economics, and ecology. Mostly he gave up after the first ten pages, but he tried not to let it show.

For the most part, he didn’t get a chance to read longer than a half hour before McCaine had him summoned. John watched with awe as McCaine used a whole battery of telephones at once. Employees would make brief oral reports, while he was reading something else, and then he shooed them away with new instructions.

When John arrived at eight in the morning McCaine was already there. Even though McCaine never remotely suggested John should put in a similar effort, John couldn’t get help feeling guilty when he wanted to go back to the hotel at eight in the evening and McCaine was still in his office. He started to ask himself if McCaine ever went home at all.

So the days went by and time marched on. France set off an atomic bomb on the Mururoa Atoll despite international protests. The former football star O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of murder after a sensational trial hyped up by the media. Israeli Minister President Yitzhak Rabin was shot during a peace demonstration. London fog became more common as the summer ended. It had been a long time since the reporters last stood waiting for John Fontanelli in front of the hotel with microphones and cameras, until the day arrived when things really started to get going.

“Here are the first recommendations from the analysts.”

“Ah,” John said.

As McCaine let the stack of papers drop on the desk he added: “Which we will ignore for now.”

The slapping sound that the papers made on the conference table reverberated for a moment. It was so quiet up there in the huge room that it seemed there was no outside world beyond the windows.

“To do what instead?” John asked. He knew that McCaine was waiting for this question.

“Our first company takeover,” McCaine explained. “It must be a bombshell … a real sensation … something that no one can ignore. Our first strike must rattle the whole world.”

John looked at the papers that were compiled to make their first move possible. The large surface of the conference table shimmered in the morning sun like a black lake with no wind. And the papers were a rocky island in that lake. “You think we should buy a really big company?”

“Yes, of course. But that alone isn’t enough. It must also symbolize something. It must be more than just a company; it must be an institution. And it needs to be American. We must take away a prime piece of real estate from the leading economic power in one fell swoop.”

John concentrated. He ran the names of famous companies he knew through his head. They were all institutions, more or less, weren’t they? It seemed to be the goal of all large successful companies to become institutions. “You’re not asking me which one we should take. Are you? You already have one in your sights.”

McCaine nodded slightly, placed a hand on the black lake. “As an American, who do you most associate with money?”

“Bill Gates.”

“Alright, that’s not who I meant. I’ve got someone on my mind from the previous century.”

John thought for a second before a name came to him. “Rockefeller?”

“Exactly. John D. Rockefeller. Do you know what the name of his company back then was?”

“Wait … Standard Oil?” Was that ever mentioned in school? He couldn’t remember. He remembered reading about it once, and once he saw it on TV years ago. “Yes, exactly. The Standard Oil Corporation. That was the story. Rockefeller had a monopoly on the oil market, until the government passed an antitrust law and his company was split up.”

“That is the popular version. The true story goes like this: John D. Rockefeller was charged with breaking the antitrust law in Ohio in 1892. But he avoided a court decision by splitting Standard Oil into separate components and distributing the parts in different countries. They were all companies that were still controlled by him and his staff. The courts effectively forced him to start the first multinational company.”

“Okay, but so what? It doesn’t exist any more.”

“Really? The Standard Oil Company of New York has been called Mobil Oil since 1966. The Standard Oil companies of Indiana, Nebraska, and Kansas merged between 1939 and 1948 to become Amoco. The Standard Oil Companies of California and Kentucky merged in 1961 and were re-named Chevron in 1984. The largest chunk of all was the former Holding, Standard Oil of New Jersey, which was changed to Exxon in 1972.”

John stared at him and felt how his lower jaw moved down. “You want to buy Exxon!?”

“Exactly. Exxon is in many ways the ideal candidate for the first blow. It is one of the five largest companies in the world, the second largest energy company after Shell, and is represented worldwide on every continent except Antarctica. Not to be overlooked, Exxon is one of the most profitable companies on this planet.”

“Exxon …?” John felt his heart beat in his chest. “But can we afford it? I mean Exxon is gigantic.”

McCaine pulled out a magazine from his paperwork and opened it to one page. “This is the Fortune Five Hundred list, a list of the five hundred largest companies in the world. The important thing to watch is the second last column, the net assets. You need to own fifty-one percent of net assets to control the company.” He shoved the list over to John. “Go ahead and do the math to see how far you can get.”

John stared at the list with names like General Motors, IBM, Daimler-Benz, Boeing, and Philip Morris. He reached for the big calculator and started to add numbers together. He added only the billions and stopped when he got to the bottom of the list at number fifty, and he still had over six hundred billion dollars left over. “I can really buy half the world,” he mumbled.

McCaine nodded like a teacher who is satisfied with the answer given by his stupidest student. “And when you have bought half the world, your money isn’t gone, it’s invested. That means it’ll start to really earn money, money that’ll allow us to buy the rest too.”

It was one of those moments in life that remains in one’s memory forever, like the bright lights of a special firework display. John sat there and stared at the list with the light-blue and dark-blue columns with all the names and numbers. Numbers that now seemed puny when compared to the mighty, powerful number of one trillion, and then he started to understand, really understand what power he had been given. Now he understood what McCaine wanted to accomplish, understood the whole dimension of the plan and the irresistible dynamics that they were about to unleash. They would be successful because there was nothing and no one who could stand in their way. “Yes,” he whispered, “that’s how we’ll do it.”

“Two weeks,” said McCaine, “and we’ll be in Texas.”

John remembered something. “Does this mean that all the bigger oil companies stem from Rockefeller’s Standard Oil?”

“Not all. Shell’s roots are in the Netherlands and England and had never anything to do with Standard Oil. Elf Aquitaine is French, British Petroleum, as the name implies, is British.” McCaine leaned forward. “But do you get the message here? Somebody else already tried to do what we’re going to do. Rockefeller’s problem was that he was too early. He really didn’t know what to do with all the power he had. If he lived today, then first of all it wouldn’t be possible to dismember Standard Oil, and second, he would know what has to be done. He would probably follow the same plan as us.”

That same day Fontanelli Enterprises announced that it planned to acquire Exxon. The invested capital of Exxon was 91 billion dollars at this time, and it had net assets of 40 billion, divided among 2.5 billion shares that were owned by six hundred thousand shareholders. The current stock market share price was 35 dollars. Fontanelli offered 38 dollars per share.

The chairmen of Exxon called together an emergency meeting as soon as possible to discuss the situation. It was a shock; the company’s performance was so good that everyone thought it safe from a takeover. No one thought that an investor could come along without worrying about a billion dollars here or there. They sat together with the largest shareholders and worked out how to buy back large number of shares to prevent the takeover. In the meantime the share price climbed continuously and even surpassed the 38 dollar mark when everyone understood that Fontanelli Enterprises had almost an endless amount of money available. A sort of fever developed as investors tried to acquire shares because that crazy trillionaire from London would pay any price. It was just a matter of nerves some so-called stock market experts said, as the price climbed to 60 dollars per share.

“If he really wants Exxon, he’ll pay the price.”

London’s reaction was cool. The price had just reached 63.22 dollars when a message went around that made some break out in cold sweat as soon as they understood the consequences. John Salvatore Fontanelli, some supposedly well-informed sources reported, had supposedly said: “Then we’ll buy Shell.”

The following day there were offers to buy shares of every major oil company.

Everyone who had bought the over-expensive Exxon shares now panicked and tried to get rid of them. Unfortunately, the news had already made the rounds, and no one wanted to buy. The share-price dropped like a stone.

McCaine watched the stock prices in New York’s Stock Exchange on his computer screen in London with the stoicism of a soldier in the trenches. “Now,” he said into one of his phones when the price had gone down to 32.84 dollars.

Two weeks later Exxon employees all over the world were throwing away papers with the old letterhead to replace them with new ones that said: EXXON — a Fontanelli Enterprises Corporation.

This time they made the headlines in all the newspapers across the globe. There was not a single TV channel that didn’t have the Exxon takeover as its lead item on the nightly news program. Had it been necessary to express the basic atmosphere in the business world with only two words, it would have been ‘pure horror.’

All at once it was clear to even the slowest journalist what it meant to have a private fortune of one trillion dollars. In countless special reports, talk shows, discussions, and interviews around the world, people were saying exactly what McCaine had told John during their first meeting: that it was one thing when a large investment firm or a bank has hundreds of billions of dollars and another thing when a single person really and truly has the same sum.

“The difference is,” according to a certain Lord Peter Rawburne, who the subtitle shown on the screen during the interview called one of the world’s most distinguished financial journalists, “that this Fontanelli doesn’t have to give a hoot about the rate of return to his investment when he makes a decision about something, and that makes him incalculable. One might also say ‘free.’”

But that amount of freedom gave rise to apprehension. Economics ministers advised him to show social responsibility. Trade union leaders were very wary of so much concentration of money and influence. The chairmen of other large corporations were trying hard to remain calm and appear confident they were still in control.

What would happen next was the number one question.

A few periodicals, among which were some renowned financial magazines, showed with great effectiveness world maps with firm logos and stock market values of different companies around the world to illustrate what a global Fontanelli conglomerate could look like.

“They are doing half the work our analysts are supposed to do,” McCaine said with a smirk.

A not so serious magazine even spelled out which of the smaller African nations Fontanelli could buy outright, including everything state owned. No two prognoses were the same. It seemed anything was possible.

Surprised, John accepted an invitation from McCaine to join him and his mother for Christmas dinner.

Mrs. Ruth Earnestine McCaine suffered from advanced rheumatism. She sat crooked and bent in her over-sized chintz wingback chair, but was determined not to let the disease get her down. Blue-gray eyes looked out from a face full of laughter lines and age spots, framed by a surprisingly full and thick mop of curly white hair. “How do you like your castle?” she wanted to know.

“I can’t really say yet,” John answered. “I’ve only been there a week.”

“But it’s all nicely done up now, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sure, very nice.”

“You should know,” McCaine told John with an amusing smile, “that mother devours the gutter press. She probably knows your stately home better than even you.”

“Ah,” John said. “Well, that wouldn’t be too hard.”

A few copies of the said gutter press newspapers were lying on the table. John was glad to see at least Lady Di was still attracting the media’s attention.

It was odd for John to see the private side of McCaine’s life. A man who in the office was a dynamo functioning at top speed, sending sparks flying, never still, driven by his goals to the extent of even appearing careless. Tonight, at home with his elderly mother, he seemed, calm, even relaxed, and in a good mood.

Their home was a respectable, white-painted house built sometime around the turn of the century, located on a quiet street in a quiet part of London and looked almost modest compared to all the other villas in the neighborhood. There was a modern glass elevator for McCaine’s mother, since she was restricted in her movements, and that rather detracted from the architecture of the hallway. But apart from that you could have filmed a movie set in pre-war days here without changing much of the interior or furniture.

The food was good, but not elaborate, basic home cooking. It was served by a thick housekeeper, the only employee in the McCaine household, as John found out. There was a nurse who came twice a day for one or two hours to look after Mrs. McCaine.

When McCaine left the table for a moment, his mother pointed out watercolor painting over the fireplace with a plain stainless steel frame. “Do you recognize that?”

John looked at the picture. “Could be Florence,” he guessed. “One of the bridges over the Arno.”

“Yes, the Ponte Vecchio.” In a conspiratorial tone of voice she added: “Malcolm painted it.”

“Really?” Never in his life would John have thought that McCaine could swing a paintbrush.

“He painted a lot when he was a young man,” she told him. “My late husband was transferred often between bases, you know, and so we got around a lot. Back then we were stationed in Italy and Malcolm went to work for a computer firm and shortly thereafter he stopped painting.” Her eyes sparkled. “Don’t tell him I told you that.”

John stared at the painting and didn’t know what to think. Surely it was absurd to see this as some divine message, wasn’t it? But he couldn’t think of it in any other way. Both of them used to paint, but gave it up — it was a meaningless detail. A sign that both were destined to meet one day.

“There is one more matter that we have put off,” McCaine told John a day before they were to attend a conference with the chairman of Exxon in Irving, Texas. “My employment. We must clear that up before I present myself officially as chief executive.”

“Oh,” John said and reached for a pen. “Of course. I totally forgot.”

“Well, we were busy,” McCaine said and pulled out a document several pages long in triplicates from a leather-backed folder. “You do understand that I have to think about me too once in a while. If, for example, we are not of one mind with my contract and we go our separate ways, then I would have worked all these months for nothing. You would owe me not a single shilling.”

John was surprised to find that McCaine was worried about this. Did he, John Fontanelli, seem so unpredictable to the British? “Well, maybe we’ll agree,” he tried to joke and reached for the papers. “Let me have it.”

McCaine handed him a draft contract, and said: “Read everything closely before you sign it.” He sat down, crossed his legs and arms, like someone ready to wait for a long time.

John had to force himself to read the whole page before he flipped to the next one. He only understood the bare bones of it anyway with all the legalese it was written in. It changed when he got to the paragraph that mentioned the salary; it was unmistakable what it said there. John’s jaw dropped. McCaine wanted an annual salary of one hundred million dollars!

$23,000,000,000,000

JOHN FELT HIS blood boil as he stared at the number on the contract. It was presented as something absolutely routine, but it was precisely that, the way in which it was presented so routinely that angered him, but he somehow realized that he had to repress his obvious anger. “Isn’t this a bit, hmm, much?”

McCaine lifted his brows. “What do you mean?”

John held up the piece of paper. It seemed to weigh a hundred pounds now. “I’m at the part with the salary, and I somehow have the feeling that you wrote a zero too many in there.”

“No, I think not.”

“But a hundred million dollars … There is not a single chairman on earth who gets anywhere near that much!”

“Come now, John,” McCaine responded with a touch of anger in his voice. “A hundred million dollars is what you earn in interest in one day. And I will increase your money. I will easily double it. That means I will earn you three hundred times what you pay me. Show me an employee on this planet who can say that.”

“But that’s not the point. We’re not doing all of this just to make more money, are we? I thought we were here on a mission. To change the future.”

McCaine looked at his fingernails. “You know I don’t care about money, John. My salary is symbolic. It is symbolic of the fact that I’m the boss of the largest company on earth … by far the largest company in the world. And that’s why it must be the largest sum ever to be paid. Do you understand? You can’t keep something like this secret. I don’t want to. When I sit across from one of those guys who thinks he is so very important, I want him to know that I earn fifty times more than he does. That’s how this game is played, John. He will feel tiny and insignificant and will do whatever I want.”

John looked at the number again; $100,000,000. Naturally, he could refuse to sign. The company and the money belonged to John, everything did, even the chair that McCaine was sitting on, the paper the draft employment contract was printed on, the pen he was supposed to sign it with. He could cross out the number and write another one instead; twenty million maybe, or twenty-five or even only ten, which was still a whole bunch of money. If McCaine didn’t agree, then they would part ways.

Theoretically, he had just bought a multinational oil company, an office building worth millions, hired people, and signed contracts. He had done things he could never have done by himself. He had less knowledge about running a business and economics than Murali, the pizza man. He couldn’t even run a newspaper stand, much less a company with more assets than the next three hundred largest companies put together.

He felt his hands get sweaty as if the piece of paper was hot. He looked at McCaine, but McCaine’s expression was that of a poker player. Maybe McCaine wouldn’t go away. This project was his calling in life, after all. At least that’s what he had told John. Was all of this nothing but an ingenious plan to get a pile of money? But even if it were, he had no other choice. He had himself backed into a corner somehow, and all of a sudden his money couldn’t help him.

“Hmm,” John said. Actually, he felt as if he had been tricked, and that’s what was bothering him most, not the money itself. McCaine might even be right with his argument.

All in all, John had no choice.

John took the pen that had somehow slipped from his fingers earlier when he started to read the contract. “Well,” he said in a weak attempt to make it seem like a sovereign decision, “I think you are right. Given the scale of things, it’s only appropriate.” He flipped to the last page and scribbled his name and did so with the other copies too. He put one copy with his files and handed McCaine the other two. McCaine took them without changing his expression.

There was an embarrassing silence in the room for a moment.

“Okay,” John said, trying to appear casual. He leaned back and clapped his hands, “when are we taking off? What are we going to do with the Texans?”

McCaine stood and said, “We will talk with the chairmen, shake their hands in a friendly manner, and then fire half of them.”

“What? Why?” John blinked his eyes. It suddenly seemed to have cooled down a few degrees in the room. “Is that necessary? I mean, they seem to have done a good job if Exxon is profitable. Haven’t they?”

“Sure, but that’s not the reason. The reason is to make it clear to them that we are in complete control now.”

“What?”

“We will put a few of our own people in their place.”

John raised a hand. “Wait a minute, I don’t like that. I don’t want any part in these kinds of absurd power games.”

McCaine looked down on John with a cold expression. “John, your outlook on the world needs to change, you can’t actually imagine that we can do what we set out to do and still be nice guys.” He shook his head. “Forget that. What we will are going to ask people to do isn’t going to be easy or pleasant. We will be hated for this. Our names will be cuss words for the next hundred years. Churchill told the British all he had to offer them was blood, sweat, and tears, but those days are long-gone. We can’t try that again. We cannot ask anyone for permission, we have to do what has to be done, and that is a question of power, indeed. John, you still have a lot to learn about power. I see it as part of my task to teach you everything I know about power.” He lifted both copies of his contracts. “This was the first lesson. What did you learn from it?”

John looked perplex. “What do you mean?”

“I handed you a contract of employment with an exorbitant amount of money for salary. You signed it despite feeling it was too high. Why?”

“Because your arguments had convinced me after I thought about it.”

McCaine smiled thinly. “That’s a lie.”

“Why? I don’t have to make such a fuss over a few million…”

“Now you’re making excuses for yourself. The truth is; you thought my salary was too high, but you thought you had no other choice but to agree. In other words, I was more powerful, even though you are the wealthiest man in the world, and I’m nothing in comparison.” McCaine turned around and went a few steps. He stopped and then faced John again. “Would you like to know how I accomplished this?”

John sat there with his mouth open. Not only had McCaine tricked him into a salary two hundred times as much as the US president, now he was even bragging about it and wanted to explain how he did it! “I am,” he croaked, “curious.”

“You made a serious mistake right from the start that you should never repeat. An elementary rule concerning contracts is that you let it wait. You faced a fait accompli, and you can’t do a deal on a fait accompli. I was able to wait until you were in a position where you couldn’t simply get up and leave. But when you enter negotiations without this option — the option of getting up without signing — then you are automatically in a weak position.” McCaine was acting like a professor teaching the basics of his specialty. “Take for example moving into an apartment without having first signed a rental agreement. Once you’re moved into the place the landlord can almost do what he wants, demand more money to do small renovations each year, and so forth. Your only alternative would be to move back out. You can’t just leave and find another place. It’s not that easy when you’ve already gone through all the effort and expense. Do you understand? You allowed a fait accompli, and that greatly weakened your position.”

“So, we should’ve spoken about your salary from the very start?”

“Ideally, yes,” McCaine said nodding. “Your position then was optimal. I was a man whose life revolved around an idea that could only be realized with your agreement. You are the richest man on earth and fairly disinterested. Hell, if you had insisted, I would’ve worked for nothing!”

John thought about the day he and Marco came to London the first time without the Vacchis knowing about it. “I guess I’m not very skilled in this stuff, am I?”

“This is no skill you are born with. You have to learn it. The lessons have just started.”

“You’re a mean teacher.”

“It’s a tough class,” McCaine replied. “Admit it; a while ago you thought, ‘What will I do if he leaves me alone with all this?’”

John nodded reluctantly. “Was it obvious?”

“No. I just knew that was what you would think. But did you also notice that I didn’t make threats? That would’ve been blackmail, if I would’ve said something like, ‘You either sign, or I go,’ then you would’ve resisted. My leverage was that I knew that you knew my abilities and your own inabilities. That I did not mention these two facts strengthened my situation. You didn’t know what I would do, but you knew what I could do. Those arguments I presented were correct, but not crucial. What was crucial was the balance of power between us at that moment.” McCaine gestured to the windows. “We will be on the go during the next few months and be in many discussions. It is important that you understand what is going on … really going on, I mean.”

John looked at him and tried to grasp what McCaine was saying. It was hard from to understand that these were the rules, the rules the world worked by.

“Which one of us in charge, I mean really in charge?”

McCaine shrugged his shoulders. “As I see it, the situation is fluid. You cannot follow through with the plan without my experience and without all the preparations I’ve already made, and I can’t do it without your money. I guess one could call it a symbiosis.”

John took his copy of the contract and held it up. “Does this mean we can tear this up and start again?”

McCaine folded his copies lengthwise and stuffed them into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Only in your dreams.” He grinned mockingly. “See it as a charge for the lesson.”

They flew to Texas and wearing friendly smiles shook hands with every member of the board of Exxon. After they took their seats, McCaine read a number of names from a list of those who would be fired with immediate effect.

It was a practical execution. Security people McCaine brought along accompanied the fired managers to their desks to assure that only personal items were packed and that they spoke with none of the other employees. The security men stayed with them until they were out of the parking lot. Computer specialists went to work to have their passwords and access codes deleted. John sat there without saying a word and watched the happenings with a blank expression on his face.

The media went haywire, especially after they still didn’t get to interview the new owners or get an official statement.

“What does Fontanelli want?” asked the headline of an article from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

McCaine was very satisfied. He left one newspaper lying on the table of the conference room with the headlines showing. John asked him if reports like that would harm them. “Nonsense,” he only said. “In a week it’ll all be forgotten.”

And so it was. In Chechnya, in mid January, a bloody hostage crisis came to an end after six days when Russian forces flattened the village of Pervomaiskoye. Early in February a Turkish Boeing 757 crashed before the coast of the Dominican Republic. After seventeen months of inactivity the IRA set off several bombs in London killing three and injuring over a hundred people. In mid February the oil tanker Sea Empress, sailing under a Liberian flag, ran aground off the Welsh coast by Milford Haven and polluted the islands of Skokholm and Skomer. The breeding grounds for tens of thousands of marine birds and the natural preserve of Pembrokeshire were contaminated with crude oil. Experts considered this accident as destructive as the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989.

“We should see to it that nothing like that can ever happen again with one of our tankers,” John said. He was surprised at himself by the way he already spoke of “our” tankers.

“We should. That’s a good idea,” McCaine said after a short pause. “And then we should inform the press about it.”

A short while later a press release was issued stating that Fontanelli Enterprises had decided that crude oil would be transported only in tankers that meet stringent safety measures developed by its own safety board, and that only tankers with double hulls would be built for the company in future. The only reaction to this report was a drop in Exxon share prices on the stock market.

On the March 20, the British government had to admit that there was a connection between mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which forced the EU to pass a worldwide export ban and brought about the slaughter of 4.5 million cattle. There were no more doubts that BSE was the result of cattle being unsuitably fed.

“It’s high time that we stop such politicians,” McCaine said grimly, crumbled the newspaper together and threw it away. John was impressed when McCaine got it into the wastebasket from a distance of seven meters.

As a result of all these bad headlines, the public had more or less lost interest to the activities and motives of Fontanelli Enterprises. Most people didn’t realize that the shopping spree had just begun.

McCaine pretty much followed the recommendations of their analysts. And John followed McCaine. They bought large companies, small companies, food companies, chemical companies, transportation companies, airlines, telephone networks, manufacturers of electronic components, steel manufacturers, machine companies, paper mills, mines, steel mills, nuclear power plants, software firms, supermarket chains, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies.

McCaine apparently had given up on sleep, and seemed to have four arms with which he held eight phones all at once. One conference came after another, from early morning to late at night at an unbelievable tempo. John learnt to operate the controls for the video conference system better than the remote for his own TV. On some days there were a dozen delegations at once waiting in the reception area, attended to by an army of young hostesses as they waited for the large double doors to open to let the next group enter. Some of them had flights of up to twelve, fourteen or even twenty hours behind them just for a half-hour meeting. They formed holdings, which in turn bought companies to restructure them, to disassemble them and to reorganize them again. They signed cooperation agreements with companies that couldn’t be bought, such as those privately owned. They purchased rights, patents, licenses, and concessions. They bought land, properties, farms, and plantations.

A young designer developed a new elegant company logo, using part of Giacomo’s signature on the testament, which was basically a contoured deep-red lower-case f on a white background. This simple logo was about to conquer the world.

What at first glance looked like a general store of companies was, upon closer inspection, a complicated wickerwork of strategically interdependent entities — but there was no one able to look so closely into the conglomerate’s structure, as Fontanelli Enterprises was privately owned, and it was not obliged to make its financial statements public. For the most part unnoticed, they had secured a monopoly on many low-key but vital raw materials, such as tungsten, tellurium, and molybdenum, and a significant market share in selenium and lithium. The investment in energy production and distribution was enormous and encompassed every form of energy production. They owned nuclear power plants, but also firms that manufactured the control rods for the reactors, and the beryllium they were made of. They owned oil fields, refineries, pipelines, and tanker fleets, and, above all, they owned rights all over the world to potential oilfields.

“Every idiot invests in Internet bookkeeping and software firms these days. That’s how you can earn millions on companies that aren’t earning a cent of profit,” McCaine said. “But when you get down to the essence of it then only things like energy, raw materials, food, and water have true value.”

But despite that, Fontanelli Enterprises was represented in other areas too. They had bought a large Italian fashion company, secured shares in a renowned advertisement agency. What raised a lot of eyebrows was its purchase of ten European music companies at once to forge them together into one. This, McCaine had explained, serves two purposes: to confuse outside observers and to make a slight profit. They would be sold again as soon as their profitability was used up.

“We must,” he explained, “raise our yield above all else. You can do the math; if we achieve a yield of thirty percent, the whole world will belong to us in twenty years.”

They made headlines again. This time with a spectacular real estate purchase: they bought 40 Wall Street. It had been the tallest building in New York for one year before the Chrysler Building surpassed it and had also been empty since the stock market crash of 1987. It cost them a little more than a half a billion dollars. The renovations on the building began right away, and it was already being listed as the Fontanelli Tower in the 1997 edition of the New York City map.

“Donald Trump wanted to buy it too,” McCaine told John who had done the negotiations. “He had even offered more than what we paid. So I called the mayor and a few city council members and told them that we needed precisely this building to do our business and that if it wasn’t possible we would be forced to relocate our North American center of operations to another city such as Atlanta or Chicago.” He smiled evilly. “That’s all it took.”

In the evening, with London’s lights as a backdrop, the large conference room had the aura of a cathedral. The current group of people, energetic and chatty while they had been sitting in the waiting room, was now dead silent around the giant table.

McCaine got straight to the point. “What I want is that you, with the help of the most modern methods available, develop a computer program that will simulate all important developments in the world. This should include such elements as population growth, energy reserves, raw material reserves, pollution, and so forth. It should be the most accurate program of its kind and be capable of calculating any changing variables up to 50 years into the future.”

“That’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do for years,” said one of the guests.

“And what has prevented you so far?”

“Lack of money, what else?” Professor Harlan Collins was a gaunt man in his early forties and he looked like it wasn’t just his work that he didn’t have enough money for. His suit was wrinkled and he wore a threadbare turtleneck instead of a shirt and his hair looked as if it had not seen a comb for some time. He was an ecologist and cybernetic engineer and he was head of the Institute for Future Research in Hartford, way up near Northwich, England. According to McCaine, he was a top authority in his field.

John had never heard of him before, but that didn’t mean much. He stayed in the background and observed and listened and looked through the papers the professor had brought with him. He let McCaine do the talking.

“What exactly does that mean?” McCaine asked. “Don’t you have enough computers?”

Collins waved the idea away dismissively. “Computers aren’t the main problem. Every personal computer today has more processing power than Forrester and Meadows had available to them. No, what we need mainly is money to hire competent people. We have to gather data, examine them, and check each number for plausibility. You can’t hope for accuracy when your models are based on faulty data. That’s actually very logical, but I spend most of my time traveling around and trying to convince financial backers of this.”

“Not anymore,” said McCaine. He leaned back. “If we come to a mutual agreement, that is. You will return to your institute and continue what you are now working on and you will get whatever money you need from us.”

The professor’s eyes opened wider. “Now that’s what I call an offer. What do I have to do? Sign in my own blood?”

McCaine let out a snort. “You might have heard that we are here to try to fulfill a prophecy. We want to restore humanity’s lost future. Fate handed us with a trillion dollars to help accomplish this.”

“I love projects with a generous budget,” the scientist said. “Yes, I heard of the prophecy.”

“Fine. Tell me, what is your opinion about us having lost our future?”

“Fundamentally, I know too much about research that deals with the future to make such a presumption.”

“You astonish me.” McCaine pulled one of the laptops closer to him. He opened a program and pointed at a graph being projected onto a huge screen on the wall. “I take it that you know this line?”

The professor looked. “Yes, of course, that is the standard run from WORLD3.”

“Slightly modified. Do you see the red line that ends in 1996? WORLD3 was developed in 1971 to predict the future. I have integrated the actual developments since then into the program. Up till now the predicted and the real lines conform rather disconcertingly, don’t you think?”

Professor Collins couldn’t help but to smile patiently. “Well, yes, you can see it this way … or that way. You do realize that both WORLD2 and WORLD3 are far outdated.”

“What?” McCaine was visibly confused.

“Both models combine all of earth’s countries into one operative unit, without any regional differences. I remember that the models were criticized and examined in the University of Sussex, and it was found that they are oversensitive to changing parameters, which results in large margins of error. On the other hand, you show that the normal behavior — the famous limit to growth — is almost independent from the input data. In other words, the behavior appears to be the result of a cybernetic correlation rather than the input data.”

“Appears?” McCaine repeated. “That doesn’t sound like a thorough examination of the problem.”

“I think Aurelio Peccei and the other members of the Club of Rome were chiefly interested in just getting a global debate going. WORLD3 and its predictions were ideal for this, naturally.”

McCaine jumped up and paced back and forth in front of the big panorama windows. “What about the Mesarovic and Pestel models? They take regional differences into account.”

“The World Integrated Model, yes. You really seem to have studied this material very well if you can remember that. Then you must also know that the WIM takes far less account of the environment than the WORLD models. That had often been a source for criticism, and at any rate, back then the reason given was its enormous complexity.”

“But doesn’t an accurate model have to be necessarily complex?”

“Sure. But above else it must be plausible. You have to be able to comprehend what it is doing otherwise you might as well look into a crystal ball.”

McCaine pulled out a thick tome from a drawer and tossed it on the table. “Which is what the authors of this study have done, if you ask me. I take it you know this work?”

“Naturally … Global 2000. It’s the study President Carter commissioned. It’s perhaps the most bought and least read book in the world.”

“And, what do you think about it?”

“Well, it is, in effect, a collection of opinions from diverse experts, augmented by not so well documented model calculations. This doesn’t necessarily have to be any worse. But its greatest drawback is the limited time period it covers, which goes only up to the year 2000. It is today’s consensus that true upheavals are expected in the beginning of the next century — if they are to occur at all.”

“Exactly. And I want to know what sort of upheavals,” McCaine said.

“And what will you do then, once you know?”

“With the help of your model I want to find out how to avoid the catastrophe.”

The scientist looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded slowly. “Very well. What requirements do you want us to meet?”

McCaine didn’t hesitate for a moment. “First, it must be a cybernetic model, and it doesn’t matter how complex and how expensive. I want no guesses, no intuitions, and no conjectures. Everything must be quantified and intertwined and result in crystal clear outcomes based on the computer calculations.”

“We’re working on just such a model, which I assume you know about — otherwise you wouldn’t have invited me.”

“Correct. Second, you will report to me first. I will decide when results are to be made public.”

Professor Collins sucked air through his teeth. “That is tough. I suppose I can’t get you to change your mind on that point?”

“You can bet on it. Third…“

“How much more?”

“Only this last point. I want to know the truth. No politically corrected statements. No tinkering with the measurements, no propaganda, only the truth.”

It was not long after that the jumbo jet was finished. They had bought it for 400 million dollars and had it rebuilt at the LHT wharf in Fuhlsbüttel, on the outskirts of Hamburg, Germany. It was turned into a comfortable flying command center — complete with offices, conference room, bar, bedrooms, and guestrooms. It had a satellite communications system and a whole slew of other equipment. To match the image of the conglomerate, the entire plane was painted snow-white with the dark-red elegantly curved f on the tailfin. Since this symbol resembled somewhat the number one, the personnel began to give it a nickname later adopted by all aircrew and control tower personnel across the globe: Moneyforce 1.

From then on, they often spent weeks flying all over the world, going from one conference or site visit to the next. John started to enjoy acting like a businessman, flying to some spot on the globe with his own plane, being accompanied by beautiful people in stretch limousines, being important, looked up to. He began to enjoy sitting in nice conference rooms at giant tables made from exotic wood and listening to reports given by nervous older gentlemen, and he started enjoying it even more so when he began to understand some of the numbers that were being talked about or that appeared on an overhead projector screen. Once or twice he even asked a question, which would sometimes be meekly answered, but for the most part he would remain silent and left the talking, as usual, to McCaine. In time, because of his silence, John as acquired the reputation of being mysterious and unapproachable.

John Fontanelli may have been as good as unapproachable for journalists and solicitors, but not for his family and friends. He still had a personal secretariat, but with different personnel, and they worked on the same principles as the one the Vacchis had started. Even the list that the employees used to determine which calls and letters to forward to him was the same. The letters and packages were, however, checked for bombs. It took the third or fourth phone call for John’s mother to realize that he was on a plane, which she could hardly believe. It was uncanny how quickly letters were forwarded to him, regardless where in the world he was. It was as if they had a clairvoyant who knew where the aircraft would land even before they themselves did. That was how John got a copy of Marvin’s first CD.

John opened the small cushioned package with curiosity and had to grin when he pulled a CD out. Wasted Future was the title. The cover showed Marvin in a garbage dump with an angst-ridden expression. The note said, Dear John, here is my first step to a hopefully meteoric career. It was signed by Marvin and Constantina, who was credited on the CD under vocals.

Very interesting. John left everything lying on the table and went to the plane’s salon, which was equipped with a $50,000 hi-fi system. He put the CD into the player and was very curious when he pushed the play button. The CD was, to put it in one word, terrible. The sound coming out of the speakers was a mix of thudding noise in which the bass guitar stood out like a sore thumb while the vocals were helplessly drowned by too much echo and general racket. The melody just stomped and rolled along in a monotone rhythm, and when there was a recognizable melody it was so close to an existing song that it came close to plagiarism. Almost nothing could be heard of Constantina’s singing, but the little that could be was enough to know that it was also no great loss to have her voice drowned in the cacophonous jumble of instruments.

Shuddering from the experience, John took the CD out of the player a half hour later. He just couldn’t listen to the rest, and he had even pushed the advance button to skip a few of the songs. He felt guilty at having been partly responsible for introducing the world to what would not only be the first but undoubtedly the last step in Marvin’s career as a rock star. It meant that Marvin would soon need more money.

He tossed the package, card, and CD into the trashcan and called his secretary. He told her to strike Marvin’s name from the mailing list.

$24,000,000,000,000

IT WAS A bright sunny day towards the end of April, the first real spring day. The castle was more magnificent than ever before, as if it really was the center of the world.

Marco was beaming too. With the communications mic in his ear, the walkie-talkie ready in one hand, and pistol in the shoulder holster, he felt deeply happy.

“You really seem to like it here in England,” John told him.

“Yes,” Marco replied. “But it’s not really England but Karen.”

“Karen?”

“Karen O’Neal. Maybe you remember her. She was Mr. McCaine’s secretary in his old firm.” Marco beamed again. “We’re together now.”

“Ah,” John said. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” Marco’s hand went to the ear and pressed the earphone further in. “The prime minister’s car just came through the gate.”

Marco’s euphoria was something all the money in the world couldn’t buy.

Since his experience with Constantina, John had become wary of women and couldn’t shake the feeling. He knew that he could get the most beautiful women into his bed, with or without paying, but ever since he got to England he stayed clear of women. With every smile and every flirtatious look he cringed with suspicion. He couldn’t ditch the feeling that they weren’t interested in him but his money. Sometimes it didn’t even take a smile. Like back then with the female reporter in the Vacchi archives, the one who had made the legacy public. She wasn’t even his type. Not even close. God knows why he was even still thinking about her.

They went outside. The prime minister’s dark gray Jaguar came rolling over the low hill. The peacocks stood between the flowerbeds and, almost as if they had been ordered to do so, spread apart their tails presenting a rainbow of feathers to the visitor. John took in a deep breath, wiped his hand on his trousers inconspicuously and felt his heart pounding.

It was McCaine’s idea. And he even left him alone for this occasion. You can do it, he had told John. This tempo of his daily life, John reflected, at least meant he didn’t have much time to think about his love life.

The car came gracefully to a halt. One of the men in the security detail opened the door. And then John Major got out, immediately recognizable with his white parted hair, large thin-framed eyeglasses and broad smile. Just like John had seen him on TV. When they shook hands, John sensed that the politician was also a bit nervous. He will be afraid of you, McCaine had told John. There are only a handful of countries in the world that could withstand an assault from your money, and Great Britain isn’t one of them — not by a long shot. He will wonder what it is you want from him. He will wonder, between dinner and dessert, if you plan to demand something outrageous.

John had an almost out-of-body experience and was standing there watching himself shaking the hand of the Prime Minister of Her Majesty the Queen of England, making small talk like he had been doing it all his life. He had insisted on taking some lessons on behavior with an etiquette teacher in London in preparation. He practiced formal etiquette down to the smallest detail. McCaine had laughed and said, you are the wealthiest man on earth, you can act any way you want.

John felt that Mr. Major was impressed as they went inside. It was obvious that the interior designer had managed to create exactly what John had wanted: an elegant and dignified atmosphere without pretending that representatives of an old dynasty lived here. Precious antique furniture stood beside ultra-modern pieces made of steel and glass. Modern paintings added an interesting touch, and above all, the interior of the castle was lighter and more cheerful since being renovated. Floodlights were placed where there used to be dark corners, which also made the interior seem much larger than before.

As planned in detail over the week before, they first went for a stroll out in the garden behind the great house. They tried to make casual conversation while being watched from afar by dozens of security people. John learned that John Major loved opera and cricket, neither of which interested John. The keeping of peacocks was something neither man knew anything about, and so they had little to say other than how nice it was to get to know one another.

Finally, the prime minister told John that his royal highness, the Prince of Wales, wanted to meet him. “He didn’t exactly tell me to give you his best wishes,” the British prime minister added, “but it may well be that he sends you an invitation to visit one of these days.”

John nodded. He and McCaine had discussed this once before, to invite the heir to the throne instead of the prime minister, but McCaine was against it. That would be a snub. “It’s not that we couldn’t afford to do this, and Prince Charles would probably even come, but we would be acting too imperiously too soon,” McCaine had said at the time.

A half hour later the other guests started to arrive. The publisher of the reputable monthly magazine 20th Century Observer, Victoria Holden, had arrived by train in London and John had her picked-up from the train station. She was called the Grand Old Lady of upscale journalism. Arriving at the same time as Victoria Holden was Alain Smith, publisher of the mass circulation newspaper, The Sun. In quality of journalism it was the exact opposite to the 20th Century Observer. They still greeted each other like old friends.

A short while later the Washington Post’s Great Britain’s bureau chief arrived. He was a wiry young man named David Moody, with a firm grip of a handshake that left John’s hands numb for several minutes.

And finally the famous journalist Lord Rawburne ambled in, his clapped-out Aston Martin car backfiring as he came over the hill, making the guards nervous. He blatantly parked his car right next to all the luxury vehicles, and got out dressed in baggy tweed clothes as if he had just returned from a hunt. He didn’t seem to give a shit about dress codes and etiquette.

It was also Lord Peter Rawburne who made the evening lively. “Speak up, Mr. Fontanelli,” he said as the starter plates were being cleared from the table. “You didn’t invite us just to pass the time. Am I right?”

John placed the napkin off to the side, looked at his guests and felt knots in his stomach. He suffered from stomach cramps caused by nerves so badly he could hardly sleep. He hoped he didn’t look as ridiculously unsure of himself as he felt. He had practiced his speech a hundred times in front of a mirror and in front of video cameras, until he felt he was saying what he wanted casually enough, without it looking over-rehearsed. Now he only had to get through his opening remarks.

“I would never dare take such a liberty,” he tried to joke, but no one laughed. He knew then that this was not going to be easy. He began, as he had practiced, “I have looked for an opportunity to set some things straight — things that concern my company. Fontanelli Enterprises is generally seen in the public eye as an ordinary investment for a great fortune looking for additional profits.” John waved his hand to remind them of the opulence of their surroundings. “You will no doubt agree with me that the last thing I need is yet more money.”

The only thing you must keep from them is the fact that what we are aiming at is virtual global hegemony, McCaine had warned him. Be modest.

“I know a few people you could say that about,” Miss Holden threw in. “But it doesn’t stop them trying to earn even more money. Once, I asked one of them why he wanted to keep earning money, even though he doesn’t need any more. He said, ‘I don’t do it because I need to, but because I can.’”

“But I can’t!” It wasn’t a comment John had planned. He cleared his throat. “What I mean by that is that no one can say that I’m a born businessman.”

“But you appear to be learning fast,” said David Moody. “You invest cleverly, worldwide. I think the only countries you have not bought anything yet are Iraq and North Korea, and the only place where you aren’t represented is Antarctica.”

“I have clever employees. Besides, you can’t invest such vast wealth in a single country, not even in a single continent without creating a monopoly.”

“Or even on a single planet,” Alain Smith scoffed.

John felt hot. The publisher of The Sun was, without knowing it, darned close to the truth. “I see my wealth primarily as an obligation,” John said slowly. “I don’t want to amass more money. I want it to be of some use to humanity.”

“So it’s true,” Lord Rawburne threw in. “The prophecy is the driving force.”

“Why don’t you just give your money to the poor?” Smith wanted to know. “Or at least a good part of it.”

John looked at him and said, “Because I don’t think that would help much.”

“A homeless man under one of the Thames bridges might think otherwise.”

“And he would be wrong,” John said. He was surprised at the conviction in his words, and even more so to see that it had an effect on his guests. Alain Smith kept his mouth shut and simply nodded, looking like he thought John might have a point. No one else interrupted him so he returned to his speech, at last believing he might get to the end without having a nervous breakdown. “What I wanted to say is that my main emphasis is to protect the environment. We are in the process of developing environmental protection measures that will be implemented in each of my companies, and this even in countries and in situations where such measures will bring a loss in profits. You may have heard of our efforts to make transporting crude oil safer. That costs money, but I want to do everything possible to avoid a ship sailing under my flag getting into the same situation as the Sea Empress did. What we’re implementing now are measures that can be quickly put into practice, for instance using recycled paper in my offices, separating and recycling waste, not using products that damage the ozone layer, and so forth. Unfortunately, such measures are of a more symbolic value. In the near future we will start projects that will take us a few steps further, for instance production methods that are environmentally sound down to the last detail. We have even more ambitious plans. However,” John said as he focused on the prime minister, “these will need the support of the government.”

Major’s eyes opened wide, or maybe it was only his glasses that gave that impression. “I had been wondering why I was invited,” he said dryly.

John took a deep breath. The butterflies in his stomach were still troubling him. Go on — don’t stop now! “The Fontanelli Group will, I think I can say safely, play a major role in the world’s economy. That means I shall be instigating certain changes in economic-political systems that will be of great benefit to the world in the long run. I will support company policies to that end, even if it means reducing economic efficiency and hope that we set a precedent that others will follow.”

He looked at perplexed faces.

Alain Smith, sitting at the other end of the table, took his wine glass, and John heard him mumble; “Now we’re in for some fun.”

The prime minister’s face was rigid. “Your willingness to engage with government is welcome,” he said icily. “But I still must draw your attention to the fact that in a democracy the correct way to achieve policy change is through Parliament, not private arrangements over dinner.”

Victoria Holden leaned forward, the pearls of her necklace jangling on her plate. “Mr. Fontanelli, would you care to outline the sort of economic-political changes you have in mind?”

John looked at her thankfully. Miss Holden, despite her nearly eighty years, might be the most progressive and open-minded spirit at your table, McCaine had told John. And what she has to say has more weight than the numbers of copies her magazine sells would suggest.

“I am, as I’ve said, a newcomer in the business world,” John explained to her and the others. “Maybe that’s why I am still in awe over certain things that others consider normal; those who have practically grown up in this environment. For instance I ask myself how it can be profitable to transport crabs from the North Sea to Morocco, simply to have their shells removed there. How is it you can transport apples by air from New Zealand and sell them cheaper than apples grown in your own country?” Now he got to the part of his speech that really meant something to him. “Here‘s a really big question; how can something that’s harmful for the environment be more profitable than the other way around? It’s because the price a company has to pay for something — in this case for transport — does not correspond to the real costs. If everything was priced according to the damage it causes to the environment, we wouldn’t have pollution problems. There’s one thing people care about and that’s keeping costs down. We all are pretty inventive in this regard. The history of industrialization is a history of reducing costs. Why aren’t we putting the same effort into assuring a more sustainable way of economics? Why can’t we have environmental impact integrated into cost calculations? Why don’t we just make sure that it is expensive to cause damage to the environment?”

There was a long silence, as if he said something extremely embarrassing.

“If you make transportation costs more expensive then you’ll strangle world trade,” David Moody said and leaned back. “The economy is dependent on good transportation conditions.”

This argument was predictable. Even John had thought of this when he discussed these matters with McCaine. “It is not simply a matter of transportation costs. The economy developed as it did because those costs are cheap, and not the other way around. I am aware that it will cause serious consequences if my plan is implemented. I’m not saying that it has to be done all at once. But it must eventually happen.”

“Your suggestion would mean,” Smith insisted, “that, for instance, subsidies to mining would stop, and a hefty tax on coal. The result would be a huge rise in unemployment.”

“If we aren’t going to change anything, then there is no point even beginning,” John replied.

The prime minister said nothing, but he was not amused. He just stared straight ahead, clearly wishing he was somewhere else.

The next course, a salmon pate with Riesling sauce, was served in silence. What a crazy environment to discuss the misery of this world, John thought when he saw the beautifully decorated plate placed before him.

“I think Mr. Fontanelli is right,” Lord Rawburne said, taking up his fork and fish knife. “We are amongst our peers here, we are all fairly intelligent people, and we don’t need to fool ourselves. If you take a look at industry today, you will see that there is a line beyond which we start taking from nature and another where we begin to return something, although at present that is usually just waste. Everything in between is something humans can deal with. These two boundaries are the critical markers: we keep using up resources, which are not limitless, and we keep dumping waste, which is something we also cannot continue to do. We have all known this for some time now and done nothing about it. Mr. Fontanelli’s suggestion is spot on; as long as we can carry on as at present with no financial consequences, nothing is going to change. I said nothing on purpose. There are idealists who still hope that the global economy will dispense with economics. The rules of the game at present lend no weight to the environment. But we can change the rules. It’s not that hard, we do it all the time. We change construction laws, laws on insurance, the stock market, tax, exhaust emissions — this is all part of economic policy. And we could just as easily make laws that make it expensive to pollute. Then all those things we would like people do on moral grounds will get done automatically through normal capitalist logic. That may well be the only way; there is no obvious alternative.

David Moody had started to shake his head during Rawburne’s comment and seemed unable to stop. “All this is undoubtedly well meant,” he said, “even though it’s not very original. It’s the usual call for more state control. But the fact is that the environment is better off in those countries with a free market, while in the formerly centrally controlled economies it has been ruined.”

Rawburne leaned forward and pointed the fish knife at the American as if it were a dueling sword. “Rules and regulations are not the same as a centrally controlled economy, as you well know, Mr. Moody. The state must set rules. That’s what it’s there for. Your free economy would not function without rules that were created by a government. I’m talking about such rules as those governing the stock market, bank contracts, and so forth. Just the same, in those states where rules are not enforceable, a free market won’t function either. That’s why you don’t invest in Russia.”

John felt he needed to say something to cool down the animosity between the two men to prevent it from getting out of hand. “I’m far from being an economics expert,” he interrupted. “I only asked what things might look like if the whole planet, including the environment, were treated as one company. If we had to buy everything we need from this company. I mean everything, not just raw materials, but water, air, and land.”

The company we’re building, McCaine thought, and lifted his glass for a toast.

Victoria Holden smirked. “Then life would be too expensive.”

“Nonsense,” Smith said.

“That would be a monopoly,” Moody grumbled. “Your ‘whole Earth’ company could set prices as high as it wanted, nobody could pay anymore.”

“You appear to believe that we humans are undesirable here on earth,” Lord Rawburne argued. “You have an interesting position that may be worth a closer look in another discussion. But the answer to Mr. Fontanelli’s question is obvious; it is self-evident that nature is not a firm. I can see a role for state intervention here. Up until now, the state has been interested solely in boosting the economy, and in good times the interests of its people. It might be more intelligent to leave the economy to itself and for the state to be the trustee of nature.”

“All that sounds nice, Lord Rawburne,” the prime minister said, “but in political reality, that’s utopian. Let’s assume you could get a majority vote for that, all you would achieve is to place Britain in a worse economic situation in the global market.”

Miss Holden interjected, “Of course such a measure would need international cooperation. For a single nation to go down that path would not only be senseless, it would also be useless.”

Alain Smith waved her comment away. “Forget it, Victoria. Every country would try to find ways to circumvent such an agreement.”

John Major nodded grimly. “I can only agree with your colleague.”

The heated discussions continued over dinner without any productive results, or any discussion of the culinary qualities of the food. Afterwards, at the earliest possible time that was within the parameters of proper etiquette, the prime minister left the gathering, but not without saying a few carefully selected words about how he had appreciated being invited and hoped for good relations in the future.

Alain Smith followed him a short while later. “Anyway,” he said on leaving, “I find it reassuring that the man at the head of the largest company in the world has higher values then the usual greed, blind ambition and hunger for power.”

“I’m certain that your concerns for the environment will set an example,” David Moody said. “Just don’t overdo it. One step at a time.”

Victoria Holden didn’t have any good advice, and just thanked John for the invitation.

The last to leave was Lord Peter Rawburne. “You’re thinking in the right direction,” he told John as he shook his hand. “You just haven’t thought it through yet.” With these enigmatic words the journalist got into old banger and drove off, spewing a trail of dirty hydrocarbon exhaust from his tailpipe

For a long time John stood at the window of his room, staring up at the starry sky, as the gossamer ideas in his head turned to steely resolve. He glanced at his watch and saw it was time: eleven thirty. He went to the phone and flipped through the pages of the directory lying beside it. There are over two hundred telephones in the castle, which meant that most numbers had three digits. He found the number he was looking for and dialed it.

“O’Shaughnessy,” a somewhat startled sounding voice answered.

“It’s Fontanelli,” John said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Ahem, no sir,” the librarian said. “I was still reading.”

John nodded. He didn’t expect anything else from the gaunt Irishman with the prematurely thinning hair. “I’m sorry to disturb you so late, but I have an urgent request …”

$25,000,000,000,000

ONE WEEK LATER John walked into McCaine’s office in the morning, placed a book on the desk stood there waiting for him to look up. He was clearly not in a good mood.

“Juan, uno momento, por favor,” McCaine told the person on the other end of the phone, put a hand over the speaker and leaned forward. The title of the book was Mankind’s Autopilot Route to a Better Future. The author was Peter Rawburne. He put the phone to his ear again. “Juan? Lo siento. Podria llamar usted mas tarde? Vale. Hasta luego.” He hung up, took the book in his hands and looked at John. “Good morning, John. Where did you get this?”

“O’Shaughnessy found it,” John told him, rocking backwards and forwards on his heels.

“O’Shaughnessy? Well, well. He’s an efficient librarian, I must say.” McCaine opened the cover, flipped casually to the title page. “A well preserved copy. Better than my own.”

John snorted, “The ideas I trotted out at the dinner party had all been expressed by Lord Rawburne twenty years ago! I feel like an idiot!”

“Nonsense. He was very enthusiastic. That’s what you yourself told me. He took your side, did he not?”

“My eyes almost popped out of my head. You knew about this book. Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

McCaine remained calm. “Because, it was better for you to think such ideas up on your own.”

“But I didn’t think of those ideas on my own! You talked me into them, each and every one.”

McCaine shook his head. “We sat together one evening with a bottle of wine and discussed how to overhaul the economy. Us two, you and I. Alright, it’s true that I introduced Rawburne’s ideas, but you accepted them, adopted them, carried those thoughts further and were very enthusiastic about the whole line of thinking. Does an idea change just because another person thought along the same lines?”

“You should have told me that the spiritual father of the ideas I was about to put forward would be sitting at my table.”

“Then you would have been biased. You would’ve come across as a proselyte, someone who was converted to a new ideology and wants to convert the whole world.”

John hesitated. “Was that the reason? You didn’t want me to be biased?”

“John,” McCaine said as he slowly closed the book and placed it on top of a pile of binders next to John, “I’m not ingenious enough to think of such things on my own, I admit. But I really don’t care where a good idea came from and who had it first. I’m not paying license fees to save the world. If an idea is good I will use it.”

“What about the others? They presumably knew I was rehashing Rawburne’s ideas?”

“No one knows about Rawburne’s proposals.” McCaine pointed at the book. “This is a private printing. There were two hundred copies made. Have you asked yourself why? Or why he didn’t tell you himself, and pretended to pick up on your idea even though it was his?”

“No,” John admitted.

“Because he believes you, he believes that you had the same idea. And it awakened a hope within him that perhaps the right time has come for his thoughts. When he wrote the book he was maybe twenty-six years old and back then it definitely wasn’t the right time. You can hardly imagine how many people he would have offended back then. Taxes on the use of nature, on land ownership, the use of water and raw materials, on the production of waste! If the English lords of the day hadn’t been half-dead already, they would’ve hanged him.” McCaine leaned back and folded his arms. “The upper classes would never have forgiven him. The rest of the world knows him as perhaps the best environmental journalist there is. When he says something everyone listens — the brokers on Wall Street as well as the politicians in 10 Downing Street, Frankfurt as well as the White House. For us it is worth more to have him clutch you to his bosom than if he had been able to give you BP.”

“Really?”

“Did you read the papers last week?”

“No.”

“You should, because then you’d see that you have become a hero. There are reports in the English newspapers about our environmental initiatives. American newspapers are calling the greater environmental awareness in industry the ‘Fontanelli trend.’ In Europe there is hardly an editor-in-chief who hasn’t already subscribed to Miss Holden’s 20th Century Observer.”

John stared at McCaine, his shirt already sweat-stained around the armpits at this hour of the morning. “And this is the result of a single dinner and my tepid speech?”

“You can bet on it. You’re not the crazy heir anymore who doesn’t know what to do with the money. You have become a popular public figure. People are starting to understand that you are the true heir and that you will fulfill the prophecy. You are a pop star, John. Get used to it.”

John’s face remained grave. “Anyone could do what I’m doing. I’m a loser who happened to inherit a crazy amount of money.” He was startled by his own words.

McCaine studied him for a moment. He spun his office chair to the side and looked out the window, over the rooftops of London. “You had failed … in a world that is very wrong,” he told John calmly. “We will make it right. We will see to it that the right people succeed and that proper behavior will be rewarded. Everything else will fall into place.”

John discovered another rock star. It was during an evening in front of the TV. He was still too wired to go to sleep so he turned it on and zapped his way through the countless channels until Marvin’s face stared out at him on MTV. Against a mountain of wrecked cars he sang his all but incomprehensible lyrics to the accompaniment of little better than white noise. The music was still terrible, but the video looked impressive, especially during the refrain when Constantina sang along, wearing only what looked like a few scraps of clothing from a junkyard. Her lascivious moves reminded him of a certain evening on his yacht, unused for months now, not exactly a memory he treasured

At any rate, it didn’t look like she was still aiming to be a lawyer.

There were still so many cartons of threatening letters stored in the cellar of the Vacchi law firm in Florence that they could’ve filled the entire police station evidence room. Until John Fontanelli’s move to Britain, the specially created police unit had been busy investigating the letters, which resulted in many arrests around the world and put many people in jail or in psychiatric wards.

In June of 1996, odd sounds coming from the courtyard of the building lured many people to their windows. Standing there in the courtyard they saw a truck from a firm that specialized in destroying documents. The machine on the back of the truck devoured the full cardboard boxes almost as fast as they were tossed in. The rotating metal teeth grabbed the cardboard and ripped it open spilling countless letters into its steel maw. Each piece of paper and envelope was reduced to tiny bits as the hungry machine swallowed the sealed cartons one by one. It took just under two hours before all the threats against the richest man in the world were nothing more than kindling stored in three sacks.

“A direct order from the minister of justice,” the DA told his visitor as they watched through a window. He tried to remove a speck of meat stuck in his teeth since lunchtime. “I heard the minister of finance was actually the one who asked for them to be destroyed.”

“Really?” the visitor said.

He got the meat out. What a relief. Disgusted, the DA examined the small brown lump between his fingernails. “That’s the right thing to do, if you ask me. Fontanelli promised to stay in this country and pay taxes here when he was naturalized, and then three months later he went off to England. I don’t see why we should go through so much effort for someone like that.”

“We’re not paying any taxes?” John looked up from the financial report. “Is that true?”

McCaine was busy writing a long note in the margin of a document. “This is an internal document for our eyes only,” he told John without looking up. “I hope the numbers on it are as accurate as possible.”

“It says here thirteen million dollars.”

“That’s thirteen million too much, if you ask me. But it was unavoidable.”

“I don’t know … I had promised the Italian finance minister to pay taxes for at least one year…”

“The seven billion I couldn’t save last year should be enough for him.”

“I made a promise. Do you understand? I shook his hand.”

McCaine finally looked up. “Don’t make me cry. Excuse me, John, but we’re talking about twenty or thirty billion dollars and more. You could buy the Ukraine for that or half Africa. I’m not even going to think about throwing so much money away.”

“But we can’t … I mean, we’re earning money. And if you earn money you have to pay taxes. That’s the way of the world, isn’t it?”

“We are an international company. We can choose where to pay taxes. And because I can choose, I will choose the tax-rate of the Cayman Islands, and that is zero.”

John nodded awkwardly and stared at the paper again. Thirteen million dollars. “How can we get away with this?” he asked. “We don’t live on the Caymans, we’re in London.”

“We have companies on the Caymans, just like on Sark, in Belize, Gibraltar, Panama, and any other tax paradise you care to name. Those companies do nothing, they have no employees. They exist only as entries on trade registries in the town halls and have small signs on mailboxes. And those signs have inconspicuous names on them, because not everyone should know that they belong to you. One of them, for example, is called International Real Estate, and is the firm that owns our high-rise office building and your stately home, and it charges us a lot of money for them. The rent we pay reduces our profits and thus the taxes we must pay. But what is the finance department going to do about it? They can’t prohibit us from living and working in rented places. You can play the same game with transport, investments, consultation fees, and so on, until you practically pay no tax at all.”

“Is the money even safe on all those islands?”

“Don’t be so naïve. The money is moved only by the computers in the banks, from one hard drive to the next. Not a penny leaves this country, not even in the form of bits.”

John found this hard to believe. But he had got used to being in a realm where the unbelievable was normal. “All this doesn’t seem quite right to me.”

“No one said it is. On the contrary, it is amoral and perverted. But take a look at the statistics of the International Monetary Fund. It states that there are over two trillion dollars deposited in off-shore accounts. Our position would be severely hampered if we pay taxes and the others don’t.”

John scratched his neck. “Every little working guy has to pay taxes. My father has to pay. Everyone. What right do I have not to pay?”

McCaine leaned forward in his chair, put his fingers together, resting his chin on them, and looked thoughtfully at John. “You are a businessman. You are one of the largest employers in the world. You supply half the world with daily, everyday items. You provide a service that not a single government is capable of. So, if you ask me, I don’t see any reason why you should pay tax.”

“The attack continues!” McCaine bellowed as he entered John’s office. They had been traveling around the globe for weeks and had recently returned to London for a while and McCaine was already creating a hurricane of activity in the building.

The last thing they did was to have talks with firms in Eastern Europe, the Near East and in Africa. They viewed factories that sometimes looked like museums, or dingy cells filled with slaves, they saw crusty pipes discharging foamy liquids directly into rivers, walked through oily mud and neglected depots, always accompanied by chairmen or directors who needed financial aid.

“The Syrians want us to forego investing in Israel,” he told John during one of their frugal lunches, which they had got used to eating at the conference table. “And the Israeli government didn’t want us to invest in Syria. I told both to listen up, if that’s their attitude, then I won’t invest in either. Suddenly they changed their attitudes.”

“Well done,” John thought, who never got used to the power he could wield.

“By the way, we will get a government subsidy for three hundred million for the construction of the new microchip factory in Bulgaria, and the government will also cover ninety percent of the losses for the first five years, which are fairly inevitable.”

John looked bewildered. “Don’t we have any more money?”

“Don’t look so petrified, John. We have more money than ever before. You can go down to our currency traders and watch them multiply it.”

“Then why do we need government subsidies?”

McCaine put the salad fork on the table. “It is like I told you during our first meeting; one trillion dollars isn’t enough to buy the world. That’s why we must get as much outside money under our control as possible if we want to succeed. That’s one way. Each dollar the Bulgarian government gives us they don’t have available to spend. They are weakened and we get stronger. Because of that, we’ll be able to get even more out of them the next time, and so on. An endless process.”

“Got it.” Such tricks still made him feel a bit bad, even though he was trying to accept the fact that these were the rules of power. “But what advantage does a government see in us investing in their country if they pay for almost the whole thing?”

“That’s what I talked them into. Besides, they knew that we could just as easily build the chip factory in Romania or Hungary, and that they would gain international esteem with investors instead. It’s like the motto, where Fontanelli Enterprises invests, others could too.” He shook his head and laughed mockingly. “You know, I love it when I sit down in old palaces with those heads of government with all their grand titles and pomp, knowing they are like putty in my hands. When they look at me and realize who has the say-so. That their supposed power is little more than show. There are no governments, John, there are only people sitting in offices. Some are so stupid that you can make them believe anything. The rest only want to be voted back into office — to them creating jobs is more important than a balanced budget.”

“It’s about time that you got to know about the miraculous way you can make money work for you,” McCaine said a little later, adding sarcastically: “Seeing as you seemed so worried our cash might be running out.”

John involuntarily conjured up the image of Marvin, who was always involved in money-making schemes, and who got John to join him sending chain letters and other rackets. He promised to pay attention but wasn’t expecting to learn much.

“First, we’ll create a new corporation,” McCaine said. We’ll call it Fontanelli Power. The company deals in electrical power. Europe will have a liberalized electricity market in four years, so this will be a lucrative market. For capital we’ll use our various power plants, so they will henceforth belong to Fontanelli Power, whose stocks belong to Fontanelli Enterprises. So the ownership won’t change.”

It took just four days to set up Fontanelli Power. All that was really required was for some of the smaller companies to be outsourced and given new names. The company’s new logo was designed for next to nothing by a New York-based ad company, which Fontanelli Enterprises partially owned.

“Now step two. We will announce that Fontanelli Power will launch on the stock market. That’s a little more work because there are a bunch of legal regulations to follow. Above all, we have to get potential investors interested, which should be no problem with the name ‘Fontanelli’ involved.”

The legal niceties were dealt with by the company’s own lawyers. The meetings referred to things John didn’t understand such as a stock market prospectus and Initial Public Offerings, even though he took notes so he could read up on them later. The ad company designed a campaign, which turned out to be unnecessary because the newspaper articles were enough to rouse interest in Fontanelli Power stocks.

“We will put only a small amount of stock on the market, say fifteen percent, which will make the stock overpriced…”

“What?” John asked. He was getting pretty annoyed by the use of so many terms he didn’t really understand.

McCaine went back into teacher mode. “That means there will be more buyers than there are stocks. We will sell the stocks in a lottery. Those who get nothing will want them all the more. Just wait and see.”

The initial share price was $28. By the end of the day the price was $59, and after a week it had leveled at $103.

“Did you see what happened? We still own eighty-five percent of Fontanelli Power, but this eighty-five percent is worth three times as much as the entire company before the stock market launch. The money we invested has tripled, totally legally and within the rules.”

John thought it was all surreal. “So now we sell the rest of the stock?”

“No way. That is what’s so crazy; the moment we release the rest, the supply would surpass the demand and the price would plummet.”

“So this only virtual money then?”

“What do you mean by virtual money? All the money you have is nothing more than magnetic impulses in computers. Not a single bank could pay out your money in cash.”

“But what good is having a company three times what it’s worth if you can’t change it into cash?”

McCaine grinned. “That’s easy. So far we bought companies and paid for them. Now we can buy companies by trading stocks of Fontanelli Power. We only have to make sure to keep fifty-one percent of it, and then we remain in control. To look at it in another way, this maneuver allows us to buy companies with money that does not even exist.”

John wanted that run by him again, and then once more, with sketches and numbers scribbled on a piece of paper, before he understood that business really could be done like this. He just couldn’t believe it.

“That really works!?” he finally admitted.

“Indeed,” McCaine said, “as if someone made the rules just for us.” He had a look of victory in his expression as he added: “And it gets better.”

“Better than this?”

“Much better. The next thing we’ll do is set up our own bank.”

A year, almost to the day, from the founding of Fontanelli Enterprises, a new bank was launched. Originally, McCaine bought up several small banks mainly from the Mediterranean area and merged them to become the Banco Fontanelli di Firenze. It was the world’s largest private bank and headquartered in Florence, Italy. Since the Fontanelli name was associated with vast sum of one trillion dollars, everyone assumed it was the largest bank in the world. It wasn’t, it was ranked around 400th.

John Fontanelli had only a small amount of money in his own bank’s account, at least when compared to what he held in some of the large American and Japanese banks. Since Banco Fontanelli was a private bank, and had only a limited disclosure requirement, such details were never made public. The regular guy on the street thought this bank had a trillion dollars.

A bank assumed to have such vast capital naturally generated a lot of trust, and because the Banco Fontanelli offered a number of attractive opening offers numerous large investors switched their accounts to it. Weeks later the bank had already climbed to 130th and it continued to grow.

“We will soon be the largest bank in the world,” McCaine prophesized confidently, “and all of this with other people’s money.”

“What do we need a bank for?” John wanted to know.

“To control money,” McCaine told him without looking up from the files he was studying.

Their plane was heading towards Florence, flying over a gleaming blue Mediterranean Sea with small fluffy clouds moving slowly below the plane. They were going to a meeting with the chairmen of the board and would fly back to London that same day. They’d be back just in time to congratulate Marco, who was getting married today.

“But how can a bank control other people’s money? I mean, the owner of the account can get his money whenever he wants and do whatever he wants with it.”

Now McCaine looked up. “That is not so with most deposits. Besides, not everyone wants access to their money all at once; that would ruin any bank. No, the money that the bank customers deposit in the account is used by the bank for other things.”

“But we have to pay them interest for their money.”

“Of course.”

John took the paper with the current interest rates of Banco Fontanelli. “To be honest, this does not look very lucrative to me.”

“That’s because you’re looking at the interest rates like the man from the street. Three percent for a savings account and ten percent for borrowed money, so you think that the bank earns seven percent, which sounds acceptable. But that’s not how it works.”

“How do you mean?”

McCaine smiled his usual thin smile. “When you hear this for the first time it sounds unbelievable. But it is true, and you can check it in any textbook on banking.

“This is how a bank works: Let’s assume we have deposits of one hundred million. There are laws that make us keep ten percent as reserves. The other ninety million we can offer as loans. If someone wants a loan from us they need to have a bank account, which may well be with us and is more likely the bigger the bank is, and we could even make this a requirement of the loan. This means that the money we lend will end up with us again. So after loaning out the money we still have ninety million dollars, which we, after keeping another ten percent reserves, have another eighty-one million dollars to lend, which will land up back in our accounts once again, and so forth. This way we can turn one hundred million in deposits into nine hundred million in loans, on which we charge ten percent interest. This brings us ninety million dollars in interest. Does this look like a good deal now?”

John could not believe his ears. “Is that really true?”

“Yes it is. Sounds like a license to print money.”

“It sure does.”

“And we’re in control. We can choose who we loan money to and who we reject. We can ruin a company by demanding our money back from one day to the next. This is our right. By the way, all we have to give as a reason is fear the loan won’t be repaid. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“But that’s not legal, is it?”

“Totally legal. These rules are made and controlled by governments. Bankers are the most respected and honored people around. And we,” McCaine grinned as he looked back down on his papers, “are now members of this illustrious circle of people. People will tell us secrets no one else knows. We will do business deals that are impossible for others. But that’s not all, as bankers we can make financial transactions without the long noses of government officials snooping around. If banks didn’t already exist, we would have to invent them.”

The boring 11-story sandstone building stood in the shadow of the World Trade Center skyscrapers, described by McCaine as a literal perversion of the truth. There hung a giant gold-plated relief over the entrance with the words: Credit is the lifeblood of free trade. It has contributed more than a thousand times as much to the wealth of nations as all the gold mines in the world. John’s eyes were still blinded by the light as they went inside the building belonging to Moody’s Investors Service, the world’s largest investment assessment firm.

Moody’s appraises companies, nations, and anything else one can invest in to determine their risks. No other place in the world kept as many national and corporate secrets. No visitor was allowed into the offices of its employees, not even the pope. Analysts, sent there by national finance ministries to check the books, always came in twos, to prevent bribery and had to divulge their personal investments to prevent a conflict of interest.

The evaluation of credit worthiness of government bonds had an effect on risk-markup on the markets, meaning the interest that those governments had to pay on their treasury bonds. Moody’s didn’t make any exceptions, and it was immune to any governmental attempts to put pressure on it. If Moody’s announced an assessment of a country’s financial status just before elections, it could mean the government in power had practically lost the elections already. That was exactly what had happened in Australia in March, when the Labour Party suffered one of its worst defeats.

McCaine and John had no overriding reason for visiting Moody’s. “Moody’s is one of the few true centers of power in the world,” McCaine simply said. “It won’t hurt to show up there as long as we’re in the area.”

They were asked to wait in a waiting room with thick carpets, and then they were taken right up to the 11th floor. They went into an elegant conference room where they were greeted by the president of the firm, which had been founded at the start of the twentieth century. “What an honor, Mr. Fontanelli, to get to know you personally,” he said keen to show his enthusiasm.

He assured them that the Banco Fontanelli di Firenze, of course, had the highest and coveted triple-A rating. He told them with a gleam in his eyes that if there were a fourth A, the bank would get that one too. John would not have been surprised if the gray-haired man had asked for an autograph. Just from the expression on his face, he could tell that the man Moody’s president was looking at was a John Fontanelli that he himself had never seen. As the richest person on earth, John was the most credit-worthy person possible, from the aged analyst’s point of view. A legend. God, or Mammon in the flesh.

“Nice to hear that,” John said and smiled as the bright rays of August sun light reflected off the glass of the World Trade Center

Over the coming weeks and months they went to visit other institutions that John had never heard of before including the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as SWIFT. There too the bankers felt honored to receive a visit from John Fontanelli. A limousine with tinted windows took them out of Amsterdam along a winding road until they reached a building the size and scale of which it was hard to make out at first glance.

“Signor Vacchi was here once too,” the pale bareheaded Dutchman told them as he led them down a hallway. They could see endless rows of computers behind bullet-proof glass. “But that was a while ago. How is he doing?”

“Good,” John just said. He was in no mood to touch that subject.

SWIFT, he learned, organized five hundred million money transfers every year worldwide. It assured that banks were able to make binding agreements electronically with military grade encryption methods. SWIFT messages had to be confirmed twice before the actual process could be initiated. It was impossible to penetrate this system from the outside. The nerve system of the global finance structure was as secure as a missile silo and the codes were just as secret.

When they went to Brussels for a meeting with members of the European Parliament they stopped by Euroclear, an organization that handled international securities trading. Their office building was an ordinary granite and glass structure on the Avenue Jaqumain. They were not allowed to view the computer rooms, much less go in. Only ten out of the nine hundred employees were permitted to go in there. But they were shown the emergency power generators and coolant tanks on the roof, also for emergencies. They were told that another facility with the same setup was running parallel to this one in a secret location, should the main facility suffer a failure. Stock market transactions were being done by the second and on call. But, although the best electronic equipment money could buy was used and the system globally linked, a transfer could take up to three days, because apart from the trade partners involved in the deals, there were also national depot centers and banks involved.

“Would it not be better to transfer all the money I have scattered in the other banks into my bank?” John asked when they were airborne again.

“I’ve been thinking about that too for a while,” McCaine said and cocked his head. “The yield would be more. On the other hand the other banks are terrified you might do just that, and I like that.”

And so they raced around the globe and managed gigantic reorganizations and restructuring, purchased and sold, and organized measures of rationalization during meetings that hardly lasted more than a half hour. If it looked like a meeting might last longer than that they held it in the air, on the way to the next conference; then their meeting partners had to fly back home with a regular scheduled flight.

When they spoke, people listened, when they commanded, they were obeyed, when they praised someone, that person was on cloud nine. They were masters of the universe. Most of the world didn’t know it yet, but they would be the rulers of the coming century, and they were invincible.

$26,000,000,000,000

THE OWNERSHIP OF a bank that grew to monstrous size with incredible speed on the global markets opened new and unforeseen opportunities. Some of these opportunities were not quite legal, for instance when they used cloak-and dagger-methods to study account activities to learn about their competitors’ plans, relationships, and condition, or to plan a takeover. The people working in the analytical department didn’t ask where McCaine got the lists he put on their desks, but they did find them very informative.

But it turned out that it was the totally legal methods that were the most effective ones. Making use of investment strategy specifications and credit criteria alone they could promote whole industries or regions or cause them serious problems if they chose. They could throw Third World governments into crisis or save them. In the aftermath of one such crisis, they were able to acquire dozens of companies in Malaysia, South Korea, and Thailand dirt cheap. There wasn’t a single authorization or concession that Fontanelli Enterprises would have been refused. They owned more prospecting rights, fishing rights, and drilling permits than anyone could exploit before the end of the century. By now there was hardly a person on the planet who wasn’t in some way affected by decisions made in the flying command center of the Fontanelli empire.

“We are like a black hole,” McCaine said enthusiastically while rubbing his hands as they sat in their jet again. “We suck up everything around us, and the more we grow and stronger we get the faster we suck up even more. We will grow until we’re as large as the whole world.”

John didn’t look at him nor did he respond. He just looked out the window and watched the take-off. He didn’t quite like the thought of being a black hole, not as much as McCaine did.

Then came a bewildering piece of news. In a move that seemed almost out of a comic opera, German and Italian tax authorities raided branches of the Fontanelli banks in Frankfurt, Munich, Florence, Milan and Rome. They searched the offices and confiscated boxes of documents. Swarms of company lawyers, however, managed to regain possession of them again before one single official had the chance to set an eye on them.

“What in the hell does that mean!?” John exclaimed. “What are they looking for? And what can they charge us with?” He stared out the window but didn’t see anything.

“Nothing,” McCaine replied. “They have nothing on us. Don’t get upset, John, it’s not worth it.” He stood there and readjusted his tie.

“But we have to do something. We can’t just let them do this to us!”

“Of course, and we will. Now is the time to get in front of the cameras and tell the world that we’re gravely concerned. We are troubled about Europe as a financial environment. We will demand the free movement of capital, the inevitable globalization, and the international flow of money.” He laughed as if everything was an amusing game for him. “And they will swallow it all, hook, line, and sinker.”

John looked at McCaine doubtfully. “Can we do this? Control the international money flow?”

McCaine laughed again; a very amusing game indeed to him. “Yes, of course. Money flows through the computers of the banks without a single cent getting lost. Can control be any better?”

“And globalization? That’s a development that’s unstoppable …?”

“John, we are implementing globalization. The two of us, you and I, we are globalization. If all those countries out there were in agreement, they could stop us in our tracks. But they aren’t in agreement.” He messed with his cufflinks. “Divide et impera, that’s called, I think.”

A knock on the door. One of the secretaries stuck her red-haired head in and said. “Mr. Fontanelli, Mr. McCaine, the press is waiting down in the foyer now.”

“Thank you, Frances,” McCaine said. “We’ll be right there.”

John wished he could see the situation as calmly and confidently as McCaine did. He didn’t like this at all. He suddenly had the impression of walking on thin ice, singing at the top of their voices so as not to hear the cracking sounds beneath their feet.

Moneyforce 1 was flying north along the coastline of Borneo. The South China Sea glistened deep blue beneath the left wing, and the fogs and deep green jungles of Borneo passed by below the right wing. “You will like it,” McCaine had assured John. The jungle gave way to a huge bay with a large city in the middle that seemed to be floating on the water. The light reflecting from the golden domes of the mosques and palaces and it looked like a dream from One Thousand and One Nights.

John stared out of his window and eventually realized his jaw was hanging open. “You were right,” he said breathlessly. “I like it.”

McCaine took his eyes from a thick file and peered out to see what John meant. “Oh that, that’s nothing yet.”

Kompong Ayer, the city on the water, John found out later. It was a city build on posts centuries ago already. Arabian seamen had given it its modern name during the Middle Ages when the land around it was still called Sribuza. It had spread from both sides of the bay to the mainland and was now called Bandar Seri Begawa, and was the capital of Brunei Darussalam, the sultanate of Brunei. John could see it was a modern and wealthy city as they drove along the wide boulevards. There wasn’t an old car to be seen. The streets were lined with fancy bungalows and supermarkets. The muezzins called out to prayer from the minarets, and their driver stopped the car, got out, unrolled his carpet, and prayed.

“The people here have very good reasons to thank Allah,” McCaine said as he watched the driver through the window. “They pay no taxes. Education and medical treatment are free. Poverty does not exist, and there are even subsidies for building private houses. All the dirty jobs are done by foreigners, mostly Chinese.”

“And all this thanks to oil,” John threw in.

“Thanks to oil,” McCaine echoed. “It is quite remarkable how the Creator has put almost all major oil reserves underneath Islamic countries. Don’t you agree? Makes you think. Our colleagues from Shell pay the sultan so much that even after paying for all government expenditure he’s able to put two billion dollars into savings, where there are already thirty billion dollars. Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah used to be the wealthiest man on the planet — until you came along.”

The driver rolled up his carpet again, put it into the trunk and drove on.

“And what exactly are we doing here?” John wanted to know, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

McCaine made a vague gesture with a hand. “It might not be a bad idea to get to know one another. The sultan will meet us and said he would be happy to get to know you.”

“Do I have to feel honored?”

“Good question. The sultan is dewa emas kayangan, the golden god who came from heaven, at least for his traditional thinking people. For the rest of the world he simply is the potentate, a potentate with oil.”

The car got to the waterside promenade and rolled towards a huge building with golden domes.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” McCaine mocked.

John stared speechlessly at the building. It was an architectural monstrosity that looked like St. Peter’s Cathedral adorned with a dozen minarets.

“It’s the largest palace in the world,” McCaine said. “It was designed by a student of Le Corbusier, who wasn’t very happy about the results, because the sultan had a bunch of extra wishes he insisted on integrating. The palace has eighteen hundred rooms, two hundred fifty toilets and covers an area large enough for two and a half thousand single-family homes. Internal designers were brought in from Italy, glass makers from Venice, structural engineers from the US, silk wallpaper from France, forty varieties of marble from Italy, bars of gold from India for the throne room, onyx tiles from Morocco, and so forth.”

“Good gracious, that must’ve cost a fortune,” John said awed.

“Around five hundred million dollars, a bit more than our plane, but that was back in eighty-one.”

“Our jumbo looks better.”

“But it’s not as spacious.” McCaine shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever. I wanted you to see this, maybe now you will believe me that you’re living below your means.”

John remembered those words when they returned to London and he went home to his stately home. Home — well … It was imposing and luxurious and all that, but it was so huge and had so many employees that it seemed to him more like a train station than a home. And this was still not up to standard? How much more swank and pomp did he need? And what for?

He thought back sometimes — when he had time to do so with all this traveling — to those first weeks in Italy, how idyllic everything was. Back then it had bothered him to have one or two bodyguards following him everywhere he went. Meanwhile an ever-growing security organization had developed around him, a private army that checked out every step he took before he took it. He had to inform them in the morning what he had planned to do, where he wanted to go and where he wanted to stay, and then they would swarm out to check, examine, secure and discuss among themselves the pros and cons of this and that. There were lots of them and they did their best to be discrete and keep distant, but he knew they got nervous each time he was outdoors, and especially where there were a lot of people. He tried to keep going to such areas to a minimum, even if it made him feel like a prisoner and not like a wealthy man; a prisoner being transported from one cell to another.

But he would not complain, not to McCaine, who worked like a man possessed, or to anyone else. He was the heir to the Fontanelli fortune; he was the fulfiller of the prophecy. He would accept the inconveniences.

Jeremy was waiting for him. He didn’t seem as impressive a butler any more now he was in a real English stately home. “A Mr. Copeland called,” he reported. “He said it’s a life or death situation.”

John’s forehead was covered with wrinkles at this news. “How did he get this number?”

Jeremy looked unhappy. “I’m afraid, sir, that such things can be found out these days.”

“If he calls again get rid of him. I don’t want to speak with him.”

“Yes, sir,” Jeremy said with a slight bow, and added, with an attitude that John would not have stood for in anyone else, “Ahem, sir, there is one more thing …”

John actually didn’t want to discuss anything anymore today. He just wanted to relax on his sofa and listen to some music, Bruce Springsteen maybe or Muddy Waters. “Yes, what?” ”Please, Jeremy, look at me when you speak to me.”

The butler attempted to straighten his back. He managed a few degrees. “Sir, it appears that some of the house personnel are … ahem …. stealing, sir.”

“Stealing?”

“There has been quite an amount of food taken and a number of valuable items are missing in the castle, sir.”

John looked at him, stumped. It seemed absurd to have the same people he employed in his home steal from him. “Are you sure?”

“Unfortunately, yes, sir.” It was obvious that he could not keep the upright position for very long.

John’s first reaction was to ignore it. He was wealthy enough not to worry about a bit of thievery. But then he realized it did bother him. He didn’t like the idea that every chambermaid, every gardener, or every cook he looked at might be the one stealing from him within his own four walls. Okay, in his own four hundred walls.

“Show me the books,” he told Jeremy.

When he saw the records he noticed that it was far worse than he had thought. Jeremy was simply overburdened with so many employees in the house. Lists that recorded incoming goods were sloppily kept, bills weren’t paid for weeks. The thefts had been noticed only because they got bolder. He had no other choice but to look into the matter. In order not to punish the honest employees, he had to find the guilty ones and fire them immediately. He would have no choice but to call the police. He would also need an additional head of the household personnel.

He felt the first cracks appearing in the ice beneath his feet.

McCaine, as usual, was up before the paperboy brought the newspapers and brought them along on his way to the office to read them there. On this particular morning he stopped dead when he saw the headline. He read the first page then read it again, then once more, and then read it again. The Schweizer Bankverein SBC, and the Schweizerische Bankengesellschaft had merged. The new bank was called the United Bank of Switzerland, or UBS. It had assets of eight hundred billion dollars and managed assets of one and a half trillion dollars. UBS was now the largest bank on earth.

The article stated that talks had been going on for some time, but in light of the ever-growing Fontanelli conglomerate it was accelerated and finalized.

It was the first time McCaine’s neighbors heard him howl with anger.

$27,000,000,000,000

JOHN HAD NEVER before seen McCaine so upset. “Here!” he shouted and threw the paper on the desk and paced back and forth like a lion in a cage. “They united against us!”

John took the paper. Another merger. Yesterday it was the United Bank of Switzerland. Today it was Mobil Oil and Texaco that joined together. Once again the reasons given for the fusions were thought to be the only way to counter the domineering position of Fontanelli Enterprises.

“And the cartel authorities are even backing them,” McCaine fumed, “the same cartel authority that stopped our plans to buy Texaco!”

“We wanted to buy Texaco?” John wondered. “I didn’t know that.”

McCaine paused and waved the question away. “The negotiation only lasted a few days. Why would I have bothered you with this?” He balled his fists. “America! Dammit! We’re not ready yet to take on America, but I wished we could put some fire under Washington’s ass!”

“You’re talking about a democratically elected government.” John felt anger at McCaine’s words. Even his voice sounded cooler, more distant and disapproving in his ears than he had intended. But so what? He had to let out his discontentment. “In places like North Dakota and Minnesota there are guys who built cabins out in the wilderness, arm themselves to the teeth and bitch at the government, just like you just did.”

McCaine didn’t respond, and just looked at him intently, as if he had x-ray vision. He slowly opened his fist and lowered his hand, turned around, and went unhurriedly to the window. His anger seemed to have dissipated by the time he got there. “John,” he said staring out the window, “you still haven’t understood what’s going on here. Otherwise you would not make such ridiculous comparisons.” He turned around. “Those guys in North Dakota … I know some of them. Believe it or not, I have even spoken with a few of them. I know how they think. They believe that things can’t go on for much longer the way they have been, and when everything breaks apart they want to have a safe place to live. A place they will defend with all the weapons they have. They are the most self-centered people there are, because they think ‘to hell with the rest of the world, as long as I survive.’”

John nodded grimly. “Exactly.”

“But governments,” McCaine continued, “including democratically elected ones, are exactly the same! Who voted them into office? The people. A government must represent the wishes of the people and most people think to hell with everyone else, the main thing is that we’re doing well.”

John opened his mouth to say something, but didn’t know what. “Hmm,” he said and wished he weren’t always so helpless and awkward during such conversations.

“What are we doing here? We’re striving for a position from which we can re-direct the world into a better direction. It isn’t for us. We have everything; we have more than enough of everything. Both of us could give away lots of money without a problem. Do you understand? We’re both so rich that there shouldn’t even be the slightest suspicion of us wanting to have more. What we’ll be doing will follow a logical and exact set criteria. Soon, we will have a computer model available to present to the world, the most detailed cybernetic simulation that ever existed. With its help we’ll be able to follow every important change and foresee all its consequences. We will be able to give a concrete reason for every decision we make. The only yardstick will be the survival of the human race; the greatest possible wellbeing for the greatest number of people.” McCaine was standing in front of John gesturing imploringly. “Don’t you understand that lobbying of every kind is our enemy? Every type! It doesn’t matter if it’s a government, a trade union, a syndicate, a lobby group or anything else. They are all organizations that seek to get the greatest advantage for their groups of interest. They want injustice! Do you understand? That is the goal of every lobbyist — to create injustice, an imbalance in favor of its own interests!”

John had involuntarily recoiled a bit; to have McCaine like this before him speak so fervently and full of steam was like standing in the way of a moving locomotive. But John had to admit that what McCaine said was true, though it sounded unusual, almost like blasphemy, but it had its own inner logic. “I’ve never seen it like that before,” he admitted.

“Yes.” McCaine’s glance met John’s. “I knew that.”

“I mean, in my whole adult life I’ve never missed voting in an election; as long as I was living in New York, at any rate. My grandfather taught me that, again and again. To exercise my right to vote … that many, many people sacrificed their lives for this right. Back then he…”

“Fled from Mussolini, I know. He was right. Democracy is a great accomplishment, a fine thing; I don’t want to argue against that at all. But you have to able to afford it!” McCaine took a breath of air and looked at John as if to ascertain what he could and could not expect him to accept. “You won’t like what I have to say now.”

“So far many things you’ve said weren’t that great.”

“It’s not my fault. That is how the world is. When danger is imminent, there is no time for long discussions, or you’re dead before a decision can be made.” He lifted a finger and pointed at John. “In times of need, it’s good to have someone to take over command. A leader. Do you know where the word dictator comes from? From Latin. In ancient Rome, a single leader was voted in for a limited time period in times of crisis. That was a dictator. In times of danger, democracy takes a pause … always and at any time. Study history unbiased and you’ll see that I’m right.”

John felt a well of discomfort growing inside him. “You want us to become dictators?”

McCaine laughed heartily. “What else would you call what we’ve been doing all this time? Two people are working to get into a position to tell the world what to do. That’s the plan, isn’t it? Has been from the start.”

“You never called it a dictatorship.”

“If I had back then, you would have stood up and left.”

“I’m thinking about doing that right now.”

“Please go if you want, no one is holding you back. It is your trillion dollars. But, John, you still have a prophecy to fulfill. Before you go, please tell me how you plan to do that. Your wonderful democracy hasn’t even been able to take such a tiny little step as to ban CFCs, not to mention much more effective measures. Please tell me what you want to do. If you can think of a better way, let’s hear it. I searched for a quarter of a century and didn’t found one.”

John stared at him with growing consternation. He knew McCaine was right, as awful as it sometimes sounded. John had to look away and felt he was carrying a great burden. “That’s not easy, you know. I mean, I’ve never had a clear concept for my own life. But I sure as hell never wanted to be a dictator!” Even so, he had secretly known all along that this was the only way things could be done.

“John,” McCaine said in a low tone, almost softly, “we are disgusted with people like Saddam Hussein not because they are dictators, but because they want only to kill people. That’s what makes them into tyrants. We, John, won’t kill anyone, we will save people. We will have a type of power that no one ever had before, and we will be the ones who steer humanity away from the disaster it’s currently hurtling towards. John looked up, dithering, his mind a whirl of confusion.

“I know it is not easy. I had twenty-five years to get used to this concept, and even that wasn’t easy.”

“Indeed it’s not.” His voice sounded odd, almost dry.

“I’ve also voted at every election.” He gave a wry chuckle. “But I didn’t vote for Major.”

John remembered the dinner … the prime minister’s cool reaction to his plans. “I guess I’ll get over it.”

“So, are we still working together?”

“Yes.”

“I need to know if you’re going to stand behind me, John.”

John sighed and tasted the awful taste of betrayal on his tongue. “Yes, I’m behind you.”

“Thank you.”

It was silent for few moments. They could hear the bells of Big Ben from far away.

“So what will we do next?” asked John.

McCaine stood by the side of the desk, and drummed his fingers silently on the surface. His eyes looked to something indistinct in the distance. “The fight has begun,” he said. “So we will fight.”

Directors, chairmen, and managers came to London from all over the world over the next few days. For the first time the conference room in the Fontanelli Enterprise headquarters was so full that additional chairs had to be brought in.

The supreme boss of all these directors, chairmen of the board and managers, John Salvatore Fontanelli, richest man on earth and designated savior of humanity, opened the meeting with a short and sententious speech over the threat to natural recourses, and the central role that the protection of the environment would play throughout the conglomerate. The theme of his whole speech could be summed up in a few phrases: “Please keep in mind that environmental protection must be affordable. We can’t survive on good intentions alone. Only if we are able to radically reduce waste in our companies will we be able to secure our future.”

John retreated back into his office and left the details up to McCaine. He was still not a great orator. He suffered so much from stage fright that just the prospect of a little speech like that had kept him running to the bathroom, and he had barely slept a wink the night before. He had tossed and turned in bed, repeating the speech in his mind over and over again and now he was so sweaty that he had to take a shower and put on fresh clothes. To think he had laughed when McCaine insisted they had a bathroom and dressing room for each of their offices!

“To me all this talk about protecting the environment seemed a bit phony,” he told McCaine when he came in for a moment to get some files and transparencies with colored diagrams on them. “I mean, isn’t it all just to earn more money?”

McCaine looked up at him with a surly expression. “You disappoint me, John. I don’t expect those people in there,” he pointed a thumb to the conference room, “to have any understanding of what all this is about. But I do expect it of you.”

“Appears to be my destiny; everyone expects me to fulfill everything, but I end up disappointing them all.”

“All right, one more time and please take notes. We’re the biggest company in the world, right? For now, at any rate. What we have to worry about is keeping that position. What we don’t want to see is several concentrations of power. Then we’d have a stalemate, and nothing that needs be done would be.” McCaine collected the transparencies and held them out towards John as if he might poke him in the chest with them. “Is that so difficult to understand? Think in long terms, John. The long-term thinker will win.”

With that Malcolm McCaine went back to the conference room. He looked at the people gathered around the huge table staring at him like scared bunnies. He adjusted the microphone and told them the same things that he would say in similar meetings in the coming days: “Gentlemen, I want only three things from you, first profits, second profits, and third profits.”

One of the few women who attended the meeting that had actually been a punishment detail in disguise, was Gladys Vane, the manager of Polytone Media. It was the new record company that had been formed from many previous independent European record companies and was headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. During the past three months, two top performers, a female pop vocalist from Israel and an English band, had gone to EMI Electrola, which had hurt the quarterly earnings quite a bit, making them go into the red. She had to listen to a lot of complaints during the meeting.

When she was back in Brussels, she called a meeting with the bosses of the company’s subsidiaries and doled out similar lectures to explain the seriousness of the situation.

“But it won’t work without cooperating with the artists,” the boss of the Spanish subsidiary told her. “We must invest in them. It takes time before a performer is established, but if we don’t give them the necessary time to do so we soon won’t have any performers anymore.”

“If we don’t earn any profits, the performers soon won’t have a record company at all,” Gladys Vane retorted. She didn’t want to get another bitching out from that confounded British guy. “What I’ve just said stands; anyone who isn’t earning money gets the boot.”

The managers flipped through their papers. The manager of Cascata Records, a subsidiary based in Milan, Italy, that had belonged to Polytone since the middle of the year, looked long and hard at the sales figures for a CD with the title Wasted Future.

“We’re suffering a setback,” McCaine said. “It’s unpleasant, but that’s life. Setbacks are unavoidable and they separate the men from the boys.”

John only nodded. They were on their way to the airport, but their armored limousine was stuck in traffic. Looking ahead, all he could see was a mass of trucks and red double-decker busses. It was drizzling and anthracite-colored umbrellas looked like giant mushrooms in motion.

“We need to keep our sights on our objective, otherwise we’ll get decimated one piece at a time. One of our next goals is the International Monetary Fund.”

One of the advantages of having your own aircraft is that you don’t have to worry about missing your flight.

John thought about what McCaine just told him, and frowned. “The IMF?” he repeated. He read about it before. The International Monetary Fund was an international institution that assured the worldwide finance system functioned properly, and that currencies remained convertible, and so forth. The description sounded utterly boring. “You’ll have to explain to me what this has to do with us.”

“The IMF currently has around hundred eighty member nations. Each member has to deposit a certain amount of money, its so-called quota, and the size of the quota depends on the wealth of the country, the richer it is the more it must put in. The quota also determines the country’s voting right — the more money a country puts in the greater its say. Right now, the US has about eighteen percent of the votes.” McCaine stuck out a finger and wrapped his other hand around it. “That is the first point and it aligns with our view of things: wealth is influence. That is laid down in the IMF’s statutes.”

John said, “Influence over what.”

“That is the second point we need to concentrate on. The IMF can look into any member’s books and is permitted to ask governments for information about their monetary and tax policies, but has no right to issue directives. At least that’s normally the case. It’s a different matter if a country needs a loan from the IMF. Such loans are given only under stringent requirements and the requirements are strictly controlled. There is no other way to get such direct control of a sovereign nation.” McCaine held on to middle and index fingers. “Do you understand? Through the IMF we can prevent the emerging nations’ uncontrolled industrial growth from destroying the environment.”

John looked at McCaine and was impressed. He had to confess that he would have never thought of such an idea. “The IMF … yes.” He nodded. “But how do we get control of the IMF?”

McCaine shrugged his shoulders. “Through well selected words, through offers of cooperation, or what I’d like to see most of all, Fontanelli Enterprises as the first member that is not a nation.”

John had to take a deep breath. “Well, that’s going to be tricky.”

“But not all that tricky. At the moment the IMF has a total worth of around a hundred ninety billion dollars. About half of that is in non-convertible currencies, money that can’t be utilized. For us it would be a simple matter of paying in more than even the US.”

For a moment John had that feeling of invincibility that had first come over him during the summer, a feeling better than sex. But whatever sort of container this feeling was kept in, there seemed to have a leak, because it quickly ebbed away and left him once again with uneasiness. “I don’t think they will accept us.”

McCaine was looking out the window. “That’s only a matter of time,” he said. “The era of nations is ending. People will hang on to this notion for a while longer, like grandmother’s tea set that you never use because it’s so delicate, but in future generations people will not understand what good a nation was.” He pointed outside to a display window of a bookstore that had a copy of an illustrated book of the long-passed Olympic Games in Atlanta. “You will see one day, believe me. One day the athletes of the Olympic Games won’t compete for nations, but for corporations.”

“Couldn’t we create a sort of prize?” John suggested one evening high above the Pacific. “Something like a Nobel Prize, but one for environmental protection measures?”

McCaine, who, as usual, was studying documents, memorandums, and contracts, looked up at john. “A Fontanelli Prize?”

“Not necessarily. But I could imagine awarding a prize each year to people who had done something significant to help fulfill the prophecy. I mean, that could be an incentive to help people to re-think, and it would do our image some good too.”

McCaine drummed his pen against his chin. “Do you want to endow a prize like that?” he asked.

John found McCaine’s way of putting it a bit odd. “Yes,” he answered.

“Then do it.”

“Me?” John looked at him doubtfully. “I have no idea how something like that is done.”

McCaine placed the pen on the pad. “You don’t have to know how something is done. Do you remember what I told you during our first meeting? Money trumps everything, money replaces everything, and money can have everything done. All you need to know is what you want to do. Leave the how to others.”

“And who, for example?”

“Call the organizational department, ask someone into your office and then tell the person what you want. Simple as that. And it will be done, because that’s what those people are paid for.” McCaine smiled. “By the way, I think your idea is great.”

At one of their rationalization projects, a company called HUGEMOVER, once the world’s leader in the manufacture of heavy equipment, there were unexpected consequences to their streamlining: the union decided to go on strike.

“Hello, Jim,” McCaine said as the video conference was up and running. “We’re hearing things here that we can hardly believe.”

John sat outside the camera’s range. McCaine told him it’d be better. He said it would probably get ugly.

Jim Straus was the chairman of HUGEMOVER, and he was a gentle-looking man with the rosy pink skin of a baby. He looked out from the video screen with an expression of defiance. His deputy, Donald Rash, sat next to him looking like he was trying to snap his pen with one hand.

“Well, I’d have to lie if I said I don’t understand the boys,” Straus told McCaine. “To have their pay cut by twenty percent and their work hours increased by two, and all this at once and without talking with them first or even offering negotiations. You would go on strike too, Malcolm.”

“What I would do or not do is not up for debate. The question is what you will do about it, Jim.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have to negotiate.”

“That’s not the answer I wanted to hear. The pay they had before had been utopian compared to the world market, and the work hours made HUGEMOVER almost seem like an amusement park.”

“Malcolm, you no doubt remember that I had misgivings about this. There are too many changes, and they are coming too fast. I told you.”

John saw McCaine’s lower jaw move like he was chewing gum. “You should check a dictionary what a self-fulfilling prophecy is. No negotiations.”

“We don’t have a choice. Good relations with the union is a tradition at HUGEMOVER.”

McCaine lowered his head and rubbed his nose. There was a pause in their conversation that grew more ominous the longer it lasted. “I was already in a bad mood, and then you had to use a word I’m allergic to: ‘tradition.’ Today is not the day, Jim. You’re fired.”

“What?” Straus was outraged.

McCaine turned to Straus’ assistant and asked: “Donald, tell me if you can do a better job.”

The big man finally snapped the pen. “Ahem … Mr. McCaine, sir …”

“Donald; simple question, simple answer. Will you do better, yes or no?”

“Ah …” Rash dropped the parts of his pen on the desk and glanced to his former boss, who was still trying to get a grip on what just happened. Then he seemed to understand what was at stake. He grew an inch when he told McCaine, “Yes, Mr. McCaine.”

“What will you do, Donald?”

“I will not negotiate. Let them strike. We’ll see this through.”

“You’re my man, Donald. You’ll get your new papers as soon as possible. Please see to it that Mr. Straus gets his too.” McCaine switched off. He paused for a moment staring at the black screen. Then he looked to John. “Did you think that was brutal?”

“Yes.”

McCaine nodded. “It has to be sometimes. We need to be strong right now.”

Time magazine had a big article about the struggle at HUGEMOVER, including a title picture that was based on an old Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill movie, but with the faces of John Fontanelli and Malcolm McCaine, and the title The Left and Right Hand of the Devil. The article was merciless, calling John’s commitment to the environment hypocritical and McCaine’s business practice highway robbery.

John felt his ears got red and he began sweating as he read the article. He wondered how McCaine could remain so calm as he flipped through the pages.

“I’m getting tired of this stuff,” he finally said. “It was always part of the plan anyhow to buy the media … newspapers, TV channels, and so forth.” He closed the magazine and threw it to one side. “It’s about time we got on with that.”

Christmas was not far away. Thick fogs covered the Thames more often, spread out into the city, rolled over the high buildings and made them look like troll castles and the street lanterns like elven lights. The big hit for buyers this Christmas season were products with the Fontanelli f on them. People bought caps, cups, key chains, shawls, binders, and above all else, shirts — all white except the almost violet dark-red curvy f. The license payments for the logo alone brought in hundreds of millions of dollars.

On the fifteenth of December, Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas merged to become the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world. The reason given for this move in economics journals was the rapid growth of influence of the Fontanelli conglomerate. A number of other mergers were expected to take place in the near future.

The situation over at HUGEMOVER got bogged down. The union kept the strike going and the management refused to negotiate. The reduction in production over the Christmas and New Year was not only manageable but even welcome due to reduced orders for heavy equipment. But with the new season starting soon, new orders would come in that would not be fillable with only a non-union, skeleton crew still working.

“Even in the US, labor laws forbid firing striking workers,” Donald Rash explained with a ready-to-fight expression. “We’re buying as much as we can from our subsidiaries overseas and we re-organize more in a week than we usually do in a year, but we’re reaching a limit. We already reached it with the excavators.”

McCaine had his hands folded in front of his mouth as if he was praying. “What will you do?”

“Hire new people. Labor laws keep us from hiring strikebreakers. We have a recession and other companies are also rationalizing, and we’re getting good people from overseas who will work for less pay. Besides that, we’ve also streamlined a number of processes so they won’t require specialists anymore. That used to be a problem area during strikes — we were dependent on those people, but now it’s no problem finding new workers.”

“The union knows this too, I hope?”

“Hmm, yeah, I think so.” Rash looked at McCaine, who was sitting there motionless. “Oh, I guess it’ll be enough if I threaten them with that possibility.”

“It’s worth a try,” said McCaine.

Two days later the strikers went back to work, for twenty percent less pay and two hours more work per week.

“See?” McCaine simply said and had something that ever so slowly turned into an approximation of a smile.

The ringing telephone by John’s bed woke him up. He sat up startled and stared at the darned thing and was almost sure it had not rung. It was two thirty in the morning. He must’ve dreamt it, for sure. But it rang again. Not a good sign. A phone ringing at such an hour never brings good news. He answered it.

“Hello?”

“You damned dirt bag …” It was a woman’s voice, sounding far away and peculiar, like talking in a tunnel. She spoke in Italian.

“What?”

“I said you are a damned dirt bag!” She sounded inebriated.

John ran his fingers through his hair and tried to think. “Without a doubt,” he said. “But, would you tell me who you are?”

“Porco Dio …” There was a long moment of silence with only heavy breathing to be heard. “You haven’t forgotten me, have you? Tell me that you haven’t forgotten me.” She started to cry quietly.

John was racking his brain, but for nothing in this world could he place the voice. Hesitantly, he told her, “I’m sorry…“

“You’re sorry? Good. You should be. You should be because it’s all your fault.” She let out a squeaky sob, which did awaken a vague memory. “It is all your fault. Did you hear me? Yours alone! It’s your fault that Marvin is in jail. My life’s also going down the drain. I hope you’ll be sorry for that too, you dirt bag.” The phone was slammed down with a rattle as if the woman on the other end was so drunk she could hardly find the base.

John sat there with the receiver still in his hand. His heart was pounding as he stared before him in bemusement. Then it came to him. Constantina. That could only have been Constantina. For Christ’s sake! He didn’t even recognize her voice. Marvin’s in jail? It didn’t sound like she was kidding.

He dialed the number of the security service. Marco got on the phone sounding surprisingly awake for this time of night. John told him what just happened.

“I am very sorry, Mr. Fontanelli. I don’t know how the call got to you. Your number is the most secret of secret numbers.”

“She must’ve got it from Marvin. He’s good at stuff like that. But that’s not why I’m calling.” He explained what he wanted. Later, he put on his morning coat and restlessly paced around his huge room. Finally the phone rang again.

“It is true,” Marco said. “Marvin Copeland was arrested in Brindisi. He is being charged with dealing drugs.”

$28,000,000,000,000

TWO CHAIRS WERE the only pieces of furniture in the square room with high ceilings. The room stank of urine and mold. The door Marvin was brought through had a tiny window with a screen and massive locks, which looked new and appeared to be the only things in this jail from the twentieth century.

And there he sat, Marvin Copeland, shabby and worn-out, barely able to keep upright on the chair. It looked like he had slept for weeks in the clothes he had on, and not just since he had been in jail.

“What happened?” John asked him.

Marvin shrugged his shoulders and grimaced. Then he finally said, “Well, what happened — they got me, is what happened.”

“Dealing drugs? Is that true?”

“Aw, fuck! My record company threw me out from one day to the next. They said my CD wasn’t selling. But the truth is they didn’t promote it enough. I mean, how can you get a foot in the door with the likes of Michael Jackson or Aerosmith?” He sat bent over, staring at the floor, and then looked at John from below. “What am I saying my record company? It’s your record company, like half the planet is yours.”

“Marvin, you had a hundred thousand dollars. I got the figures from Cascata Records. They paid you an advance of three hundred thousand dollars. You’ve spent almost a half a million dollars in a year and half.”

“Man, you got nerves with your jumbo jet and all.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Yeah well shit, everything costs so much. I had to drive a rock star car, wear rock star clothes. You can’t imagine how expensive all that is.”

“If you mean that I don’t know how much coke costs, then you’re right.”

“Boy, oh boy, you should hear yourself. I told you so. The money will change you and it has. I told you!”

“Marvin … cocaine! That’s not the same as joints. And you were always against dealing drugs.”

Marvin leaned back and closed his eyes as his head tilted back. He looked pale and hungry. The two friends remained silent for some time. The small barred window high on the wall let diffuse light into the bare room and they could hear the traffic outside. It all sounded so much louder now, the mopeds and the honking horns.

“It’s the comet,” Marvin said breaking the silence as he opened his eyes.

“The comet?”

“Hale-Bopp. The comet. Don’t tell me that you haven’t seen it yet. It’s big enough.” He sighed and took in a deep breath. “Comets bring bad luck. People have known that for ages. An artist like me feels it. Artists are sensitive to these things, you know? Okay, coke might bring you to new dimensions, but even without it …” He shook his head for a long while, thinking. Then he looked at John. “Can you get me out of here?”

John studied Marvin’s face, the expression in his eyes. He thought he noticed a sly look in them, but there was also need and a plea for help. All that was missing was for Marvin to drop down on his knees and beg.

“That’s why I came here,” John told him and wondered if he really was doing Marvin a favor. “They said that you can get out on bail. But you can’t leave town and there are a few other conditions.” He took a deep breath and added with a bitter taste: “Anyway, I won’t go broke if you skip bail. If you understand what I’m trying to tell you.”

Marvin looked at him as if he didn’t understand a word he said. Then he nodded. “You still are a real friend. Despite all that money.”

McCaine was not amused when John returned to London. “Your friend, or whatever it is you see in him, is the prototype of a true loser if I ever saw one. He never did anything with his life and he never will. Forget him, John, as fast as possible. Avoid any and all contact with him. Losers are dangerous to people with important goals, believe me. You can be the most competent person on earth, but if you have losers around you, you won’t achieve anything. They pull you down and mess up your plans and get into your way at crucial moments. They poison your life like a contagious disease — they might even be a disease.”

John was tired and wished he had gone straight home from the airport. He was absolutely in no mood to argue. “You talk about him as if he was a rat, or something.”

“What else would you call it — what he’s doing with Constantina?” McCaine stood there, his arms crossed, against the backdrop of the London skyline like some immobile statue. “Marco was good enough to fill me in with the details.”

“Constantina Volpe is a grown woman and responsible for herself,” John said exasperated. “And Marvin was there for me when I needed it. I owed him.”

“You owed him? Oh, well then. And when will you not owe him anymore?”

“I don’t know.” John hadn’t thought about that yet. This could go on forever. “Well, I guess now we’re even.”

McCaine made a grunting noise. “You appear to be convinced that you’ve done him a favor.”

“I helped him get out of prison.”

“And? What will happen next? You paid the bail for him, he gets out of jail, and then he disappears?”

“Something like that.”

“You really think that he’ll be able to avoid border controls, or a manhunt by Interpol and do it all while on drugs? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I reckon he’s pretty clever at stuff like that, so yes,” John retorted angrily.

McCaine unfolded his arms and drummed his fingers for a moment on John’s desktop. Then he said, “Well, whatever. I want to ask you something, John. If you should ever run into this sort of problem again, could you come to me first? Can we agree on that?”

“What do you mean by this sort of problem?”

“You know what I mean.” McCaine stopped by the door with the knob in his hand. “Don’t do anything secretive; come to me with these matters. I’ll handle it.”

John entrusted a project manager named Lionel Hillman with getting the award project up and running. He was a bustling man with curly, rust-brown hair and had the same colored hair growing out of his nostrils, which it was hard to avoid staring at when speaking to him. Hillman dived into the project as if he could live on the work alone. He was the one who suggested calling the award the Gaea Prize, named after the Greek goddess of earth, mother of the heavens and the Titans, the source of dreams, the nourisher of all things.

John, who was unfamiliar with all that sort of stuff, gave it the nod enthusiastically. Hillman also selected a team of judges, consisting of five renowned biologists, ecologists, and environmentalists, each one from a different part of the world. He also created foundation and trust using the Nobel Prize as a basis to oversee the institution, and had an artist design a trophy, which was admired by everyone who saw it. Finally he proposed an ad campaign that would make the Gaea Prize and what it stood for known to everyone in the world. The first award presentation was set for November 1997, on the last Saturday of the month. The date, two weeks before the Nobel Prizes, was given as much consideration as the venue, Copenhagen, to assure maximum publicity.

He invited John to come along during the photo session for the ad pictures. The mother earth figure was modeled after no one less than Patricia DeBeers, the most expensive model in the world, hailed as the most beautiful woman of the century. And good lord, she was breathtaking. John stood next to what looked like a large white umbrella, and watched how the photographer gave instructions to her as she lolled and stretched and twisted before the cameras dressed only in a thin veil. If she could not get people worked up about saving the earth then John didn’t know who else could.

“Break!” the photographer called out. He gave his assistants some instructions to change the set and then he discovered John. “Ah, Mr. Fontanelli.” He came over, shook his hand. He looked older than he did from afar and by the way he moved. He was a wiry man with straggly white-blond hair and age spots on his face. “Curtis — Howard Curtis. Lionel told me that you might drop by for a look. Welcome. How do you like it?”

John nodded and told him that he was impressed.

“She’s a great woman, isn’t she? Really great — absolutely professional, knows one hundred percent how to handle herself, and has a good grip on the job. A real pro.”

John looked past him at the set. Patricia DeBeers sat straight-backed on a stool with her veil while a chunky make-up girl dabbed something on her breasts, probably make-up. He found the view rather distracted him from whatever it was the photographer was saying.

“Do you know what?” said the man who Hillman claimed was the best photographer in the world. He took a step back and looked at John with his eyes half-closed. “A question, Mr. Fontanelli … would you mind trying something?”

“Don’t tell me you want to photograph me.”

“Absolutely.”

“No.”

“I won’t accept no for an answer, Mr. Fontanelli.”

“No way.”

“For the sake of the award …”

“Especially because of that; I don’t want to make the prize look ridiculous before it is even awarded for the first time.”

Curtis took another step back with a deep sigh, and rubbed his chin. Without taking his eyes away from John, he said, “A suggestion…”

“No.” John wanted to leave.

“I’ll take a picture with you and Miss DeBeers with the trophy. And you decide what to do when you see the finished photos. Please …” Curtis lifted a hand before John could respond. “For me. I owe it to my reputation as a photographer.”

“And you’ll work on the finished photos until I say they’re okay.”

“Yes, absolutely. I can give it to you in writing or before witnesses, whatever you want it. When you say no, it’s no, period.” Curtis smiled impishly. “But you will not say no.”

A few days after the photo shooting, after he had handed over the prize to the earth goddess while trying hard not to stare at her breasts as the flash bulbs popped, he found the newspaper lying on the breakfast table folded with one of the pages in particular facing up. Someone had marked the article red. John had no idea who. Drug charges against American musician dropped, the headline said. The charges against Marvin had been dropped after initial suspicions were found to be unsubstantiated.

“Don’t be so naïve, John,” McCaine told him after John marched into his office with the newspaper. “Your friend is as guilty as Judas. I had to bribe five police officers and two judges before the charges were dropped.”

John looked at him aghast. “You did what? Bribed?”

“I told you I’d take care of it, didn’t I?”

“Sure, but bribes …?” suddenly John felt incredibly naïve.

McCaine folded his hands patiently. “John, you don’t think we could’ve avoided a headline like richest man in the world buys drug dealer’s freedom? All the money in the world couldn’t have. How would you have liked that?”

“I don’t know. But I also don’t like us bribing people like a bunch of Mafiosi.”

“No one expects that.” McCaine gazed at his eyes so inquisitively that John was surprised by it. There was a moment of silence in the room. “It is all right that you don’t like it,” McCaine finally said in a low tone of voice. “I don’t like it either. But if I must I’ll pay bribes anyway, and I will lie, and I will cheat, whatever it takes. I will do it to fulfill the prophecy. Do you understand that? I’ve sacrificed my life for this mission. I would sacrifice my soul, John. I’m serious. My soul.”

John looked down at the man, sitting in the midst of telephones and computer monitors, dressed in a tailor-made Savile Row suit designed to emanate power and might. But the only thing that McCaine was emanating at this moment was dedication — a kind of dedication that surpassed anything a normal human could handle. For a brief short moment he looked more like a monk than anything else.

John cleared his throat and looked at the newspaper in his hand. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he said but the answer sounded cheerless. But there was only emptiness in his head, and the only thing he could think to say was: “Thanks.”

He walked away without looking back.

Malcolm McCaine indeed saw himself as a sort of monk. But on this very evening, as ever filled to the last minute with relentless work and decisions that affected thousands of people and millions of dollars, he decided it was about time to make an exception. He stretched out, flexed his shoulders, and glanced at the collection of clocks on the wall in front of him showing the time in the most important cities in the world. Then he threw the files on the towering stack of papers on his desk, as chaotic as ever. He slipped on his jacket, took the cassettes out of the dictation machines and turned off the lights on his way out.

The secretaries were long gone. He placed the cassettes on their desks, and then went to the elevator, which took him down to the parking garage.

Over the past few decades, Malcolm had neither the time nor the energy left over to pursue a relationship that would have suited his needs. That’s why he usually had gone to certain establishments in search for alternatives where certain basic physical needs could be met. One of those alternative establishments was the one he decided to visit tonight. It enjoyed an excellent reputation among its exclusive clients as being absolutely clean and discrete, worth it for those who were willing to pay exclusive prices.

The woman who ran the house, a tastefully dressed woman in her mid-forties who could’ve been taken for a company manager, greeted him. She never called the clients by their names, but remembered their faces.

“We have a bunch of new girls here,” she explained. “Pretty young ones from Asia and Africa …”

“Yes, yes,” McCaine didn’t really understand what she was going on about. He had lived in so many different countries, grown up with so many people of different nationalities and skin colors that racism wasn’t an issue for him so he missed the racist undertone in the woman’s remark. What he wanted was something different. He walked slowly past the row of girls, really close to them and looked into their eyes. He saw eyes that looked indifferent, or that were deadened, or that were filled with greed, and even a few that were friendly. He knew that he was not an attractive man, too big and heavy and clumsy. So he went from one girl to the next until he saw the expression he was looking for: Not me! Please don’t pick me!

“You!” he said and was satisfied to hear her startled little gasp.

She was slim but otherwise there was nothing special about her and her dirty-brown shoulder-length hair. He enjoyed following her up the stairs and watching her reluctant steps. It excited him to know that she found him disgusting but would spread her legs for him anyhow because he had the money for it.

It was the beginning of May 1997, and the British people voted for a new government under the Labour Party’s Tony Blair, the charismatic new prime minister who had promised to make everything better.

While watching the TV reports, John wondered if it might be a good idea to invite Blair over for dinner. At least he seemed nicer than his predecessor.

The photos Curtis had taken of John and Patricia DeBeers were ready, and just as the photographer had predicted, John was pleasantly surprised with the results. After a bit of reluctance and a talk about it with McCaine, he gave permission to use the photos in the ad campaign.

HUGEMOVER was causing trouble again. The union was trying to interfere with production by using slowdown strikes and other measures to force another round of negotiations. Donald Rash seemed clueless as he described the situation on the conference video screen.

McCaine’s expression was dark and threatening. “No doubt the union has key figures, functionaries, instigators, and so on. Do you know who they are?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Throw them out.”

The big American’s eyes widened. “But that’s against the law.”

“Throw them out — I don’t care.”

“And then what? The workers will go on strike. And this time I won’t be able to break the strike with workers from outside the company. It would be illegal.”

“Then send the pencil pushers from the offices into the production halls. Put the engineers and the entire middle and lower levels of management to work. And you too; go down and screw on bulldozer blades.” McCaine took a sheet of paper with a list of HUGEMOVER employees on it. “And you have five thousand part-time workers there who you can utilize without breaking any laws. Tell them that whoever wants to keep his job needs to get to work.”

“But that’s …” Rash stopped, considered his response and then nodded. “Okay.”

McCaine paused for a moment of pregnant but poisonous silence. Then he said, “This case will set a precedent. We must prevail. Do you understand, Donald?”

Donald Rash’s expression told him that he did understand that it was a good idea to agree. “Yes, Mr. McCaine.”

In the papers the next day it said that HUGEMOVER had fired all union functionaries. A day after that the plant employees went on strike again, sure of victory because the firings were illegal. Their one consolation was the amusing sight of salespeople donning blue coveralls, personnel executives handling heavy wrenches, and secretaries driving forklifts.

The single overhead projector on the end of the giant conference table beamed its bright light onto the screen. Darkness retreated to the far corners of the room and seemed to cower there like some animal afraid of the light.

“What do you think about the great chess match?” McCaine asked Professor Collins as the scientist was getting his transparencies in order. “Man against machine. Kasparov versus Deep Blue.”

Collins looked up. “I must confess that I’ve only been following the games occasionally. What is the score?”

“It’s over. Kasparov lost the last match today after nineteen moves. The IBM computer from is the champion of the chess world.”

Collins nodded. “Well, what can I say? I think those who believe man’s dignity is debased by this duel have been looking at it the wrong way. To me it simply shows what computers are capable of, what computers exist for, what all machines exist for: to do certain jobs better than people could.”

McCaine smiled. “Well said.”

Today’s report began as they always did: with a review of the past year’s activities. John struggled not to yawn.

“The move into the new and bigger building,” Professor Collins explained as he placed the corresponding transparency on the projector, showing a plain flat-roofed building, “had a very positive effect on our work. We were able to hire a number of excellent employees, although we don’t look as attractive to students and doctors as we would like, mainly due to the secrecy agreements we had to maintain. Concerning the computers, we have switched over totally to the RS six thousand and to the UNIX operating system. It is all interconnected and hooked-up to the Internet and behind an effective firewall. And I’d like to add that the work environment and motivation among the members of the staff could not be better.”

McCaine nodded, pleased. John leaned back and shoved his folder an inch to the left … just for the sake of it.

“And,” Collins went on, “we have done a trial run with a simulation that has produced the first practicable results.”

John felt the hairs on the back of his hands stand up and he raised his eyes. There was something about the professor’s voice that had a particular effect on him. This was not just another report. The researcher had big news.

Collins placed another transparency on the projector. This one showed a number of complicated diagrams that looked more like electrical plans. Nervously, he adjusted it back and forth until he was satisfied with its position. He cleared his throat and when he began to speak he had regained his normal tone of voice. But now it sounded like a diversion. He said, “What we observed for the past decades was a continuous improvement of productivity and living standards. This is an elementary correlation, since, independent of all other factors, the average standard of living is dependent on the average productivity. This is known as a positive loop, or in other words a self-perpetuating development. If it were possible to release productivity not directly needed for sustaining life, it would be possible to invest in education, and research and development to further improve productivity which in turn would make it easier to free further production capabilities, and so on. The jump in productivity that Henry Ford achieved at the beginning of the twentieth century was the result of new production methods, particularly as regards specialized work performed on assembly lines. These days, assembly lines play only a minor role. The number of people working on assembly lines is about the same as those working on farms. Increased productivity has mainly been achieved through the use of highly developed machines, robots, and chemicals, but above all to an increased level of education and production methods. There is even a meta-level, that is, new methods conceived for developers to improve working patterns in areas in which we will need quality managers and consultants.

McCaine was leaned forward, listening intently. Then he said, “All that sounds very positive.”

“It would be in a world with no natural limits. But the Earth is only so big. The increase in productivity has been matched — thankfully not proportionally — to a greater demand for raw materials. These are mined ever more efficiently but with a corresponding increased level of pollution of land, air, and water.

“Wouldn’t a further increase in productivity counter that? I remember standing on riverbanks as a child, looking at water that was nothing but a stinking mess polluted by sewage and chemical factories. Today we have affordable means of cleaning that waste water, and I could bathe in those same rivers if I wanted.”

“There are no simple answers to that. In many instances good technological solutions have been found. Efficient scrubbing of sulfur from factory exhaust gasses created gypsum of such high quality that power plants employing the process put gypsum mines out of business. But cleaning waste water containing heavy metals leaves behind solid waste material with a high concentration of metals that are often dumped where they cause harm. Or think about the subject of climate change: all technological solutions require the use of energy, and this means the release of climate changing gasses. Many small streams feeding a mighty river of heat that may change our climate.”

McCaine thought, softly tapping his hand on the table. “Okay. What does your prognosis look like if this goes on as it has been?”

Collins changed the transparency. The screen showed a picture of many lines crisscrossing, some of which had been clumsily highlighted. “The current trend, looking positive at first, will continue for at least ten years, twenty more likely, but only absent of political upheaval. Our model isn’t yet capable of taking such things into account. We will continue seeing increases in production and living standards too: strong in developed countries and weaker in the rest of the world. The increased productivity is fed mainly by reduced barriers, such as border controls being dropped or reduced, fewer language barriers, and trade barriers among other factors. Inhibitory incompatibilities are being reduced or removed, which frees reserves of productivity that have to be used to overcome all these hurdles. To put it in simple terms, the world is growing together in every aspect, communications, economics, and culturally.”

McCaine nodded. “Honestly, I don’t see anything bad with that.”

“Fundamentally, I agree with you. But there is a reason for everything, what we lose is the previous heterogeneity. What is not initially obvious is that the process means our entire life sustaining system, be it natural or technological, is becoming more vulnerable. Like the typical effects of monoculture farming. Or take computer viruses. In a badly arranged network of computers with different operating systems, a virus is no big deal: it contaminates one or two computers but that’s about it. But if you have highly efficient computers, all interconnected and all with the same operating system, software, et cetera, which is normally a positive thing for users and network efficiency, one virus will cause very serious problems. Then the virus will infect hundreds, or thousands or even millions of computers. The same system is threatening our life support system.”

“A computer virus?”

“No, a crash, a collapse.”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“Just by weight of numbers alone we are all increasingly participants in a highly complex but integrated system. It is inevitable that at one point one of the components involved will be tested beyond its limits and will fail. The failure of this one component will have an effect on the rest of the system. Since they are all already highly strained, they will be forced beyond their limits by the effects of the one failed element, and so on until the whole system fails. This domino effect could happen extremely fast compared with any of the changes that have so far occurred in human history.”

John cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon, but how would this system failure manifest itself? A nuclear power plant exploding?”

“No. That alone is not enough to initiate a system failure. There are a number of others that are more likely, including those that involve direct human activity. We might be talking about nuclear war or a manmade epidemic. But most failures come down to a lack of a natural resource.” He put on a transparency with a map of the Earth that showed the ocean currents. “Our current model calculated that the most likely catalyst for a collapse would be a failure of the Gulf Stream.”

The dark shadows in the corners of the room seemed to come creeping closer as he spoke.

“The Gulf Stream?” John echoed in disbelief.

Collins pointed at some arrows on the map with the point of a pencil. “The North Atlantic Drift, which it is actually called in the northern part of the globe, transports warm water from the tropics to Europe, which warms the cold air from the Arctic and brings in moisture. This assures a temperate climate and rains all the way to the Ural Mountains. The mechanism that propels the stream is the differing salt concentrations and temperatures. The farther north the water flows, the colder it gets and the more salt it contains due to evaporation. It eventually reaches a hypersaline state, as we say, and is then heavier than the other waters around it. This causes it to sink to the bottom of the ocean like a mighty submarine waterfall. This in turn produces a sort of suction that pulls more warm water up from the Gulf of Mexico.”

John thought about the grand view of the Atlantic as he’d flown over it many times and how huge this system must be. “That is such a giant process,” he said. “How could this be stopped?”

“Unfortunately, that is quite easy,” Collins answered with a grim look. “And I’m not speaking of a mere slowdown of the flow; I’m speaking of its complete cessation. To make this scenario possible it would suffice to warm up the northern hemisphere by about five percent. And we’re taking giant steps in that direction.” He placed another diagram on the projector with so many arrows and formulas that looked totally puzzling to John. “Allow me to explain roughly what will happen. A general warm-up will, as everyone knows, cause the glaciers to melt. A common notion here is that the only result would be rising sea levels, and we if we don’t live by the coast we don’t need to worry. But what could cause more problems than the rising ocean levels here in Europe is something quite different. The water from the melting ice is fresh water, which it is lighter than saltwater so it spreads over the ocean’s surface. It also freezes faster and during the winter it will freeze to a thin layer of pack ice, which insulates the warm tropical water from the cold temperature of the Arctic. This will prevent the air in the northern hemisphere from warming or acquiring moisture before it reaches Europe. Since this water cannot evaporate it won’t saturate with salt thus it simply spreads out over the northern oceans instead of sinking. The underwater waterfall stops and so does the suction action that brings more warm water from the south.” The scientist stopped talking and looked round at his audience in the room. “The weather in Europe will change from one year to the next; it will be like the weather in southern Alaska or central Siberia — cold, dry, and with a permafrost ground. Here in London the temperatures will hardly be above freezing even in the summer. There are a half a billion people in Europe … where would they go, how would they be fed? A chain reaction of political, economic, and social developments would result that would spell the end of our civilization as we know it.”

John felt his mouth go dry, and he could have sworn it got colder in the room. “How can this be prevented?” he wanted to know.

“By stopping the earth from warming up.”

“And how can that be done?”

“By reducing the output of carbon dioxide.”

“And how …?” John wanted to ask but McCaine interrupted him. “No, John, it won’t work like that. You’re going down the wrong path again. That is a linear problem solving method and this won’t work in a networked system. If you don’t keep the entire network in sight, you might solve one problem, but create a dozen others and make two dozen more even worse.” He looked at the professor. “Isn’t that right?”

Collins nodded. “More nuclear power plants, for instance, would markedly reduce the output of CO2, but would also increase the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe.” He made a vague gesture with one hand. “The model demonstrated that the developments of critical domains are becoming more acute and the possible catalysts need be less serious to cause a collapse. If the Gulf Stream remains intact, then maybe ten years from now it might be enough to have, say a serious earthquake in Japan to cause the world economy to collapse. The aftermath could be hunger that is countered with overfishing, burning much more wood, and other desperate measures that will cause yet more ecological damage. It is also a fact that our entire civilization is getting more susceptible to epidemics, on the one hand, because microbes are very easily spread by our modern transportation systems, and, on the other hand, due to a general reduction of the efficiency of people’s immune system, which has a whole host of other causes. I could give you a long list of terrible possible catalysts for a collapse, but that would hide the fact that they are simply catalysts. Fuses, if you will. The actual explosives are the slower developments, like an increasing world population, increased industrialization, climate change, and so forth.”

The darkness oozed down the walls like black blood when he switched the projector off.

“How much of what you just said,” McCaine asked, “is known to others, such as governments, organizations like the UN, and such?”

“Hard to say,” Professor Collins said. “Luckily, we currently have someone in the White House who knows about such matters — Vice President Al Gore. At least that’s the impression one gets from the book he wrote. I think the US government has knowledge similar to ours. But I’m afraid that any decisions they might make will have their national interest at the fore rather than global necessity.”

John placed his hands flat on the tabletop; a silly gesture, but he had the desire to touch something. Perhaps to make sure all this was real and not a dream. “How accurate is all this?” he asked in a low tone. His voice got swallowed up in the darkness but was still audible. “How dependable is your program, professor?”

“Except for the fundamental principles that go back to Forrester and Meadows, and so on, our model also utilizes the work done by Akira Onishi, who is currently developing the FUGI Global Model. FUGI is short for Futures of Global Interdependence. As the name already implies it calculates all correlations worldwide. It is a dynamic cybernetic model, which had the separate components developed by outstanding specialists who calibrated them using historic data. This means that our simulations start with the year 1900, which must deliver data that correlate to actual data gathered from then to now. And since they do so, we assume that we have ascertained the systematic relationships correctly, and that the calculations that go beyond today — into the future — are also correct.”

McCaine had his hands folded together. “Does FUGI deliver the same results as your model?”

“No. Professor Onishi works for the UN, his work concentrates on migration and refugee streams.” Collins was fingering a transparency that was stuck on the projector. “Besides that, we fundamentally get different results on substantial points than he does. Otherwise we could’ve just used his model.”

“I understand.” McCaine pushed his chair back. It made a sound that bizarrely reminded John of his grandfather’s funeral. When the lid to his casket was put in place and screwed down.

No one said anything. The stillness seemed to be merging with the darkness. Had it got colder or was John imagining it?

Professor Collins broke the silent spell with a nervous statement, saying: “It is necessary to make decisions as to what to do next. If the results of our calculations should be made public…”

“No,” McCaine said immediately. He took a deep breath and his hands grabbed the armrests of his chair. “Enough grim predictions have been made public already. These won’t help. No one wants to hear that anymore. Me neither, by the way.” He stood up with a speed and strength that displayed his vitality. “What I want to know is how we can prevent what you’ve predicted. That’s what your model should help us with. Will you still be in London tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Professor Collins nodded. “I have a room at the…”

“Good. We will meet again tomorrow morning. Bring that thick tome with you, the one that explains the systems. We will decide on every element that Fontanelli Enterprises has an influence over and also how big the changes are with each decision and element.” He paced back and forth. “I want you to run simulations with every possible combination of variations, until we know exactly what strategy we must follow to prevent catastrophe.”

Professor Collins sighed loudly. “You are aware that this will require many runs? These types of permutations may run into the millions or even billions…”

McCaine stopped. “So? You can have as many fast computers as you need. I will buy Deep Blue if it helps. All it did in the chess match was to calculate billions of combinations? And it won.” His eyes twinkled. “And that’s how we’ll do it too.”

The train rolled across the bridge leading to the other bank of the Elbe River, girders sped by the window. The harbor came into view. The sun shone warm and the cranes lining the port looked like strange giant animals, grazing by the sparkling river.

Hamburg! Yes, why not? Ursula Valen breathed against the window and watched how the mist from her breath quickly dissipated. She was contemplating moving away from Leipzig … if she found a job, though she wasn’t sure she even wanted one.

Why was she here? Did she really want to work in public relations for a business group? Of course not. The truth was she wanted to find a way out.

In retrospect, it had been a mistake to try to avoid the unavoidable. Sure, the electronics store that her father set up after the fall of the Berlin Wall was doing good business; it was his pride and joy. But not good enough. At least she should have insisted that the business move into a cheaper building before she started to invest her own money to sort out the finances, and to sign on loans that she would be paying off for the rest of her life. At least they should have moved as soon as the rent had skyrocketed. But the way things were, no amount of expansion would have helped anymore, neither the new employees nor the expensive ads on the trams. Her father had to close down in the end, and was lucky to find a job with one of his former customers.

The results of two years’ hard work: her money was gone, she was drowning in debt and instead of her doctorate had barely managed to scrape through her master’s program and had a grade average not worth the paper it was written on. What added to her anger were the enormous costs for caring for her grandfather that finally dealt the family business the fatal blow. Why were all those damned old Nazis so long-lived? Eighty-eight years old he was, still robust, “tough as leather and hard as Krupp steel” … the whole crappy Hitler Youth slogans. He got all the other residents to rebel against the employees of the old folks home, tyrannized the foreign-born nurses with racist slurs, and then celebrated when the ones with dark skin refused to have anything to do with him. It was her parents who had to deal with the consequences, as usual. If it was at all possible, he was even more difficult to deal with after the Wall had come down. When the old communist East Germany had still existed at least he had spent time in jail, on several occasions. “You should have poisoned me sooner,” was all he had to say when they told him that he ruined another dream of theirs. Although Ursula Valen didn’t believe in God, she sometimes had a feeling that he did exist, because he was reluctant to take grandfather and have to put up with him.

The train rolled into the station. For a moment she was startled, thinking she had returned to Leipzig, the two stations were so alike. She got out of the train and flowed with the moving crowd trying to think about the interview ahead but still thinking about her parents. They were old and exhausted, simple people who only wished to live a decent life, and she was their only silver lining, the daughter, their only child. Whatever might end up taking her away from Leipzig would also take her away from them.

In thought, she looked at the subway map to find the right route. Things didn’t seem to have changed much in Hamburg since her last trip to the city. It was almost exactly two years ago. It had been a rewarding trip back then, but she had turned down all the job offers. Now she didn’t know why.

Three hours later it was over. She was told that they would be in touch, but in a tone of voice that she had learned the meaning of. She went out through the large glass doors and stopped for a moment, closed her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling as if she had been holding it in all along. Relief! And now she had an entire afternoon before the train departed for the return trip.

“Hamburg? Then you have to pay a visit to the Parapluie Bleue,” someone had told her when she mentioned her trip. She had no idea what it was. “It is a bistro near the Gänsemarkt. It has a blue umbrella sign over the entrance, you can’t miss it.” What was so special about the place? Just go there and have a look. The guy who gave her the tip was a journalist who used to be a reporter for Stern and was now a senior executive at the Leipziger.

It turned out to be worth the trip. Located on a quiet street off to the side from the crowded Gänsemarkt-Passage it had a faceless dummy balancing a ten-foot blue umbrella in an outstretched hand that automatically opened and closed. She went in and looked around. It was filled with people and smelled of toasted bread and ham. She suddenly felt hungry. She took a seat on one of the stools by the bar.

The man behind the bar finished filling two beers and placed the glasses on the waitress’s tray, then turned to Ursula. She dropped the menu when she saw his face; it was Wilfried van Delft.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, surprised.

Van Delft wasn’t any less surprised when he recognized her. He lifted the bar towel he was holding, smiled, and said, “Working.”

She idly glanced round expecting to see packed shelves full of manuscripts, magazines and books, children’s drawings on pin boards, but found only umbrellas in all colors and sizes, and umbrella stands and framed photos of the rainy city. “But …“

Van Delft looked past her, his chin suddenly as hard as steel. “I was thinking about calling you,” he said, “to tell you that they gave me the boot.”

$29,000,000,000,000

THE BISTRO EMPTIED at around two in the morning, and van Delft finally had time to sit at her table to talk. “The bistro belongs to my brother and his wife. It’s amazing how much money you can make in a place like this, it’s almost tempting to open one up,” he told her with a thin smile, a very thin smile. “But, of course, this isn’t what I wanted to for the rest of my life.”

Ursula Valens was still speechless. She ate her salad with fried chicken breast and watched van Delft write notes, serve customers, and work the cash register, as if he’d been doing it for years. And all the while a thousand questions were running through her head. Until they all came down to one; “Why?”

He told her, “Officially, it was due to internal restructuring.” He paused for a moment to make it clear this was not the whole story and especially not the truth. “They fired one guy for taking a handful of pens home for his kids; they were ad gifts that cost thirty pfennigs a piece. Theft, it’s called. They practically spied on him until they found a reason to fire him. I mean, the same thing could’ve happened to me too, so I was actually lucky.”

“But who can be crazy enough to fire someone with years of…”

“I could quote Hamlet now, but I won’t. You knew that Grüner und Jahr now belongs, like almost half this planet, to the conglomerate owned by your friendly environmentalist and young trillion dollar heir, right? Well, I was cheeky enough to think that I could get round the censorship imposed on us since the takeover”

“Censorship?”

“Of course no one rings from London to say you may or may not print this or that. Perhaps only Goebbels could’ve been so heavy-handed, or Randolph Hearst, but these days? No, when you want to keep things secret then you fill the empty spaces in the papers with something else, preferably with petty gossip, trivial rubbish about celebrities, and try to justify it by saying ‘that’s what people want to read’. And you have to print what the people want to read, otherwise you’ll lose sales and readers and advertisements and go under in the sea of competition. What happens? Well, no one will know that there is this war in Africa, or about the famine, or care about political opinion.” He shoved his glass around the marble tabletop a bit. “Everyone knows what stories the people upstairs think bring in sales and ads, and which stories don’t. And when someone gets fired, there is always a good neutral reason, redundancy, some faux pas, any old thing. But everyone knows that the main reason someone gets sacked is because they’ve displeased London.”

Ursula watched the man with the reddish-blond hair. Van Delft had gained quite some weight since she last saw him, and he didn’t look as healthy anymore either. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to believe that things were as bad as he said.

Van Delft looked at her too. “Sounds paranoid to you? Like a loser’s excuse?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “What did you do?”

“I printed a report about the catastrophic conditions in a Bulgarian chemical plant that belongs to the Fontanelli group. It was an ugly contrast to the chorus of praise concerning their environmental activism and recycling concepts. The report was four pages long with seven color photographs. A week later there were talks about a restructuring and by month’s end I was on the street. I got compensated, sure, but at my age it still means over and out for my career.”

“But all this stinks … badly!”

“Of course. It’s supposed to. Can you imagine how careful the other employees are now, those with kids in college and mortgages to pay? This is terror by truest definition of the word. Terror, wrapped in silken lies about sales pressure and efficiency drives.” Van Delft looked at his glass, lifted it to his lips and downed the water. “Enough crying. What about you? What brings you to Hamburg? How is school?”

Still thinking about his story, she told him all there was to be told. Now it was his turn to look flabbergasted.

“For God’s sake, Ursula, you wanted to get your doctorate. Didn’t you want to evaluate the Vacchi archives and re-write the economic history of the past five hundred years?”

“Yes, I did.” She brushed her hair back from her face and gathered it but it was useless without a hairpin. “Little girl’s dreams. I wrote resumes and did bookkeeping instead. I could tell you more about Ethernet cables than you would ever want to know.”

He really appeared concerned. “But that was your dream, your vision. You said the archive in Florence was heaven-sent …”

Ursula Valen stared at her glass and saw the windows of the bistro reflected it. “Heaven-sent. Yes, back then I thought so.”

Cristoforo had contacted her off and on afterwards, wanting to know how she was doing. He never attempted to force her into anything. He just stopped calling one day.

“And now? I mean, that’s over, but what’s keeping you from getting your doctorate?”

“Debts, for a start, I have to earn money. And besides, who am I? One of the countless women who have masters degrees without doing anything with them.”

“You are the woman that got access to the Vacchi archives.”

“I still would like to know how.” She stared into space, reflected back, saw in her mind the narrow rows of account books, the smell of dust and leather, the testament under glass … She dismissed the thoughts. “No, that chapter is closed.”

Van Delft wanted to reply, but simply looked at her pensively, and said: “You know what’s best.”

For a short while they watched the passersby out on the street, and then Ursula asked in a soft voice without looking at van Delft: “Has he really got so powerful? Fontanelli, I mean.”

“That’s what’s being said. I don’t know anything about the financial world. But once in a while I see Jo Jenner from the economics section, maybe you remember him. He was always dressed so fancy with fifties-style eyeglasses…“

“Yes, I think I know who you’re talking about. He was always a little pale.”

“He gets even paler when Fontanelli is brought up. He says one can’t believe what a giant he had become. He says the trillion dollars were like an explosive, enough to blow up a whole block. But Fontanelli subdivided the explosives into little packages and placed them at strategic places. Now he could blow up the whole world with a single push of a button … theoretically speaking.”

“We have to do something about it,” John said and shoved the tray away. He had grilled turkey with salad, but he barely took a bite. The plate would be taken away and washed. The dishwashing liquid would bind the fats and be washed down into the sewage system. It would flow on to the sewage treatment plant, and from there John wasn’t sure what would happen next. At any rate, he had had no appetite since Collins’ presentation.

“Basically, you are right,” McCaine nodded while chewing. “But first, we have to know what.”

Collins had returned to his institute with a gigantic set of objectives in his briefcase and the assurance he’d get enough money for ten times as many new computers. They would be run day and night to calculate billions of combinations. Although his whole team would be working to exhaustion, it would take at least three months for results to come through. There could be not even the most basic idea of an effective strategy until then.

John hadn’t sleep well since Collins’ lecture, and he was plagued by nervous hyperactivity during the daytime. He could barely settle to read the papers, and in the evening he felt like getting drunk. “For two years now,” he said, cracking his knuckles, “we have done nothing but buy up companies. But the only real environmental contribution we made was to print forms on a few thousand tons of recycled paper instead of normal paper. This was never what it’s all about, was it?”

McCaine nodded. “That’s right. That’s not what it’s about.”

“It’s about our future on earth, right? But if you listen to what the professor says then it’s over. There is no future. It’s only a matter of time until we face catastrophe.”

“If nothing is done.”

“But what should be done?”

“He’s working on that.”

“And then? Will we be able to act? Are we powerful enough? Do we even have power? Can we really do something about it? Tell me.”

McCaine held the fork and considered John’s points, contemplating. “We have power,” he said in an easy tone. “Of course we have power.”

“But what sort of power? Will armies march if we order them to? Can we have people arrested? All we can do is fire people.”

“You don’t really want that … armies, I mean.”

“I only want to know what kind of influence we have.”

“I see.” McCaine went back to eating. He sawed off a piece of grilled meat, shoved it between his teeth and chewed. “I see,” he said again. “All right, it won’t be a bad idea to show some teeth. We will take the necessary steps.”

“All of Asia has a population problem,” McCaine explained, standing in his office in front of a large map of the world. “China is fighting it, remarkably effectively. India is trying to do something, though their results are meager. The Philippines are hopeless. Here, the Roman Catholic Church has strong influence, and it forbids any sort of contraceptives, and their machismo men are determined to have as many sons as possible. As a result their population is growing like crazy.” He tapped on the cluster of islands that made up the country. “So that’s where we start.”

John crossed his arms. “I suppose by starting a major ad campaign for our products, seeing that we’re the world’s largest manufacturer of condoms and the pill.”

“Too expensive, too much effort, too slow, too useless. Do you remember what I told you about the IMF? That is our leverage. We’ll apply financial pressure with a combined speculative attack on the national currencies of Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and some others. The IMF will have to step in to give financial aid and one of the prerequisites will be massive birth-control measures.”

“Are you sure?”

“You yourself will fly to Washington and tell the president of the IMF that this is what you want before you stop our financial assault.” McCaine grinned maliciously. “Camdessus himself has six kids; I’m sure he doesn’t care much about birth control. We’ll have to apply massive pressure.”

John stared at the world map and tried not to let McCaine notice his apprehension. Me go to Washington? What had he got himself into?! “And,” he asked with a dry mouth, “what sort of financial attacks are we talking about?”

“Practically all currencies in this area are bound to the US dollar so they are overvalued since the dollar went up. This minimizes their chances of exporting goods. But the governments and companies there have large outstanding loans in US dollars that would be difficult to repay if their currencies fall against the dollar. To protect themselves, they have been buying dollars. What we will do is buy large numbers of futures options on the dollar against their local currencies with a one to two month option.” He picked up a thin folder with a memorandum that had the Fontanelli logo on the upper left and a red line going across the front from one corner to the other, which marked it as containing confidential information. He held it up. “Our analysts have calculated everything already. Once we reach a critical number, then their central banks will be forced to decouple their currencies from the dollar, and they will drop in value, at which point we buy them for less than we sold them for. George Soros did something similar with the British pound and sent the European monetary system into turmoil. It’s a safe business that will not only open IMF’s ears to our demands, but will bring in fat profits.”

John took the memorandum, leafed through it and looked at the photos and calculations in it. He wondered how long McCaine had been planning this. Or was their analytical department continuously working on plans like this? Perhaps. “And what if the IMF remains deaf?”

“It won’t. It will have to step in and give loans ourselves … for an amount of at least ten billion. It will be called an aid program in the news, or emergency aid. But when you take a closer look, all those billions will flow into our coffers instead, and those of whoever jumps on the bandwagon with us. The IMF will have to listen to us — otherwise we will simply suck them dry.”

Unbelievable. John felt a feeling of absolute power suffuse his body. So they did have power. Money was the greatest power on earth. But their victory still had one element to tarnish it. “But if it works, then only because those countries get into financial trouble, right? That’s what we’re depending on?”

“No.” McCaine shook his head. “If we are willing to lose a few billion dollars, we could do this with almost any country in the world, regardless of its financial situation.”

The blemish was gone. John read the last page of the plan and studied the numbers. All figures in billions, it said above the numbers … large numbers. “Are you sure we have enough money for this?”

McCaine took the file from John’s hand with an impertinent grin and threw it on his desk. “No one said that it all had to be done with our funds. No, we’ll only fire the first shot. I will fly to Zurich later on to have a talk with the Bankverein. The noble gentlemen there are very willing and able to invest large sums for our purpose — very large sums even. If I’m able to make them comply with our requirements, then the dance can begin. And I will get them to, not to worry.”

John listened and had a light feeling, so light he almost floated. “That sounds good.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then give the word, and it will come to pass.”

John looked at McCaine, scrutinized the dark expectant eyes that seemed filled with boundless energy, ready to go out into the world and do whatever was needed for the prophecy. He took a deep breath, tried to get a feel for the moment. If this were a film, there would be dramatic music playing now, but this was no movie, this was reality. And he said, “Let’s go.”

McCaine nodded, pressed the button on the intercom, and said: “Set up the appointment for Zurich. This evening, and tell the pilots.” He released the button and smiled. “We’re on our way.”

There was an odd silence in which no one said a word.

“Ahem,” John said. “Is that it?”

McCaine nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Then, ah, I wish you success and…”

“Thank you. Don’t worry.”

“I won’t.” John looked away, feeling awkward and out of place, but McCaine appeared keen to be left alone, to get back to his files. “We’ll see each other tomorrow?”

“I should imagine so, yes.”

“Well, then have a good flight.”

“Thank you.” As John was leaving, McCaine said, “Oh, there is one more thing that we should take care of.”

John turned around. “What?”

“I’ve meant to talk to you about it for some time now, but you’ve noticed the many problems lately …”

John came back to the desk slowly. McCaine was leaning back with his arms crossed and rubbed his nose with a hand. “Yes? What is it?” John asked. He must’ve missed something that McCaine was hinting at.

McCaine gazed at him. “The people at the Bankverein asked me a question, a question that we should have asked ourselves a long time ago.”

“And that would be?”

“What will happen to Fontanelli Enterprises if you should die?”

John stared at the large man sitting behind the large desk and his mind went blank. Like he couldn’t believe what subject they got to now. “Die?” he heard himself say. “Why should I die?”

“They are bankers, John, and bankers want guarantees.”

“I’m fulfilling a prophecy — God’s will. He won’t let me die until I’m done with it.”

“I’m afraid,” McCaine said with raised eyebrows, “bankers from Zurich aren’t God-fearing enough to see the logic in that.” He flicked a hand as though batting away an annoying fly. “You must understand these people, John. If they invest on our advice, then they want assurances that our aims will be carried out in full. They don’t want you to die and your parents to get everything and donate the money to the Red Cross. Do you understand? And I understand them in this regard. And it doesn’t matter if their worries are sound or not, they worry, and their worries are a problem for us. They can get in the way of the plan.”

John chewed on his lips. “So, what do you suggest we do?” he asked.

“A long-term solution is that you find a woman to marry and have children. Then we can point out that there are legitimate heirs who have been raised and educated properly and will be capable of stepping in to take the helm of the company.” McCaine lifted his hands and held them out like a fisherman showing how big his catch was. “But, as I’ve said, that is a long-term solution. It’ll take a few years to come to fruition. I should have another solution at hand when I meet them this evening.”

John still thought he was dreaming. “Nobody has mentioned anything like this before.”

“So far we have been dealing with relatively poor people, in a manner of speaking. These are bankers, John, men who together have more money than you. You don’t have enough to match what they are willing to loan us even if you sell everything. Other people’s money, John. I told you that this is the key.”

John nodded. “Yeah, sure, but I’m not sure I can get hold of a wife and child by this evening,” he said, suddenly worried that McCaine might already have planned something of the sort… a lightning wedding and adopted child, for instance.

McCaine shook his head. “You don’t need a wife and kid now, you need an heir, and to get that is quicker and easier.” He pulled out a sheet of paper from his drawer, took a pen, and shoved both towards John. “Write out a will and make me your heir.”

“You?”

“Stop!” McCaine said, raising both hands. “I don’t want you to misunderstand me. It’s only something for me to show the Bankverein, and since you know me it will be relatively plausible and convincing to name me your heir.”

John stared at the paper and then the pen. Slowly, he asked, “Is this … another test? A lesson in power?”

“That’s a good question. The answer is no. You don’t need to do this. I could try to convince the Bankverein another way, although I don’t know how.” McCaine put his hands on the desk with the palms facing up. “It would help us very much.”

John felt dirty, miserable, and helpless. For one moment John could imagine McCaine having him murdered. The next moment he was ashamed of the thoughts … almost. He sat down, pulled the paper towards him, took the pen, and unscrewed the cap. “This is only for show?”

“Yes.”

“What should I write?”

“I’ll dictate. First the heading: My last will and testament.”

John started to write and then stopped. “Would it not be better to type it?”

“On the contrary — then it’d be void. Testaments must be handwritten.”

“But my handwriting is terrible.”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s your handwriting.”

“If you say so.” John began writing again, and stopped once more. “What about my parents? Can I add that they be taken care of for the rest of their lives?”

McCaine sighed. “If you want, yes, write it down, and mention your brothers too. But don’t get into too much detail, this is only something to show the bankers this evening, nothing more. As soon as your first child is born you can write another will, and then everything will be in order.”

“Hmm,” John said. He still didn’t like this at all. The tips of his fingers were white, from squeezing the pen. Was it because he had never thought about dying and was now in shock at having to deal with the genuine possibility of its eventuality? His death, the death of the future, the death of humanity. How did he get into all of this? Where were the carefree days when he neither thought much about the past nor the future? He felt like getting up and running away, didn’t want to think about death, ice ages, holes in the ozone layer, diseases, wars …

“Write,” McCaine said.

And John did: I, John Salvatore Fontanelli, of sound mind and body, hereby bequeath upon my demise as my last will …

“Thank you,” said McCaine after John signed and handed paper to him.

Throughout May and June the financial markets were in upheaval with the Thai baht being pounded by speculative attacks. Both Thailand and Singapore tried to support the baht, but by July the government had to throw in the towel and uncouple the baht from the dollar. The Malaysian Central Bank intervened on July 8, 1997, to help the ringgit, which had been under severe pressure, and despite enjoying some success initially with the sell-off of US dollars, Malaysia also had to give up two weeks later. Indonesia followed suit a short while later. The stock markets in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and even Hong Kong and Seoul plummeted.

The IMF announced on August 11 in Tokyo that it would initiate an aid package for Thailand that totaled 16 billion dollars, financed partially by the IMF and partially by neighboring countries.

“What about the Philippines?” John asked.

“They’ve already been under the trusteeship of the IMF for a while,” McCaine said. “We’re ruining the entire region with a single swipe.”

For weeks all the major newspapers carried articles with color images, announcing the newly formed Fontanelli Foundation’s Gaea Prize, which would be awarded each year to companies for outstanding environmental and future-oriented projects, with prize money of 10 million dollars. The articles also listed the five scientists from all parts of the world chosen as judges. The earth goddess Gaea had been modeled after the photo-model Patricia DeBeers, who was known to have won more beauty contests than anyone else in history, and the figurine looked just as erotic.

A sub-article showed John “Trillion Dollar Heir” Fontanelli hand over the prize to her for safekeeping. Jay Leno was the first joke about beauty and the beast, which drew lots of laughs. Others followed his example and soon John was the butt of comedians and comedy sketches. McCaine began to worry about John Fontanelli’s image in the public eye.

Market research institutes in all the industrialized nations were given the task of finding out what people thought about John Fontanelli. The polls showed that John’s concern for the environment had hit a chord in the public’s mind. The man on the street thought of John as being someone who was truly concerned about the planet’s future, and who was rich and powerful enough to do something about it.

“Wonderful,” McCaine said, and replaced the polling with an ad campaign.

Ursula Valen saw numerous versions of the Gaea posters on a construction site fence as she went home after visiting her parents. It awakened a dull anger within her for having been treated arrogantly. Then a Porsche changed lanes without using a blinker, forcing her to hit the brakes. She honked her horn and shouted angrily after the driver, forgetting all about the posters.

At home she was even angrier when she saw the newspaper lying all over on the floor. The paperboy once again made a mess of pushing it through the mailbox opening. Never mind, she already knew what the lead item in the news was today. She gathered up the pages and carried them to the garbage. On one of the pages was a photo of the Gaea statue and John Fontanelli pretending to be some sort of environmental angel.

“You won’t save the planet either,” she mumbled and stuffed everything into the trash.

But she couldn’t help thinking about him again.

She went upstairs to her little apartment under the roof, opened the windows, threw her bag into a corner and put the kettle on the stove. She took a cup from the cupboard and put a spoonful of instant coffee in it. Then she put a record on the record player and stood by the stove, waiting for the water to boil. It took her a moment to realize that the kettle was whistling. She poured the hot water into her cup, and then she put some cookies and an apple on a plate.

She went to the shelves by her desk and dug around the folders in the bottom compartment until she found what she was looking for. It was all still there … all those things she had brought back with her from her trip to Florence — things she had forgotten about, stapled and tied together, just a few feet away from her desk. She untied the bundle. John Salvatore Fontanelli had been big news on the financial pages of the newspapers for ages now, and nobody was going to ask a history student for her opinion of him. But that didn’t mean that all the historical aspects had been dealt with.

Such as this, for instance: she was looking at the photocopies of Giacomo Fontanelli’s account books and those that Michelangelo Vacchi had made. The ones from the Vacchis were exemplary. The writing on each page was almost as neat as if had been printed. The ones from Fontanelli, on the other hand, were a wild jumble of numbers and lists in florins, zechines, talers, groschen, and pfennigs, some of which were barely legible. Some sentences were crossed-out, while notations had been added, and additional calculations were written along the margins, which made it unclear if or what they had to do with the actual bookkeeping. Even the most kindly disposed auditor would have strangled him for this mess.

She was so caught up with Giacomo’s sloppy entries that she almost overlooked the oddest component about it. The Vacchis started their books on February 1, 1525, with an account balance of 300 florins and with a notation that the money was received from Giacomo Fontanelli in trust. One florin, the fiorino d’oro, was made of 3.5 grams of gold. Taking the current price of gold into account on the London stock market, 300 florins would be worth around 10,000 dollars — not much these days. Back then, however, it was quite a fortune.

Giacomo Fontanelli’s books ended on January 5, 1525, with several accounts in several currencies. Taking into consideration all currencies’ worth when added together, the total sum was indeed 300 florins, but it was not really separated according to currencies; there were several different sums in zechines and a bunch in florins and so forth. And behind each number was, hard to read, a name. Back when she first noticed this she had wondered what this meant, but never followed up.

Now she had a hunch, one so unbelievable that it almost took her breath away. She leafed back, scanned through the columns, got a notebook and calculator and with their help tried to comprehend the calculations. Could this be true? Above all, could it be true that in 500 years she was the first to stumble upon this?

The amounts listed weren’t assets, but debts, and the names behind the numbers were the names of those he owed money to. The Florentine merchant had gone bankrupt in 1525.

$30,000,000,000,000

IN THE BEGINNING of August the striking workers of HUGEMOVER capitulated. For months they held out in front of the gates, set up banners, and handed out flyers, while production inside the factory workshops continued, even increased. So they ended the strike and accepted the conditions laid down by management, which were even more stringent than before. They agreed to work for yet less pay and when necessary for up to 12 hours a day, even on the weekends and without overtime.

“I feel betrayed,” a lathe operator who had worked at HUGEMOVER for 27 years told a TV crew. “I feel like my own company declared war on me.”

John felt a lump in his throat when he heard the man speak on TV. He looked at McCaine. “Was it really necessary to be so hard, just for those extra few percent in profits?”

McCaine looked at him derisively. “First, percentages are never so unimportant that you say ‘those few’. You should know this the way your fortune grew so much from a lousy average four percentage points a year. Second, we didn’t start all this to make people rich and happy. That man there,” he nodded toward the TV screen, “will continue having more than enough to eat and have a roof over his head. That’s something that many millions of other people on this planet will never have. We’re here to secure mankind’s future, and it will be a stony path, if it should ever happen at all. People will have to do without certain things and they will have to submit, and some will have to learn the lessons sooner than others. These are truths that, of course, I would never say in front of a camera.”

John nodded and watched an effigy of Donald Rash being hung up and burned. He understood the people and their anger, but he also understood that they didn’t understand the overall picture. How could they? This whole thing felt so wrong, so ugly, but there weren’t any other alternatives. After all, they did win, even if the victory tasted bitter.

A while later John Salvatore Fontanelli, wealthiest man on earth, still, and even wealthier than ever before, flew to a meeting with members of the IMF in Washington, D.C. In the mean time, the term “Asian crisis” had become an everyday-expression. According to the latest reports, the Indian rupee was coming under increased pressure and so was the South Korean won.

John’s plane was given special permission to land at Washington National Airport and was directed to a specially cordoned off area of the tarmac. Three limousines with tinted windows were waiting him. One would take John to the IMF meeting, while the other two would go in other directions to draw the attention of reporters and photographers. Before the car went down into the parking garage John got only a fleeting glimpse of the IMF building. It was a steel and concrete structure with odd-looking window frames on the upper stories that looked like vents. He was taken up by elevator and walked down hallways, accompanied by lawyers and economists carrying thick briefcases with important expressions on their faces. They entered a large conference room where they were greeted by a well-dressed man with short, silver-gray hair whose hand was cold when John shook it.

“My name is Irving,” the man said with a low and precise voice. “Robert Irving. Mr. Camdessus sends you his warmest greetings and his deepest regrets for not being here personally, due to personal reasons. He did give me power of attorney to speak with you.”

John heard his aides clear their throats audibly. One leaned towards him and whispered in his ear: “A pretense, sir. We should arrange another appointment and fly back.”

But he would have none of it. He already hardly got out of the bathroom during the flight due to stage fright and nervousness, and he wanted to get this over with. Besides, there was nothing to negotiate; he would say what was to be said and that would be it.

John smiled and said, “No problem.”

They gathered around a table, John and his staff on one side, Irving and his staff on the other. One chair on the IMF side remained empty. “One of my people will be here a bit later,” Irving said. “We’ll start without him.”

The room was filled with noises of briefcases opening, folders and papers slapping and rustling, and pens being unscrewed. Remember that you control at least ten times as much money as the IMF, McCaine had told John. They have every reason to fear you.

John cleared his throat and began the speech that he and McCaine had practiced. He told the men of the IMF that he and his team had followed the developments in Asia with concern, not due to the current financial crisis but for the long-term developments. He got to the point quickly by saying it was the increase of the population in the Philippines that was their primary concern. “You all know it is my duty to fulfill and ancient prophecy,” John continued, his heart pounding in his chest. “I’m here to ask you to help us with this matter. I don’t consider this request to be overbearing, since it is for the benefit of all humanity.”

You can afford to be polite and good-natured as you tell them your demands, McCaine had said. You are so powerful there is no need for you to get loud or to make threats, don’t forget this.

“We have the possibility to end the Asian financial crisis. We will offer to do this, if the IMF is willing to expand its catalog of regulatory measures for this region by one component: that of a demographic policy. This means ensuring that active measures for population control are undertaken.” He signaled to one of the lawyers, a gesture barely noticeable to anyone else. He was handed some papers. “These are the details worked out by our experts.”

The papers were passed from hand to hand until they reached Irving. He flipped through and scanned their contents before laying them down and lighting his next cigarette. There were three butts in the ashtray in front of him already.

“For me,” he said while the lighter spit sparks because he was working it too hastily, “it sounds as if the world’s largest manufacturer of condoms and birth control pills, which, by the way, is you if I’m informed correctly, wants to secure new markets.”

“Nonsense.” It sounded more abrupt than he wanted it to. But a few of them flinched. Good.

“Besides, the IMF is a transnational organization and cannot take orders from a private company,” Irving continued. “The measures discussed here go far beyond those of a normal intervention. I don’t want to downplay your offer, seeing it as well-intentioned. But not even the experts agree about the reasons for — and results of — current population growth. I believe it is better to leave such issues up to the individual nations to decide.”

John looked at the slim, gray-haired man with confusion. He had said almost exactly — to the word — what McCaine had told John when they practiced this meeting and McCaine played the role of the IMF director. “You may see it this way,” John told him, as he had rehearsed a dozen times, “but we don’t. In a few months we’ll be able to present the most elaborate computer simulations that have ever been possible, showing global correlations and developments. Although we have no detailed information yet, we do know enough that it is essential to make great efforts to curtail population growth. The sooner such measures are started the better it will be.” It was good — even better than when he was practicing with McCaine.

Irving didn’t respond at first. He sucked on his cigarette and watched the glow at the tip fade again. The smoke ring he exhaled was nearly perfect. Finally he said, “Has it occurred to you that what you have just said and the way in which you said it might sound like blackmail?”

“What I merely want to say is that I have influence over speculators and investors who determine the developments in Asia. And what I’m offering you is my influence to help you, in exchange for your influence to help me. In my book this would be called a business deal, nothing more.”

Irving shook his head, ever so slightly. “There is nothing to discuss here. This is simply beyond our area of competence.”

John felt a knot in his stomach. What was he doing here? Three years ago he delivered pizzas, and his only worries were how to pay the rent. Wasn’t that better than arguing with people like this IMF guy about miserable subjects like population control in the Philippines? He suddenly lacked the strength to fight against the cold, slick man sitting across the table from him. “I’ve said what I needed to say,” he told him flatly and made to leave.

At this moment the door opened. The last man from Irving’s staff entered. He wore a broad smile, came around the table, reached out a hand to shake John’s, and then said: “Hey John, long time no see.”

It was Paul Siegel.

For a moment Ursula Valen wondered if it was the August heat that made her head feel like it was about to burst, or if it was the math. She was surrounded by photocopies of Giacomo Fontanelli’s account statements, bright in the sunlight. Her notebook was made of recycled paper and it didn’t reflect the light as much, but droplets of sweat stained the pages.

She could not afford mistakes. She wanted to avoid embarrassing herself with incorrect calculations. Darn it, she had studied history and that was something she should know about. Okay, back to the beginning.

Banking and finances during the Middle Ages; it was really a study of coinage. Back then the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne based money on silver during his reign. One pound, or 384 grams, was divided into 20 sous, also known as solidus or schilling, which were each divided into 12 denarii, or pfennig. In the year 1252, Florence began to make coins out of gold, embossed with the city’s coat-of-arms, the lily, on one side, and on the other side with the likeness of John the Baptist. It was called the fiorino, then the floren, and finally the florin. In the German states, gold coins were known as Goldener, or gulden, a name that would come to be used for all gold coins. In 1252, a gold florin contained 33.5 grams of gold and was worth 20 solidi, and in 1457 it was worth 108, and then the list she had found ended. There also used to be a silver florin, the fiorino d’argento, which was worth a third of a taler. But what in the hell was a taler in this context? The zechine was a copy of the florin made by the Republic of Venice; it was also called dukat. In northern Europe, the groschen was also in use, which was worth four pfennige.

The whole thing was chaotic. She threw the notebook and pen across the room and felt an impulse to toss it all into the garbage can. If it only weren’t so hot. And this headache … She got up, went to the fridge, and drank a few large gulps of ice tea directly from the container.

The first banks were opened in Genoa and other Italian cities during the twelfth century. They took people’s money for safekeeping, offering interest and loaned it to merchants, craftsmen, and to members of the upper classes. The initial custom was to give the banks the money for safekeeping and when traveling to pay for things with a voucher from that bank. During the fourteenth century Venetian banks allowed people to get more money out of the bank than he had deposited for the first time. During the fifteenth century the Arabic numerals and commercial accounting were widely adopted across on the entire European continent, and the method of double-entry bookkeeping first appeared in Italy. But Giacomo Fontanelli didn’t use this system: his system didn’t appear to follow any system at all.

What if he had accrued assets the previous years and didn’t list them, perhaps to circumvent taxes, or just out of laziness? It seemed possible with him. Since she never even got close to copying all of his accounting books, she found no other solution than to return to the Vacchi archives. At least if she wanted to get any kind of clarification on the matter.

Go back to Florence? Tell the Vacchis something they probably don’t want to hear? She watched the dancing dust particles in the room lit-up by the sunrays streaming through the window, and then suddenly her mind danced just like the dust. Without further thought, without hesitation, like a hunter knowing when exactly to release the projectile, she fetched her diary, leafed through it until she found Cristoforo Vacchi’s phone number, went to the telephone, and dialed.

“Off course, Signorina Valen,” Cristoforo said right away. The old man sounded tired or sad, which was hard to say, but he did seem to be happy to hear her voice. He didn’t’ mention or complain about the fact she hadn’t been in contact for two years. “Come whenever you wish.”

The room was not big and the rounded corners made it seem even smaller. An oval shaped table stood in the center that made it look like an arena. Gray armchairs on rollers surrounded it in three rows. There was a white curtain hanging at one end, though it was impossible to know what it was hiding.

“The executive directors meet here three times a week,” Paul Siegel explained as he nodded at the walls, which had light colored wood paneling with white cloth. He looked at John and shook his head. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? That of all the places for us to come across one another again it should be here.”

John nodded. “Yeah, really crazy.”

“It was unfortunate that I wasn’t there the time you called me from the Waldorf. I was in Japan for two weeks. By the time I got back you were all over the media. I thought by then it was a bit late to return your call.”

“Yes, there wouldn’t have been much point.”

Paul reached into a pocket and pulled out a business card. “But I swore that I would give you my cellphone number if we ever bumped into one another again. So I’m doing what I promised. No, don’t say anything, a promise is a promise. And who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself having the same experience.” He wrote a phone number on the backside of the card and gave it to John.

John looked at the impressive looking symbol of the IMF and the equally impressive title under Paul’s name. He turned the card around and read the phone number. “That’s funny.”

Paul was sticking his pen back into the slot of his notebook. “What? That I have a mobile phone? I tell you, I won’t set a foot out of the house without it anymore. As soon as they invent one that you can get integrated into the body, I’ll be first in line.”

“No, I meant the number. That’s your birthday. How did you manage that?”

Paul was all too happy to explain. “That’s real easy. You used to be able to choose a number, and I was one of the first one there when there was still plenty to select from.”

“It’s easy to remember, that’s for sure.”

“Sure, if you know me well enough.”

They sat down, John in the chair of the Russian IMF delegate and Paul in that of the Saudi Arabian. They filled-in the three-year gap since they had last met in Paul’s apartment in Manhattan’s West Village, when John was a poor bum who owed money to all and everyone. Two years ago Paul, after a short relationship and just after John’s inheritance, changed jobs going from being a consultant to work for the IMF and moved to Washington. That’s why John had not been able to get hold of him at his old address. They both had a lot to tell. Paul had glasses now, which looked good on him, his unruly dark-brown hair was cut in a new style that didn’t suit him as well, but otherwise he was the same guy he had always been: intelligent and with a lot of common sense.

John needed a lot longer to tell Paul all that had changed in his life, and when he was done, Paul looked at him long and silently.

“I don’t know if I should be jealous or feel sorry for you,” he finally admitted. “Really, one trillion dollars … good Lord! It’s a question of either being a blessing or a curse.” He laughed. “At least I don’t have to worry any more about whether or not you’ll starve.”

John had to laugh too. Things were suddenly like they used to be. Like those times they sat on the broken wall of the ruined building on Thirteenth Street, discussing everything but mainly girls. “What do you think about all this? Just between you and me?” he asked Paul.

“What, the suggestion about the Philippines?”

“Everything; what I’m doing with the money, McCaine, Fontanelli Enterprises, the prophecy.”

“I have no opinions about prophecies. I’ve made too many of my own already,” Paul answered and leaned back. “You probably knew that already. Otherwise … I don’t know. When I found out that you were coming, I did a little research. I could not find out that much though, a bit about Malcolm’s previous firms, nothing exciting, and his career history. They were sad to see him leave at IBM, he had good grades at university. Some of his former professors remembered him and considered him to be a sort of oddball, that’s it. And Fontanelli Enterprises? Well …” He rubbed his nose the same way he always had in the old days. “I am not that happy with it… with the fact that such a colossus exists. Every economist feels that way. It is not good for the economy when there is one participant that is so much bigger than any other. You dominate large parts of the market, more than you probably realize, and this is an uncomfortable situation for me.”

“What would you do in my position?”

“Ho, ho!” Paul shook his head. “If I only knew…” He glanced around at all the empty chairs. “I think I would spend it. I would invest it in projects to create economic equality for women all over the world. Women are the key. Many of our projects have convinced us this is true, and it’s been a known fact for my colleagues at the World Bank. Everywhere where women are educated and are free enough to decide what happens in their own lives the birthrates drop to an acceptable level. Everywhere women own property instead of being property themselves, the standard of living rises to a level where people can afford to consider environmental issues. In many aid programs, it’s the women who receive the money too, because they improve things with it, while the men only get drunk or buy gold watches.”

“Then you should support my Philippines suggestion.”

“John, yes, but the IMF is not the right instrument for this. We are an institute for overseeing the international monetary system, that’s it. We depend on the cooperation of governments, and have to follow all sorts of political constraints. No, what I was talking about was something that a private organization could do. We cannot.”

Suddenly it was no longer the old days sitting on the wall, now it was the present again. They sat at the table across from each other; the one a representative of the top monetary guardian of the world and the other the wealthiest man on earth. The same table where each week decisions were made that had major consequences for entire nations or regions, and outside the room sat a dozen men waiting for them to reappear.

John stood up. “I‘ll think about it.”

The Rolls Royce awaited her as she stepped out of the train station in Florence. However, it wasn’t Benito behind the steering wheel, but a young man Ursula had never seen before. He was wearing a uniform. He took her suitcase, opened the door smoothly and flashed a pair of bright eyes at her.

“Benito had a stroke,” Cristoforo Vacchi told her as they drove off. “It’s not as bad as it could’ve been, but he can’t drive anymore. Now he lives with a family that cares for him. Ever since he could walk again, he comes every day and polishes Emmy — the radiator figurine, you know.”

Ursula nodded.

The Padrone looked more gaunt than she remembered, almost too skinny. John Fontanelli leaving must’ve been hard on him.

“Signor Vacchi, I’m sorry that I haven’t…”

“I knew you would return one day,” he said interrupting her with his gentle smile. “It was only a question of when and why.”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know if you’ll like the why.”

She was sure she had to be wrong — that she had terribly miscalculated something. At best, the Vacchis would laugh at her; at worst she would get shouted at. She would return home tomorrow, burn all papers from her studies, and apply for a job as a waitress at the Parapluie Bleue.

She took another deep breath and told him what she noticed in Giacomo Fontanelli’s books. She felt as if she had just ordered her last meal before she was executed.

But Cristoforo said only, “Ah!” and nodded after she was done telling him. “That old mystery …”

Ursula opened her eyes widely as she said, “You know?”

The Padrone smiled. “Oh yes. My family has been wracking their brains for a long time over that. Actually, we don’t have the slightest idea where the money originally came from.”

$31,000,000,000,000

“WHAT YOU EXPERIENCED in Washington was stubbornness,” McCaine explained to John. “The force that maintains everything we’re fighting against. People want everything to stay the way they are comfortable with.” He made a fist. “Now do you see that there was no point in expecting people to volunteer to behave differently? That’s not part of human nature. Force is the only weapon that will bring results.”

John nodded glumly. “That means our fight goes on.”

“You can bet on that.” McCaine grabbed the fax. “News from Collins; the expansionary work is coming along as planned. His people are practically doing nothing else other than unpacking new computers, connecting them, loading programs, and starting their work. In short, the results will be available as scheduled.”

“Good,” said John. “And what’ll we do in the meantime?”

McCaine gave him a strange look. He stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of the windows. He had not done that for a long time. The city glowed under a bright August sun — it looked like somewhere on the Mediterranean Sea.

“You could help me,” McCaine said unexpectedly and stopped pacing, looking at John. “You could help in a way that might sound crazy, maybe it’s even quite an imposition, I don’t know, but you could be an enormous help.”

“If you’re trying to make me curious, you’ve succeeded.”

“We have a fight ahead … a tough fight. Our enemies are sounding the trumpets of war on all fronts and there is going to be bloodshed. We might be forced to do a few things that aren’t in the rule books, if you understand what I’m trying to say. To get to the point, under the current circumstances, the most useful thing would be a distraction.”

“A distraction?”

McCaine looked at him in a way that reminded John of Jack Nicholson. “I don’t wish to be in the papers for everything that I do or don’t do, do you understand? It’s that simple. And that’s why it would be nice if the media had something else to report on.”

“Aha,” said John. “But where is the problem? I mean, we own half of all newspapers and…”

“The problem is the other half … the media that we don’t own.”

John blinked as he looked at McCaine. “Hmm, sure. But I don’t get my part in all of this, I’m afraid.”

McCaine went back to his desk, opened a drawer, pulled out a newspaper that John could see was some gossip tabloid, and threw it down on the table. “Take a look at that.”

The paper was two weeks old. The headlines read: The most beautiful woman — the wealthiest man — is that love? There was a photo underneath the headlines that John recognized; it was the model Patricia DeBeers. She was walking on a sidewalk hand-in-hand with a man, whispering something into his ear. To his astonishment John realized the man was him!

“What’s this supposed to be?” he exclaimed.

“A fake. Well made, admittedly. This paper is notorious for such things. Normally they report on stuff like children with two heads, UFOs and so on, and no one cares, but the phones haven’t stopped ringing at their offices since that article appeared. All the world wants to know if the rumors are true.”

“Nothing is true, of course. I’ve never been for a walk with this woman, let alone hand-in-hand.”

McCaine said, “The favor I’m asking you for is that you do just that.”

John stared. “I must’ve missed something in our conversation. Please, say that again, what do you want me to do?”

“I know this is a bit out of the blue,” McCaine picked up the paper, folded it neatly, and then held it up like a piece of evidence in a courtroom. “Normally, there’s hardly anyone who believes this paper. Elvis shows up every six weeks or Nessie, and perhaps only a few nuts believe any of it. But the reaction to this article made me think. The world wants this to be true. The public would like to see nothing more than a liaison between the wealthiest man in the world and the most beautiful woman in the world. It would confirm all their preconceptions, like a fairy tale come true. They yearn for something like this.”

“That may be, but she means nothing to me. During the photo shoot we spoke maybe four or five words, and I had to concentrate not to stare at her breasts. That was all.” John fell quiet, a queasy feeling in his guts.

McCaine nodded slowly and thoughtfully. “But, it would be an effective distraction, don’t you think? You and Patricia DeBeers and a photographer keeps popping up to get that lucky shot, like when you two are holding hands? The media would go mad.”

“You’ve been up to something,” John studied McCaine’s inscrutable face. “Tell me that it’s not what I’m thinking.”

McCaine rolled up the paper. “I have taken the liberty of sending your yacht out. It was in Hong Kong anyway for a radar inspection. Today or tomorrow it should arrive in Manila. I also hired DeBeers to…”

“What? You hired her?”

“I had a confidentiality clause added into the contract, and I talked her agent into cutting the price so far they practically insisted on it — cut price relatively speaking, of course. It was quite interesting.”

“What did you hire her for?”

“You two will be the love-struck couple, at least when you’re in the public eye. What you do in private is your business. You sail a bit around the Philippines, let reporters find you, go shopping on land every once in a while, and please, arm-in-arm — for the sake of the press.”

“You’re not serious!”

“If the world looks at the Philippines, they should see the two of you, and not the stock market or the interest rates. That’s what I need.”

“You are serious.” John put his hand against his forehead as if he had a fever. “You’re really trying to make up some cheesy love story.”

“Come on, John.” McCaine threw the paper or what was left of it into the trash can. “God knows I could’ve thought of a lot worse than this … sending you on your yacht to cruise for a couple of weeks with one of the most beautiful women in the world. Or? And who knows, maybe you’ll grow to like one another and …”

“No. That’s enough now.”

“… the dream might come true.” McCaine grinned as if it were a joke. “All right then, I’ll mind my own business. As you wish. But I do want to remind you that you should start thinking about starting a dynasty…”

“But not with a photo model who’s being paid,” John threw in. He was still annoyed. No. This was a bit too much. He would refuse. He would say no, just say no …

McCaine was serious again. “It would be of great help,” he said. “It will be difficult enough. We have to bring the governments of a half a dozen countries to their knees and a supranational organization too, and all the time competitors are waiting for the slightest mistake on our part. It would really be a great help.”

John closed his eyes and relented. “All right. When is this supposed to start?”

“As soon as you can leave, Miss. DeBeers is on her way already. She will be waiting for you on the yacht in Manila.”

“Oh, I can hardly wait.” John stood up and felt very tired. “I’ll go pack.”

McCaine grinned wolfishly. Come to think about it, he grinned wolfishly quite often lately. “Bon voyage,” he said. “Enjoy yourself.”

“Thanks a lot.” As he went out John glanced at himself in the narrow mirror that McCaine had hanging beside the door, and he murmured: “Do I really need this?”

Ursula was feeling better again. She had taken a nice shower and felt tired from the long train ride, and now she sat together with the Padrone and the other two older Vacchis at a beautifully set table. Only Eduardo was not there. They were in the dining room on the first floor and it smelled magnificently of marjoram, tomatoes, and oregano. Whatever it was that Giovanna was serving, it looked wonderful in the fine porcelain dish.

During dinner they discussed what she had come across, the riddle the Vacchis had known about for some time.

“If you take into consideration that the assets the super rich Medici possessed during their heyday weren’t much more than four hundred thousand florins,” Cristoforo Vacchi said while he blotted his lips with a thick, starched napkin, “then you realize that three hundred florins was quite a nice fortune back then. But less nice, of course, if you had debts equal to this sum.”

“Giacomo Fontanelli was a candidate for the debtor’s tower,” Alberto threw in, handling his knife and fork. He meant the usual European way of punishing those who could not repay their debts; imprisonment in one of the towers of the town walls.

The Padrone took his wineglass and sipped. “At the very least he got himself into quite a tight corner.”

Ursula asked, “Was it possible that he accumulated reserves over the years that were not notated in the books? Then the last page would be a summary of the total debts to be repaid. I can imagine that he took care of his worldly business before he retreated into the monastery.”

“In principle, yes,” Gregorio said thin-lipped, though he appeared to disagree with the idea. “But, according to his records there are no indications how he could’ve accumulated such reserves. Business just wasn’t doing well enough, to put it bluntly.”

Ursula put her fork down and looked at the three men. “And this never aroused any suspicion? Never made you doubt your mission? Not knowing where the fortune originally came from?”

No one said anything. They only glanced at each other. Cristoforo also put down his fork and knife and folded his hands on the table behind the plate and said: “To understand this, Miss Valen, you must know that we have not been in possession of Giacomo Fontanelli’s books for all that long. We acquired them when I was a child before the outbreak of World War Two, and back then no one had the time to study them. To be honest, we found out what you discovered only a few decades ago.”

“A few decades?” Ursula echoed in surprise. When they drove here from the train station, it had sounded as if the Vacchi family had been wondering for centuries about this. “How come? I mean, where were the tomes kept for centuries?”

“In the Monastery of St. Stephanus.”

“Fontanelli’s monastery?”

“Right. It used to be a small monastery in the foothills of the Apennines. If you leave Florence and head towards Forli you pass by the ruins. It had been abandoned in 1890, and was empty until Mussolini used it as an ammunition dump. It was blown up just before the war ended, apparently in an air raid.”

“And the books?”

“As far as we know, they had been brought to Rome along with other documents when the monastery was abandoned. They must’ve been stored there for several decades until someone got the idea to hand the account books over to our family.”

“And who was that?”

Cristoforo shrugged his shoulders tiredly. “I’m sorry, but as I said I was a child.”

“Hmm, you said there were other documents…”

“My father told me about them once, but he didn’t know what kind they were or where they were kept.”

“But they might be of interest.” She felt a surge of adrenalin. “Don’t you think?”

He awoke because the sun was shining on his nose and made it itch. He looked out the window. The clouds below were a magnificent sight, and so was the dark-blue sky above. He glanced at his watch. Not much longer to go. He could hear the bodyguards talking in low voices further back, but he could not understand what they were saying because of the steady noise of the engines. Probably just chit-chat. He would have never even dreamed that a part of fulfilling the prophecy would involve pretending to be a playboy with some hired supermodel. How ridiculous. How embarrassing if the truth should ever come out.

The landing was like all the others, and the airport also looked like all the others. They taxied to their designated security area, and as usual a limousine was waiting for him. It was a long white one and it looked like a Cadillac, but it wasn’t. Not that it mattered. At any rate, he had flown so often during the past two years that he started to worry about being overexposed to radiation. It would be good to stay on the ground for a few weeks. To hell with the reporters!

During the drive he only glanced out briefly. The air-conditioner was on full blast and Manila looked like any other large city, even when viewed from a luxury car. There were the usual high-rises, wide streets, far too many people, and gaudy advertisements, similar to those in LA. There were workers paving streets in the heat or jack hammering concrete.

“The harbor,” Marco said as they left the main road to drive down another wide street full of potholes.

John was surprised how pleased he was to see his yacht again. It looked magnificent, a large gleaming white symbol of luxurious living. It had been two years since he was last aboard. While he sat in his office day in and day out pretending to understand business matters, he had sent it sailing around the globe without him, to keep things in working order and to keep the crew on their toes. What a waste!

Captain Broussard stood by the railing next to the bridge and waved to him. John waved back. Just as he was about to set foot on deck, he noticed something approaching with quick steps, something colorful and swirly, and before he knew what it was a slim scantily dressed woman took a hold of him and kissed him passionately. Long and hard.

John was stiff and defensive at first, but then he began to enjoy it … really. He embraced her too and felt soft, hot skin underneath aromatic cloth, smelled her hair, and felt a definite reaction of a certain body part …

Patricia DeBeers released her embrace and stepped back, as if she needed to take a long hard look at him after a prolonged absence. She looked good, far better than he remembered. Her figure was perfect, as was her face, she was the embodiment of female beauty, and the tropical sun made everything look even better. Maybe the trip would be more fun than he had imagined.

She took his hand and said, “Come,” and pulled him after her to the afterdeck, laughing and acting giddy as a schoolgirl, and then they went through the glass door to the salon. Inside, she released him, closed the door, and then stopped three paces away from him with her arms crossed. “This was the job I’m here to do as I understand it. Are you satisfied?”

“Huh?” John said. Her voice had the same effect as a bucket of ice water, and then he understood. “Oh, yeah, sure … uh-huh … ahem, very realistic … absolutely.” It was all a show, of course, according to plan. Maybe there was even a screenplay they were supposed to go by during the next few weeks.

“Great. I like it when customers are satisfied.” She didn’t sound like she meant what she said. And it didn’t look like it either. She stood there with a sour expression and seemed disgusted with herself.

John made a clumsy gesture with a hand. He wanted to do something to calm her down. “Grand performance,” he said. “Like I said.”

She turned and looked out the window, at the bright blue ocean, and the forest of ships’ masts. She stood there for a while without saying anything; just stood there like a live calendar photo. “Do you know what I feel like, Mr. Fontanelli?” she finally asked her voice full of distain. “Can you guess?”

He suspected it had to do with how and why she was hired. He knew it without her having to tell him. “Listen…”

“No, you listen. You might be the wealthiest man on God’s green Earth, but this doesn’t give you the right to treat me like dirt. Okay, so I modeled for the Gaea prize. I happen to be a model, and I model for all sorts of things. But this doesn’t make me into a whore. Do you understand? You can rent my time, you can rent my looks for your purposes … that was the deal, and I will play along. I’m a pro. But you cannot buy my affection, Mr. John Fontanelli, mister one trillion dollars. I’m a model, but I’m a woman first. Do you understand? A woman.”

“Yes, I see that … Sorry, I meant to say I know … that you’re a woman. It wasn’t my…”

She blinked as if she was fighting back tears. “Couldn’t you have thought of something else? Is that how one gets when one is rich? You think everything has to be done with money?”

“No, you don’t understand…”

“You could’ve simply asked me. Just ask, like a person simply asks another person. A man can ask a woman if she wants to be with him, even if it’s only for a short time, for a vacation, for a few weeks. Sure, she can say no, but you have to take the risk. Otherwise it’s worth nothing when she agrees, don’t you understand that?”

John looked at her helplessly. McCaine had done a number on him again. “Yes,” he told her. “I understand.”

She looked at him and shook her head letting her luxurious hair move like waves of wheat. “No, you don’t understand. You simply hired me. You’re paying for me. That’s why it’s not worth anything that I agreed … nothing.” She went off, down the dark hallway without turning on the lights. John heard a door closing — he sighed.

A steward appeared from somewhere with a phone. “For you, sir.”

It was McCaine. “The captain told me that you’d arrived. He said the first show already took place and that at least ten photographers witnessed it. Shall I send you copies of the papers as soon as you’re on the front pages?”

“Please don’t,” John croaked and fell into an easy chair. This trip would be worse than he had imagined.

“All right, then I won’t. Here some more details for the trip. You will start the cruise as soon as your baggage is on board. You will anchor in a small harbor in a bay further south. Tomorrow a representative of the Philippine government will come on board. He will accompany you, serving as an interpreter and will show you the most beautiful places of the thousand islands.”

“And where the reporters will be allowed to find us, I assume?”

“You just don’t worry about that. We have to let them work a little for their successes or else you won’t be interesting enough for them.” McCaine paused. “You sound depressed. Is something wrong?”

John leaned his head back against the soft cushion and stared at the patterns of the burl-wood paneling on the ceiling. He could see dragon’s heads and other make-believe images in his imagination. ”What? I’m doing just great.”

To offer the paparazzi something the program called for breakfast on top deck the next morning. The Prophecy was anchored near a small yacht harbor that was barely visited. They sat by the table on the sun deck in full view of anyone interested in taking a look. A canopy of blue sailcloth protected them from the sun, but not against the humidity that promised to get worse during the daytime.

“There are nineteen in total, Mr. Fontanelli, sir,” the steward told him barely moving his lips while he served coffee and fresh hot croissants.

“Nineteen what?” John asked irritated by the comment.

“Three in that gray Hyundai by the quay. Do you see? The man in the back seat has the largest telephoto lens I’ve ever seen.” He poured the coffee extra slow. Doubtlessly, the man had seen too many James Bond movies. “We have an excellent pair of binoculars on the bridge, and from up there you can scan the entire area without being seen. Do you see the large sailing yacht on the third pier from the outside, the one with the blue hull? One photographer sitting on the stern and two are…”

“All right already,” John said and took the cup. “Thank you. I don’t really need all the details.”

The steward seemed piqued. He remained silent as he finished setting the table until the appearance of Patricia made him forget everything else. He was so distracted by her that he spilled a few drops of coffee.

“What are you doing?” she ranted at the man.

“Excuse me, Miss DeBeers, please, I beg your pardon,” he uttered. “Of course I’ll get a fresh cup—“

“I should hope so, and today, if you don’t mind!”

“Today. Of course, Miss DeBeers.” He whooshed away.

Puzzled, John looked at her over the edge of his coffee cup while she sat down. As she had said yesterday, she was a pro. She was dressed in a scented morning robe, her hair tousled, but she still looked amazing. A casual observer could come to no other conclusion except that they had had a wonderful night of sex. No one on land watching them could hear her rough tone of voice.

“And — what are we going to do today?” she asked in a frosty tone but with a charming smile as she reached for a croissant.

John put down his cup. He thought he should make some attempt not to ruin the general impression. “I don’t know. A representative from the government is supposed to come later to guide us.”

“Oh, how exclusive.” She batted her eyes with exaggeration.

“Isn’t it?” Would they spit poison at each other like this for the next few weeks? What fun that would be!

“Last night,” she began to say, stopped, chewed, smiled, and then went on, “I read a guide about the Philippines. I got it from the ship’s library, can you imagine? It’s unbelievable what attractions they have here. You can take a rowboat along the underground river on the island of Palawan. There’s a giant cave system that hasn’t been fully explored yet. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

“Hmm,” he said. “Sounds good.” He never even thought of reading a guidebook. Sometimes he had a feeling he was missing out on life, despite his wealth. Like right now for instance.

“Or the sulfur springs at the base of an extinct volcano, Mount Makiling, or something like that. That’s not far from here, maybe fifty miles. Tell me …” her voice went lower and sounded hopeful, “wouldn’t you like to go swimming in the sulfur springs?”

John stared at her. He wanted to reach for another croissant, but his hand forgot what he wanted it to do. “You’re not serious, are you?”

She pouted and pulled her feet up on the chair. He robe parted revealingly. “You could let me have some fun too,” she said suggestively. She turned her head to the stairs and shouted. “Where’s my cup, dammit?”

They were out of breath by the time they reached the fifth floor of the law firm; Ursula, because she was carrying a travel bag, and Alberto Vacchi, because he wasn’t as young as he used to be. His hands were shaking visibly as he unlocked the door.

“So,” he said still wheezing, “this is the apartment.”

Ursula squeezed past him and looked around. Nice. The ceilings were low, the walls were white stucco, the furniture from the last century, there was a fridge, a stove, and colorful bedding. The air smelled stale.

“It’s been awhile since the last person stayed here,” the lawyer apologized. He went over to the window and opened it wide. The city noises poured in banishing the feeling of timelessness she had felt when she stepped through the door. “Are you sure you want to stay here? It would be no problem to stay with us — the driver could…”

“You can close the window again,” Ursula said and put her bag on the bench in the tiny kitchen. “No thanks. It would be a waste to travel that distance every day. I’ll manage.”

Alberto closed the window again, and then he went looking through the cabinets. “Dishes, plenty of them … canned food.” He picked a can up and looked at the label with a raised head to put the lower part of the lens of his bifocal glasses to use. “Not even past its expiration date. That’s a surprise.”

Ursula opened the refrigerator door. It was turned on, but the only thing inside was a bottle of water.

“I can recommend some restaurants nearby where…”

Ursula shook her head. “I will fend for myself.”

The elder lawyer ran his fingers through his curly hair. “We should have thought about getting some groceries. Should I have some brought?”

“I’ll go shopping. I won’t need much; a few pani, some latte, a little verdura, e salame, vino rosso …”

“Bene. D’accordo.” He looked at his shoes thinking. “I will tell you the combination of the lock for the document room. It changes every month, but it’s still almost two weeks before the end of August. You’ll get keys … anything else?” He looked at her. “Oh yes, I’ll also notify the security service. They come by four times a day to check the house. They must know of your presence.” He thought for a moment, but could not think of anything else. He lifted a hand. “Si, that is all. There are phones everywhere here, so if you need anything, or if something is amiss, just call.”

“I will,” Ursula said with a nod. The elderly man with his dandy looking kerchief in the breast pocket looked almost touchingly concerned.

“What will you do?” he asked.

Ursula shrugged her shoulders. “Search. I’m good at that. Search until I find something.”

The government representative was a somewhat large Filipino. His name was Benigno Tatad and he was built like an Olympic swimmer. He greeted John kindly and told him that President Ramos personally sent his greetings. He appeared quite intimidated, as if wealth were something one had to drop on one’s knees before. When Patricia showed up he was totally caught off guard. With shaky hands he unrolled a map of the Philippines and suggested a course to set.

“Fairytale islands with lonely beaches,” he told them. He practically ran when John suggested he go to the captain to tell him the course.

Soon, the Prophecy took a southerly course. They passed Balayan Bay as the sun sank over the South China Sea and flooded the world with reddish and golden light. The sea was calm, dark gray, and violet against the silhouette of the northern coast of Mindoro as they reached the Verde Island Passage. They anchored by Puerto Galera at dusk and had the motorboat take them over to the exciting nightlife there.

They were an odd troop. Together with the bodyguards there were seven men assembled around Patricia. The supermodel seemed to enjoy the attention. She bounced rather than walked wherever she went, flirting with all around her and loving it.

“Are we being watched?” John asked Marco as they left the first disco.

He nodded casually. “Two guys with cameras behind us, off to the side. And up ahead on the bike, looks like it too.”

John leaned a bit toward Patricia. “We’re on duty.”

“I bet you enjoy that.” She said sneeringly.

They visited a few more gaudy discos and some sleazy bars, before going down to the beach and then back to the boat.

Their guide from the government tried to keep a smile on his face, but he failed to convince anyone with the masquerade. When John asked him what the matter was, he admitted that the nightlife of Puerto Galera wasn’t exactly the one of the highlights he was supposed to show them.

During the following days they cruised past jagged coastlines, lush forests, and beaches with palm trees. Time and again brightly painted fishing boats appeared, sometimes a single one, sometimes in groups, with their clanking engines and riggers stretched out over the water. Some pulled past them quietly with bloated sails. The fishermen waved to them, but otherwise didn’t show much interest in the giant yacht. They went across the Sibuyan Sea, went past the coast of Luzon and then they finally saw the volcano Mayon, a tall and perfectly conical peak with a thin white wisp of smoke coming from the crater, a clear warning of its potential danger.

Patricia suggested going for a stroll through the town Legaspi at the foot of the volcano. Benigno Tatad dared to gently dissent, saying that the town was exceptionally unattractive and boring without a single bit of flair.

“All right,” she replied. “Then we’ll do something else.”

“We should go to Boracay,” the representative suggested. “Many people say it has the most beautiful beaches in the world.”

They continued their cruise, sailing between small and large islands, through water as clear as in paradise, back to the Visaya Sea, and then to the west again. Once, a small plane appeared and circled above the yacht, but they could not tell if there were reporters in it or just rich tourists who wanted to do something unusual. The actual reason why they were cruising around in the yacht was soon forgotten; days blended into one another, marked only by delicious meals and lazy hours in the shade, as they dozed to the gentle swaying of the yacht, and the splashing water as the bow cut its way through the sea. All thoughts of the world beyond their perfect little paradise vanished. To John, the stress he had experienced during the past two years, like running a marathon with hardly a break, seemed to melt away under the tropical sun. He wondered whether he would dissolve completely if he allowed himself to succumb to his ultimate in relaxation.

Boracay. They plowed through the turquoise shimmering water, past wide coves where colorful little sailboats with outriggers crisscrossed the waves, marveled at powder-sand beaches lined with coconut palm trees just like on a postcard. The largest beach, White Beach, turned out to be too heavily developed and crowded with tourists, but with the help of Benigno they found a smaller beach to the south.

“There are wonderful coral reefs. If you want you can dive there,” Benigno suggested.

John wasn’t so keen on the idea. “I can’t dive.”

“I can order an instructor to teach you, no problem. He can bring all the necessary gear.”

Patricia thought this was a great idea. She insisted that Benigno go diving with her. He agreed, though clearly with mixed feelings.

The instructor came the next day. He was an older Filipino with gray hair but, apart from his extensive diving vocabulary, spoke only broken English. He unloaded enough equipment from his boat for half a battalion to take to the sea.

John spent his time on the foredeck, letting the others snorkel and practice diving in the back.

“Officially I am here to give you the code numbers for the locks,” Cristoforo told Ursula smiling. He had to use a walking stick these days. “But of course it’s always nice to get a chance to visit. We always talk about you when we eat. It would be exaggerating to say we’re worried about you but we still keep thinking about you. We have nothing better to do now.”

Ursula looked at the Padrone slightly surprised. She had been somewhat taken aback by his sudden appearance, and was irritated to have another person in the room. “Is it the end of the month already?” she asked.

“It’s the thirty-first.”

“Unbelievable.” She had lost all track of time, as usual when she was digging around in archives and was left alone. It seemed as if she had arrived only yesterday, but at the same time she could have almost believed it if someone had told her that years had passed beyond these old walls. She put down her pencil and stood up. It was ages since she had spoken to anyone. “I have found something that looks odd to me. You should take a look.”

“With pleasure.”

She opened the air-conditioned display case that contained Giacomo Fontanelli’s books. She looked through the books, some of which were roughly bound while others were finely crafted. They had her ragged looking notes, hastily scribbled on, hanging out between the pages. “Here.” She pulled out a thin one, one of the last, opened the book and showed him. “Here, this notation. How would you translate this?”

The Padrone adjusted his spectacles and studied the scraggly faded writing. “Hmm — not easy.”

“As time passed, Fontanelli had got into the habit of writing notations in the margins of his books, as if they were diaries. He wrote down who he spoke to, where he thought there might be business to be done, stuff like that. This is the only note that is private in nature.”

Cristoforo sat down at the desk, pulled the lamp closer and silently read the note. “It is odd indeed,” he said, agreeing with her, and then he translated: “’Spoke with father today. Maybe a way out.’ What did he mean by that?”

“I thought the whole time that he was an illegitimate child and didn’t know his father,” Ursula told him.

“At least that’s what he said in his testament.”

“In it he also said that he left behind a fortune, and not debts.” Ursula shook her head. “I’ve done all the calculations. All the years, the florins and zechines and marks and pfennigs, it is unbelievably chaotic, but he did his math correctly. If he really did put money away unofficially, it had to be from business deals that weren’t recorded in the books.”

The Padrone carefully paged through the old book. “When is this from ?”

“March 1522.” She checked her notes in a thick notebook filled with numbers. “On that date he was almost five hundred florins in debt and was late in his payments, until someone called J gave him a loan of two hundred florins. He fiddled his way through pretty well, the great philanthropist.”

Cristoforo closed the book and set it aside. “And how do you explain that?”

Ursula rubbed her chin. “I can’t yet. All I know is that I need to go to Rome. I must find the other documents of Giacomo Fontanelli.”

“God knows where they could be.”

“They were moved in this century. There could be records, protocols, or something that’ll help me to locate them.”

“Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes.” She once had sat on a committee examining whether or not teachers, professors, and other government employees in the newly re-united Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall should continue to be employed. She found she had a talent for tracking down documents in the archives of the Stasi. It was awkward uncovering documents that proved someone had worked for the secret police, even though the papers were hidden or incorrectly filed. She had a sort of sixth sense for this type of work. Yes, she could track down the Fontanelli papers.

“Good,” the Padrone said. “We’ll arrange everything. I know a few people you should call upon who can help you open some doors.”

The steward woke John not just to remind him of lunch, but because there was a phone call for him.

It was McCaine, and he said, “Princess Di is dead.”

John sat up, put the phone to the other ear, with a shocked look on his face. “What?”

“Princess Diana, Prince Charles’ ex-wife. She crashed into a bridge pylon in a car in Paris last night.”

“What?” The humidity hit him in the face. “How did that happen?”

“It appears she and her entourage were trying to escape a pack of paparazzi chasing them on motorcycles. There were four of them in Di’s car: her, her boyfriend, the driver, and her bodyguard. He’s still alive, but they don’t know if he’ll make it. Tragic.”

“That’s unbelievable.” John’s head had cleared, and he realized he ought to feel sad or sympathetic, but he didn’t. “But, why are you telling me this? Do I have to attend the funeral?”

“No, I’m telling you this because the event has seized hold of the public imagination. It’s rather more important than your affair with Miss DeBeers.”

“Aha.” Should John feel offended now? “Does this mean I should return?”

McCaine cleared his throat. “Hmm, looks like you can hardly wait. Is it so terrible being with the world’s most beautiful woman?”

“I can handle it — for now.”

“Since you got her between the sheets I suppose. Alright. No, I wanted to ask you to stay a while longer. I want to observe if the press remain interested. The media are having a multiple orgasm over the Diana story, but even a princess gets buried at some point. Stay out there another two weeks, in case we need to carry on with this charade for the press.”

John stared at his bare feet, wiggled his toes, and then blinked at the endless blue sky. Right now he could not imagine ever going back to his office. “All right, if I must.” I hope it sounded reluctant enough, he thought after he put the phone down and laid back on the lounger. But before he dozed off again, it occurred to him, who thought paparazzi could be so dangerous …?

McCaine put the phone back on the hook and frowned anxiously. It was five in the morning and he had been in the office the whole night. There were three TVs across from him switched to three separate news channels, CNN, NEW, and SKY News. There was a fourth monitor, but it had text running across the screen from Reuters. Outside, London slowly awakened.

“Foster,” he called into the dimness.

The man who approached his desk was slim and tall but apart from that there wasn’t much to say about him other than that he had obsidian eyes and a thin mustache. But he had had different colored eyes in the past and moustache could be shaved off or a false one attached.

“The princess isn’t the only woman who died yesterday in Paris,” McCaine said. He pulled out a thin folder and pushed it towards the man.

Foster read it and looked at the photos. “Constantina Volpe. What happened to her?”

“That is not the problem. The name of the problem is Marvin Copeland. He is a wannabe rock musician and unfortunately a friend of Mr. Fontanelli from the old days.” He leaned far back and ran his fingers through his hair. “By rights he should be sitting in an Italian jail instead of being in French investigative custody in Paris. Mr. Fontanelli made the mistake of getting him out. Had he not done that, then Constantina would not be heroin death number so-and-so in France’s drug-death statistics.”

Foster handed the folder. “What is it you want me to do?”

McCaine sat up again with a sigh. “There is a plane at the airport that will take you to Paris. As soon as the French courts open, I want you to be waiting outside the door. Get Copeland out, pay his bail, talk them into it, whatever it takes, and get him out of the country.”

“Where?”

“To Canada. There is a private drug treatment clinic that does good work and asks no questions as long as the bills are paid.” He opened a drawer and got out a business card. “Here, the address.” He handed him a second card. “The number on this one is from a man in the US who has been working for me a long time. He can provide assistance.”

Foster studied both cards in the dim light and then handed them back. “What is his name?”

“What’s his name, yes.” McCaine thought for a moment. “Let’s say his name is Ron Butler.” He opened another drawer, took out a steel box, and pulled out a thick envelope. “Here are a hundred thousand pounds, that’s all there was in the safe. If you should need more for the bail, call me. Whatever you do, call me as soon as you have Copeland. I’ve informed the clinic already, I’m only waiting for their confirmation; their offices are only open during the day.”

“Very well.” Foster stuffed the envelope into his jacket pocket. He hesitated. “A clinic … is that a safe solution?”

“Copeland is a friend of Mr. Fontanelli’s. Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

“Besides, I can reassure you; the clinic is located in the middle of nowhere in Quebec, and the people there know how to take care of the patients. Their record of escapes is better than Alcatraz’s. A person leaves the place only when he or she is absolutely clean … sometimes not even then.” McCaine rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “As long as the bills are paid, and they will be.”

Foster nodded. Was there a faint hint of a smile? Maybe it was only an illusion caused by the poor lighting.

McCaine stretched out and let his hand fall on a stack of files. “That is all for now. As if I didn’t have enough to do already with all these cartel lawsuits, complaints, and balancing the books. Now I have to take care of idiots who cause disaster wherever they go. It makes me sick. Off you go, Foster, solve this problem for me.”

“As usual, Mr. McCaine.” He gave McCaine a short nod, stepped back into the shadows and seemed to melt away. He stopped at the door. “This incident … if the media should catch wind of it, then it could be unpleasant for Mr. Fontanelli, right?”

McCaine looked darkly at him. “Right.”

“Then the death of the princess was lucky for us.”

“Yes.”

They cruised on even further south, into a world of a thousand islands, past small and even smaller dots in the ocean, rocky shores, sandy coves, hanging palm fronds, wherever the radar found a passage.

Patricia and Benigno went diving whenever the Prophecy anchored, and told John of the colorful corals, anemones, and schools of fish when they were sitting at the table. He had noticed an increased intimacy between the two and wondered if Patricia might have started an affair with the good-looking government representative. But it wasn’t any of his business. Let them have their fun.

He did get a bit bored lounging around all day, every day, and he finally let himself be talked into going for a dive too. He started with snorkeling under the watchful eyes of the instructor, watched the other two disappear into the mystic azure-blue water, looked at the bottom of the Prophecy’s hull, and was bored.

As the yacht plowed through the crystal clear waters again, John practiced with the breathing apparatus, learned the important hand signals, and how to put on the neoprene wetsuit. They finally anchored again near a large and obviously populated island. The yacht was floating in front of a jutting cliff behind which was a coral bay, its sandy beach covered in driftwood.

“That island there — do you know the name of it?” John asked the government envoy.

He was busy with his diving suit. “Panglawan,” he said giving John a fleeting glance and a somewhat cramped smile.

John knew by now what this sort of glance meant; it meant that Benigno either didn’t know or at least wasn’t sure. But it really didn’t matter. After listening to the final warnings from the instructor, John put on the mask like the others and adjusted the mouth piece, and down he went into the turquoise-blue sea and down into what he expected to be astounding nature, untouched by man.

First, he saw only a wild jumble of bubbles all around him. The air bottle seemed to want to get away from him and he took a short while to get used to it. When he finally was able to look around, all he saw was a desert. Everything here was dead. A handful of colorful fish scooted over the gray bottom, as if they only wanted to get away from here. When John got close to them, they disappeared into the dark holes of the dead coral. John took hold of something that looked like a rock, but it crumbled in his hand. He turned his head; Patricia was coming towards him looking like a mermaid with her long floating hair. He saw in her eyes the same distraught expression that he was feeling.

They swam onward, with Benigno still a fair distance ahead. But wherever they swam they found only a gray and lifeless underwater world. Most supermarket parking lots had more life forms living there than this coral bay. Benigno stopped swimming and signaled to them to come to him. At this moment John heard a dull boom, then another. It took a few moments before he realized that what he was hearing was explosions.

$32,000,000,000,000

ALBERTO VACCHI WAS waiting for her on the hotel terrace when she returned from the national archives. Just as he had been the previous few days. She had no idea what he did the entire day while she was in there. Maybe he did nothing more than sit there and drink cappuccino.

She sat on a chair across from him with her bag containing her notebook and photocopies on her lap. She looked at him with an exhausted expression on her face.

“You’re early today,” the old lawyer said to her after they exchanged looks for a moment. “Would you like something to drink? Your throat must be pretty dry.”

“Not only my throat,” Ursula nodded and placed her bag on another chair. “A water, yes, please. Or a whisky, a double, a triple …”

He made a gesture for the waiter. “Madre mio, that doesn’t sound like good news.”

“It’s useless, Alberto. Useless. I can’t think of any other key word to search under. It feels as if I’ve gone through every piece of paper in there.”

“Maybe you need help. I could get a few students from the…”

“No, it’s not that. The people who helped me did an excellent job. They are diligent, use their heads, and even know English better than I do. No, the documents aren’t there, period.”

The cameriere appeared, a dark-skinned man with a sharply hooked nose. Ursula ordered a San Pellegrino and a caffe con latte, and Alberto an amaretto.

“Hmm,” he said after the waiter was gone. “But they were referenced in the other books, right? Then they must be there.”

“We searched in the person registry, and there was no Fontanelli listed there. There is a Vacchi, but he had nothing to do with you. We searched in the local registry, in the key-word registry, in…”

A loud crash startled her. There was a collision by the double-winged doors that led into the kitchen. A tray on the floor surrounded by glass shards from a green water bottle and a drinking-glass. A trainee waitress, close to tears, had to endure a ranting from the cameriere.

This seemed to amuse Alberto. “When I spent a night here last year the very same thing happened,” he told her. “They should put up something like a traffic sign to let them know which door is in and which is out.”

“Yes,” Ursula said absentmindedly. “I thought they had one.” The late afternoon sunlight reflected brightly from a couple of shards. One of the doors was still swinging back and forth making a slight creaking sound, like a bird chirping. Alberto said something but she didn’t hear. She was thinking about traffic signs, kitchen doors, and then started to shake her head. “Ich bin eine Idiotin! Ich bin die größte Idiotin, die jemals …“ “I’m such an idiot! I’m the biggest idiot that ever…”

“Ursula?” Alberto looked at her concerned. “What’s the matter?”

She stood up and looked at her wristwatch. She might have just enough time. “I have to go back into the archive,” she said, suddenly aware that she had been speaking German.

“The archive? But what do you want to do so late…”

“The outgoing registry — I forgot to ask for the outgoing registry!”

She swam back up to the surface. Benigno tore the mask from his head, kicking water.

“Dynamite fishers!” he shouted breathlessly. He looked around and then pointed. “Over there!”

Indeed, a narrow fishing boat on the waves barely a quarter mile away was bobbing on the waves. Two men sat inside, one rowing and the other messing around with a net.

“Well then let’s get out of here,” John said and looked around to the Prophecy. But the yacht was around the cliff and could not be seen from their position.

“No, I must go over there. Dynamite fishing is strictly forbidden. It destroys the coral and the fry … You saw it down there. It’s my duty to arrest them.”

“How do you plan to do that? With your bare hands?”

But Benigno shook his head, put the mask on, went underneath the surface and swam towards the boat.

“What now?” Patricia asked troubled. “We can’t let him go alone.”

John had a twisted look. “My bodyguards will quit or kill me if I go swimming after him.” He patted himself to find the little plastic case that Marco handed him before he went diving. He opened it and got out the walkie-talkie. “Let’s see if this thing is as watertight as the manufacturer asserts.” He switched it on, and what a surprise, wet as it was, a red LED light came on. “Nice toy.” He pressed the call button. “Marco? Can you hear me?”

“I hear you loud and clear,” Marco’s voice said from out of the sealed mike.

“Marco, please come here with the motorboat,” John told him, hoping to have made himself clear. “We’re in the bay. Hurry!”

The answer was an unintelligible, “Mrchsptrst …”

“With the boat.” John repeated. “Boat … come … fast.”

“Icnt hrsts ssstkr.”

John looked at the red light. “I did all I could,” he said, turned the unit off and stuffed back into the pouch. “Come on, we can’t leave Benigno alone.”

They took off the scuba gear and swam after him on the surface but with no real hope of catching up with him. Benigno obviously had a swimmer’s physique for a reason. As they swam towards the fishing boat small fish floated all around them on the water’s surface. More and more the closer they got.

The two fishermen were busy collecting their catch and didn’t notice the swimmers approaching. When Benigno suddenly appeared on the surface they were almost startled to death. One guy nearly dropped his net and the other one started to shout. Benigno shouted in a language that for John sounded only like malang-malang and alala, and then the three men were shouting at each other all at once.

The guy with the paddles spotted John and Patricia swimming towards them. He stood up and held a paddle like a weapon, shouting and gesticulating with it, looking like he’d use it as a club. The other man tried to calm him down with composed words, but he didn’t seem to have much influence over his companion.

“My God,” Patricia screamed and swallowed some water. She spat it out. “He’s going to smash Benigno’s head!”

John didn’t answer, mainly because he was out of breath from swimming so fast. He stopped and put out his arms to keep Patricia from getting any closer to the boat, which was bobbing wildly in the water and would have tipped over for sure if it didn’t have the outrigger on it. The situation was pretty serious.

“He’s afraid for his boat,” Patricia shouted. “It’ll get confiscated when he’s caught fishing with dynamite. You used to get the death penalty for this.”

John looked at her surprised. “How do you know that?”

“Read it in the guidebook.”

No wonder the man was so upset. A fisherman without a fishing boat meant the end of his career. People had committed murder for less. But instead of trying to hit them with the paddle, he stopped and just stood there staring over their heads to the horizon. The three in the water also turned around to see what he was looking at: the Prophecy’s motorboat, white, elegant, and racing over the waves right towards them. Now that the shouting had stopped they could hear the boat’s engine roaring.

The fisherman sat down and dropped the paddle. He put his hands over his face and cried. The other man looked at him with dismay, the net still in his hands and the few fish wriggling within. They yielded to their fate.

The motorboat came alongside the fishing boat. Marco was behind the wheel and sitting beside him was a young, wiry man wearing sunglasses. John remembered him; his name was Chris, a red-haired Irishman who had been having a hard time with the tropical sun.

“Is everything all right?” Marco asked with concern and let the ladder down so that they could climb aboard.

What distressed John the most was the meager catch the two men had. The fish they had already caught barely covered the bottom of an old mustard-colored bucket, and none of the fish were any larger than a hand. Altogether, including the fish still in the water, it would make maybe two full meals, if you ate the fins and bones too.

“I don’t get it,” he told Benigno. “How can this be worth it? I mean, they don’t get the dynamite for nothing.”

Benigno was in no mood for contemplating the economics of this. He just sat there, wiped his face with jittery hands and murmured something in his mother tongue. “Over ninety percent of coral reefs have already been destroyed by dynamite fishing,” he said. “It is forbidden, they get their boats taken away, but they just won’t stop it.”

“Yes,” John nodded. “But there’s got to be a reason.”

“Because they are stupid! Stupid and superstitious and thickheaded!” His nerves seemed frazzled.

John peered over to the others. Marco looked at him expectantly. Patricia crouched beside Benigno on the bench as if she wasn’t sure if she should put her arm around him or not. The two fishermen stared up at him from their bobbing boat with anxious expressions.

“Benigno,” John said, “I want to see how they live.”

The government representative looked up at John confused. “How they live?”

“Yes. Their village, their families, their whole surroundings. I want to understand why they do this.”

“Why?”

“I just told you why. I want to understand how they live.”

The broad-shouldered Filipino wanted to respond, but then he remembered why he was sent here. “They live a very simple life. It is of no interest to you, I’m sure.”

“If I say I’m interested then I’m interested.”

Benigno was obviously conflicted. “But this is not part of the nice things to see in my country. That’s what I am here to show you. Not a miserable fishing village.”

“I’ve seen the nice parts of your country for the past three weeks.”

Benigno stared down at the deck, as if there was an answer to be found there. “We should just hand those two over to the local authorities and keep going. That would be best.”

“Not for the two of them. And I have no desire to play policeman.” John rubbed his chin. “But, of course, I don’t want to force you to do something you don’t want to. My office will be able to organize having a translator flown here. It’ll only take few hours.” That John didn’t want to force him to do something was a lie. For the first time he was using McCaine’s method of exerting power deliberately.

And he was doing it successfully. Benigno kept staring straight ahead. The fact that he had not spoken showed he was thinking about it. Benigno did not want be sent home — what a disgrace that would be. “No, that’s not necessary,” he mumbled. “If you would really like to …”

“Thank you.” John pointed to the fishermen. “Tell them what we want to do, tell them to lead us to their village.”

“Right now?” Patricia asked upset. “No, John, you can’t do that. I have to get back to the ship and wash the salt out of my hair.”

Of course, right now and immediately, John thought. We’ll never find them again later on. “We’ll be back by this evening. Benigno, please …”

With Patricia still complaining, the envoy leaned towards the side of the boat and spoke with the fishermen. The one with the paddles, a squat man with a face covered in scars, seemed to be the spokesman of the two. John noticed that the other man had two fingers missing, probably due to handling dynamite _ this had obviously not been their first time at it. He was much older, with gray hair and wrinkles, and he appeared softer and more submissive of the pair.

“They are not very happy about the idea,” Benigno explained. “They want to know what we want in their village. They think that we want to harm their families.”

“Tell them that they have nothing to fear, that we won’t press charges.”

Benigno cleared his throat. “If I may make a suggestion, give them some money, five dollars or ten. That’s a small fortune here. Then they might believe you.”

John pat his neoprene suit. Of course, he did not have any money with him. Come to think of it, since he’d been wealthy he hardly ever had money on him anymore. “Does anyone have ten dollars?” he asked and looked at the others. “Marco, you maybe? You’ll get it back.”

“With interest and compound interest?” Marco asked, already digging around in his pants pockets. He pulled out a ten dollar bill and handed it over to John. “Now you owe me.”

“Thanks.”

He handed the money to Benigno who held it to the fishermen. They talked back and forth and the one with the paddles made big eyes. He studied the strangers looking down at him from in the big motorboat. He took the bill.

“His name is Pedro and the other man is Francisco,” Benigno said. “They will take us to their village.

The village was so close to the water that looked almost as if the woods right behind it had gradually pushed it there. The small gray huts with wicker, straw walls, and roofs made of weathered palm fronds stood close together, some on stilts in the water and others over the mangroves. Faded pieces of clothing hung on wash lines. Only a closer look revealed them to be tee-shirts, pants, and shorts. There was cardboard, corrugated sheet metal, and plastic foil behind and in between the huts. Groups of children, most half naked, ran towards them when they saw the big white motorboat approaching their worn-out pier, looking like something from another world.

“Don’t touch anyone’s head,” Benigno warned them, “and that includes the children. It’s considered impolite.”

But the children never got close enough for this to happen. They kept a respectful distance from the strangers with the brightly colored neoprene suits. A throng of kids escorted them as they followed the two fishermen. Even Patricia went along, who up to the last moment had complained and said she would not set foot on land. Only Chris remained on the boat.

They were still on the pier when a man drew near to greet them. There was a rusty hook where a right hand should have been. They shook his left hand then continued walking. Sitting in front of a hut was a man who only had one upper thigh left, looking glumly at a brown bottle on his lap. They saw several young men using homemade crutches because they had each lost a leg. Another one had no arms. When the people realized the strangers felt sorry for them, they brought them into another hut where a man without arms or legs lay in a sack hanging from the ceiling. The villagers said something and laughed heartily and even the man in the sack laughed a dirty toothless laugh.

“What did they say?” John wanted to know.

“That he made two kids since his accident,” Benigno said embarrassed.

Patricia turned away. “I think I’m going to vomit,” she said.

It was like a drug-induced trip through a strange world, a nightmare from a hellish painting. This wasn’t a village, it was a battlefield. The inhabitants looked like they lived on the frontlines, where there were landmines every step of the way. But perhaps the only fight they were fighting was one of survival.

They got to Pedro’s hut. His wife, a delicate woman with big jaded eyes, bowed deeply before them until her husband commanded her with a rough tone to get the guests something to eat and drink. With her head low, she went away and returned with a brown bottle without a label that smelled of alcohol and a bowl of rice with pieces of fish in it. Pedro introduced his children. There were seven in all, four sons whom he named. Then he made a gesture for his guests to sit so they could eat and talk.

“I still have some money,” Marco whispered, “in case it’s proper to give them some for their hospitality. I mean, I guess we’re eating up their food for the entire week.”

“Later,” Benigno whispered back.

Francisco sat with them although they still didn’t know what relation he was to Pedro or his family. After a while other villagers came to join them to look at the strangers, though no one dared stare for any length of time, except for the small children. Everyone wanted to tell their story.

“They say they must go out further to the sea because there is nothing to catch anymore near the coastline,” Benigno translated, and added bitterly, “It’s no wonder, they destroyed everything here. They sawed-off the branch they were sitting on.”

John could see part of the beach from where he sat. There was a raggedy old man out there handling a fine-meshed net judging by the shimmer in the sunlight, as if nobody had told him there were no more fish. He displayed great patience, throwing the net into the water over and over again. “Do they even know what they are doing with the dynamite?” John asked. “Why it’s forbidden?”

Benigno asked, the fishermen answered, and then Benigno talked to them, explaining the consequences of using explosives. Judging by their expressions they had never been told it was illegal. They didn’t know that coral reefs were the home and food source for countless fish and that dynamite destroyed the coral. And they did not know that by trying to increase their catch this way they actually created underwater deserts and destroyed all life, and that their children would be left with nothing.

John looked over at the old man again and remembered that at one point, a hundred years ago it seemed, he had been sitting in his office reading about this subject in a book. Back then he had understood it all so well, although the preservation of coral reefs seemed like a secondary issue. But this here was real. For these people the preservation of coral reefs was a matter of life and death.

“They didn’t know,” Benigno said in annoyance. “They simply thought dynamite fishing was forbidden because it was dangerous for them.” He shook his head. “They still don’t seem to fully understand …”

Patricia DeBeers was twisting the ends of her hair and examined them. “Why did they even start doing it? Didn’t the old method work well enough for centuries?”

“Good question,” John nodded.

Benigno passed the question on. It was mostly the elders who answered with long melodious comments, while the others nodded in agreement. But Benigno could not translate everything they said, so he simply told them in a nutshell: “The fish catch wasn’t enough anymore.”

“Why not?”

“There were too many people.”

“They had to find a way to catch more fish than the traditional methods allowed. I understand.” John nodded. So indeed, overpopulation was the mother of all problems. He looked around and saw the hordes of children, the human interest and compound interest of their forefathers. “Have they ever thought of having fewer children instead?”

Benigno shook his head. “That’s something I don’t even have to start asking. That’s not allowed.”

“Why?” Patricia asked sharply. “What about contraceptives?”

“They are against the law. And it’s against God’s will.”

“And is it against God’s will to give penicillin to a child with pneumonia?”

He looked embarrassed. “I can’t be the judge of that. That’s the church’s business. I go by what the priests say.”

“Is that what you do?” She looked at him with a sharp grin, leaned closer to him and said in a low tone: “I have a riddle for you: do I take the pill, yes or no? Guess.”

Benigno stared at her with widened eyes. John had a strong impression that if the two had had a relationship, he had just witnessed its end.

Later on, on their way back to the boat, they passed by the old man with the net. He had caught a handful of small fish in the two hours they were there. The fish were only an inch or so long.

John pointed at them and asked Benigno: “Ask him if he knows that those little fish won’t grow up into adult fish to make more fish. Ask him if he knows that he’s destroying his last chance to ever catch anything at all in the coming years.”

Benigno sighed and did as asked. The old man, who wore only worn-out red sports pants, looked at them myopically, smiled sadly and said something. Then he went over and pat John lightly on his arm.

John looked at him confused. “What did he say?”

“He said, what good will it do him if he waits for the fish to get bigger if he’s already starved to death?”

It was already so late in the evening that something resembling a cool breeze blew in from the sea. They had eaten very well, as usual, with a guilty conscience, but with a good appetite. Two of the younger bodyguards went out with the motorboat to retrieve the scuba gear that John and Patricia had left.

The big yacht swayed lightly on the waves. If you stood by the railing and paid close attention, then you could hear the stabilizers working. Clouds that looked like columns of smoke covered part of the starry sky. One could even imagine the scent of a fire.

Patricia sat in the salon, busy writing letters. Benigno Tatad sat on the bow and stared lost in thought at the water. John made his rounds on the yacht, talking with the stewards, the cook, the engineer, and finally with Captain Broussard. Everything was in order so John retreated into his cabin.

This was the one room onboard he considered to be the least comfortable of all. It was more like a garishly furnished hotel room rather than a home. Tonight, though, he was glad to be able to lock the door behind him. He dropped into one of the two easy chairs, stared into the air, and then he grabbed the telephone to call McCaine.

“What really destroys the environment is poverty,” McCaine said after John told him what happened today. “It’s not the overpopulation, not the lack of education … poverty. Nothing will stop someone who’s starving from killing an animal for food — it doesn’t matter if it’s a near extinct species. He needs to eat. Nothing will stop someone who is freezing from chopping down a tree and allowing the desert to expand. He needs wood to burn, and it’s either him or the tree. People in poverty have their backs against the wall and when you don’t have a choice, you can’t think or care about anything else. Poverty is the core of the problem.” McCaine stopped talking, or maybe it was only problems with the satellite. “I can’t disagree with you,” he said. “The question is, what did you learn from that?”

“I’m wondering if it might not be better to initiate many small projects, all over the world, aimed at all the many different local problems. Like here in the Philippines. After dinner I made some phone calls to people the government guy onboard suggested. Turns out a lot could be done here with a ridiculously small amount of money. If the dynamite fishing were stopped, letting the coral recuperate for a few years, then life would return and so would the fish. Even sinking old tires into the sea as a reef replacement would help. All it needs is someone to do it. Simple films could be produced in all the different dialects found here to teach the people certain things. Efficiency could be improved too. Hell, a third of the fish catch gets spoiled … six hundred thousand tons per year, just because there aren’t enough refrigerators, ice machines, and such, and the roads are in bad shape. I figured out a sum of ten maybe fifteen million dollars, allocated over a few years and in the right places, could work wonders here.”

“Hmm, I’m sure you know that there are countless such projects already in progress all over the world.”

“Naturally. But after all I have a whole damn trillion to give away…”

“Maybe twice that by now, I suspect.”

“The more the better. At any rate it’ll be enough for a hundred thousand such projects. A hundred thousand points on the globe where we can get involved in improving lives and moving life in a positive direction. A bunch of needle pricks, but on a massive scale, like acupuncture for the planet, that’s how I see it.”

McCaine let out a grunt. “What you suggest is a hit-or-miss thing. Not quite what we’re looking for to accomplish our task.”

“It would be something real,” John insisted. “Not like those giant plans we follow the whole time … with some future plan in mind.”

“Do you know what you are doing? You’re escaping to local problems because global problems are too complex for you to comprehend. If you return to linear thinking you’ll make everything worse. It is this line of thinking that put the world in this situation in the first place. It may very well be that such projects could be useful, but as soon as our computer model…”

“But that’s only a model! Not reality. A model can never take into account all those details that make up reality.”

“Luckily, that is not necessary. The calculations for an orbit around the earth are also only a model, a pretty rough one even, but still the satellites we use to communicate continue to work dependably.” McCaine said patiently. “Look, John, let me give you another example. The island you were on — Panglawan, you said?”

“That’s right.”

“I take it that the village was situated very close to the water, even though there was flat land behind it and lush forests.”

John was truly surprised by this accurate description. “Yes.”

“Do you know why?”

“No.”

“It’s because that forest belongs to the Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, just like those sugarcane fields further inland. The pious gentleman has forbidden anyone but those who work for him from living in his forest. Do you see the correlation? The villagers don’t build their huts on stilts or in trees because it’s romantic, but because the space by the sea belongs to no one. Almost all the land in the Philippines belongs to twenty family clans who managed to move themselves into advantageous positions during colonial times and they don’t want a thing to change. They will be grateful when you solve their problems without questioning the existing power structure. No, John, you will spend your money and then, within just a few years, everything will go back to what it was like before you came. This is not what was meant with ‘returning the future for mankind’.”

John felt the phone getting heavy in his hand, and he felt like a rapidly deflating balloon. “Hmm,” he said. “I guess I can’t disagree with you there.”

“The power structures are the key,” McCaine went on. “You don’t need to go into all the details. That applies to us too, by the way. Our easy days are over. The big boys in the world now understand what’s going on. The US and Japan … currently, there are plots being hatched against us you won’t believe. All in secrecy, of course.”

To John this sounded a bit paranoid. “Are you sure?”

McCaine laughed darkly. “I only have to look across my desk to be sure. We’re being flooded with lawsuits, for supposedly breaking laws of competition, cartel allegations, laws on co-determination, environmental codes, everything they can think of, even lawsuits for product liability claims and all of it demanding ridiculous sums of money, and it’s all lies. They claim to have witnesses to testify that we work for the CIA. How do you like that? We might as well hand out company passes to the revenue officials in Japan, that’s how often they come to ask stupid questions and stop the work in our factories. Or listen to this one: we wanted to take over the Bank of Rabat, had everything worked out and got confirmation for the deal, then, the American secretary of state’s plane landed, supposedly to refuel while returning from a trip to Israel. Oddly, it took them four hours to fill up the fuel tanks, and the next day we were told ‘Sorry, but the deal went to Chase Manhattan.’ Shall I go on?”

“I believe you,” John looked perturbed. “Would you like me to come back?”

“If you’ve acquired a law degree and ten years’ experience, sure. But otherwise there’s nothing you can do to help, and I’d rather you be there for now so that you can play the figurehead for the environment. Have you heard about the forest fires?”

“What forest fires?”

“In Indonesia fires to clear land have spread out of control. There are fears that practically the entire forest may burn down within the next few weeks. It’s so bad because they have the worst drought in fifty years there. It’s an unprecedented catastrophe. Smoke and ash has drifted as far as Malaysia and Singapore. I think you might even see it in the Philippines within the next few days, and this is just the start.”

“And what should I do?”

“Condemn the misuse of nature, the feeble and pathetic politics of the governments … say things like that. We’ll write a rough speech when the time is right.” McCaine sounded like he was playing for time.

John said a bit reluctantly, “I have a real problem hanging around here vacationing when we have all those lawsuits and problems you just told me about. Don’t get me wrong, but I’d like to know if anything will be left of my firm when I return.”

McCaine laughed, and this time it even sounded like an amused laugh. “The lawsuits are real, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have things under control. The war is on. The Japanese finance firms, who put the revenue officials on our ass, are suddenly having problems getting money from the financial markets. One of them, Yamaichi Securities, the oldest Japanese brokerage firm with a correspondingly high profile, is involved in a very embarrassing blackmail scandal, which is causing more and more customers to take their money out. I’ll be surprised if they survive the year. And as for the US — well, God’s on our side. We’ve found out that the president has had an affair with an intern in the White House. When he had enough of her, he found her a seventy thousand dollar job at the Pentagon. What do you think we could do with that? The man will be sweating like a pig. He won’t have time for plotting against us. He’ll wish he’d had his balls cut off, I promise you that.”

“Hmm,” John said. “I don’t know. I’m not really convinced. Hasn’t every president under than sixty had an affair? I doubt it’ll upset that many people.”

That was a good point, McCaine thought after the call ended.

He wanted another gulp of coffee, but there was only a brown ring on the bottom of the cup, and the pot was empty too. He put both on the coffee table next to the many empty cups already there. He needed to start cleaning up after himself. He could not allow a maid in here anymore since there were too many secret documents lying. Papers were stacked on every table and even on the floor. The way things were right now, he was sure that the Americans would have spies working to see what exactly Fontanelli Enterprises possessed, what they could do and what their intentions were. That’s why he had guards posted outside his office, that’s why he locked his doors personally every evening, and if it started to stink in here then that’s the price he had to pay.

He took his notepad and went back to the conference room, which he had been calling the war room of late.

“… the prime minister is on our payroll, so it won’t be a problem,” someone was saying as he came in. It was a thick-necked man with long gray hair tied back in a ponytail.

McCaine took a look at a map of South America on the projector screen. He didn’t know which prime minister the man meant, and he didn’t really care. It was more important to keep Fontanelli’s mood under control. To have him back now would have caused too many problems, not to mention that McCaine would have to explain what he was planning and the preparations being made for moves that were not exactly morally above board.

He sat down. “Mr. Froeman.” He turned to the man with the ponytail. “Gentlemen, please excuse the interruption. Mr. Fontanelli has just brought up a doubt concerning the Clinton affair, which I think is worth considering.”

“And that would be?” Froeman asked with a grim look.

“He wasn’t impressed by the affair. He said that every president under sixty has had an affair.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said a skinny young man sitting directly by the overhead projector.

McCaine locked his fingers together. “We might be overestimating the effectiveness of this story.”

“Hmm,” Froeman said. He leaned forward in an aggressive pose, placed his elbows on the table, and toyed with the thick signet ring on his finger. “It all depends how we play it,” he said after a few moments staring into space. “Let’s say we don’t go with the usual sensationalist revelation, but instead do something else. Something even better. We’ll let it leak, nothing concrete, nothing provable: make him think he can wiggle his way out of it by denying the allegations.”

“And then what?” a black man with a scar on his chin sitting beside him asked.

“If we could get him to deny the affair under oath,” Froeman explained with an evil grin, “then he would be breaking his oath of office. Then we could bring out our evidence and break his neck with it, whenever we wanted.”

“Since when does an American president swear an oath not to have an affair?” his neighbor grumbled.

“The president swears to obey the laws of the United States when he gets sworn into office. Do you really want to argue with me if perjury is breaking the law or not?” Froeman said, wondering why his time was being spent on such a stupid question.

“Wait a second!” McCaine raised a hand. “I don’t want to topple the president. I only want to keep him preoccupied with other things.”

Froeman nodded impatiently. “That’s clear. We’ll see to it. But you would not mind calling him to ask for a few favors, I take it?”

John woke up unusually early. When he got on top deck he could smell smoke. He scanned the sky, and it looked gray, an unhealthy, threatening gray. They were not rainclouds, but clouds of smoke.

All the sun tarps where still rolled up on board ship and no one was about. He could already feel the heat of the coming day. He went up to the sun deck, sat down at the still empty breakfast table, and looked at the landscape, which looked like paradise.

After a while Benigno came up the stairs. He put on a fake smile when he saw John. “Magandang umaga po, Ginoong Fontanelli,” he said and sat down across from John.

“A good morning to you too, Ginoog Tatad,” John said. He pointed at the empty table. “Did you notice anything?”

“The table isn’t set yet.”

“I don’t mean that. It’s still too early. Take another look.”

The Filipino stared at the table trying to find the answer.

“It’s gray,” John said helping him a bit. “It should be white.” He wiped his hand over the surface and held it up. It was black. “Ash and soot from the forest fires in Indonesia.”

Benigno looked at the dirty hand, and then he looked at the smudge the hand had left on the specially treated wooden table. “That is disgusting,” he said.

“Isn’t it? It looks like things are coming to a head.” John pulled out a kerchief and wiped his hand with it. “By the way, I want to go back to that island today and have another talk with the people in the village. There still are a few things I don’t quite understand.”

$33,000,000,000,000

THE NEWS THAT the same strangers who had caught Pedro and Francisco at dynamite fishing had returned to the village made its rounds in no time, and especially the part about them handing out ten dollar bills, real American dollars. Soon, the visitors were sitting down, surrounded by everyone, except those who had gone out to fish, which basically meant they were surrounded by people who either had no boat or whose physical ailments kept them from going to sea.

They asked the villagers all sorts of questions, about the village, if they had a telephone, where they buy groceries, and where they sell their catch. They told them about the town of Tuay and the market there, where they could buy rice and coconut oil, and where they could sell their catch to the local fishmonger with his ice chest, and that there wasn’t just a telephone in Tuay but also a real post office, and also a government office, a doctor and a church.

“Ask them,” John said to Benigno, “who sells them the dynamite.”

Suddenly their smiles froze, and they wouldn’t look the visitors in the eyes, one village snuck out of the hut, despite the dollar bills they said they would be handing out. John didn’t need an interpreter to know that the question was unwelcome.

“Tell them that we won’t report them, that we have nothing to do with the police.”

“I already have,” Benigno told him.

John’s mouth was taut as he thought for a moment. “Look, Benigno, there must be at least one person who profits from what’s going on here. There’s got to be someone who profits if everything stays as it is, and it has to be someone with enough power to make sure nothing changes. I just want to understand, that’s it. We are on the rim of a spider’s web, and I want to find the spider. Tell them!” He rolled the bundle of money up and shoved it back into his pocket for all to see. “Tell them that we can go to another village to get answers.”

Now they started to talk, though still reluctantly. It’s the fishmonger who sells them the dynamite. He’s also the one who sells them the gas for the boats so they can go further out to sea where there’s still fish. It costs 5 pesos for one trip, but most of the people don’t have that much. The fishmonger loaned them the money but wanted 8 pesos in return.

“Bastard,” John said. “That’s sixty percent interest.”

Most of the fishermen had debts, debts that kept on growing. Somehow, they said sadly, they never managed to repay them. There were still a few places, secret spots far out in the ocean, actually too far out for the small boats, where decent amounts of fish could still be caught. Sometimes they could even catch a lapu-lapu, one of the finest fish in the Philippines an it brought in good money, but even when this happened it only meant that the fishmonger would strike out one number and replace it with another in his black account book, and the fisherman had to ask for yet another loan to buy rice.

“How many fishmongers are there?” asked John.

In Tuay there was only the one, Joseph Balabagan was his name. No one could afford to get on his bad side.

“So he’s the one who sets the prices,” John nodded, “and the fishermen have no other choice but to go along. They’re stuck with him.”

The man with the hook instead of a right hand explained that he tried to pay his debts. He went far out into the ocean at first light and worked until the evening, until it was too dark to see, until he almost collapsed from exhaustion. He took off the hook assembly and stretched out his right arm, which was haggard, covered with scars, and had a gruesome looking stub at the end. It had happened one particular evening. He was so tired that he could hardly keep his eyes open and that’s when he miscalculated and released the dynamite a bit too late. “My nice hand,” he said in English with a heavy accent, and although he smiled, like the villagers always smiled, there were tears glistening at the corners of his eyes.

John looked at him, touched. He couldn’t imagine what it would be to lose a hand. “How do you make a living now?” he asked gently.

The fisherman lowered his eyes and stared at the mat upon which they all sat. His mouth went taught suddenly. “His daughter sends money. She’s working as a nursemaid in Hong Kong,” Benigno translated.

“As a nursemaid?” John wondered.

Benigno cleared his throat embarrassed. “That probably means as a prostitute,” he explained in a low tone.

“Oh.” John looked at the people, the brown-skinned invalids who sat around him with gentle smiles and sad eyes. His imagination saw, as if in a feverish hallucination, the whole misery of violence, wretchedness, misuse, and suffering of their existence, a gaping sore of blood and pain. It lasted only a short terrible moment, but he suddenly shuddered at the sight of the palm trees, the sea, and the village that had at first looked so idyllic. The tropical setting suddenly seemed more like a disguise for a terrible secret, like flowers on a mass grave.

“How much is a peso worth in US dollars, by the way?” he asked Benigno.

“About two cents.”

“Two cents!?” He handed out the rest of the money he brought with him to the people, got up and gestured to Marco. “Call the Prophecy. I want the four-by-four unloaded. I want to go to Tuay.”

The first group of fishermen was returning with the meager morning catch as the four-wheel-drive was brought ashore. They pulled their boats up on the beach and watched as the big, pristine vehicle was carefully driven over metal ramps off the motorboat.

Patricia DeBeers had come along too. “I don’t want to let you have all the fun,” she told John.

“Your hair may not ever be the same,” he replied.

“Dirt can be washed out, but boredom can’t.”

The narrow road to Tuay was covered with white gravel and the vehicle was dusty in no time. They drove past splendid palm trees and muddy waterholes accompanied by swarms of insects and the sound of crickets, cicadas and singing birds. They reached Tuay just over a half hour later.

The place looked like it had been built by Spanish conquistadors and had not changed since. There was a church, angular and pale brown, that rose up higher then other structures around it. The narrow paths between the houses were barely wide enough for their vehicle to pass through. It smelled of fire, fish, and rotting garbage. They saw workers repairing shoes and others planing boards, and women sitting in front of cooking pots, and schoolchildren sitting in neat rows below palm thatched roofs listening to their teachers, and they saw a harbor, which surprised them. A handful of men were unloading brown sacks and cases of Coca Cola from a barge.

“Maybe the Prophecy could moor here,” Marco thought aloud. “Then we could just lift the vehicle back on board.”

“We’ll see, on the way back,” John said, unwilling to go along with the idea.

Joseph Balabagan was a well-nourished man of around fifty. He was dressed in shorts, a clean white polo shirt and a cap, and he was working on his moped in front of his house when they arrived. The two-wheeler didn’t want to cooperate they noticed, because they saw him kicking it and shouting cuss words.

As Marco brought the vehicle to a stop beside him he glanced at them involuntarily and bellowed, “I no time!”

“We need to talk,” John told him.

The fishmonger gave the moped another kick. “I say I no time,” he shouted. “You have bad hearing?”

A shrill woman’s voice shouted for him from within the dark house, at which he angrily shouted something back, which contained a lot of “oo” and “oho” sounds. Then he kicked the moped’s kick-starter, again and again, but with no success.

John told Marco to turn the engine off. Two little girls came out of the store behind the fishmonger. You could see a bunch of wooden boxes inside the house filled with fish bedded on ice. There was smell of fish and salt in the air, mixed with the stench of exhaust gases.

“We want to talk to you about your business practices,” John explained to him doggedly. “And about the type of loans you give the fishermen, and about…”

At this moment there was a screech from within the house that made their blood curdle. A woman screamed in excruciating pain.

“Go away!” Balabagan shouted at John. “You hear me? I no time now!”

John stared at him and at the shabby house, heard the screams reverberating in his memory. Clueless, he looked to the others.

“John,” Patricia slid through the gap between the front seats, “ask him if his wife needs to go to a hospital.”

“Why?”

“The screams. Only a woman giving birth screams like that.”

Moments later they were on their way to Lomiao, the nearest town with a hospital. Marco drove as fast as the bad roads allowed. John and Benigno were squashed together on the front passenger seat, while Patricia and the Balabagan couple were in the back. The woman was bathed in sweat and barely conscious, she moaned and panted and had a belly so big she could’ve filled the rear seat on her own. The potholes and uneven road surface must have been hell on her.

After about fifteen miles they passed by the first few houses on the outskirts of Lomiao. The town looked rough. There were many huts with corrugated sheet metal roofs and walls, and the streets were full of people, gaudy billboards, bicycles, and mopeds. Balabagan leaned forward and told them which way to go until they got to a building that was clearly the hospital.

The fishmonger ran into the emergency room, his wife lying deathly pale on the back seat with her hands on her belly, and kept whispering something that sounded like prayers. She looked half-dead. Patricia held her head, and they all looked impatiently at the hospital’s double doors expecting doctors and nurses to rush out any second.

“Finally,” Marco said as the door wings started to move, but it was only the frustrated Balabagan.

He came over and stammered about not having enough money. “They not want take her … I must pay them …”

John reached into his pocket. “How much do you need?”

“They want six hundred and fifty pesos … I only five hundred have …”

“Here, ten dollars. Do they take dollars?”

“I not know. I ask.” The man was shaking as he went back inside. But the hospital accepted dollars. Two nurses rushed out with a gurney and helped lift the pregnant woman out of the vehicle.

Hospitals seemed to look the same all over the world, John thought. They had parked the car in a parking lot earlier and had been waiting in the lobby for some time now. They were hoping to either have Balabagan come out soon or get some kind of news what was going on.

John said to Patricia, “I was wondering how you knew what a woman sounds like giving birth.”

She raised her brows in amusement, the same ones that were in every fashion magazine in the world. “Why?”

“You just didn’t seem the type of woman to know that sort of thing.”

“What type of woman do I look like?”

“Well, like someone who’s above such things.”

She sighed. “You don’t really think that DeBeers is my real name, do you? My name is Patricia Miller, and I grew up in Maine, the dreariest place. I have four younger sisters who were all born at home, all during the winter and at night, and all before the midwife arrived. I try to avoid such things these days, but I’m not ignorant of them, or above them.”

“Oh,” John said, feeling terribly stupid.

After some time a somewhat embarrassed Balabagan came out, twisting his New York Yankees cap in his hands. “I sorry for be so unkind,” he told them. “Heaven you send me, I know now.” He bit his lips. He made an awkward gesture with his right arm, like he was throwing something away. “That moped! It drive me crazy! Always when I need, it not work. I should throw away. Yes, really, I should.”

“How is your wife doing?” Patricia asked.

“Better, they say. It no time yet … three days they say, say I should go home …”

John felt a mixture of both satisfaction and frustration. Satisfied, because they were obviously of great help to a desperate woman, and frustrated, because the woman’s husband was the man they were looking for, and didn’t appear to be the type of person he thought he might be, according to what he heard from the villagers. Balabagan was not the answer to his question. He might be taking advantage of the fishermen, but he was also only a small link in the food chain. They were one layer closer to the center of the spider web, but they hadn’t found the spider yet.

John asked the fishmonger to sit down. He told him what they had learned about dynamite fishing by the Panglawan, and about the loans he gave the fishermen. While John spoke Joseph Balabagan went quiet and when the word “dynamite” was mentioned, he looked around with anxious eyes.

“Listen me,” he said in a low tone of voice, “what you want from me? I only trying to provide for my family. Have to I charge eight pesos for loans, because most fishing men not can pay back anyway. What else I do? I not can give money away … I not can pay more for fish because I not can make profit. Oh, I many times buy their fish … really are not fish; I put them in ice and hope fish factory not notice. But they see many times and they my money pay less. Who will replace money for me? No one. You see you self I’m no rich. Would I have broken moped if I rich? Would I have ask you money for hospital?”

“Where does the dynamite come from?” Benigno asked.

Balabagan shrugged his shoulders. “I get from policeman. I have pay him and his boss too. I not much money after that. I sell dynamite to fishing men who want. They want because they want catch more fish, that how is here. Everyone want more money.”

“Do you know what dynamite does to the coral?” the government representative hissed. “And what it does to the fishing grounds?”

“You not can eat coral reefs,” Balabagan said and lifted his hands helplessly. “If I not sell dynamite … other will.”

“This fish factory,” John interjected “where is it?”

“San Carlos. Pay same money as ten years ago and everything more expensive. But who I sell fish then? When I catch lapu-lapu I sell restaurant here in Lomiao, but they not want all other fish. I not nothing can do.” He shook his head. “I see must how I pay back money. No one body give me money, and bank less even.”

John looked astonished. “The bank? Which bank?”

“Bank in Lomiao. They not patient with me as I patient with fishing men. You believe me that.”

“And what rates do you pay them?”

The fishmonger looked at John unsure. “Rates I do,” he said hesitantly.

“For loans?”

“Yes, why else pay bank?”

“And what kind of loans?”

The man looked like he was about to get up and leave. Even Benigno took a deep breath. Filipinos don’t like to be asked such direct questions; John had learned that already. But he wasn’t going to give up. He stared at the fishmonger, until the man gave in.

“It is always something,” he said in a low tone of voice. “When ice machine was paid it went broke and I no money to fix. I then buy must a gas tank for pump … Always something.” He grimaced. “I not can pay hardly money lately. Now I money owe.”

John opened his hands wide and said, “I’ll pay them, as a gift to you and your wife.” He was thinking about the fish factory. Maybe it was the next link in a chain of exploitation. Maybe they did the same thing as Balabagan: take advantage of their monopoly so the fishermen could not sell their fish to anyone else while at the same time paying the lowest possible prices and earning the most money. “You know,” Balabagan said, “I think twenty-seven percent too much.”

“What did you say?” John asked, his mind having drifted for a moment. “Twenty-seven percent?”

“You say me I eight pesos take for five pesos loan. This sixty percent. From me bank take twenty-seven and want security … it too much … no?”

John looked at him in disbelief. “Twenty-seven percent”? he asked again to make sure he understood correctly. “The bank here demands twenty-seven percent interest?”

“Yes.”

John let the formulas he had learned what seemed like an eternity ago run through his head; 27 percent meant that the amount to repay would double every two years — approximately.

“How can you ever to repay that?”

“I ask me too. Ice machine I pay fourteen percent — I pay back.”

“But twenty-seven percent? Why did you even do that?”

“What I do? Ice machine broke … no ice machine, no make business with fish.”

“Go to another bank.”

“Other banks not give me money.”

John nodded slowly. This looked like a hot lead. He felt his frustration replaced by anger. He asked himself what he would do if he found the center of this ruthless intimidation and merciless coercion, the spider in its web, the end of the chain, the boss of bosses, the top predator.

He wondered if he could control himself if and when he did!

“There we go,” Ursula Valen whispered. In the dusty stillness of the library her voice sounded like a bombshell.

The outgoing registry turned out to be just what she was looking for. In 1969 the entire collection of documents was transferred to the Institute of History at the university where they were used for a dissertation, which was never finished. The documents remained there for around a year and a half before they were put into storage in the university’s library. They were in a special part of the library, reserved for original historical tomes and documents and which can be entered only with a special permit. It took Alberto Vacchi just one phone call to get the special permit.

Unimaginable treasures were stored in here; manuscripts from the Middle Ages, ancient bibles, letters, diaries of historic personalities, and the list went on and on. She could not help herself from peering into the gray, thick-walled cardboard archive boxes. In one she stumbled upon a letter from Mussolini, written in large fancy handwriting. Naturally she could not read a single word, but it still looked interesting, whatever she thought of the author.

She finally found the correct box with the right registry number, pulled it out of the shelf, and brought it over to the reading table, which was also an antique. She slipped on the required protective white cotton gloves, held her breath as she opened the box, took out the first sheet, and immediately recognized the handwriting. It even had the notes in the margins like the account books. This was it: these were the personal documents of Giacomo Fontanelli, merchant in Florence during the fifteenth century.

Altogether it was quite a lot of written material for a man of the Middle Ages, Ursula thought as she went through the pages. They were loose leafs and in good shape — and quite legible. At least they would have been legible if she had the skill to read medieval Italian. Almost all the manuscripts were dated and most of them were from 1521. A few of the papers were formatted differently and had different handwriting, perhaps letters which Fontanelli had kept.

She stopped at one particular document. Very strange: the entire letter contained rows of numbers, and only at the end were there two sentences of normal text. She held the document closer to the reading lamp and studied the numbers.

1525   300     12

1526   312     12½

1527   324½  13

Et cetera …

She felt a wave of warmth when she realized what she had in her hands. The first column listed the years, the second was the assets, and the third was the difference between the second column and the following one, the yield of the assets. She did the math in her notebook, using a hypothetical interest value of four percent. Her eyes ran down the columns and she was just as amazed at what she saw as she had been when she first read the same calculations in the newspapers and learnt how the Fontanelli assets grew: very, very slowly at first, then gradually increasing until it reached astounding rates of return. It took more than a quarter of a century, until the 1556, before the three hundred florins grew to more than a thousand. It reached over a million for the first time in 1732, and in 1908 over one billion, and finally to more than thirty billion florins in 1995 — which when converted, came to one trillion dollars

What she had found here were the calculations predicting the amount that the original three hundred florins would reach over 500 years.

But this had not been done by Giacomo Fontanelli.

“Fabiana?” She turned around to look for the young history student there to assist Ursula with any translations.

Fabiana had gorgeous black hair all the way down to the small of her back, with a somewhat pasty complexion, but a great figure. Ursula found her sitting by the index card cabinets deeply involved in painting her nails.

“Ciao, Ursula,” she beamed as she came over. “Did you find something?”

Ursula placed the last page before her on the table and pointed at the text below the calculations. “What does this say?”

Fabiana leaned forward, blowing her nails above the almost five-hundred-year-old document and studied the thin scraggly writing. “That says, hmm …” She frowned and held her breath. “I would say it means, ‘You see now how through the laws of math my work will acquire immortality,’ that’s an odd sentence. Isn’t it?” She read it once more. “Yes, that’s what it says. Signed Jacopo.”

“What?” Ursula felt an electric jolt run through her. She took a closer look. At first glance the signature looked nothing more than an illegible scrawl, but now that Fabiana said so … “Jacopo?”

“That’s what it says,” the girl said unimpressed.

“I think,” Ursula said to herself, “I need to sit down.”

John saw the banker’s eyes twinkle when he told him his name. Obviously, he knew him from the news, recognized the name, and was trying not to appear overly impressed.

“My pleasure,” he said and introduced himself, with the tag on his jacket — Labarientos. He gestured for John and Balabagan to sit in the two chairs in front of his desk. “Please, what can I do for you?”

It was a small bank, and the interior was pleasantly air-conditioned. There were hardly any customers inside. John thought, after having seen all sorts of swank and splendor in countless other banks, that this one was rather spartan, almost cheap. Balabagan sat meekly, his head bowed on the edge of his chair.

John really didn’t know how best to proceed to uncover the network of machinations involved here. On the way there he contemplated to simply buying the bank so he could take a look into their books without any hassles. But he decided that this option was always open and that he would try to talk it through first.

He leaned far back and crossed his legs, his hands relaxed in his lap, just like McCaine had taught him, to give the appearance of being important and impressive during talks. He said, “I would like to know what made you charge Mr. Balabagan an interest rate of twenty-seven percent.”

Now Mr. Labarientos blinked his eyes nervously and answered hesitantly, “It is not part of our business practice to discuss credit issues of our customers with total strangers.”

John nodded. “I can believe that. Especially considering the loan sharking you’re involved in. But I suggest you ask your client if it’s okay with him.”

The fishmonger nodded hastily to avoid being spoken to.

“Very well then,” the banker said and looked at his computer, pushed a few buttons and waited. It took some time, but finally the data appeared on his screen. “Ten years ago we gave Mr. Balabagan a loan to pay off other outstanding loans. Do you need the exact amounts?”

“What interests me is the twenty-seven percent interest rate. Is that the rate you charge him?”

“That is correct.”

John leaned forward. “I would like to know another thing: how much has Mr. Balabagan already repaid? Approximately.”

Labarientos looked unsure at the fishmonger, and tapped around on his keyboard. He hesitated before answering. “Mr. Balabagan has asked for a deferment of payments several times, and asked for a reduction of interest rate eight years ago. We agreed to his request, but as you can imagine the payments were delayed.”

John felt anger starting to boil. “Spit it out. How much of the principal has he paid off? Two percent, one percent … nothing?”

Now sweat beads formed on the banker’s upper lip. “Indeed,” he mumbled, “it’s the last that is true.”

“What means that?” Balabagan asked suspiciously.

“This means that you have paid only interest on the loan over the past ten years, without your debts being reduced by even a single peso,” John said brutally. He was getting angry. He felt like beating the fat little man out of his nice blue suit.

“What?” the fishmonger cried out as he sprang up from his chair. “But … why? I pay, and I pay much, pay, pay, pay.”

“Not enough,” John said shaking his head.

“How go on? I pay all life long? Pay, pay, pay?”

Labarientos made a stone-faced expression. “No,” he said, “the loan runs twenty-five years. When the time is up it must be either paid-off or we must foreclose.”

John explained to him. “This means that when you can’t repay what’s left of the loan plus the interest all at once in fifteen years, the bank will take away your house or whatever else you used for collateral.”

Mr. Balabagan shouted, “How I do? How I do? Where I get all money all one time? My house? My son get house and business. What bank want do with fish business?”

“They might rent it to your son,” John said. He started to understand how this game was being played. He leaned forward again, looked the banker dead in the eyes, trying to keep his anger from exploding, and said: “Mr. Labarientos, how dare you, how dare your bank charge such a horrendous interest rate? Tell me. Tell me if this is normal business practice here.”

Tip-tap-tippity-tap. He tipped around on his keyboard. It looked like he was trying to play for time. “It was a loan,” he explained cautiously, “that was granted for a set rate during a high interest period. The loan had bad guarantees, which was risky for the bank. It is absolutely normal to charge extra when the bank takes on increased risk.”

“Is that all?” John asked. He was thinking of the dynamite fishermen and their lost limbs, the man hanging in a sack, the daughter who went to Hong Kong to sell her body for money for her family. “Is that all that matters? The risk for the bank?”

Labarientos looked at John, licked his lips nervously, and folded his hands on the desk. “As a bank,” he said not being intimidated, “we are responsible for our depositors. You, for instance, Mr. Fontanelli, yours is one of the largest accounts we have. You have entrusted us with many millions of pesos. I’m sure you don’t want us to lose this money, and you want interest for this money. True? This is what we are doing here. We earn your interest.”

John’s face burned with shame on the way back to his yacht. He thought he might be the first person ever to suffer facial burns from embarrassment. He leaned against the door on the back seat, an arm over his face, and felt sick to his stomach. He should have known all along. It was so plain the whole time, so clear. It was so obvious.

Question: How does money grow? Answer: It doesn’t.

What idiocy it was to believe anything else.

But yet it is preached to us from childhood. It was like a mantra and preached more fervently than a prayer. Money grows in your savings account. That was what we were all told. It was on ads, and parents, teachers and friends all said the same thing: Put your money in the bank and it will grow. Even Paul, the clever Paul Siegel who had finished Harvard with summa cum laude and was more intelligent than most people John knew, said the same thing: let your money work for you.

But money doesn’t work — people work.

How different it could be: What stopped enough money from being printed to make everyone a millionaire? Nothing. Except, there would be no one there to bake your breakfast waffles. No one to plant, harvest, and grind the wheat for your bread. No one to do any of that. Money doesn’t work, only people work. And money doesn’t reproduce. Each dollar, each cent that your account grows came from someone else’s labor. Someone who has debts and has to repay them and the interest on them.

Debts and interest were a giant cunning mechanism to move money from those that have little to those that have a lot. It was a transfer that occurred in very small doses that didn’t harm most people and calculated with absolute mathematical precision. That’s how his fortune came about, except for the original capital from which it all began. The ridiculous ten thousand dollars turned into one trillion through the work of many, many, many people over the course of five centuries.

John saw before his eyes a tremendously large web, a circulatory system, which had large veins leading to medium veins to smaller ones to tiny veins, and then into minute, hair-like capillaries that stretched to every corner of the earth, to every country, every city, every village, and the life of every individual who lived on earth. But it wasn’t blood that flowed in this system but money: cents and fractions of cents moving in the capillaries flowing together into quarters in the small veins, then dollars, then a hundred thousand dollars, a million until it was a huge amount of money flowing through the large veins and still growing as it flowed towards his accounts, forty billion dollars a year, over a hundred million each and every day.

He followed the spider’s web to find the spider in the mirror. He had followed the food chain and found himself at the top. He was the boss of bosses. He was the top predator. He was the heir to the Fontanelli fortune and had believed himself the solution to the world’s problems. In reality, he was the cause of it.

“Stop the car,” he ordered.

The vehicle stopped, he spilled out of the door and vomited into a ditch by the side of the road as if he had to get rid of everything he had eaten over the past two years.

$34,000,000,000,000

THEY SOMEHOW GOT him back on board the ship. Somehow he survived the night and the next morning. But he wanted to go back to the island because there was still something to be done.

He was taken to Tuay with the motorboat, where the four-by-four was still parked. They asked him if it was still needed on land and he said no, it could be loaded back on board. They said the Prophecy was too big to be moored here and he only nodded. Everything inside him hurt. It was too big a cross for one man to bear. While they went to work to get the vehicle back on board the yacht, he made his way up the road with heavy feet.

The road was nothing more than compacted dirt with a few stones in it, and it led to the market square, which was at least asphalted. He stared at the oversized church. He felt as if there were a scream stuck in his throat. He went over to the fishmonger’s house.

Joseph Balabagan was sitting on a box watching a young man working on the moped’s engine. When he saw John he sprang up and went over to him. He told him he had called the hospital and his wife was doing well. He wanted to visit her this evening, by bus if the moped wasn’t fixed by then. He thanked John for all he had done. John went with him, nodded to the youth who gave him a friendly smile, his fingers black from engine crud. The fishmonger told one of his daughters to get some glasses while he got two bottles of Coke from the ice chest. John sat down on the chair he was offered and pulled out his checkbook and pen, which, although it didn’t look like it, cost more than everything the fishmonger owned.

“How big are your debts?” he asked Balabagan.

Balabagan’s eyes widened. “Oh no,” he uttered. “That … I not can take …”

John looked at him and felt deaf, mute and wounded. He said, “Mr. Balabagan, I am the richest man in the world. You helped me, now I want to help you. You need help, because you will never be able to repay the debt on your own. So, how big are your debts?”

The fishmonger stared straight ahead. He was thinking hard, until one side of him won over the other — perhaps it was the instinct to survive. He told John the amount and John wrote double that without making an effort to convert it into dollars. He tore the check from the book and gave it to him. “It would be good if you would not sell dynamite anymore,” he said.

“But…”

“Farewell,” John said and got up. “Give my greetings to your wife. Thanks for the Coke.”

John went away. It still smelled of smoke and the western skies were filled with a gray colored veil from forests burning in Indonesia. Fires set by people who also worked for him, his subjects, who knew nothing about him personally. It was like this all over the world, men and women everywhere were toiling, sweating, and grunting under their own burdens. They did dangerous work, or difficult work, or boring work, without knowing that they were doing it for his benefit, to assure the steady growth of his fortune, to make him wealthier and wealthier without him lifting a single finger.

What became painfully clear to him this morning was that it wasn’t only his subjects, his serfs, his slaves who had debts. No, the machinery of money was far cleverer than that. He and Marvin had to pay rent to Mrs. Pearson, the house owner, but she could not really keep the money, because she had to pass it on to the bank to repay the loan she had taken to buy the house. The cost of capital it was called, which he saw in countless calculations without thinking about it. With each product you buy you help pay off the manufacturer’s debts. A huge part of the taxes we pay goes to pay down interest incurred by the national debt. And whichever path it may have taken, this money ended up in his accounts. Well, not all, but more and more of it. The bigger the corporation, the more it sucked in, like a black hole getting stronger as it grows. Just as McCaine said, the whole world could belong to him one day.

John stopped. He peered across the bay at the landscape that looked like paradise but smelled of smoke and garbage. In the end wasn’t he and all his money at fault for the crises? Would things have developed differently if this monstrous fortune did not have such a voracious appetite for returns? Like a Moloch demanding sacrifices from the entire world until there was not enough left over for man and nature? And if it was as he feared, he’d need to run the numbers to make sure he was right. Maybe the way to fulfill the prophecy was to lose the fortune?

What an idea? What a paradox? Yet maybe it was the logical conclusion. No wonder the Vacchis never figured out what the solution was. The destruction of the fortune would banish an interest-hungry trillion dollar monster from the world. Was that it? Was this the answer?

In his imagination he saw a large piece of ground before him, a vast piece of land, maybe in a desert somewhere in the US. They would need to build roads. Spectators would want to come to watch. One trillion dollars in real money, in bills; how many truck-loads could that be? Quite a few for sure. What a sight that would be. It would be a scene that would go down in history, truck after truck dumping money, masses of bundled bills piled into a huge heap, larger than the world had ever seen. Armed guards would be needed. He would make a short speech; explain what he had discovered and why it was good to destroy the money. He would take a torch and jab it into the mountain of Benjamin Franklins and George Washingtons and together with the spectators he would watch with gruesome relief as the largest fortune that had ever existed went up in smoke, to would be burnt into ash — ash that would rain down miles away.

John blinked and rubbed his forehead. He was back … somewhere on the main street of Tuay. People were looking at him with odd expressions on their faces.

There was something wrong with the image he had conjured up, exciting as it was. He was seeking a solution like searching for a hole in a tooth with his tongue. He remembered a visit to a central bank. He could not remember in which country it was, but he and McCaine had stood behind a window of bullet-proof glass, watching employees sorting through old money bills and throwing them into a large shredder, and replacing them with fresh ones. Was a bank note the same as money? Could he destroy his fortune by cashing in all his bank accounts and burning the cash? He would be breaking the law in many countries, he remembered. In many places it was forbidden to destroy money printed with monarchs and national symbols. But apart from that, what would prevent the central banks from simply printing more bills to replace the destroyed ones? After all, it was only special paper. And while he was at it, why make such an effort with the trucks? He could ask the Federal Reserve Bank to print a trillion dollar bill just for him. He could burn it in an ashtray in the comfort of his home. Maybe it would even be as simple as writing a check! The point was simply to get his accounts down to zero. He could have the cash paid out or write a check, they were nothing but vouchers. In this case the books were balanced and all was valid. Or he could have all his assets transferred to his own bank, then go to the computer operator, and say, “Here, take this account — delete it and write a bunch of zeros.” Then the fortune would be destroyed too, wouldn’t it?

John shook his head, ran his fingers through his hair and brushed it away from his face. If money could be destroyed so easily, what was to prevent it being created just as easily? One could just as easily write any number into the same account, like one hundred trillion or a hundred quadrillion. But was that money too? And if not, why not? What was money?

Deep in thought, his feet carried him along unseeingly until he got to a place where a tree provided a bit of shade. He sat down and stared out over the blue sea at the shiny white yacht out there without really seeing it.

Money. Suppose people could not only destroy their own money but all the money on earth. What then? What would happen? Would people be helpless, be forced to develop a new kind of economy without money, go back to bartering?

Not likely. His father would write vouchers for a pair of shoes, go to the bakery, and trade it for a loaf of bread and vouchers for more bread to cover the cost of the shoes, and the price would be guided by the values they had before money’s destruction. People would re-create money again, in some way and some form.

That was it: Money is a human invention. And getting rid of it was as difficult as getting rid of nuclear weapons.

“Hello, Mr. Fontanelli?”

Startled, John stood up. A youth stood before him, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, looking at him curiously with bright, alert eyes. He seemed worried.

“What?” he looked around; he was sitting on a dirty yellow plastic box, like those used to transport vegetables. “Is this your box? Sorry. I hope I didn’t break it…”

“No, sir, Mr. Fontanelli,” the youth said with a waving hand. “That’s not my box. I just saw you sitting here and, well … I wanted to talk to you.” He reached out to shake John’s hand and smiled broadly. “My name is Manuel Melgar, sir. I’m honored to meet you.”

“Well, if you say so…” John shook his hand and looked at him. Manuel was slim, almost wiry, had black hair combed to one side, wore a clean pair of jeans that were clearly his pride and joy, and a blue tee-shirt with Bon Jovi, Keep the Faith printed on it. John had to grin when he read the shirt; a grin that made his heart ache. “Hello, Manuel. How are you?”

“Thank you, I’m well, sir,” he said proudly. Although he just stood there, there was something agile about him, as if he wasn’t used to standing still for very long.

“Nice to hear.”

Manuel rubbed his nose and seemed to be thinking. “Sir, do you have one minute? I thought of an idea and want to know what you think about it.” He looked nervous. “I apologize if I’m distracting you from whatever was on your mind. I thought, as long as you here…”

“It’s all right,” John said nodding. Keep the faith. “I have time.”

Manuel smiled, partly with anxiety, partly with enthusiasm. “Well, I notice that many fish the fishermen catch go bad before they are sold, at least a quarter of them, maybe even a third. The reason is it that it is a long way to the fishmongers. Most of the fishermen leave the morning after they get back to land, but by then the fish have been lying around all night. No wonder many go bad.”

John nodded. “Makes sense.”

“If someone bought a tricycle…”

“Sorry, but what sort of tricycle are you talking about?”

“A motorcycle with three wheels. Okay, maybe even a motorcycle with sidecar. You were in Lomiao yesterday — a lot are there as taxi cabs.”

John asked himself how the youth knew that he was in Lomiao the day before, and nodded. Yes, he remembered seeing a bunch of the multi-colored things rolling around, covered with stickers and a bunch of unnecessary lights. “They are called tricycles? I didn’t know that.”

“We call them that. I not know what called in other places.”

“I’m not sure they exist anywhere else.”

Manuel looked confused — out of his comfort zone for a moment. Then he continued. “I could buy tricycle — a used one. It a good deal. I would convert so I put ice into it. A friend help me that work in repair shop in Lomiao. With it I could drive around all fishing villages and pick up fish when they are still fresh. That will cost me some gas, but it still worth it, because not much fish would get spoiled. I did precise calculation.” He looked at John expectantly. “Do you think it good business idea, Mr. Fontanelli?”

John looked at the youth puzzled. “Sounds pretty good, yes. Where do you get the ice from?”

“From Mr. Balabagan. He would like me get fish for him and would give me ice for nothing, but I not going to fall for that.”

“Why not?”

Manuel grinned smartly. “You have stay independent if you want success. If I drive for him, I still drive for him in ten years too, and he make all profits. No, I buy fish from fishermen, and I sell to Mr. Balabagan. I buy ice from him too, and soon as I can, I buy ice machine for tricycle.”

“But it’s riskier that way.

“Others lose money playing dice. I rather gamble this way. Besides, there other fishmongers along coast, and I want sell fish to best bidder. When a fishmonger has only few fish before pick-up appointment, it be worth it for him to pay little more, because he get better price too the more he has.”

“Well thought-out.” John was impressed.

“And when I go to villages anyhow, I be able to make more business,” he said proudly. “I take oil and rice with me and sell for same price they pay at market. But I buy it at Lomiao, because it cheaper there at large market. This way I make more profit.” He folded his hands and looked expectantly to John. “This sound good to you, yes?”

That wasn’t only good, but he found himself feeling jealous of the young man’s sense of business. He could already imagine the lively boy cruising through the villages with his colorful tricycle. “That is a very good plan,” he admitted.

“It is, yes! Everyone get something from it. If one third of fish go bad now and later not, that be improvement of fifty percent without it cost more to anyone than it now.” He was beaming with joy, and then he added without getting a touch too cunning: “Mr. Fontanelli, sir, could you maybe support this plan with loan?”

John flinched. He almost had to grab his chest. “A loan?” he uttered. I don’t give loans anymore. I don’t want to suck all of humanity dry like a vampire.

“Yes. You see, sir,” he said, going into complaining and begging. “Bank not give me loan. I have nothing, my parents poor too. I have nothing to give. I have only idea. You are wealthy. I think you can spare hundred dollars for while … You get back, with interest and compound interest. I promise.”

John looked at the youth and still felt sick and miserable, but yes, he had to admit the youth’s idea was good. It was exactly what needed to be done here, and this boy was ready and willing to do it. And there were no doubts that he had the smarts to do it well too. John pulled out his check book. “How much do you need?”

His eyes lit up, his hands danced as they presented the numbers that he probably had going through his head over and over again. “Okay, tricycle costs hundred and fifty dollars, and to rebuild maybe fifty. And money for first trip and ice and some to pay fishermen …”

“I’ll give you a thousand,” John said and wrote “Manuel Melgar” on the “Pay to the order of” line of the check.

“No, sir,” he said. “That nice of you, but I not can pay interest on so much money.”

“You don’t need to pay interest. I’m giving you the money.”

He reeled back some. “Excuse me, sir, Mr. Fontanelli. I not want that. No.”

“I can afford it. Believe me.”

“That not point. Point … is!” He slapped his chest. “Sir, when … when I old one day I want say I did it all my own. You understand? I have everything to thank for is my idea — my work, and not from handout.” He shook his head again. “It not be any fun this way. Please, sir, three hundred dollars … a loan … business deal.”

John saw him standing there full of energy and determination and wished he himself had more of both. Keep the faith — right. “All right, if you wish,” he said nodding. “We’ll make a business deal then. Three hundred dollars?”

“Three hundred dollars.”

“How many pesos is that?”

“I’d want dollars, sir.”

“No problem.” He filled out the check and handed it to the youth who took it with such glee that John felt jealous. What did it matter if they called it a loan?

Manuel put the check carefully into his pants pocket. “Now all I need is your card.”

“My card?”

“Your business card … with your address. So I know where to send my payments.”

“I see.” John went through his pockets and gave him one. Maybe he’ll show it to his children one day. In time he’ll find out that it won’t matter if he pays back the money or not — it’ll be hard enough as it is.

The young man was very happy, said thanks many times, wished John well, said thanks again, and then went away with his check. John stood up, patted the dust from his pants and walked to the harbor where the motorboat was waiting.

“I’m leaving,” Patricia DeBeers told John when he came back aboard the yacht. She was sitting on one of the cream-white sofas in the salon, magazines and coffee cups scattered all around her, and was waving a letter in the air. “I got this today — it’s an invitation to a casting in Hollywood; I’ve been waiting for this for some time.”

“Congrats,” John simply said.

“I asked the captain to fly me to Cebu with the helicopter. Is that okay with you? My agency will get me a flight to LA from there.”

John dropped on a sofa. “I didn’t know that Cebu had an airport.”

“Macta Cebu International Airport. But I think the flight will make a stopover in Manila. It’s a good idea to get away from here anyhow. Did you hear about the fires in Malaysia and Indonesia? There was a report on TV a while ago. It’s terrible. In Kuala Lumpur it looks like the aftermath of a nuclear war. Everyone is wearing a mask, and the smoke is so dense that the high-rises can’t be seen; they can barely see the sun.”

John looked out the window; the western sky was oily-gray. It got worse every day. “Yeah,” he said, “I heard about it.”

The steward appeared. John asked him to bring his mail.

Patricia DeBeers looked contemplatively at the letter in her hand. “How does this work? How does the post office know so far ahead where to forward the mail?”

“The most common theory is that we accidently hired a psychic,” John told her as he took a stack of letters from the steward. A large brown envelope caught his attention right away. It was sent from Rome, but the name of the sender was unknown to him.

“A psychic … interesting. Would not it be better to have him work the stock market for you?”

“I don’t know. How would I get my mail then?” He ripped the envelope open with his index finger. Inside was a stack of papers stapled together and photocopies of documents written with a typewriter, Italian text. He also pulled out a letter, and was glad to see it written in English.

The large envelope was from the editor of the school newspaper Lorenzo had written for. The letter explained that the second part of the article had been found and that a copy was included in the package.

The young editor wrote:

Contrary to what we thought, the fault for the delay was not to the Italian post office. Lorenzo’s stuff had slipped behind one of our shelves. We discovered it there after a donation from a local department store allowed us to get new furniture. I’ve finished school in the meantime, but not without instructing my successor to look forward to the generous donation that you assured me when you got the stuff from Lorenzo.

Of course there wasn’t a single Italian dictionary on board, so John wrote down all the words he didn’t know or didn’t understand the context of and faxed the list to his secretariat, asking them to translate it for him. Then he went up deck to say good-bye to Patricia.

John got a good-bye kiss and Benigno got a handshake.

“What should I do?” Benigno shouted as the helicopter’s turbine whined. “I’m the seventh of eight children. If birth control had existed back then I would not exist today.”

“Great argument,” Patricia said. “I have a girlfriend who would not exist if her mom hadn’t been raped. I’ll ask you another time if you think rape is a good thing.” She got in and the chopper lifted off the deck and into the sky, half of it already full of smoky haze.

When John went below deck a fax message from his secretariat was already there. He took it, grabbed pen and paper, and went into his cabin.

In part one I pointed out that the world’s misery was not the fault of technology or science, but of industrialization, or the economy, to be more exact. But, although our standard of living is far higher now than even the richest potentates enjoyed during the Middle Ages, we still have only one thing in our minds: growth. More and more and more economic growth, using up the earth’s natural resources even quicker and piling the garbage dumps up even higher.

For what? That is the main question: Why is everyone working like crazy? One could say that humans are simply greedy and can’t ever get enough. This answer has the advantage of being simple — but the disadvantage of being wrong. Look around you and see how little most people are satisfied with. Fatty french-fries, beer, and football — that will do for most people. There may be a few gluttons around, but the majority is satisfied with so little that it is almost frightening.

No, take a closer look. It you still talk to your parents, ask them. They will tell you that they worked so hard because they had to. Because, no matter how much they worked, they felt they never earned enough to pay for everyday necessities. Even as incomes rise, expenditures rise faster: prices, taxes, fees, levies, postage — everything goes up. Like Alice in Wonderland, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay still.

And that, my friends, Romans, countrymen and women, is the fault of a stupid little defect in the design of things. A triviality, actually, but remember, this triviality is destroying our planet. Small causes, huge consequences.

The idea there is something wrong — that there is a mistake in the system has been troubling people for a long time. At first the fault was thought to be money. Boy, did they bitch about money. There’s hardly a religion or preacher that hasn’t damned it, but enjoyed seeing plenty of it when passing around the collection basket. But anyhow, friends, it’s not the money. We could discuss it for ever if there was enough space for it here in the paper or you were interested enough to read it all, but since we have neither, here is the bottom line: money is a great invention and it is innocent.

The next suspect would be interest. As you might remember from math class, calculating interest is not easy, and it may lead to fascinating results, because the compound interest added to the calculation makes it all much more complicated. Not many people really understand interest rates, but it is actually quite simple. When someone loans money to someone else he wants something for it. The best solution is for the borrower to pay a fee for borrowing the money. The fee is called interest. Sure, if someone borrows a lot it can get him into a tight spot if he hasn’t thought about it carefully beforehand. And someone who has a lot of money, more than he needs, can lend a lot and earn a lot of money doing it by earning a lot of interest. And if he has enough money, he might not have to do anything else for the rest of his life other than lend the money he doesn’t need to spend himself.

That was something our not so smart ancestors saw as a bad thing, or maybe they were just jealous. But at any rate, the ethics of interest payments have time and again been a bone of contention throughout history. At one time, Jews historically could charge interest while Christians could not. As a result, a number of ugly massacres happened. Even in fascist countries it was forbidden to charge interest, because it was seen as being immoral to earn money without working.

But despite the Church forbidding interest, interest continued to be paid, because people always needed to borrow money. One simply needs a large sum of money for certain things. It would be nonsense, for instance, to save your whole life just to build a house when you’re eighty. It is better to build it now and save later, so to speak, even if it ends up costing more. Or take someone who wants to start a business. He needs a shop and machines and tools to be able to get his business off the ground. So he borrows it and pays it back, bit by bit. If you forbade this, he would remain poor.

We’re getting warmer now. It is within this mesh of money and interest that the flaw in the design of things lurks. We will get there in a moment.

First, I wish to remind everyone reading this that money is an essential part of the way our world works. You buy a Coke in the store around the corner. The storeowner puts it into the cash register and then pays Coca-Cola. The company buys a new computer and pays it in part with the money from the storeowner, which came from you. Your dad works in this computer company, gets a share of the money from the soda company, and dad gives you your allowance. And so forth.

No doubt you all have played the famous board game Monopoly. In the start you have little money and carefully contemplate which streets you can afford to buy. Towards the end you have a lot of houses and hotels, and collect huge sums for rent and end swimming in money. Now here’s a question: Where did all this money come from? Take a close look. Except for a few small sums of money from one of the Chance or Community Chest cards, everyone that passes the “Via!” the “Go” box, gets the famous 20,000 liras. And now think about how it works in real life. Here too there is a certain amount of money available, and this amount can’t always be a constant. The economy grows — like crazy- so it needs more money. Where does it come from? Of course, it is no problem to print more money — that’s not the point. The question is: How does it get put into the game? I’ve never received a letter from the central bank telling me that it had once again become necessary to increase the amount of money in circulation and that each citizen will get 500,000 liras. I bet you didn’t either, or anyone else for that matter. But how does this work? How does new money find its way into the game? And don’t tell me you don’t care. You should, because here is the fault in our system.

What I’m about to explain is not something you will ever learn in school (we all know that nothing we learn in school will really help in life anyway), so pay attention. Anyone who doesn’t believe me can look this up in books on economy and finance. The key word is money creation.

Let’s assume that the above-mentioned cola company wants to build a new bottling facility. It applies for a loan from its bank. The money the bank lends will normally come from its depositors, but let’s assume that it’s a little short on cash due to having issued too many loans. In this case it’ll turn to the central bank. The central bank is allowed to loan money without relying on assets from customers as collateral. It can create money from nothing and put it into the game. Here, every bank can get extra money, but also, of course, only in form of a loan. This means it must have securities and pay interest, the so-called prime rate. It is what’s listed in the financial section of the paper every day. The prime rate is set by the central bank itself, using the following principles: If the central bank fears that more money is being loaned than is good for the economy, then it’ll raise the prime interest rate. The loans become more expensive and less money is borrowed. The other way around makes loans cheaper and more money is borrowed. The prime rate is a control mechanism for the economy.

Sounds easy, right? But this is the greatest nonsense there is! Millions of bankers learn this and still think it’s great, but when you think about it for a moment, you will find the mistake in our system is right here.

Let’s discuss what can happen. From out of nothing the central bank will grant a loan, of, let’s say a hundred million lira. The prime rate is fixed at three percent. If the loan is due to be repaid over one year (we’ll use one year for simplicity’s sake) then the total amount to be repaid will be three hundred and three million lira. But from where does the additional three million lira come from? They don’t really exist. And there is no way to invent it, because only the central bank can create money, and it wants interest for its loans! What nonsense!

Yes, naturally there is more money circulating around, and for this reason interest is being paid, but with the result that that money is missing somewhere else. And where money is missing, a loan has to be taken in the hope that it will be possible to repay it at a later period. The financial system is vast and complex. Lots of money is moved around, swapped, held up, but one thing remains constant: nothing is lost, not one single lousy lira. In the end it leads to one thing, sooner or later, another loan has to be taken from the central bank to repay the first one.

If the economy were a person, we would say he is addicted. The central bank has got him hooked.

There is another way. You remember our anniversary party at the school last year. Everyone got a red plastic chip for a piece of pizza, a blue chip for a Coke, and a green one for an ice cream. These chips were substituted for money for the duration of the festivities. I traded my green chip for a red one, because I don’t like ice cream. I saw a student who traded all of his for blue ones because he was thirsty. It all worked wonderfully and students got more or less what they wanted. And when the festivity was over our principal threw away all the chips because all the pizzas, ice cream, and Coke were gone. Now imagine that company that produced those chips had, instead of selling them, said here you have a thousand red chips, but for them we want a thousand and thirty chips in return. Not even our principal is so stupid that he would not have noticed that. No, what we experienced during the festivities without being aware of is a monetary system the way it should be. The money was used for the things available and when they were gone it also disappeared. It was only available for the reason money was ever invented in the first place: to simplify the exchange of goods. This way everyone was able to simply go home. It was not necessary to go chasing chips that no longer had any value.

Let’s get to the point. As a result of the fact that the central bank charges interest rate on newly created money, we end up with more debts than money to pay them. It is like the card game Old Maid, except that more and more Old Maids are being put into the game. And while each player must get rid of his Old Maid, it keeps getting more difficult to do because the number of Old Maids is growing. You have to work faster and harder, try to outdo the others, and you can’t be kind to anybody any more, you must squeeze out that last bit of effort. Everything speeds up in an endless and vicious circle.

Is it not this what we are seeing today? The economy grows and grows, oh what a miracle, oh what a wonder, yet everywhere austerity measures must still be put in place, jobs are getting scarce, everyone must work harder and has less time for himself and for his family, taxes go up, everyone has a feeling that everything is getting worse, even though everyone is working hard for it to get better. It’s not getting any better. The more effort we put in the more debts are created, and they are increasingly difficult — or even impossible — to repay. The more we try to escape this misery the worse we make it. The only way out of this spiral is to find someone who will foot the bill, someone far away, or maybe nature will do it! Let’s cut down another rain forest — it doesn’t cost anything and we’ll get paid for the wood to pay off our debts. Let’s get another product on the market that no one needs. We’ll convince the stupid people that they do need it, even if it’s only to be “in” for a short while. Let’s build it cheap so it doesn’t last, then when it breaks we can sell even more. Let’s get people’s money any way we can, so that at least we can pay our own debts. Let’s bury our toxic waste or sink it into the oceans because we can’t afford to dispose of it properly. Each and every one of us is in their own, fighting for themselves.

The worst bit is that debt is taboo, something not to be talked about. People don’t talk about their debts, as if they were signs of failure. They’d rather be exposed as sexual perverts than as being in debt. Officially, no one is in debt. Superficially, everyone is content. Nobody has financial problems, just like the Victorians pretended nobody had sex organs.

What can we do about it? The economy exists solely to supply people with the things they need. That won’t work without money, the lifeblood of the economy. But, this blood is diseased. It forces the economy to grow voraciously and it’s killing off the basic foundations of existence. If the economy were a living thing, we would say it had leukemia. That’s why whatever we try to do to save the world has no effect unless we first heal the monetary system. The defect in the system must be fixed.

The phone rang. John looked up and eventually realized his eyes were sore and tired. He glanced at the clock; it was a bit after one thirty in the morning. Goodness! A call at this time could mean only bad news. He answered it. “Fontanelli.”

“Eduardo Vacchi,” a voice said that he had not heard for ages. “Excuse me please. I was told that you are in the Philippines. Is it very late there?”

“Yes, but I was still up.”

“I’m calling because of grandfather,” Eduardo said. “He’s dying. He told me that he would like to see you one more time.”

$35,000,000,000,000

HIS CHARTER refueled in Bangkok, with another stopover in Karachi. He would reach Florence twenty-six hours later. Cristoforo Vacchi would have to live at least that long if he wanted to see the Padrone again.

At times John barely knew where he was. The flight was a change of pace from his usual private jet. All hell was breaking loose in Manila, in the city, and especially outside of it. It was unbelievable that aircraft could fly in the oily, black haze that covered the skies. But they heard that it was worse in other places: the airport in Kuala Lumpur was already closed, and Singapore was nearly as bad. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The hospitals here overfilled with people with eye and lung problems caused by the smog. A few had already died.

They finally took off and left the smog behind. It gradually stopped smelling like smoke inside the plane. John simply wanted to sit there and let his forehead rest against the window. The plane made a wide turn towards the west. From up here, in the brilliant light of the stratosphere, the smoke clouds looked even uglier, like an evil, black cauliflower stretching as far as the horizon … an atmospheric inflammation, rampant and abnormal.

His grandfather had liver cancer, Eduardo had told him. It was diagnosed a year and a half ago. It grew fairly slowly, as it often did in older people, and due to his age there wasn’t much that could be done about it. Now he was nearing his end … quickly. He begged John to hurry.

What sort of criticism would they heap on him? He could expect the Padrone to show no mercy now he was on this deathbed, he would give John a piece of his mind … tell him he had gone down the wrong path with McCaine, wasted precious time building up an empire that helped no one. That he, Cristoforo Vacchi, was deeply disappointed in him. That John was the wrong heir after all.

Lorenzo would have known what to do. That’s what went through John’s mind over and over again, like water drops from a Chinese water torture. The fact that the second part of his school newspaper article showed up seemed to him like a sneer of fate. Not only would John never have come up with such ideas on his own as Lorenzo had done, but he still didn’t fully understand what Lorenzo meant.

Lorenzo would have understood and taken action, he expected Cristoforo to tell him. Lorenzo would have been the true heir.

He shuddered at the thought of facing the old man. He could have made sure he arrived too late. Traveling half way around the globe wasn’t that simple a matter. No one could hold it against him.

It was a strange feeling to come back here, to look out the window and to read Peretola Aeroporto on the terminal building early in the morning, just like two and a half years ago. This was where it had all begun, his new life. Two and a half years. To him it seemed like an eternity, but then again it also felt like it was only yesterday.

It was a strange feeling to be picked up in the same Rolls Royce he rode in through Florence for the first time, and it took the same route, past the Ferrari dealership. But, it wasn’t Benito driving the car anymore. Eduardo told him about his stroke and shrugged his shoulders — that’s life. “How was your flight?” he asked.

“I could have done without the four and a half hour layover in Karachi,” John said. “Otherwise it was okay. I was glad to even get a flight at all.”

“I thought you would come with your private jet.”

“No, M — er…” McCaine needs it, he almost said. Better not. “I would have to have it come to fetch me, and that would not have been faster at all.”

Eduardo understood. “I see.”

He looked different from what John remembered. He looked more serious … no … more mature … grown-up. He wanted to ask him how he had been, but decided to put it off until later, maybe. “How, err … how is he doing?” he asked uneasily instead.

Eduardo looked out of the window. “He’s fading away. I don’t know how else to say it. Every morning we go in to see him, and … he is still there. Real peaceful, you know. He needs nothing … he’s peaceful. He smiles when he speaks but mostly he sleeps.”

“And it’s for sure that … I mean … there is nothing to be done … absolutely?”

“The doctor comes twice a day and adjusts the morphine pump so he’s in no pain. That is all that can be done.”

“I see.” He stared ahead. Marco sat beside the driver. He seemed to be enjoying talking in his mother tongue again. At least it seemed so through the partition window. “So it is only a matter of time.”

“The doctor says he is amazed he is hanging on. He says he has the feeling that grandfather is waiting on something.”

Me, John thought, and almost felt sick. He looked for the armored Mercedes, following them with the other bodyguards. They could not help him either now.

It was a strange feeling to step into the Vacchis’ house again … to look around and to see that nothing has changed. Had he ever left? How much time had really passed? He greeted them all with a somber expression.

“Go to him,” Alberto said in a solemn tone. “He’s waiting for you.”

There were no more hands to be shaken, so he no longer had a choice. He went upstairs, up the centuries-old steps. He walked down the hallway with the high ceilings; his heart was pounding and hands were shaking as he got closer to the door. The doorknob felt cool as he turned it. There was no turning back now.

The room was large, and quiet, and dark. You could smell that the room was thoroughly and regularly aired out, but there still was the hospital odor of disinfectant in the air. A giant four-poster bed stood at the end of the room with the curtains tied back. There was also an IV stand with a bag filled with a clear liquid and a rolled-up hose, waiting to be put to use. A metal trolley stood beside it with bandages, medication, and a bunch of other medical supplies.

In the bed, almost unrecognizable, was the Padrone, or what was left of him in this world.

“John,” he said. “You came …” He was weak. He looked at John, his dark eyes deep in their sockets, his voice low and feeble. It was hardly audible even in the silence of the room. John came closer to hear him.

“Padrone, I…” John said hastily, but the dying man interrupted him.

“Get a chair.” His finger pointed to a dark corner. “It should be over there.”

John went and got something he would have never simply called “a chair”. It was a work of art, an armchair with cushioned seat and an elaborately carved back. It was very old, but in good shape and no doubt worth a small fortune. You could sit on it too.

“I’m happy to see you one last time, John,” the old man said. “You look good … nice tan.”

John gripped the chair’s arms, his fingers tense. “I was in the Philippines … six weeks or so … on the yacht.”

“Oh yes. Eduardo told me. The Philippines … nice. I sometimes had a bad conscience, because I had influenced your life so much … burdened you with all of this … But, you look like you are doing well?”

“Yes, sure. I am doing … well, yes.”

The Padrone smiled. “That girl that you were shown with in the newspapers … I say girl. She is, of course, a woman, Patricia DeBeers. Is that something serious with her? Excuse my curiosity.”

John swallowed hard and shook his head. “That was only … I mean, she is basically okay, and we got along in the end. In the beginning it was … only a show. For the media, you know.”

“Ah,” he nodded — barely noticeable. “Was that his idea? McCaine?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “McCaine. For some reason it comforts me to hear that. I almost thought so, but I thought that no one could be so crass as to stage manage something like that … The photos looked posed. I don’t know why. Miss DeBeers is a fabulous looking young woman, no doubt … but I couldn’t see you and her as a match.”

John nodded, he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to think. He hadn’t imagined a dying man could be interested in such matters.

The Padrone closed his eyes for a moment. He wiped a hand across his forehead … a hand with almost translucent skin. “You might think,” he then said and opened his eyes looking at John surprisingly clear and steady, “that I am disappointed in you. Tell me honestly.”

John admitted it. “Yes.”

The Padrone smiled gently, almost softly. “I am not. Did you think I wanted to see you just to give you a piece of my mind? That I would waste my last hours like that?”

John nodded and had a lump in his throat.

“No. I only wanted to see you again. A most selfish wish, if you like.” He looked straight ahead at the window, at the bright, deep blue sky outside. “I still remember the moment, when I realized I could live to see the unveiling of the heir. I think I was twelve at the time, some time before the start of the war. Everyone was talking about Hitler. I remember it well. I did the calculations so many times to be sure. My father, who had told me about it my whole life, would not live to see the day — but I would. I felt like the chosen one. I felt connected with you even before you were born. I visited you twice every year when you were a child, watched you grow up, watched you play, and tried to find out about your wishes and dreams. Is it so difficult to understand that I didn’t want to die before seeing you one more time?” He paused. Talking seemed to make him tired. “You have not done what I expected. Would that be a reason to condemn you? I never expected you to do what I expected. Otherwise I could have done it myself.”

“But I teamed up with a man that you advised me against, every one of you. I used the money to create a global empire of companies instead of helping the poor, feeding the hungry, saving the rainforests, doing anything sensible. I sought power but don’t really know what for. I…”

“Shh,” the old man said, his hand rose. “I was upset when you went away … I admit. It took me some time to understand it all, a very long time, to be honest.” He let his arm fall. “But when death gets so near that it is visible in the corner of your eye no matter where you look … that sets things right in life; you change your priorities. Don’t feel too bad about yourself, John. You are the heir. Whatever you do will be the right thing.”

“No, no, I’m not the rightful heir that the prophecy meant. Now I know. Lorenzo would have been the right heir. He…”

“John…”

“I had his essay sent to me. In it he examined the monetary system and found the mistake in it, in the monetary system. That’s ingenious. I would have never worked that out in my entire life. Even now I don’t really understand it fully. Lorenzo would have known what to do. Padrone, I don’t know.”

“But God wanted to have Lorenzo come to him only a few days before the deadline. So you are the rightful heir. It will be you that will use the fortune to restore humanity’s lost future. So it is written in the prophecy, so it will happen. You don’t have the power to do anything about it, one way or another. Whatever you do, in the end will be the right thing.”

John looked at him, perplexed. “You still believe in me.”

“Indeed, I still believe. I can’t help it. It is the way it is.” He closed his eyes, as if listening to some inner voice. “I think it is time for me to sleep a little. John, I thank you for coming. I was a bit worried you might not, truthfully …” His voice got weaker, until it wasn’t loud enough to be heard even in the stillness of the room.

John saw that those might have been the last words he heard from the Padrone, the Mr. Angelo of his childhood, the herald of summer and autumn. All that must be said must be said now, or never. He searched his mind for anything yet unspoken but found nothing, so he sat and helplessly watched the dying man.

“Oh, before I forget,” Cristoforo Vacchi said, “there is a young lady here as our guest. You know her, I think. She has discovered something truly amazing. You should take a look.” His skinny fingers wandered across the sheet and came to rest on John’s right hand, but it felt more like a shadow then part of a body. “Farewell, John. And relax, you will see, in the end all will be well.”

The feeble hand retreated and lay beside the frail body that was hardly visible underneath the covers. For a moment John was horrified to think he had witnessed the moment of death, but Cristoforo Vacchi had only fallen asleep. He could see the old man’s chest going up and down.

John stood up, careful not to make any noise. Should he put the chair back? Better not. He looked down at the Padrone and, despite trying, could not quite get his head around the fact that this would probably be the last time he would see him alive. All he knew was that it would be good to say farewell, however he went about it. He stared, trying to keep the moment in his mind, to grab hold this instant in time and to preserve it, at least in his memory, but it all slipped away. Never before had he felt time pass so relentlessly. He gave up and simply looked at the man, the man who had such steadfast confidence in him. He stood there silently until he felt something like peace within, and he knew that was enough. He turned away and left.

Only when he was outside in the hallway and had carefully closed the door did he notice his cheeks were moist. He was crying.

She sat at the table as if she were part of the family. She looked pale and somber, and John had to think for a moment to remember where he had seen her before. Right, back then in the archives; she was the German history student who had translated the testament and made the prophecy public.

“Ursula Valen,” he said as he greeted her. Back then he had been quite upset with her, he remembered that too, but not exactly why. “The Padrone told me you had discovered something that I should see.”

She lifted her eyebrows with surprise. “He said that to you? Amazing.”

“Why?”

“Oh, just because. You will understand it when you see it.” She made a gesture. “As soon as all this is … well, over.”

But things didn’t move that fast. They sat and waited and the doctor kept going up to check on the Padrone just to come back down shaking his head.

“I have never experienced something like this before … that someone should be so peaceful when dying,” the doctor told them at one point, and another time he asked: “Is there a particular date that is important to him? An anniversary or something like that?”

“Not that I know of,” Alberto answered. “Why, is that important?”

“It happens sometimes that a dying person will cling on to life to see a particular day … a birthday, an anniversary, the anniversary of the death of a loved one …”

“Our mother died in May 1976 … that can’t be it,” Gregorio said. He pulled his calendar booklet out, studied it for a while, and then shook his head. “No, I can’t think of anything.”

So they kept on waiting. Ursula had a guest room in the Vacchis’ mansion, and John was given one too. The bodyguards, for whom they had no more rooms available, were put up in the village guesthouse. They sat together, and the Vacchis told stories of years gone by. They ate and drank whatever Giovanna served, which was not inconsiderable; as if they could save the Padrone’s life by eating him out of house and home.

The night came and went. In the morning the Padrone was still alive. He lay in his bed and stared for hours out the window at the sky. He didn’t want to speak to anyone. During those hours that a profound tranquility descended on the house and the entire grounds — a sort of unearthly calm. It was if a magic spell had been cast over everyone and everything — a spell that seemed to stop time itself.

But this magic didn’t extend beyond the family. “Please, don’t consider me to be impious,” Gregorio said to the doctor, “but life must go on. The daily grind, appointments must be kept, they can’t be postponed indefinitely …”

“I can’t tell you when it will happen,” the doctor replied. “I simply don’t know how long it’ll be. No one can say that. A few days ago I would have told you not to worry about your appointments today, but now … he could last until October. At least it would not surprise me if it did.”

So, they kept waiting. They had less and less to say to one another. They were alone with their thoughts and wandered about restlessly, their nerves were twitching from the changing moods.

“Do you also think he’s waiting on something?” Ursula asked John when she saw him walking in the garden one late afternoon. They were at the far end of the grounds, where they had a good view of the sea.

John shrugged his shoulders. “No idea. I just hope he isn’t waiting for me to get an ingenious idea how to fulfill the prophecy.”

“That sounds like you believe in it.”

“I don’t know what I should believe. He believes in it.”

She nodded. “Yes, I know that,” she said, looking out over the sea. There was a thin layer of haze. Autumn was coming.

John looked at her profile. She was pretty in an austere way. He hadn’t noticed when they first met. He felt an impulse to say something nice, but it was better not to, considering how he had treated her back then. “You were examining the archives, I suppose,” he said instead. “For your book … you wanted to write a book, if I remember correctly.”

“I wanted to, yes.” She gave him a glance, crossed her arms and looked back out at the horizon.

Great! Now he had reminded her of their argument back then, exactly that what he had been hoping to avoid.

She turned around and looked at the house. “We’re standing directly outside Mr. Vacchi’s window, I think. It’s that one over there, with the thick curtains. Right?”

John looked in the direction she was pointing, tried to imagine where each room was located. He remembered heavy, golden drapes. “That could well be.”

“Do you think he can see us here?”

“I think he can only see heaven from his bed.” He was trying to choose his words. “In some way I envy him,” John admitted, wondering at the same time why he was saying what he did.

“A dying man?”

“Oh, I guess that sounded stupid,” John said apologetically, and then explained: “He’s dying with the satisfaction of having accomplished the task he felt he was destined to perform. I would like to feel like that some day. I wish I knew what my task in life is.”

She didn’t seem to appreciate the comment. “Don’t we all have the same task: to live life?”

John stared to the grass at his feet — the dried, brown stalks. “To be honest, I don’t know what that is supposed to mean.”

“That life isn't some difficult, complicated thing. You live, you love, and you laugh, and you cry when you need to.”

“People have done that for eons, and if we keep it up there won’t be any more people within a few decades.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not the answer.”

She turned to look at him. Her eyes were like large dark lakes. Bottomless. And he liked the way she looked at him … He liked that she was looking at him. “You’re laying it on pretty thick,” she told him.

“It’s the burden that was placed on my shoulders… that and a crazy amount of money.” Money that enslaved humanity. He didn’t want to think about it.

She said, “I think there is something I had better show you.”

“The incredible discovery?”

“It is more than that.” She looked around. “We need to go to Florence, to the office.”

He noticed how quiet it was. There used to be cicadas chirping in the brush, but now even they seemed to be waiting quietly. The clouds in the skies were pale and motionless.

“The doctor said it may be quite some time,” she told him.

John hesitated. “Should we take the risk … just because I’m curious?”

“Is it a risk? Every person dies alone.”

But what if there was something else to be said, something the Padrone needed to know? Yet there had been time enough already. John looked at her and had this strange feeling he had known her forever. He felt his eyes go moist, but he didn’t feel like he had to hide it. He looked up at the window, behind which the old man was waiting for death, and suddenly had the rewarding feeling that what was happening was inevitable. Whatever you do, it’ll be the right thing.

“Let’s go,” he told her.

The second floor of the law firm’s office was in disarray. The display case doors were open, the precious tomes carelessly stacked on top of it, there were reference books lying open on the tables, piles of notes too, and even notes hanging on the walls, with dates, sums, and key words written in German, which he could not read. She must have been working here for ages.

“Here, take a look at this first.” She took a book from the air-conditioned display case. A layer of moisture formed on the glass when she opened it. She placed it on the table and opened it to a particular page. “This is one of Giacomo’s account books. There are two remarkable things. First, what we today call double-entry bookkeeping was developed in Italy during the fifteenth century. Back then it was called bookkeeping a la veneziana, and this was one reason why the Italian merchants had such an eminent position. However, Fontanelli didn’t use this method. Instead he used a sort of business diary, which was fairly unsystematic — to put it kindly. Look at the handwriting … soft, flowing with changing directions. It is the same as the testament.”

John looked at the pale scrawls, compared it to the one on the testament still in its old place underneath the glass. The writer had made a bigger effort to write neatly on the testament, yet it was undoubtedly the same handwriting. “Well,” he said, “that was to be expected, right?”

She agreed. “It will play a role later on. For the moment it’s important to know that this, let’s call it chaotic method of bookkeeping, makes it hard to get an overview of Giacomo’s actual finances. That’s why it took ages for anyone to notice that Fontanelli’s account didn’t end with three hundred florins in assets, but with a three hundred florin deficit. To be exact, I was the first to notice that, and this was only about three months ago.” She placed another account book in front of John. It was the last one of the series, she opened to a page with writing on it. “The second point.”

“Deficit?” John was totally confused as he stared at the numbers. They meant nothing to him. He had to take her word for it — trust that she knew what she was talking about. “But how was he able to bequeath a fortune when he did not have one?

“That’s what I asked myself too. And this was why I searched for the missing documents of Giacomo Fontanelli, with the help of Alberto, by the way. He seems to know everything and everyone around here.” She lifted the lid from an old-looking metal box and took out papers that looked just as old. “And that’s when I found these.”

It was several sheets of paper with rows of numbers on them. John stared at them and tried to comprehend what he saw. Many numbers looked strange: the number “2”, for instance, looked more like a wavy line. “Are those years?” He suddenly looked with astonishment. “Here, 1525, 1526 …” He went to the last sheet. “It ends with 1995.”

“Bingo!” Ursula said. “It is the calculation for the fortune, how it would develop over the coming five hundred years. Now look at the handwriting. It is stern, precise, and even. Whoever wrote this, it wasn’t Giacomo Fontanelli. What you’re looking at is a letter he must have received in the year 1523.”

John stared so intently at the numbers he thought his eyes would fall out of his head. “That means …?”

“It was not his money, and it was not his idea.” She had just told him something outrageous. “Someone else thought of this plan and provided the money for it.”

John’s head was beginning to spin. “The man who wrote this letter?” He flipped through the pages, to reach the end. “This … what does this say? Jacopo?”

“Jacopo,” she confirmed “is the Italian version of Jakob in German. We know that Jakob Fugger wrote his name like this for letters meant to be sent to Italy. Does the name Jakob Fugger mean anything to you?”

“Jakob Fugger the Rich,” John heard himself say. McCaine had mentioned the name, McCaine called him the most powerful man that ever lived on. “You think that I have him to thank for the fortune?”

Her eyes opened wide, like mysterious gems. “More than that,” she said. “I believe that you are his descendant.”

He looked so confused, befuddled, helpless. She felt like taking him in her arms and cuddling him. There was nothing left of the arrogance she saw in him the first time they met. Instead of revulsion she felt a strong attraction, so strong that all her alarm bells started to ring, making her remember New York, Friedhelm, naked with that unknown woman, and her terrible anger. She still felt the pain after all this time, buried deep in her very soul. Now, in face of this man she felt inexplicable warmth, as if someone who had been gone for a long time had finally returned.

But she wasn’t going to let that happen. It couldn’t happen, she was simply feeling mixed-up after the watching the decline of Cristoforo Vacchi over the last three weeks. It was hard on her to see him deteriorate day by day. The closeness of death had created an exceptional situation that made all feelings seem more intense and awakened the hunger for life. She would have to watch out to make sure she wasn’t drawn into something she didn’t need. The realm of facts and historic theories were a safe haven.

She grabbed a history book as if it were a life vest. “It all fits together. Jakob Fugger was born in 1459, the youngest of seven sons, and he was actually supposed to become a clergyman. After four of his brothers died, apparently from some infection, Jakob was taken out of the monastery and brought back to the firm in Augsburg in 1478.

“The first thing he did was to travel to Italy to get to know the family’s branch office there. He initially went to Rome, then to Venice a short time later, where he stayed about a year. After that he returned to Augsburg, where his work would earn the name he’d later become known by: Jakob the Rich.” She put the book away and looked at John. “As far as we known, for one reason or another Jakob never had any children. It is often assumed that he was impotent, but for no obvious reason. Infertility from some disease in his early years could be an explanation. But whatever the reason, in 1479 he was young, only twenty years old, and he was in Venice, a pulsating merchant city. There was the intensive sun and the heat that he wasn’t accustomed to. It is plausible that all this had an effect on him. The masquerade balls, the licentious lifestyle. It is very imaginable that he, a healthy young man, spending an entire year in this hot and humid atmosphere far from home, could have had at least one affair. And even if he did become infertile later on, it doesn’t mean he was so as a young man. So, it doesn’t take much imagination to consider the possibility that Jakob Fugger got a young lady pregnant and left Italy without knowing about it. A woman we only know the name of.”

He looked at her agreeably. “Fontanelli.”

“Exactly. Giacomo Fontanelli’s year of birth, 1480, would fit right in, and some other details too. Why, for instance, did he refuse to keep his books a la venenziana? Maybe his mother associated everything from Venice as being bad.”

John Fontanelli looked at the letter, the numbers on it and the signature. “What about the handwriting?”

She pulled out the fax that a helpful curator in Germany had sent her. It was a copy of another letter, one from Jakob Fugger. “Look at this. It’s not identical but close enough.”

“Unbelievable!” He looked both papers side by side, but his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. Suddenly, he looked up to her. “Miss. Valen, I want to apologize to you. I don’t know why I was so rude during our first meeting, but I’m sorry.”

She was surprised and stared at him. The apology was so unexpected that she didn’t know how to respond. “Well,” she managed to say, “I wasn’t Ms. Friendly either.”

“But I started it,” he insisted. “Please excuse me. I’m truly amazed that you discovered all of this. Really. I wish I could do something like that.” He smiled a helpless smile and held up the letter. “I sure didn’t get his business genes, you know. My bank account before the inheritance runs contrary to your theory.”

She had to laugh, and she was thankful for him bringing the conversation back to the historical aspect of things. “Oh, that was nothing. Even your ancestor Giacomo didn’t get much of it either. He was often in debt and barely made ends meet. Look here.” She showed him a book that the Padrone had shown her before. “Here’s an entry: March 1522 … a Mr. J loaned him two hundred florins.”

“J as in Jacopo.”

“Probably.”

“But how did he make contact with his father? And why did he never mention who his father was?”

Ursula hesitated. It was such wild speculation and she simply was not completely sure about whole thing. “I can imagine that at one point his mother told him about it all. Maybe just before she died, though we don’t know when that was. Everyone in Europe, on the other hand, knew what had become of the young man she had met in her youth. Jakob may have bought her silence with the loan. The earliest contact, according to the books, was in 1521. Jakob had another four years to live back then, and maybe he felt death approaching. His designated heir was his nephew Anton, and Jakob Fugger wouldn’t have wanted to change that in favor of an illegitimate child, especially one with such little sense for business.”

“But he developed the plan.”

“Definitely. And it is far easier to accept that someone with Jakob’s vision and business sense thought of something like that and not Giacomo.”

“But,” John asked hesitantly, “what about the prophecy?”

Now they reached the touchiest part. Ursula felt her cheeks burning. “I think Giacomo really did have his dream. You have to remember that he grew up in a monastery, with all its legends, myths, and stories of prophets and martyrs. To me, it not at all surprising that a fifteen-year-old back then might have such a dream and interpret it as a vision.

“A dream in which he described our time-period with uncanny accuracy. A full five hundred years in the future.”

“You think so? They are general descriptions that could have just as well been taken out of the Bible, the apocalypse, or the Book of Daniel. No, he had a dream, interpreted it as a vision, or a prophecy, if you will. But I think that Jakob Fugger made use of this prophecy.” She pointed to the last sentence of the letter. “This here says — if it’s translated correctly: ‘the functioning of the laws of mathematics is such that they will give my fortune immortality and thus you might say your vision will come true.’ He wanted to use the religious convictions of Giacomo Fontanelli and Michelangelo Vacchi to recreate in the distant future what he himself had at that very moment: the greatest fortune on Earth.”

John stared into thin air for a moment. “One way of looking at it could be to say that divine providence used the money and Jakob Fugger’s intelligence as a way to create the means of fulfilling the prophecy.”

“Yes, you could see it like that. Cristoforo Vacchi, for instance, sees it that way, but I don’t.”

“Did you show him all this?”

“Of course.” Ursula frowned. “That wasn’t what caused him to collapse. Don’t worry.”

John stood up and stretched, as if trying to shed the burden from his shoulders — but it was in vain. He went over to the rows of display cases. “And all this here? The Vacchi family did something quite incredible. Don’t you think? I find it difficult to believe that Jakob Fugger was responsible for this and not some divine will.”

“I’m not questioning the religious convictions of the Vacchi family. What I do question is the relevance of the prophecy.”

“I thought the two things were linked.”

“No. I just don’t believe one single person can restore humanity’s lost future. I don’t believe money can do it either. But then again I’m not even sure humanity’s future is lost in the first place.”

John’s eyes opened wide. “All the calculations say…”

“They’re wrong. They have always been wrong. There were calculations done at the turn of the century that predicted that by now city streets would be waist-deep in horse manure. That is all nonsense, John. We live no more or no less in the end of times than people did in any other period in history. We’re only a bit nervous because a new millennium is approaching. That’s all.”

He came back over, stopped in front of her and looked into her eyes. She sensed a heavy burden in his soul. “You have no idea how it is. To have this much money means having the world’s destiny in your hands. I would love to do something good with it, but I don’t know what. I don’t even know if anything good at all can be done with it. But what I do know is that it is very easy to do a lot of bad things with it.”

“Then give it away. Create an endowment. Hand it out. Don’t let it crush you.”

“You don’t understand. I’m the heir. I have to…”

“You have to live, John. Live.”

“Live,” he repeated in thought, like he never used this word before. Something like pain was in his expression. “To be honest, I don’t know how to do that.”

No! It was as if some magnetic aura was drawing her to him. No, I am not getting romantically involved here. She forced herself to recall Friedhelm, and New York, but all the memories were fading; they already seemed indistinct, like a photograph from the previous century. “You already are doing it. You just need to stop thinking it’s God’s will. It isn’t.”

“Whose will is it then, Jakob Fugger’s?”

“Nobody. It is only a story, nothing else.”

His was breathing rapidly and had been for some time, though she only noticed it now; he was panting, like someone about to break into tears. His hands trembled — dismay was written all over his face.

“But if …” he began, breathed hard, and whispered, “if I have no task … if I have no task in life … who am I then? Who? Why am I alive?”

She couldn’t help it. She took him in her arms and pulled him close to her when he started to cry. She felt him shudder and shake and felt his desperation and how his tears gradually began to wash away the dismay and he started to calm down again. What a scene, she thought, the two of them surrounded by all those old tomes, in this ancient house.

He finally released himself from her hug. She realized she didn’t like letting him go. “Thank you,” he said and sniffled as he pulled out a kerchief. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“A lot has happened.” She found it strange how awkward they were together.

He stood there and watched her closely, apparently lost in thought. “I liked it … your touch.” He sounded a bit amazed to be saying what he was. “This may sound strange, but I didn’t want to leave without telling you that.”

She felt herself swaying. “It doesn’t sound strange in the least.”

They stared at each other. They just stood there and looked into each other’s eyes, and something happened. Don’t do this, something inside her shouted, but there was a force between them that nullified all rules and invalidated all restrictions and made them embrace. Then they just stood there and held each other tight for what seemed like an eternity before their lips found one another, and they melted, and something stronger than the universe carried them away in the great dance of life itself.

“Let’s go upstairs to the apartment,” was the last clearly articulated sentence either of them said that evening, and later neither could have said which of them had said it.

That night at 2:30 a.m., Cristoforo Vacchi died, and it was a curious coincidence that he did so only minutes before an earthquake shook central Italy killing several people and badly damaging the world famous Basilica San Francesco in Assisi. The epicenter was in the mountainous region of Foglio and the quake could be felt as far away as Rome and Venice. But in the fifth story of the Vacchi firm a man and a woman were far too busy with one another to feel anything except their passion.

$36,000,000,000,000

MCCAINE RAMPAGED THROUGH the mountains of binders scattered over the floor in his office. Things couldn’t continue like this. But since the new safe had finally been delivered the day before and bolted to the floor under his watchful eye, he would not have to endure this much longer. Stack after stack of documents were examined, ordered, put into a folder, then a hanging file, were given a registration number, an index card, nice and neat and easy to find, and available at any time. There was a shredder in the corner of the room, but it didn’t have much to do; McCaine didn’t like destroying files. He knew how often he had had to look back in old files to find details of deals done long ago, be it to learn from own past mistakes, or to follow certain developments.

The steel cabinet was a monstrous thing, but it was cunningly disguised with fine walnut paneling making it blend in very well with the rest of the office. McCaine would have preferred rosewood, but this would have been inappropriate for the boss of a corporation that promoted environmental protection. He had to watch out for details like that. He had given interviews before in this office, to TV reporters too, and furniture made of tropical wood certainly would have been noticed. Although, he considered it all nonsense and just another example of the shortsighted methods generally accepted to protect the environment. In his opinion, the most effective way to stop slash-and-burn land clearing was to allow the countries with rainforests to sell the wood and make good profits instead of burning them down, destroying the valuable wood. But he had lost hope of one day convincing the media and public of his idea.

Time and again he stuck his head out the office door, but the reception area was still empty this early in the morning. “Am I the only idiot in the world who works this much?” he grumbled as he closed the door again.

This was serious work. Each binder meant a business, a victory, an invasion, and not all of these projects were successful ones. On the contrary, everything kept getting more difficult. The stock market was going up like crazy, the most ridiculous companies were suddenly worth billions, certain Internet companies, for instance, composed of practically nothing more than a name, an office, a few lousy computers, had never earned a cent. Okay, he didn’t want them anyway, but this trend was spreading. Like in telecommunication: one of these days a telephone company would reach a worth of a hundred billion dollars. Beyond financial reach. The bitterest part was that he himself was partly to blame, due to everything Fontanelli Enterprises had been doing in the market of late. All those companies’ purchases were paid with hyped stocks, with air, so to speak. Now he had to foot the bill.

Finally, at ten minutes to seven, the first secretary arrived. “Coffee,” he bellowed at her before she had even taken off her coat. “A whole pot.”

And John Fontanelli was still in Italy, with the Vacchis. He hoped they wouldn’t talk him into some sort of bullshit. He had the sudden urge to throw something at the wall when he thought about all the good he could have done with the Fontanelli fortune if he only had it twenty years earlier. Too late! He thought like that a lot these days. It had all been too late and too slow! Everything he did, to get things rolling, to drive things forward, it was all too slow, no matter how hard he worked.

He looked at the map of the world on the wall behind his desk with all the subsidiaries, companies, holdings, co-ops, and affiliates marked on it, their markets, monopolies, and their level of influence. It was an empire like no other before, but it was still too small and too weak to change the way the world turned. And it was not at all obvious what he could do about that.

A knock on the door, and the coffee was brought in. He took it and told the secretary to call Dr. Collins and forward the call to his telephone. Then he stood there, looking out the window drinking coffee directly from the pot.

Twenty years earlier and the avalanche could have been prevented from rumbling down the slope. All they were doing now was trying to stop it when it was at full speed — useless.

The telephone — Collins was still sleepy. “I need results,” McCaine demanded. “I want to come to you, tell me when.”

“Next Friday?” the professor suggested. “Until then…”

“All right. I’ll be there on Friday at five,” McCaine said and hung up.

“Do you know what’s a bit embarrassing?” John asked.

“That you let yourself go … totally? That you shouted like a steer in heat?”

“Did I?”

“I don’t know. Could have been me.”

“No. I’m embarrassed to have forgotten about Marco and Chris. They probably sat in the car the whole night. They probably know what happened.”

“Oh, your imperial guards.” Ursula put the pillow over her face. “I had forgotten what sort of life you lead.”

“Here I have this woman who’s been investigating my past all the way down to the last detail and then she says that.”

“Don’t grin like that. This is serious for me.”

“You think it isn’t for me, too? My only choices in the beginning of all this was too little money or way too much, and believe me, I already knew what it was like to have too little.”

“What would they have done if you had refused to accept the money?”

“I’ve never asked myself that question. It would be interesting to know and to have seen their faces, wouldn’t it?”

“For sure. It would have made quite a picture … Hey, what is that?”

“Guess.”

“Well, I may have to re-think my theory of Jakob Fugger being impotent …”

When they awoke the second time it was a bit after eleven thirty.

“We should think about getting up,” John mumbled sleepily, who rolled over to Ursula and gave her a passionate kiss.

She wrenched herself free at one point and gasped: “My God, I’ve never been kissed like that before. For a moment I really thought the Earth moved.”

Flattered, John smiled. “Must be my desire to catch up that makes me…” He stopped speaking abruptly. “Oh shit, I think the Earth is moving!”

They watched a cup sitting on the table jitter to the edge and then fall on the stone floor and shatter.

The previous night’s earthquake in Umbria was followed by two more the next morning, one at 11:41 and the other at 11:45. They destroyed the mountain villages of Cesi, Collecurti, and Serraville. They heard the news on their way back to the Vacchis’ house from the two bodyguards who had listened to the twelve o’clock report on the car radio. They also told John and Ursula that the Padrone had died that night, peacefully and in his sleep.

Back at the house there was an atmosphere of sadness but also relief. Cristoforo had been an old man, who was allowed to go in peace after a full and prosperous life, some of the people from the village told them as they came to pay their last respects. Giovanna prepared plenty of food and served everyone who came. Gregorio organized the funeral, which was to be held on the following Wednesday. His older brother Alberto stood out in the garden and twisted his beard. Now he was the oldest Vacchi. Soon he would be called Padrone.

To John and Ursula it seemed far too inappropriate to tell anyone what had happened or display their new love considering the circumstances. They went to their own rooms at night, and then later, when all was very still, the guards would hear a door creak as it opened slowly, and naked feet on the stone floors as they hurried down the hallway. When the second door closed they discreetly repositioned themselves away from the room that now had two people in it. They were far enough away not to hear what was going on inside, yet close enough to hear a shout for help, just in case.

“What’s going to happen to us?” Ursula asked in one of those nights. “I mean when all of this is over?”

“I will take you away to my stately home,” he mumbled sleepily. “Wrap you up in suede and silk, shower you with jewels, and then we’ll get married and have tons of kids.”

“Great! That’s how I always imagined my life.”

It sounded sarcastic enough to get John out of his drowsiness. “Why do you ask? We’ll stay together, isn’t that obvious?”

“I don’t know if it’ll work between us, John.”

He sat up, fully awake now. “Hey, now don’t tell me that I’m just some fling for you.”

“And what about me? What am I to you?”

“If you are what? Say again!” He ran his fingers through his hair. “You are the love of my life. I thought that was obvious by now.”

“I saw a magazine down by Giovanna. You were on the front cover, hand-in-hand with Patricia DeBeers. A vacation trip to the Philippines. Did you tell Patricia the same thing too?”

“No … wait, oh, damn it. It wasn’t what you think. I…”

“You don’t have to explain. It’s okay. You are a wealthy and famous man, women will obviously fall for you …”

“For me? Dream on. For my wallet maybe.”

“I’m not complaining, it’s been fun, but you don’t have to pretend. That’s all I wanted to say.”

He shook his head. “I’m not pretending. I didn’t have an affair with Patricia, honestly. And I … I love you. Let’s get married, please.”

“I have to think about it,” she said and turned over on her side, her pillow buried beneath her. “Besides, you don’t ask a woman to marry you like that. You do it over dinner and with flowers.

On Monday, they drove to Florence to do some shopping since neither of them had anything appropriate to wear for the funeral. John didn’t have cash with him so he marched right into the Banco Fontanelli, and only when he saw Ursula’s shocked expression as she looked around at all the gold, stucco and marble, did he suddenly realize what a bad idea it had been to come here. Then one female employee made it worse when she almost collapsed with reverence, shouting, “Signor Fontanelli!” over and over and so loudly that all eyes were staring at them. Then the woman asked if she should take him to the bank director … or call the director down? John lifted his hands and tried to explain that all he needed was some cash.

“How much money will you need?” he asked Ursula after the woman finally understood and went to the counter.

Ursula only had eyes for the tall marble columns, the thick-framed gold plated renaissance paintings on the walls, the wide, modern painted dome. “All this is yours? She said in awe. It is, isn’t it?”

John followed her eyes. McCaine said back then that the main office for Banco Fontanelli should look like they had bought St. Peters Cathedral and turned it into a bank. The sight was a bit too much even for him. “I’m afraid so.”

She pulled herself together, shook her head as if recovering from a dizzy spell. “A Fugger in the city of the Medicis. I guess you can afford to take me into one of those smart stores, Gucci or Coveri or whatever. Take out twenty million lira.”

He told the man behind the bulletproof glass, and asked, “How much is that in dollars?”

“About ten thousand, I think,” Ursula said and linked arms with him. “By the way incredibly rich lover, why does someone like you not have a credit card?”

“I just don’t,” he simply said. He didn’t think it would be the right time to tell her that the things he bought were simply delivered to his home and that he didn’t have to be pestered with little details like paying bills. “Oh, better give me forty million lira,” he told the cashier as he hurried to count out the bills while the cashier fawningly asked for a signature.

“Do you think it is okay to have people crawl before your feet?” Ursula asked as they stepped out into the busy medieval city.

“No,” he answered. “But I’ve given up trying to get them to stop.”

With a skeptical expression she looked at the four bodyguards surrounding them again. “They drive me nuts being around us with their cool sunglasses,” she whispered to him.

“Hey, calm down, I do have forty million on me, after all.”

“Yeah, sure. Then you can sit together with your cool buddies at a street side café, while I do a little shopping on my own — like a normal person.”

There were far more people at the funeral than the little village church could hold. It was very crowded even in the front rows with the reserved benches and a lot of people had to stand outside, following the service through the open doors. Nobody had thought to provide loudspeakers for those who had to stand outside.

People lined the narrow village streets as the funeral procession made its way to the cemetery. Cristoforo Vacchi was, as he had always known he would be, placed to rest in the family crypt, which had stood for centuries behind the chapel with a slight downward slope so that it appeared to be the centerpiece of the churchyard.

“It is a nice view from here,” Alberto Vacchi said pensively after all the prayers and all the hymns were done and all the flowers and wreaths were placed.

On their walk back Ursula linked arms with John. At one point she nonchalantly pulled him off to the side. “I would like to introduce you to my parents,” she whispered to him.

John looked surprised. That sounded promising to him — when does one introduce a quick fling to one’s parents? “Anytime,” he whispered back. “And I want to do the same.”

“On the way there we could do some sightseeing in Augsburg.”

“Augsburg?”

“The city of the Fuggers.”

“The Fuggers? I thought they didn’t exist anymore.”

“You thought?”

He felt a swell of joy. This could be a time to organize that dinner, with flowers. “Sure,” he responded. “When do you want to go?”

She looked around warily. “How about this evening?”

“No problem.” He had been a guest of the Vacchis long enough.

“How about leaving your gorillas here?”

John had to cough. “Oh, you mean…”

“Only you and me. We will run away. Go by train second class like millions of other people and just forget about the whole circus for a few days.”

A determined voice inside him said that he had no choice if he didn’t want to lose her. “That won’t be as easy as you think,” he told her delicately. “I’m constantly in the newspapers or TV. I will be recognized, and someone might get some stupid ideas.”

“Not a soul will recognize you without bodyguards. Want to bet? What catches their attention is not your face, but the fact you are conspicuously surrounded by musclemen trying to look inconspicuous.”

“I don’t know. I’ve gotten so used to them that I would feel naked just thinking…”

“My God!” She rolled her eyes.

“Oh, all right,” he hurried to say. “But we must first find out the train schedules and…”

“Just before ten an express night train leaves for Munich,” she explained, and added, “I checked on Monday when I was shopping without you guys.”

John had to think about his Ferrari standing uselessly in Portecéto, parked in a garage by a house that was just as useless. “And how are we get there without drawing attention?”

She looked at him mockingly. “Well, that is simple!” she said.

That evening John ordered his guards to take him and Ursula to Florence to the Vacchi law firm. They said they wanted to look in the books some more, and their idea seemed normal enough, even though the men gave tiny hints that they did not believe a word he said — as far as “looking into books” was concerned. No one paid much attention to the fact Ursula brought a travel bag with her from the guest room. The bodyguards held the doors open, as usual, secured the surrounding area, and let them get out of the car.

Before they went into the house, Marco asked: “Will you require us any more tonight?”

“No,” John told him. That wasn’t a lie. “Thank you. I’ll call you.”

They went inside, cleaned the place up and packed Ursula’s other things. John had to wear a cheap gray leather jacket that she had bought for him during her solo shopping spree.

“Your fancy millionaire’s jacket goes in the bag for the trip,” she told him.

“You planned this all along,” John said. He looked at himself in the old mirror in the hallway. “I look terrible.”

“You look like a normal tourist,” she corrected him.

It was dark and the small alleyway was quiet and empty as the Vacchi house door opened and two figures came out, one with a bag over the shoulder. They closed the door and heard the steel bolts locking shut. A short while later, they entered the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence and purchased two second-class train tickets to Munich.

Their adventure remained undiscovered until 9:30 next morning, when the security service called the Vacchis. “We thought you said the two young people would be here today? There is no one here. There’s only an envelope hanging downstairs next the key-box that looks like a letter.”

But by this time Ursula Valen and John Fontanelli were already walking the streets of Augsburg.

The house was painted in a subtle reddish-brown, with a bas-relief in gold. ‘Fürst Fugger Privatbank’ John read on the sign hanging by the simple double-glass doors. Behind them cars were trundling down a cobbled street, passers-by hurrying back and forth and in the distance a big blue streetcar came around a corner. The townscape was one of magnificent old stuccoed facades, painted walls, and golden adornments. But to John the streets looked wide and airy compared to the narrow medieval streets of Florence.

He looked at Ursula. “Does this mean that the Fuggers are still in charge here?”

“No, but they still exist. This bank here, for instance, belongs to the princely family Fugger-Babenhausen. The Fuggers are still enormously wealthy. They own breweries, industrial complexes and castles, but above all land. They are among the ten largest landowners in Germany. The Fugger family hasn’t earned any money since the days of Anton Fugger; they have just lived off the old fortunes from those days … for the last four hundred years.” She pointed to a nearby bistro. “Come on, let’s have breakfast.”

Sitting under framed photos of motorcycle races and with wheels, laurel wreaths and Formula 1 flags on the walls, they drank strong coffee and ate croissants filled with ham.

John took out some of the German money he had exchanged for lira in Munich and studied the coins and bills. “Who is Clara Schuman?” he asked. He turned the bill over and saw the piano. “Must have something to do with music.” The bills were elaborate — made with the watermarks, colorful inlayed bands and embossed numbers. Very different from dollar bills, and much more impressive, he thought.

In the meantime he had got used not being noticed. It was rather pleasant and liberating. And indeed, not a single person spoke to him during the entire trip; no one even noticed that he looked a bit like John Fontanelli. The only bad part was knowing Marco and the others would be very worried about his safety. It had been unfair to them to simply disappear.

“And, what is there to see here?” he wanted to know. “A museum, I take it.”

“Something far better,” Ursula answered and wiped her fingers on the little napkin. “The Fuggerei.”

They crossed the street, wandered through narrow, winding allies, another wide avenue, then walked down yet another side-street, and then they took another right before they got to their destination. They stood before a paled yellow painted house with two rows of small windows and a steep roof that looked like the rooms inside had to have low ceilings. Latin words were chiseled into stone above a blue and beige oblique-stripped arched entryway, with the words: MDXIX. IACOB FVGGERI AVGVST GERMANI. A small, hinged door was open and they stepped through it into another world.

As they walked through the arched portal, the sun came out from behind clouds and bathed the wide alleyways between the rows of cute, sand-colored houses in a golden autumn light. John felt as if he were in Italy, it all looked so different, so Mediterranean compared to the streets outside.

“And so where is the Fuggerei?” he asked.

Ursula waved an arm to encompass their surroundings. “We just entered it. All this is the Fuggerei, the oldest social housing project in the world.”

“Project? Social housing, is that what you mean?” John looked at the simple, yet aesthetically pleasing little houses, the snug, overgrown walls, the statues of saints in niches here and there. He had to think about the notoriously bad neighborhoods in New York City that were known as “the projects” with all the broken windows, walls full of graffiti and overfilled garbage cans. “Amazing! Fuggerei? You mean the Fuggers had all this built?!”

“By Jakob Fugger the Rich personally. During the year 1511 he felt that he should become a philanthropist sorts, but instead of hiring artists like the Medicis and the Grimaldis, he decided to build this. It was an ingenious idea, because it gave him a better reputation than anything else he had ever done.”

John nodded. Indeed, the whole place looked so comfortable that he was very impressed by his alleged ancestor.

They got to a tranquil looking well, which could have been one standing in the old part of Portecéto. The short stay in Italy seemed to have made a lifelong impression on Jakob if he encouraged this type of architectural style.

“And who lives here?” John wanted to know. Although there were curtains and potted flowers in all the windows, the alleyways were very quiet and empty of people. Only an old woman dressed in black made her arduous way forward, carrying a net shopping bag in one hand and a cane in the other.

“The Fuggerei was donated as living quarters for poor Catholic Augsburg citizens who got into financial difficulties through no fault of their own. If I’m not mistaken, there are one hundred and six apartments, mostly with three rooms and comfortably equipped for the standards of the day. The entire settlement has a wall around it, like a small town within a town,” Ursula explained. “Even the gates were closed at night, and still are, by the way.”

“When did you say he had this built?”

“Between 1514 and 1523. This meant that by the time Giacomo contacted him, Jakob Fugger had already been planning for several years what should become of his fortune in the distant future after his death.”

“Hmm,” John said doubtfully. “Or maybe he reflected back on his life and asked what good it had done. It must have seemed an act of God to have a son appear out of nowhere, asking him for help to make some miraculous dream come true.”

Ursula shook her head. “I don’t think that Jakob thought like that,” she said and brushed a few strands of hair from her face. She pointed to a long alley crossing their path. “Come on, I’ll show you why not.”

At the end of the lane a small church stood amidst the houses. It was small inside with a high wood-paneled ceiling, had a massive, opulent altar with a few benches in front of it. A notice hanging by the entryway told them this was the St. Markus Kirche, built for the inhabitants of the Fuggerei who were supposed to pray daily for the salvation of the souls of the donors Georg, Ulrich and Jakob Fugger.

“Do you see?” Ursula asked John after she translated the text for him. “Two things were expected of every inhabitant of the Fuggerei for them to be allowed to live here. First, a yearly rent of one gulden had to be paid. Even back then this was a token amount. Today the price is one mark and seventy-two pfennigs, which is a ridiculously small amount, barely enough for a loaf of bread. Second, and this is what I wanted to draw your attention to, every inhabitant of the Fuggerei is required to pray daily for the souls of the donors. This was a contractual obligation taken deadly seriously. The foundation charter laid down the form and number of prayers to be said and included an Our Father, an Ave Maria, a credo and a Glory Be to the Father. And this church was built specially for this.”

John looked at the narrow church windows and wondered what would make someone lay down such rules. “That’s a lot of prayers said on their behalf over 500 years.

“Indeed. I suspect no one else’s souls have ever been prayed as much for as those of Jakob Fugger and his brothers.”

John found this all slightly spooky: “What had he done that made him think he would need so many prayers said on his behalf?”

“I don’t think that it was something he’d done” she said. “I think that he was calculating like a merchant even when it came to religion. If one prayer is good, then many prayers are better. And he had found ways, both in life and death, to get more of everything than anyone else. Jakob Fugger wanted to be wealthy even in heaven too. Simple as that.”

By that evening John had discovered that the Fuggers were omnipresent in Augsburg. Ursula and he had climbed up a tower, walked through historic streets and along remnants of the old town’s defensive walls, visited the Golden Room in the town hall, where in an adjacent room an exhibition informed visitors about the incredible magnitude of the Fuggers’ economic empire, which had extended all across the known world, even to the then-recently discovered New World. They also visited the former Fugger company headquarters on Maximilian Strasse, close to where they had eaten breakfast, where now the Fugger bank and a luxury hotel occupied the old building. John thought staying in that hotel would be too risky, so they stayed in another, less luxurious one. It was located further away in the modern part of the city and didn’t require ID to get a room. They checked in as John and Ursula Valen.

While Ursula went out again to call her parents — from a phone outside the hotel, just to be on the safe side, John stayed in the hotel room. He was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling trying to get his jumbled thoughts in order: The Padrone was dead, but unmoving in his belief in the prophecy. Then there was the discovery that money didn’t grow of its own accord, and that he was not a savior, but the biggest bloodsucker of humanity that ever existed. Lorenzo’s second article … Could it be true what his cousin wrote? Could a sixteen-year-old have discovered something that economists, even Nobel Prize winners, had missed? It seemed unlikely. But, the article really did sound logical and plausible to John. He would have to ask someone’s opinion when he got back to London. Maybe an economist, maybe Paul Siegel, he might know.

He glanced at his watch. What was taking Ursula so long? Well, since he had got to his feet, he might go and look out the window. There were a bunch of colorful illuminated advertisements along the street, and he saw names on some and realized that half of them belonged to Fontanelli Enterprises either wholly or in part. Even this hotel was part of a hotel chain he owned 30 percent of. A part of what he paid for this simple room would flow back to him, eventually and after passing through many channels. The same went for the black dress he bought Ursula. If things keep going the way they were, one day he might own everything and would find it impossible to spend money.

He saw Ursula coming back, passing between parked cars and pedestrians, headed straight to the hotel as she looked left and right before crossing the road. He let the musty curtain fall back in place. He still didn’t understand what had happened to them, but did he need to? All he knew was he felt happy around her and that when she looked at him nothing else mattered. Maybe he should do what she had suggested. Just give the money away, spend it on small sensible projects, refrigerated trucks in the Philippines, for instance. You could call it acupuncture for the planet. This could keep him busy for the rest of his life, and it would be a damn fulfilling life. To hell with all the stupid luxury, the showing off, the pomposity! And it didn’t matter if Jakob Fugger was his ancestor or not, he would continue where Fugger had left off — when he built that settlement — the Fuggerei. He would help people, and let the future take care of itself.

The door opened and Ursula came in. “Everything is set,” she told him. “My parents are expecting us tomorrow afternoon.”

He felt happy just at the sight of her. “And this weekend we’ll fly to New York,” he suggested, “then you’ll meet my parents.”

She looked uncertain. “Shouldn’t we wait?” she said hesitantly. “Let’s wait until you … know my whole family.”

McCaine was not amused at all when the bodyguards reported in early that morning. “In other words, you have no idea where he was yesterday,” he grumbled.

“We have found out that the girl called her parents in Leipzig,” Marco Benetti’s voice crackled out of the phone. “They are expecting her and Mr. Fontanelli for coffee this afternoon.”

“And you will be waiting for them at the train station, I hope.”

“Of course we will. Chris is speaking with the pilot right now to take us to Leipzig.”

“Pray to God that they didn’t fool you guys.” He slammed the phone down, and grabbed the TV remote to turn up the volume as the Fontanelli logo appeared on the screen beside the newscaster. “… Senator Drummond is vehemently against the take-over of Dayton Chemicals by the Fontanelli Group. He demands the Senate …”

McCaine dialed the phone. “Wesley? I’ve just watched the news program on NEW. Who is this Senator Drummond?” He listened for a moment. “Alright, then send someone to him who will make it clear that if he can’t keep his emotions under control we might discover we just don’t need ever again to buy anything that comes out of Ohio. If he still refuses, then give him the numbers on how many jobs will be lost, and tell him which TV channels and newspapers will blame him for the job losses. Then you can offer the ex-senator a job as a packer in our Toledo shipping company. What? Today, of course. I want to hear on the television news tonight that we own Dayton Chemical.”

Nothing but trouble! He rubbed his temples while he checked his schedule. The Venezuelan delegation was waiting. Oil was still the backbone of the corporation. He had used his influence in most of the major oil harbors in the world to make them delay servicing the tankers of Cumana Oil, and to run safety checks on them frequently. It meant the company missed important deadlines and lost customers, and the high breach-of-contract penalties had done the rest to soften the management. Today he would buy the oil company. After that he would have lunch with the CEO of the Miyasaki Steel Corporation, whom he had to convince to re-reconsider suppliers in light of their tight credit situation. And finally he would go to Hartford to have Professor Collins explain to him how he could fulfill the Giacomo Fontanelli prophecy using this complicated network of power and dependency that he had created.

There were far too many cars on the road, McCaine thought as he left London in a bad mood. That would be the first thing to do when they had established a monopoly in the oil market: make the price of gas so expensive that it wasn’t worth driving anymore. He was stuck in a terrible jam of honking cars, crawling at a snail’s pace — just awful!

He had thought of getting Collins to come to him, but decided against it. Instead, he wanted to see the Institute of Future Research with his own eyes, see what they had done with all the money he had invested in the place, and find out first hand how reliable the professor’s calculations were. Only a personal visit could accomplish all that.

The talks today hadn’t gone well. Perhaps he wasn’t in top form. Normally he would have eaten the Venezuelans for breakfast for demanding the independence of Cumana Oil, but today he was satisfied simply sending them back home and getting the boys in the investment section to fire some broadsides at the oil company on the markets. Who did they think they were? Of course, the company was basically healthy — otherwise he would hardly be interested in it. But they were little and he was big — it was his natural right to swallow them.

Kasaguro must have found a lender McCaine didn’t know about. He probably was able to win over one of those old Japanese billionaires as a limited partner. That had to be the only logical explanation for the way he grinned at him and his stubbornness. He could forget winning influence over the government using Miyasaki Steel as a bargaining chip, one of the largest employers in southern Japan.

He wasn’t feeling well after so many failures on a single day. He just could not ignore what had happened. Actually, that was why he wanted to drive out to Hartford, alone without a chauffeur and without security staff, to put some distance between himself and the daily grind; to try and get a clear view of things again. But there was anger boiling inside him … a bad day indeed.

Dark clouds moved in, which he thought fitting for his mood. It would rain this evening, maybe even a thunderstorm. There was an ominous dark violet shadow within the cloud cover.

And still that traffic jam! Even out here, even though he had left London behind him. He tightened his grip on the Jaguar’s steering wheel as he inched forward one car length at a time, all of them crawling along like a line of turtles. Aha … up ahead somebody thought it would be a good idea to do some serious road repairs on a Friday during rush hour. What a bunch of idiots, he thought angrily.

The two-lane highway funneled down a single-lane just before the construction. McCaine watched the cars, one by one, merge into a single lane, like the teeth of a zipper. He let an old worn-out VW with a granny behind the wheel pass and was about to follow her when a dirty-brown car shot out from the left and forced its way in front of him. He gave the driver an angry glare and saw a blond-haired, broad-shouldered ape behind the wheel grinning stupidly at him. He was clearly pleased with himself for squeezing in front of the Jag. Sitting beside the ape was a female primate dressed like a hooker grinning brainlessly.

McCaine stared after them speechlessly. As he slowly drove past the construction site, inhabited by a whole two unenthusiastic and tired-looking workers, the hooker female primate kept looking over at him grinning and laughing, obviously proud of what her brainless orangutan had done. They were talking about him, mocking him, as if they were the greatest things to walk the Earth. McCaine felt sick just looking at them. But the guy did have muscles, and even if there was only sawdust between his ears it probably wasn’t a good idea to ram his car then get out and try to strangle him … and of course the little female primate hooker too.

For endless minutes he crawled after them wondering why the hell he was working his ass off to save humanity. Humanity? Weren’t most people like those two fools ahead? Brainless cattle. That's whose future he was trying to save? Evolution, or just a coincidence, might have brought forth a couple of people who might be worth the effort but most were just a waste of space.

McCaine was in a bad mood, and he was beginning to think that maybe extinction was what this pair and the rest of their stupid species deserved.

$37,000,000,000,000

A HALF HOUR before reaching Leipzig the train made a stop at the small town of Naumburg an der Saale. On impulse, they decided to get out and to take a cab the rest of the way to Leipzig.

The driver was happy to get such a long-distance fare. When Ursula was discussing with him where he should let them out John said anywhere but the train station. He had an uncanny feeling that Marco and the others might be there waiting for them.

They got out in the center of the city, by a large, open square with a fountain and impressive looking facades all around. John paid the taxi driver, who thanked him in awkward English and gave them a friendly wave as he drove off. John joined Ursula, who was standing with her bag at her feet and her hands deep in her jacket pockets. She had become quieter and more withdrawn the closer they got to Leipzig. Now she seemed tense, almost as if she was expecting something bad to happen.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Here we are,” she said, looking around, as if to make sure that everything was still the same. “This is Augustusplatz, it used to be called Karl-Marx-Platz. This is where it all kicked off.” She pointed at the imposing building behind the fountain. “That is the opera house and across from it the Gewandhaus … it’s a concert hall.” Behind it stood a tall building that looked like a giant half-opened book. “That is part of the university, just like the building up ahead …”

“Kicked off?” John interjected. “What kicked off here?”

She turned her eyes away from the buildings and looked at him. “The demonstrations. Eight years ago this was still the German Democratic Republic — East Germany, part of the Warsaw Pact. We used to live behind the Iron Curtain, and you Americans were our enemies.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” John remembered. Eight years ago? Back then his relationship with Sarah had come to a painful and unavoidable end. “I remember, vaguely. That’s when the Berlin Wall came down, isn’t it?”

Ursula smiled wanly. “It didn’t come down, we tore it down.” She looked past him, as if she was staring into the past. “It all began right here — the demonstrations, back in September of 1989 — here in Leipzig. By November the whole country was out on the streets. Hungary opened its borders to the west, and on November 9 the border was opened to West Germany. A year later East Germany no longer existed.” She shuddered imperceptibly. “It is so easy to say this, but it feels different when you’ve participated in it.” She pointed at a fairly modern looking building diagonally across from them, with lots of white and lots of glass, and with a very large dark relief above the entryway. “That was where I studied … the university.” A pained smile crossed her face. “The head above the door is supposed to be Karl Marx. It is made of metal and is so integrated with the structure that you’d need to tear down the building to remove it. That’s why it is still there.” She turned around and pointed at a long horizontal building complex on the other side. “Over there is where I worked. It is the main post office. I did administrative stuff, accounting, and other boring things. Back then I thought it was coincidence that I could see the university from work. During my break I mingled with the students and pretended I was one of them.”

“Why weren’t you?” John asked cautiously.

“Because I would have had to have gone through senior high school, and I wasn’t allowed to. Not because I wasn’t smart enough, but because I belonged to the wrong family … political reasons.” She lifted her bag and shouldered it undecided. “Politics … it was all politics. I kept away from the demonstrations for a long time. I didn’t want to draw more attention — and I was afraid. It was common knowledge that the Stasi took pictures of everyone who attended services in the Nikolaikirche. But still, more and more people went, even after there was no room in the church for the all the people. After church services they marched out, onto Karl-Marx-Platz, and then went on to the train station, going along the central ring road, holding candles, of course. What the government really hated was the fact that everyone remained peaceful. They had no reason to interfere. Do you get it? That was the key … They walked past the Runde Eck, where the Stasi had its headquarters, singing songs and placed candles on the steps. What could the authorities do? It was all so harmless. But in reality it was the beginning of the end.”

John was fascinated as he listened to her, and tried to imagine how this mundane-looking square had been back then, but he couldn’t even guess.

“The climax was October 9. It was a Monday, the demonstrations had always taken place on Mondays. There were rumors that the ZK, the central committee of the SED, the East German Communist Party, had decided to crush the demonstrations in Leipzig that particular Monday. They called it ‘clamping down on counter-revolutionary elements,’ but in reality they were planning to just go out and shoot people. That was what everyone had been scared of all along — the Chinese solution. In June of that year there had been student demonstrations in Beijing, do you remember? Tiananmen Square. The government sent in tanks and killed protesters. Many people in Leipzig thought the same could happen here, but they still demonstrated.” She looked over to the long sandy-brown colored building that was still the main post office. “I was in my office on that evening. I had to stay late, because there was lots to do, but especially because … I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to see what would happen. I still remember standing by the windows, up there on the fifth floor. We had the lights off, stood by the open windows, and then they came … thousands of people, the entire square here filled with people, people everywhere. The fountain wasn’t here then. They all shouted, Wir sind das Volk, which means 'We Are the People,' over, and over, and over again beneath the black sky, illuminated only by the street lanterns and the thousands of candles — they all shouted with one voice … wir sind das Volk — wir sind das Volk. It gave me goose bumps. I just couldn’t stay in there any longer. I went downstairs and joined them. I didn’t care what would happen any more. If they want to shoot then let them shoot. From that day on, I attended the demonstrations, every Monday, until the end. If I hadn’t been there from the start, at least I wanted to be there at the end to help carry the dictatorship to its grave, I guess.”

He marveled at her. Life around them, with the traffic, the people with their shopping bags from world famous fashion chains, or with their mobile phones pressed against their ears as they waited for the next streetcar, it all seemed surreal, like thin coat of paint over a dark reality.

“Are you even interested in any of this?” she asked him. He was startled by the look in her eyes. He managed to nod silently and was happy that seemed a good enough answer for her. She wiped her eyes, the bag still hanging from her shoulder. “It’s like a trip into the past; I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad that you didn’t get shot,” he told her and took the bag from her. “That it was only rumors about sending in the troops.”

She shook her head. “They were not only rumors. We found out later on that the decision had indeed been made. The Feliks Dzierzynski regiment had been mobilized, ordered to Leipzig and the soldiers had orders to shoot. But they didn’t … they just didn’t They had discussed it in the ranks and decided to disobey the order.”

The institute was south of Hartford and looked like a military base from afar. There were three large, flat-roofed barracks-like structures with rows of greenish colored insulated windows that stood around a heat and power station, an old brick building with a shiny new metal chimney.

The guard at the gate wanted to see McCaine’s ID and called the institute to check, not in the least impressed by this supposedly important visitor and the Doberman-like expression on the face of this surly man he kept a steady eye on.

McCaine looked at the fence surrounding the place. It was about ten feet high and had rolls of barbed wire on top. There were tall poles with floodlights all around the compound. The lawns were manicured. The place looked just as he had ordered.

“Welcome, sir,” the beefy guard said to McCaine as he handed him back his ID, with an expression like a mean dog. He put the semi-automatic rifle, which he had slung over his shoulder before checking McCaine’s ID, back in its rack, and pressed the button to open the white metal gate.

McCaine parked the car in a lot that was still fairly empty for this time of day. A reserved parking spot had been made available for him right by the entrance, but he only noticed it as he walked to the front door. The sky was overcast with clouds even here in Hartford. Another guard behind a bulletproof glass window allowed McCaine to pass through a revolving door.

Professor Collins was waiting inside and greeted him surprisingly reverentially. He immediately took McCaine on a tour of the facility.

McCaine saw hallways and offices, large and small rooms, computers everywhere. There were whole collections of monitors with rows and columns of numbers or diagrams, or graphic images of all sorts flickering and changing all the time. The cooling fans of all those computers combined to create a strange background noise interrupted occasionally by the sound of a printer. The documents were gathered up by employees and tacked to a large pin board, joining other papers already there, or were neatly filed in binders. Other boards had cryptic looking words like, Strategy EN-1, or Complex RES/POP. Empty pizza cartons were stacked on a couple of tables, along with empty coffee cups full of cigarette butts. Just below the ceilings were rows of vents and ducts for the powerful air-conditioning system, but there was still the odor of unwashed shirts and cold cigarette smoke. McCaine saw a young unshaven man in a room lying on a cot sleeping with his mouth open and a pen still in one hand.

“Tim Jordan … he’s responsible for gathering the extreme-point-strategy,” Collins explained in a low tone. “He’s been here since Tuesday, working almost twenty-four hours a day.”

“I believe it,” McCaine grumbled, not exactly convinced.

They finally arrived in the professor’s office, which looked no more comfortable than the rest of the institute. But it did have the luxury of one easy chair. The walls, at least the ones not covered by bookshelves or file cabinets, were covered with myriad printouts; even the windows.

“Please, have a seat,” Collins said pointing to the chair. “May I offer you something to drink? Tea, juice, water …?”

McCaine shook his head. “A functional plan would suffice for now.”

The professor’s eyes blinked behind the eyeglasses. “Oh, yes, I understand.” He rubbed his hands nervously. “You wish to know what results we have produced.” He nodded as if he had only just grasped why McCaine was there. He walked back and forth in front of a wall covered in papers. “Perhaps I should first of all take you through the strategies we followed. By May, we had worked out which parameters of the model Fontanelli Enterprises could influence and to what extent. This resulted in a certain amount of what we call ‘parameter jumps,’ which means discrete changes of conditions during certain points in time, starting with January 1998. Since we are dealing with a complex model, differing parameter jumps may influence each other in unforeseen ways, which means we had to employ a brute-force approach, and this meant calculating a combination of all possible parameter jumps with any other combination of parameter jumps, for which there is a common term used in mathematics: permutation. Even small permutations can result in huge numbers and in our case the number is astronomically large. Thus we used different meta-strategies with the goal of excluding unusable combinations from the outset, or at least to keep them in the background so as to be able to concentrate on more promising approaches. One of these strategies was to examine the permutation of the extreme points, which means the largest possible method of interference at the earliest possible period. Another strategy was aimed at studying how we developed our focus to identify sensitive areas — but unfortunately that proved fruitless, so in mid-July we gave up on this to focus all our efforts on more promising combinations of extremes. We have…”

McCaine raised a hand to stop the professor’s flow of gobbledygook. “If I remember correctly,” he said, “we discussed all this in May.”

Collins looked up and then nodded. “That could be, indeed.”

“Then please I would like you to get to the final results, finally.”

“Yes, certainly. As you wish.” He seemed to be fairly nervous, the professor. His arm waved around in a clumsy effort to point out the diagrams on the walls, then dropped back to his side. “Here you see them, the results … all of them.”

“I see only lines,” McCaine said.

“Of course, they need to be interpreted. This one here, for instance, is the development of the economy in Asia, showing the sum in all branches of industry. The dashed line is the positive extreme, marked by the appropriate index number, and the dotted line is the negative extreme, also with reference to the output data. The list beside this is an overview of all sets of data that indicate extreme values. The correlation may be easily seen with the reference…”

“Professor Collins,” McCaine interrupted him again, “I’m not interested in hearing your methodology. I’m here to hear results.”

The scientist nodded pensively, sitting on the edge of his desk. “You mean the plan to guide mankind’s development to a stable and sustainable course.”

“Exactly. To be honest, your long-winded approach makes me suspect that you have not gotten as far as we had agreed upon in May or as far as you assured me you would have gotten between then and now.”

“Oh yes, we did,” Collins argued. He took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with the end of his white coat. “We have made it even further than we thought we could. But I’m afraid that the plan we hoped to find doesn’t exist.”

“This cannot be.”

The professor took a sheet of paper from the desk. “Our goal was to do a hundred and twenty million simulation runs by the start of October. By then all the extreme-point sets would be complete and the five hundred best approaches fine-tuned. By ten o’clock this morning we had, in reality, accomplished a total of a hundred seventy-four million one hundred thirty-one thousand two hundred and four runs, almost 50 percent more than planned.” He put the paper down. “The reason why we haven’t found a functioning plan was not because we were too slow or did not have enough computers. The reason is that no such plan exists.”

They chose one of the old church benches with flaking white paint and sat there in silence for a while.

John let the atmosphere of the place sink in. It almost seemed impossible that a revolution could have begun here. The Nikolaikirche was small and plain, surrounded by construction sites. Inside it was dimly lit and hardly anyone was in there. The windows were covered-up on the outside, where no dark drapes were closed behind the matte glass. In the corner next to them, beside a billboard and an offertory, stood a large, hand-painted sign, with a circular rainbow and the figure of a man hitting on something with a hammer.

“‘Swords to plowshares,’” Ursula translated the words on the sign in a whisper. “‘Peace prayers in the St. Nikolai, every Monday 17:00.’” So this was how it all began; with a simple invitation to church services.

John tried to sense if the place had preserved memories for the hopeful, desperate, frightened, angry, trembling, and firm people — but there was nothing, or at least nothing he could feel. He saw matte-white wood paneling, lime green painted swirls, mighty columns topped with stylized wreaths that supported the church roof; a very normal looking church. It seemed strange to him that there was not even a commemorative plaque for the memorable events of that autumn in 1989 — that not even the new government would put something up. It is as if the new government wanted to forget how easy it was to topple a government when all the people stood up together and said, “Enough!”

Ursula looked at him inquisitively. “Are you in any way … how should I put it? Religious?”

“Do you want to know if I go to church often? The last time I was in church was twenty years ago, when Cesare got married. That’s my oldest brother.”

She smiled thinly. “I know. I once sat beside him during a flight.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right.” That was one of the anecdotes they had told each other the previous few nights.

“No, I meant if you are religious … if you believe in God.”

“If I believe in God?” John took a deep breath and then sighed. “Two or three years ago I could have given you a straight answer, but today … I don’t know. You want to know because of the prophecy, right?”

“Sure. If you believe that Giacomo Fontanelli received his visions from God, then it is logical that you believe in God too.”

John cocked his head. “Let’s put it this way, I try to be open-minded to the possibility that there could be a divine plan behind all this … Maybe I even hope so. But do I believe …?”

“The way that Cristoforo Vacchi believed?”

“No, not like that,” John said shaking his head. “I wish I could.”

“The last time I believed in anything was during my youth initiation ceremony. Are you ready to do everything for the happy life of the working people? Yes, we swear this. For a peace-loving, democratic and independent Germany? Yes, we swear this. And so on. In spirit, I wanted to live a life of friendship among peoples and integrate into the community of solidarity of the working people. Even then I was not allowed to attend college, although I was the best in my class. When I complained they only looked at me with embarrassment and gave me cheap excuses — so much for solidarity. All they had were empty phrases. Beliefs and idealism are nothing more than a way of allowing other people to take advantage of you.”

They were quiet for a moment. They could hear the traffic outside.

“You mean like Jakob Fugger taking advantage of Giacomo’s religious belief?”

“And, don’t forget, those of Michelangelo Vacchi.”

A man appeared up by the altar, the churchwarden, probably. He pulled two candle stands across the floor with a clanking grinding noise, repositioned them, and then began tinkering with the candles All very run of the mill.

“The people back then,” John asked, “what did they believe in? I mean they came in here into this church, they must have believed in something.”

Ursula shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I had the feeling that they were just desperate and there was no other place to go. They certainly never thought that they could topple the government.”

“No?”

“No one believed that. And only a few of them wanted to do it. Most people would have been satisfied with a bit more democracy and freedom to travel. That is what got the whole thing rolling. A few people who had applied for travel permits put their names in the showcase in the church because they were afraid they might suddenly disappear without a trace.” She looked to John. “Not a single person thought that all this would eventually lead to Germany’s reunification. That is the joke, don’t you see? Despite Gorbachev in Moscow, despite glasnost and perestroika, not a single person in the whole world would have thought that. None of the spy agencies did, none of the governments did, simply no one. No psychics predicted it, no computers calculated it, and there was not a single utopian fantasy that would have dared imagine Germany’s reunification and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, and all without a single drop of blood being shed. It was neither predictable nor predestined. It could have easily turned out differently. November 9 could have been the beginning of World War III. It was a close call … we were just lucky.”

“Or was it providence?”

“The same providence that sometimes makes things happen the other way around? No thanks. What good is providence if it means my death? Then I’d rather say it was good luck, if it was good.”

“Was it really such a close call? I don’t remember it being like that.”

“It was never made public. Later on it was one of my first projects during my history studies at school, and I did some research on it. There was no plan ready to be put in place in the event of a peaceful, popular uprising. And on top of that, the only reason people started to stream towards the border crossings was because they misunderstood a governmental declaration. The government never meant to open the borders just like that, all they intended was to make it easier to get a travel permit. What if only one border guard had opened fire?” She let the words sink in and watched him, and when she realized he had got the message, she added: “For me this means you can stick all those smart plans and projections and trend analyses into a garbage can. Whatever will happen, will happen, and all the really important events in this century surprised all the soothsayers and analysts. When you look at old projections from, say, fifty years ago or more you have to laugh. Practically nothing happened as predicted.” She put a hand on his arm. “That’s why I tell you that it is nothing but bullshit. The prophecy is bullshit. The human race having lost its future … bullshit.”

“And that half the planet belongs to me — is that bullshit too?”

Ursula’s eyes narrowed. “You have to run away from your own bodyguards like a thief. What do you call that? A fulfilling and free life?”

The professor opened a thick binder, dropped it heavily on the table in front of McCaine and flipped to some pages containing diagrams. “Here, for instance, you can see every possible projection for every global economy. As you can see, you have great influence. You could pick almost any country in the world and decide to either send its economy soaring stratospherically or ruin it completely. The numbers for each set of data are listed on the diagrams and the corresponding strategies on the attachment. It is almost a handbook for world dominance.”

McCaine leafed through the pages. “It just does not make any sense to me that we can have such influence and still be powerless.”

“That is because you are confusing two things … money and reality. The only thing you can control is money, but money is only fiction, an arrangement among humans. By controlling money you have control over the economy, but only as long as this arrangement among humans is observed. And you have practically no influence over anything that is not involved with the economy. A good example is reproduction.” Collins went over to one of the graphic charts and tapped it. “This is the projection for one possible development in the human population. It is rather disturbing, don’t you think? Even before the year 2000, the sixth billionth person will be born, and this is unavoidable. And this number will double; that too is, for the most part, unavoidable.”

McCaine clenched his fists and looked at the lines grimly, shaking his head.

“And this is only part of the truth,” the scientist continued. “Because if you look at the strategies, which could have a damping effect on the increase in population, you will see they promote steppe formation, desertification and salinization of the soil.” He pointed to another, smaller chart. “Here you can see what has happened to arable land. In 1980, there were 0.31 hectares of fertile land per inhabitant of the planet, and in 2000, it will be only 0.16. The amount of fertile land is also decreasing, both in size and in yields. Erosion through unavoidable cultivation will increase. Salinization will occur where irrigation is a must, and this will eventually poison the ground. In twenty-five years there may be perhaps 800 square meters of land per capita, which really isn't more than a big garden, if you like. How is that going to work?” He let his hand drop in exasperation. “It can’t work.”

For a while they didn’t say anything, each lost in his own thoughts. Then McCaine leaned back in his easy chair, which squeaked. “I still can’t believe it,” he said. “What about raw materials? Fontanelli Enterprises has a de facto monopoly on many metals of strategic importance. We could shut down mining if we wanted. Or what about energy? We don’t have control over all of the oil market, but we could still drive prices up. Surely, these measures must influence your calculations.”

Collins sat back down on the edge of his desk. “It does, but if you apply pressure on a complex system then circumventive strategies will be developed. And they will be developed automatically, simply by making alternative materials more attractive. Let's take energy for example. As the price of oil goes up, other alternative energies will become more affordable, relatively speaking, such as solar energy.”

“I would not mind that.”

“But you would lose your leverage. It is the same with raw materials. There are historic examples. During the world wars each side tried using boycotts and naval blockades to block their enemy's access to raw materials that were vital to the war effort. The result was the development of alternatives — and sometimes the alternatives are better than the previous materials.”

McCaine’s expression had turned to stone as he placed his hands on the armrests. “So are these your conclusions? That all is lost and it’s only a matter of time?”

“I didn’t say that. My conclusions are that your potential influence on the system and its ability to prevent systematic collapse are insufficient. To put it bluntly: you don’t have enough power.”

“Well, thanks,” McCaine said dryly.

“I don’t want to say that it would not be possible with some international cooperation…"

The professor stopped talking when his visitor threw his head back and let out a raucous laugh, half shouting and half laughing. “International cooperation!” McCaine roared. “Professor, what planet do you live on? When and where did an effective type of cooperation ever happen? Do you have any examples? I can only see examples of disasters, like all those environmental conferences that were no more than smoke and mirrors. No, please, spare me the fantasies. That is ridiculous.”“We have the most precise and profound projection that has ever been created. We could calculate every possible result of any suggested countermeasures during an international conference and present them to the delegates the same day.”

McCaine shook his head vehemently. “Forget it.”

“We could announce…”

“Nothing will be made public.”

“You are the boss.” Collins’ gaunt figure seemed to withdraw into itself. “But if very drastic steps are not taken soon, then I can offer no projection other than a profound, widespread famine and disease beyond your wildest imagination, and in the end an Earth that is bleak, polluted, and exhausted and not worth living on anymore.”

They were waiting for them in front of the building in which Ursula’s parents had their little apartment with a balcony. Out of now where, Marco was standing in front of them with a serious expression and said, “Good day, Mr. Fontanelli.” He was trying not to make it sound reproachful, but he couldn’t. The other men got out of the car looking grim and didn’t say a word.

The Valens lived on the fifth floor, there was no elevator. They were waiting eagerly by the door as John and Ursula went up the gloomy stairway, two ordinary, unassuming people whose faces lit up when they saw their daughter. They greeted her warmly, and her mother told John “Welcome,” but then added that she didn’t speak English, a phrase she needed to repeat a couple of times before John understood her.

Her father spoke a little English. The computer company where he found a job thanks to his own former employee was American, and he had picked up the little bit of English he knew from there. Back when he was younger, he had learned Russian in school, he told John, but he had since forgotten it all. He laughed a lot while talking and had greeted John as if he had known him for ages. While they ate, he kept putting his fork down to rub his wrists. John knew it was his rheumatism, because Ursula had told him in advance.

Ursula looked like her mother — the two women might even have been confused for sisters if it weren't for the older Valen's old-fashioned clothing and gray apron. Ursula had to act as a translator since her mother wanted to know a lot about John, about his parents, grandparents, if he wanted to have children and how many. When John said ten, Ursula refused to continue translating. But her father had understood and told her mother. They laughed, and Ursula blushed.

“This is where I grew up,” Ursula told John later as they stood on the balcony and looked down at the playground. “The old swing is still there. I loved that thing. And over there by the garbage cans … a boy tried to kiss me when I was eleven.”

“Not the most romantic place.”

“I didn't think so either.”

The apartment was small and all the furniture and knickknacks made it even more cramped. Ursula’s old room now housed a model train setup that had been built with care and dedication. Her father demonstrated it enthusiastically, while her mother made final dinner preparations.

They drank some sparkling wine, named Rottkäppchen, which meant Little Red Riding Hood, before they ate. John did not quite understand what Little Red Riding Hood had to do with wine. But the bubbly tasted good. After dinner her parents dug out the photo albums. John got to see Ursula as a naked little child, in kindergarten, first day of school, and as a kid on vacation in Hungary. They also had to endure the slides of their vacation in Gran Canaria, where they celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary. By the time John and Ursula were ready to go it was midnight and Ursula’s father was not quite sober any more.

It was raining lightly. The noticeably quiet bodyguards took them to Ursula’s apartment at the other end of town. When John told them that he would not need them any more for the night and could have sworn he heard them snarl.

When McCaine left the institute in the late evening the first drops of rain were already falling, and by the time he got to the guesthouse in Hartford, where he had reserved a room, it was pouring. He was the only guest there that night and the room was almost too large for one person. He threw his bag and wet coat on the king size bed and went over to the terrace without turning on a light.

He could forget about sleep. The rain poured down like a Biblical flood. Thunder boomed and lightening flashed across the sky as if the heavens were falling.

$38,000,000,000,000

HOW COULD THIS be? He had done everything possible. He had sacrificed nights and friends and relationships, he had starved, worked his fingers to the bone. How could this be? It all had fit together so well. Fate had chosen him for this task, he had always been certain of that. Providence had shown him the way, taken him to where he was today … He had sacrificed his life to follow his destiny; there was no doubt about that. Not a single one. And now it was apparently all for naught?

Unimaginable! Impossible! Intolerable!

McCaine stared out through the windowpanes at the wild elements, pressing his hands against the cool glass, feeling the pulse in the fingertips. The rain was blown hard against the windows, turning them into windshields without wipers. He could no longer see the street below, not even when lightning flashed with an intense bluish-white light, leaving ghostly impressions on his blinded retinas. Somewhere a shutter was rattling back and forth, a dog was howling miserably as if he was being skinned alive. But neither could penetrate the noise of the storm. The thunder crashed and pounded as if Armageddon was just around the corner. He simply stood there and watched, letting himself be shaken by the powerful forces, if only it might erase just a tiny portion of the despair burning within him and eating him up.

It had all been too late, too slow. The professor’s calculations had confirmed what he had feared all long. He had started too late. He had known this deep down since the Vacchis had thrown him out. He had failed. No! This simply could not be. He done everything he could, had sacrificed so much, literally done everything possible. It was now up to the prophecy to fulfill itself on its own.

Another bolt of lightning flashed and a crash of thunder — concurrently this time, coming down at him like the wrath of God. He reeled back from the window, blinded and half deaf, he thought for a split second he had been torn to shreds, and he might have cheered if he had been. He ripped off the tie which felt like a noose around his neck. He tore his jacket off, threw them both carelessly into the darkness of the room.

He just could not get it into his head. The monstrous incomparable wealth that had been in his hands, wealth beyond all imagination, power nobody else had ever possessed … could it all really mean nothing? Was it really possible that all this was not enough to drag the world back from the brink and guide it down a sustainable path? A path that would lead to a future worth living in? Could it really be that no such plan was possible? He had always had a burning confidence that had given him encouragement during those nights when he had no coal to heat his room and when he sat wearing sweaters and coats at his table, holding a pen in his gloved hands, writing, reading, and learning. He had been possessed by a confidence as clear as the rising sun — even in the moments of desperation during the start of the business, when the stocks went down and his investors wanted their money back. He had always been sure of himself. He knew that it would end well because providence had shown him this path and had chosen him from among all other people to accomplish this very special task.

Was none of it true? Was this the way it was supposed to end? But what about all those incredible coincidences! So many breaks that had leveled the path for him, events that helped him do things he otherwise never could have done. No, this could not simply have been a delusion. All the statistics and the chances spoke against it. Impossible! He had been guided for all those years, for his entire life.

There was not enough for everyone, Professor Collins had told him. His eyes burned, his lungs, his heart … burned. No mistakes in the strategies, no mistakes in the model itself, nothing that could have given him hope. Not enough for everyone. Earth was not big enough to offer everybody a future, a life worth living in dignity, safety and health. Not wealthy enough … the numbers proved it. The diagrams were clear. Sober, merciless calculations allowed for no uncertainty.

Can it be that God wants it this way? Has he changed his mind since the prophecy? Has he decided to let man go extinct after all?

McCaine unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his pants, yanked his arms out of it and flung it away. He looked over at the nightstand by the bed. He went over to it and opened the drawer. There was a book inside, a Bible. Noah … what did Noah do? He thumbed through it but saw that it was only a Gideon bible — the New Testament — in three languages.

He needed the Old Testament: And the Lord said: ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and creeping thing, and fowl of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.’ It was a long time ago since he had learned that in school. He could vaguely remember.

“Am I the second Noah?” he asked himself in the darkness. He listened to his own voice … and for some sign or signal, but none came. He sat on the bed, watching the water pouring down the window, and the streetlights further away, swaying in the wind, their shapes twisted by the rainwater on the windows.

Noah had built an arc, a great and mighty ship into which he loaded a pair of each animal and specimen of each plant. A legend, naturally, but today it would be feasible. Build a bunker in some remote area, camouflage it and make it secure, and store all of humanity’s knowledge on CD-ROMs or whatever, and DNA samples of all known species. Expensive yes, but feasible. There was no doubt Fontanelli Enterprises could afford it.

He felt the cold crawl into his body, but he just sat there, motionless, only breathing, while his heart turned to ice. Was this really the task appointed him? To assure the survival of mankind’s knowledge during the dark centuries? To allow a new beginning one day? Maybe. It seemed so pathetic, so cowardly to do no more than prepare for the end. The professor’s computers could warn him on time. He still had a few years, maybe even decades. He could decide who should be saved; make appropriate preparations for survival in the bunker. And then? What would those who survived return to? To a world contaminated and sucked dry? Or to radioactive deserts? To ruins?

No, that was just pathetic, nothing to do with the grandeur he had always felt the prophecy intended for him and to be done through him. This could not be the answer.

There isn’t enough for everyone. Those words went through his head again, like some gruesome mantra, like a verdict, a verdict on the entire world, dumped upon his shoulders.

He stood up and opened his pants, swaying under the imaginary burden, and dropped them on the floor, pulled off his shoes and then the pants. At this moment something exploded in the back of his mind, a thought so big and mighty and terrible that he could not think about it all at once. It was an understanding so fundamental and reasonable that his heart might cease to beat on the spot if he confronted it head on. He stood still. The idea was growing within him, like an iceberg on collision course, like a comet crashing down, an idea that should have originated from Titans, but not from a mortal man.

The collapse.

One day it would happen, even if it was unthinkable today. But many things, many of them once considered unthinkable, still happened. So much had been predicted, then ridiculed and then it really came to pass. This was the same: civilization would come to an end, the end of the world as we know it.

His underwear suddenly burned his skin. He pulled off his socks and all the rest too. He stood there naked in the darkness, waiting for the impact.

The apocalypse.

Maybe it would be a disease with no cure. A virus, as deadly as AIDS and as contagious as the common cold. Or a local catastrophe, maybe a nuclear power plant blowing up in Europe, causing masses of people to flee to other parts of the world, starting conflicts there, and then war. Domino effect … a collapse in food supplies or energy supplies …

Then the first fragment of this crushing, devastating realization swamped him with radiant clarity, incomparable, glorious in its awfulness, in its crystalline, god-like inevitability. The longer the apocalypse was delayed, Malcolm McCaine realized in this terrible moment of divine consciousness, the worse it would be.

He sank down on his knees and hid his head in his arms. He shuddered from the thought. The revelation had struck him like a bolt of lightning, like an all-consuming fire, and although it was dark and quiet again, the revelation had remained — nothing in the world could get rid of it again. The longer the apocalypse is delayed, the worse it would be. The greater the devastation would be. The more raw materials were taken, the more toxins and radioactive waste would be accumulated and released, the more arable land turned into desert … the worse it will be.

The more dead bodies would have to be disposed of.

He closed his eyes and did not want to think about it any more. Something had to come out of this … he suspected … he knew it … but he did not want to think about it yet, he wanted to put it off for as long as possible.

Could it be …?

No … just don’t think about it. Don’t go that way.

Could it be that …?

This had not even been demanded of Noah. Not even Pontius Pilate. McCaine sat up suddenly and glanced around. Was there no minibar in this room, no alcohol to numb his brain?

Could it be that the task in truth was …?

He gasped. His heart was racing. He was suddenly sure that thinking this through all the way to the logical conclusion would kill him; this thought that was intended only for Titans. It would drive his soul into oblivion. But yes, that too was salvation. Yes.

Could it be that the task in truth was to bring on the apocalypse? And to see to it that not just anybody survived but the right ones — to assure that whatever remained of the world was salvageable?

He lay back down on his side and closed his eyes.

Time marched on.

He did not know how long he lay there without moving, but the storm was over when he rolled over and realized he was still alive. He felt cold, through and through. His heart was beating fast, his blood seemed to be a thick, syrupy substance, his nose was stuffy.

Now he had it all ahead of him. He forced himself to get up, he felt shaky and fragile. But his vision was clear. He saw the path that he must take, saw the path he had taken thus far, and now understood why things had happened the way they did.

Of course, he could not have seen this inter-relationship earlier. He had been too idealistic in his younger years to be able to take on this responsibility. To have seen the truth would have been a crushing burden, instead of an inspiration. Merciful providence had him wallow in the illusion that he would be the one to open up the closed door of the future for everyone. He had always wondered how this could be done, but he had confidence he would find a way; that had always given him strength.

This detailed and unprecedented computer-based projection had been necessary to open his eyes to the true dimensions of the crisis. It had been necessary to throw him into the darkest hole of despair to give him the insight to the necessary steps that had to be taken. He shuddered at the majestic gruesomeness of nature. It not only brought life into being but also death. Both were one. One was not possible without the other. Life was trial and error, abundance, and the destruction of the unworthy.

He had closed his eyes to this dimension of the divine plan, totally focused on the kind of thinking that was the norm at this moment in history. But where there is life there must be death. There was no future without this balance, no continuity possible. He had always searched for balance in his plans, his calculations, but he had not been able to find them because he was never willing to pay the price that this balance would demand.

He could not stand, so he crawled across the gray carpet to the bed, pushed the travel bag and coat out of the way, and got under the covers. How long had he lain there naked in the cold? He turned his head with effort. The numbers on the digital clock blinked; there must have been a power outage. He rubbed his arms and shoulders, but that wasn’t enough to warm him up. He needed a hot shower, regardless how late it was.

As he stood beneath the shower of hot water, stinging and pricking at his skin like needles, thinking involuntarily of that blond half-ape in the other car, the guy who had laughed at pushing in in front of him. This broad-shouldered homo-erectus, who presumably had only fucking and driving on his primitive, dimwitted mind. One question free of prejudice should be allowed here; what right did primitive life forms like that have to exist? People — oh what the hell … creatures … such as those two in the car that only lived off the work done by others, the more productive members of society; people such as himself and those who worked for him. Valuable, useful people, people with brains and taste. People who made something useful out of their lives that pursued goals in life, who tried to be useful to the world around them. But alongside such useful members of society were also parasites — and plenty of them. It would be totally unnecessary to keep such half-humans alive when resources were getting scarce.

If there would not be enough for all, he had to assume there would be enough for the deserving.

Malcolm McCaine let the hot water spray on his face and thought fleetingly that it would be difficult to convince John Fontanelli of this insight.

It took John a moment to remember where he was when he woke up. The sun’s mild rays shone through the roof window. The light had tickled his nose and awakened him.

Ursula’s apartment was small. It consisted of a couple of rooms and a bathroom, ingeniously built into the attic to create a complicated jumble of rooms and niches. It was interesting and although it was obvious that most of the furniture had not cost much, it created a sort of magical ambiance that made him feel good.

Ursula lay beside him half covered. As if she felt him being awake, she blinked at him a few times sleepily and smiled. “Looks like you like me,” she mumbled indistinctly.

“Looks like it,” he responded with a grin.

She turned around, which was also an attractive view, and reached for the clock. “Oh, today is Saturday, right?”

“Sure, unless the calendar’s been changed.”

“Don’t joke around — our nice romance could end abruptly today.”

“Let me guess; you want to introduce me to your husband and he’s a boxer.”

“Much worse. I want to introduce you to my grandfather and he’s an old Nazi.”

John thought Ursula’s nervousness was odd. After all, he didn’t want to marry her grandfather, did he? But she only reacted with a, ‘wait and see,’ to that. She seemed genuinely worried he might just run off without a word. Her grandfather had to be some monster. John’s curiosity was piqued.

Ursula worried for the entire drive to the nursing home. She even talked a lot with the bodyguards and wanted to know how they could guard a house all night and seem so fresh and chipper the next morning. Marco explained their modus operandi; who got to stay in the nearby hotel room to rest and shower for how long, how they organized the car duty, and how to have breakfast in a car without turning it into a pigsty.

“There is a glimmer of hope,” Ursula said as they stepped through the door of the home. “I just remembered grandfather doesn’t speak a word of English.”

John had to grin. “Then that’ll be quite boring when he tells us his war stories.”

Two bodyguards followed them. Ursula was right; for the first time in days they were being properly guarded again.

“He does not tell war stories,” Ursula said grimly. “He was an instructor in the Totenkopf SS, the Death’s-Head SS. He is a true to the blood Nazi and even knows Hitler’s Mein Kampf by heart.”

John squeezed her hand to reassure her. “He speaks no English and I don’t speak German. I guess I will have to believe everything you tell me.”

Indeed, Josef Valen did not speak a word of English. But he did speak Italian, better than John! “I was stationed in Italy for three years by order of Reichsführer SS Himmler personally,” he explained with military preciseness. “I was a liaison officer to our Italian comrades. It was obligatory to take language lessons. I was to participate in undercover operations. That changed later, but the language skills remained.”

Ursula had to sit there thunderstruck. John was
flabbergasted. Ursula’s grandfather was as old as the hills and wheelchair bound, but John seldom saw someone so aware and snappy as Josef Valen. And he understood why Ursula was so anxious; there seemed something evil lurking within the old man, an aura of mercilessness and toughness that made John’s hair stand on end. The little hair her grandfather had was kept short and was combed to the side. He peered at John like a wolf at its prey. It was easy to imagine this man once having shot women and children, and you were afraid to ask, because you did not want to know the answer.

“So you are the famous John Fontanelli,” Josef Valen said. He pointed at one of the chairs standing by a wall. “Have a seat. My son told me you were coming; it is an honor.”

“Grazie,” John mumbled and sat down. Ursula had a hand over her mouth and a look of panic in her eyes.

Valen adjusted his wheelchair. “I have read a lot about you, Signor Fontanelli. Of course, I never guessed I would ever meet you one day. The prophecy fascinated me.”

“Yes,” John said, nodding with growing discomfort. “Me too.”

“To give back mankind’s lost future …” The old man kept his cold, gray eyes fixed on John. “I had always wondered if you knew just when humanity lost its future?”

John leaned back until he felt the wall hard against his back. Was it colder in the room or was it his imagination? “To be honest,” he responded hesitantly, “no.”

“In 1945,” Valen said, “as the Jewish world conspiracy forced our fatherland to its knees … as it became obvious that Jewish capitalism had America firmly in its grip.”

Somehow, John thought, he should have known that he would hear something like that. “Ah, yes,” he nodded. This would be over soon. “I understand.”

“Do not tell me you understand!” the old man barked. “You understand nothing! I can see that in your eyes! Adolf Hitler was destined by providence to recognize this conspiracy, to free himself from the delusion of a false doctrine that had been poisoning mankind for centuries and to take action to remedy this discrepancy. And he took action.” Valen leaned forward and pointed a bony finger at John. “Do you realize that Hitler wanted to the same thing as you?”

John gasped. “What do you mean?”

“To safeguard humanity’s future, of course! That is the goal he was working for. He knew the world was limited in size that it could not be enough for all and that there must be a fight for space and natural resources. And he had understood that this struggle was natural, that the races had to prove themselves and that it was only this struggle that kept them strong.”

“Initiating a general contraceptive measure would have been a more original idea to solve the problem, don’t you think?” John asked sharply.

“You do not understand, Signor Fontanelli. Nature throws living beings into this world and they must survive. The weak will perish and the strong will thrive. That is the law of nature, the aristocratic principle of life itself. Nature knows no contraception it knows only overabundance and the destruction of that which is not capable of survival. Only those worthy of surviving, survive. That’s the way nature wants it. And today? Just have a look around: people reproduce without a sense of race, everyone with hereditary diseases or weaknesses are kept alive at vast expense and are allowed to reproduce, and what is the result? The genetic make-up gets watered down and spoiled. The white races, which are the true upholders of human culture, are all sick to the bone. Degeneration, do you understand? The world in which we live is a world of the degenerate and those unfit for life, and that is why it is doomed.”

John wanted to say something, wanted to stop the flow of merciless words, but he did not know how.

“Humanity must submit to nature’s wisdom again or it will succumb. That is the only way, Signor Fontanelli,” Josef Valen went on explaining. “But nature’s wisdom is a gruesome one. It has no provisions for pacifism and religions of compassion, it knows only the law of the strong. The strong will overthrow the weak and through victory prove worthiness. The Third Reich was not about conquering other countries; it was about improving mankind itself, assuring the continuity of our kind. Do you understand? To assure the continuity of our kind that was the goal. The same goal you are pursuing…”

“One question, Signor Valen,” John interrupted, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. “You don’t look like the epitome of health and fitness, but you are allowed to live here and are being cared for. You don’t mind that, do you?”

Josef Valen rolled closer, so close he almost felt sickened by the bad breath. He hissed, “I mock all of them, and these cowards take it! I spit on their despicable compassion, but they accept it! They deserve no more! Slaves, all of them!”

“That’s good to know. I can’t stand this any more.” John stood up and recoiled away from the old man. “It was not a pleasure to get to know you, Signor Valen, and I hope there will not be another meeting between us. Die well.” He left the room. Only afterwards did he admit to himself that at that moment he didn’t care whether Ursula came with him or not.

But she followed him. He put his arm around her and felt her shudder. He heard the old man laughing, and heard him calling after him: “I like you, Fontanelli! Just wait. One day you will do the right thing!”

Then they went around a corner and the squeaking wheelchair drowned out the rest.

“I can’t stand it,” John mumbled, but more to himself than to anyone particular. “If one more person tells me I’m doing the right thing, I’ll scream.”

“He was sentenced to serve twenty-five years in prison after the war,” Ursula told him on their way to the airport, “which was lucky for my father, because he got to grow up without his influence. He was a late baby; he had two older brothers who were killed as Volkssturm soldiers in the last days of the war.”

“I don’t understand why you even keep in contact with him.”

“Me neither. My father cannot seem to get away from him. I think sometimes that he wants to prove something to him. Maybe that love triumphs over hate or whatever. I don’t know. I always hated it when we had to go see him in jail or the hospital and he poured out all that vile nonsense at us.”

John looked out the window. An airport employee opened the gate and allowed them to pass with a friendly smile. They drove onto the tarmac, where the jet was waiting to take them to London.

“If I’ve got anything to say about it, you’ll never have to see him again,” John told her.

McCaine had left orders not to be disturbed by any phone calls for the next two hours. He sat there looking out at the view of central London freshly washed by rain and shining in the October sunshine. He was casually leaning back in his chair, his legs resting on the tabletop with a file on his lap that contained highly controversial numbers. He stared vaguely into the distance while he thought about how to kill off humanity — at least the useless parts of it.

Hunger, of course, was one method. Hunger was a quiet and inconspicuous type of death. Each year millions died from starvation and had done for decades without much effect on public opinion. Hungry people were too weak to start wars; another advantage of using hunger as a weapon. One drawback about hunger though, was that it was not caused by a global lack of food but problems of distribution. People were starving to death because they could not afford to buy food. It would take considerable effort to expand international logistics and to remodel worldwide trade relationships without radical change and doubly difficult to accomplish this without drawing attention.

It was a significant disadvantage; almost enough to rule out starvation.

McCaine was studying the diagrams that showed the development of human population over the past two thousand years. The only dent in the steady climb was caused by disease; the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century had eliminated one-third of the European population. Nothing else made much of a mark on the line, not even World War Two.

Epidemics. Plague was out of the question now; it was too easily cured. But AIDS looked good, didn’t it? AIDS was caused by a virus, not bacteria, and there were still no effective weapons in the medical arsenal to fight viruses. AIDS managed to accomplish the feat of being barely contagious, yet still being passed on relentlessly by sexual contact and other methods also usually associated with degenerate lifestyles. And the time period between infection and showing symptoms was long enough to infect many others with it.

He leafed through a thin report on epidemiology from a famous Swedish institute. It said AIDS infected mainly those not intelligent enough to protect themselves from it, or those with too much of a sex-drive to take such measures seriously. In other words, AIDS could be seen as a form of natural selection. This line of thought fascinated him. Could it be that AIDS was a plague sent by God, that this was a sign for him to follow. AIDS really did look attractive. As an epidemic it could hardly be improved on. The only question was whether it would work fast enough. The numbers looked discouraging. The rate of infection was low when compared to the birthrate and in many places new infections were even diminishing. Naturally these were early stages, but it was not enough by far to dent the population growth graph.

Perhaps this was the point in time to interfere. One could take control of a particular pharmaceutical company and make the medication for its treatment too expensive and reduce research on finding a cure to the absolute minimum. Excuses could always be found. In a tight spot, one could always plead “shareholder value,” which seemed to be an acceptable excuse for anything in business these days.

Despite his instruction, the phone rang.

“Yes? Ah, I understand. With his girlfriend? Well, well! Good, thank you for letting me know.” He had to admit, that of all his bodyguards Chris O’Hanlon was the most reliable at keeping him informed.

McCaine closed the file and put it back in the filing cabinet. He would have to consider taking a larger share of control over the food supply, seeds, and vaccines, but not today. Weapons were needed to protect the last vestiges of civilization against the oncoming hordes of barbarians. This would also require the redistribution of a sizable amount of the conglomerate’s assets, and he still had no inkling how he was going to convince John Fontanelli of all this.

$39,000,000,000,000

HE REALLY DID have a stately home, a virtual palace. She could hardly believe it, not even as they sat there waiting for the wrought-iron gates with the dark-red Fontanelli ‘f’s to be opened. It was not enough that they had flown in a private jet, just for them, and that they got picked up by one of those black stretch limousines, which made her feel like being in a movie. Now there was really was this stately home that John had repeatedly mentioned to her. She thought he was joking. It appeared from behind the hill, gray, defiant and giant, it was an unbelievable estate and to her it seemed very inappropriate for someone who simply had money and not the hereditary lineage of some ancient noble family. The servants stood in a row to welcome them — hundreds of servants, men and women wearing the traditional uniforms of cooks, chambermaids, waiters, gardeners, handymen, barn hands, and so forth. And a real butler wearing a stiff tail coat stepped forth as soon as the chauffeur opened the car door and greeted them with true Oxford stiff-upper-lip English.

There were hundreds of pairs of eyes glued on her as she got out. Just don’t trip and fall or make some stupid move that would be the butt of jokes and ridicule behind closed doors for weeks.

John didn’t seem in the least impressed. He didn’t put on an air, nor look as if he felt he should. Amidst this grandiose scenery he simply looked like a typical New York dude.

A castle, a palace, a stately home! Even the doorway made her feel as if she was entering a recently renovated museum. She almost expected to see a cashier’s booth to buy tickets for admission. And yet more servants inside looked her up and down, or was there a touch of jealousy in their gaze? She longed for a simple little room where she could just be herself without being watched.

“You will get used to it very fast, believe me,” John assured her and then took her hand. “Come on, I want to show you something, you won’t believe it.”

They went up the steps, down a hallway, past doors and doors and more doors until they reached a huge entryway that would have made the tallest person in the world look like a dwarf standing next to it. It led into the ballroom, painted blue and gold with huge drapes and giant crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and in the middle of this oriental opulence stood a four-poster bed, covered with silken pillows and luxurious covers, draped with shiny curtains on marble columns: a nightmare in brocade!

Ursula was speechless, and this for some time. She finally said, “You don’t really expect me to sleep in this monstrosity, do you?”

John grinned. “No one ever has. This is the show bedroom. It is only to be photographed. Hollywood stars have this sort of thing the internal designer told me, and he thought I would need something like this too.”

At least she seemed to like the swimming pool, and both the saunas too, the steam bath and the pathway through the greenhouse, filled with tropical plants. John sat on the edge of the pool and let his feet dangle in the water and watched her floating on her back, and how the gentle waves she caused rippled away from her. Light reflected from the water and danced on the blue mosaics on the ceiling and from the fake cliffs, which you could slide down in a little waterfall.

“Do you do that?” she asked, pointing as she swam to him. “Swim a few laps every morning?”

John grinned embarrassed. “Actually, no.”

“Then you don’t deserve such a swimming pool.” She pushed away from the pool’s edge and went underwater, came back up, and shook her head, letting her long wet hair swing around. She looked adorable.

“Hey,” he called out to her, “have you ever seen blinds like these?” There were water-proof switches all along the pool. He pushed one of them and just like magic the large glass walls that opened onto the garden turned an opaque milky-white color. It was the latest fad and extremely expensive.

Ursula watched consternated. “What is it?”

“Piezo-something-or-another. I forget the exact name for it. As long as an electric current flows the glass is opaque, but it lets just as much light through as before.”

“Nice. And what’s it for?”

“Well,” he said carefully, “so that no one can watch you. I mean us … we could skinny dip, for instance. If we wanted to. Or do something else …”

She gave him an inscrutable look. “I don’t really feel at home yet,” she told him and went underwater … for a long time. A colorful thing gliding along the bottom of the shimmering pool.

“It was only an idea,” he mumbled, then pressed the button letting the glass go transparent again.

She could get used to all of this: the elegantly set breakfast table, the fresh towels besides the clean shower, the fifteen-minute professional massage beforehand. The rooms where they actually slept and lived were tastefully furnished and as if by magic were always clean and tidy. She could really get used to all this. For sure.

So this was London, she thought early the next day, or at least what was visible of it through the tinted bullet-proof windows of the limousine.

“I haven’t been to my office for two straight months,” John had told her and asked her to come with him to get to know his partner and chief executive, Malcolm McCaine.

She had never been to London before or Great Britain, for that matter. Seeing the traffic going in the “wrong” direction made her a bit nervous, so she admired the buildings instead. She actually saw men who wore bowler hats and carried black umbrellas — unbelievable! She had always thought that the caricatures in her old English books were only a joke.

She knew the name Malcolm McCaine as much as anyone else in the world and was just as familiar with who he was as who the president of the United States was. Everyone knew the boss of Fontanelli Enterprises, the largest company in history, the man who got a salary of one hundred million dollars a year, the man who half of all financial journalists considered to be the most talented manager in the world, and the other half considered to be a bumbling imposter. But she would have never recognized him if he crossed her path in the street. He was hardly ever seen on TV. All the papers seemed to have only one photo of him and it even that was the same one. Van Delft had told her that an Australian financial magazine wanted to nominate him as manager of the year, but after McCaine refused to do an interview or photo shoot the idea fizzled away.

The chauffeur did her a favor by driving past Buckingham Palace, across Trafalgar Square, and along the Thames a bit so that she could see Big Ben. They really existed — all those famous buildings! She still got excited about stuff like that despite all her travels.

Then they saw some skyscrapers, old and new. Banks and insurance companies too, some world famous ones, others she’d never heard of. The car took a turn by one of them and stopped. Security personnel swarmed out, looked around as if they had entered a war-zone, and only after they gave an all-clear signal could they get out and go into the glass foyer. A small sign said Fontanelli Enterprises; it was so understated that she almost missed it.

They were escorted to the elevator, which had a real Picasso hanging on the wall that was effectively illuminated and probably just as effectively electronically secured against theft. They went up in the elevator and with every meter she felt as if she was approaching the center of the world, the only real center of power in the closing days of the twentieth century. A gong finally announced the opening of the elevator doors, as if announcing they had arrived at the throne of God himself.

“Miss Valen,” a deep voice said, and then she did recognize him after all. McCaine. He shook her hand, bowed slightly, smiled and then said, “I’m pleased to meet you,” and he seemed to really mean it. He greeted John with less enthusiasm. “You’re looking well,” he said, “The tropical sun did you good. And you found the love of your life, I see?”

It was almost embarrassing to see John beaming like a schoolboy being praised by a favorite teacher. She had to look away. She saw the vast amount of plants between the groups of chairs: orchids, ferns, and other shrubbery making the place look like a jungle beneath the low hanging hydroponic lights.

They took her into the conference room. The aura of power and majesty about the place almost made her heart race. They also took a look at some of the offices. John’s looked empty and unused, McCaine’s seemed a hub of activity. A map of the world behind McCaine’s giant desk with an improbable amount of Fontanelli red on it suggested this was the actual center of power. John might own all this, but he was really only a guest.

They went down floor lower and into the cafeteria, a little private gourmet restaurant where they had lunch together. McCaine was very sociable, though his hyperactivity seemed at times uncanny, almost depressing. He asked her about her life and her likes and dislikes, and listened to her attentively when she answered. But she could not get rid of the feeling that he already knew everything about her.

“A lot has happened while you were gone,” he told John, and continued, throwing Ursula smiles. “But I don’t want to bore your lady with that now.”

John nodded seriously. “I will be back in the office on a regular basis soon. From tomorrow probably.”

“There’s no hurry,” McCaine said waving a hand. “We have everything under control. Just because I have no private life doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one.”

The food was good — the view was superb. McCaine suggested she should go on an extended shopping trip, and then explore London’s cultural life. “Although I’m not up-to-date,” he admitted, “I have been told there’s a lot going on.” Ursula promised to think about it.

“A remarkable man, this McCaine,” she told John on their way back.

“You can say that again.”

“Basically, he does everything, am I right? He’s the one who leads the business and decides everything.”

“Well … not without my signature,” John defended himself straight away.

Ursula watched him carefully. The subject seemed to bother him. “I didn’t mean to criticize,” she said. “I asked only because I want to understand what is going on here.”

John stared grimly ahead. “He is the chief executive, and as the name implies he is the boss. But he is also my employee. It all belongs to me.”

“But you sign whatever he puts in front of you, don’t you? Or do you sometimes say ‘no, we will do this differently’?”

“I could say that anytime, of course. But the situation hasn’t arisen. He’s good at what he does and has not had any stupid ideas yet.”

She was poking around an open wound, that much was clear. A wound John did not even know he had. “Are you able to judge that?” she asked with a cruel undertone that almost took her by surprise too. “I mean, you never studied economics or…”

“I don’t have to,” John interrupted her. “I’m so filthy rich that I don’t have to be capable of or know anything. Yet still half the world belongs to me. That is the crazy thing about it all.”

She involuntarily held her breath. “That,” she said carefully, “sounds as if you are not particularly happy with this.”

“I’m not.” He looked straight ahead again. “Three years ago I delivered pizza. You need time to get used to all this. That can’t be done from one day to the next.” He made a vague gesture. “Sure, McCaine studied everything, can do everything, and has the big plan and so forth. My only decision was to let him do it all.”

She reached over and placed a hand on his arm. “It’s okay,” she said softly.

He looked at her. “But things are going to change. I will take a closer look into the details from now on.”

It was just like always, only better. It felt better to go to work when you had a wonderful night and have a wonderful woman at home. John greeted everyone he met with a beaming smile. As he felt the elevator carry him up the building, the grandiose feeling of certain victory literally flowed through his body. He marched right into McCaine’s office and exclaimed: “So? Do we have a plan?”

McCaine was just about to make a call, but put the phone down again, looking at John with a frown. “A plan? We’ve always had a plan.”

John shook his head. “No, I meant Professor Collins. The calculations should be finished by now, shouldn’t they?”

McCaine readjusted the stuff on his desk but didn’t give the impression he was looking for something in particular. “It’s an odd thing with those computers. Of course they cannot come up with ideas of their own, but when you let them go through all sorts of calculations they do it without of the slightest passion or attitude. It never occurs to them to say ‘oh, that’s no good!’ They simply crunch through the numbers and spit out the results. And sometimes they find things that were totally unexpected, and make you have ideas that you otherwise would never have come up with.” He glanced up at John as if he was looking for the right words. “Do you remember the first days here in London? When I told you that one day the American grain silos would have more power than the aircraft carriers of the US Navy? That is the crucial factor now.”

“The grain silos or the aircraft carriers?”

“Both. Basically, it is quite simple: the population is growing and arable land is dwindling. What is the logical consequence? The whole world is forced to increase the productivity of what’s available. But this is not possible with current methods. What is the consequence?”

John crossed his arms. “Famine, I would say.”

“That, or genetic engineering.”

“Genetic engineering?” He blinked confused. “You always said that was of no interest to us.”

“It is since last Friday. Since then it is the most interesting area of all.” McCaine grinned maliciously. “In genetic engineering you can create plant varieties which are much more productive and at the same time more resistant to disease, pests, and other negative environmental influences than any normal breeding could produce.” He raised a finger. “And above all, you can patent the particular genetic code. This means that no one but us can produce that plant, and no one can afford not to buy our seeds because the production pressure makes them so desirable. Doesn’t that sound like a favorable position for us?”

John nodded. “More than that.”

“It gets even better. The market for seeds is already controlled by a few producers…”

“Which we will buy,” John said, grinning.

“Of course, but the interesting thing is that today’s method of cultivation brings forth strains that are hybrid — sterile crossings of closely related species. To put it simply, the business is to sell seeds that produce great grain or vegetables, which in turn cannot produce seeds.”

“That means you cannot go independent by producing your own seeds, but are forced to buy new seeds from us for each new crop.” John was impressed.

“A property that you can put into genetically engineered seeds,” McCaine nodded. “And this means total control — if we get it right.”

John fell into his chair, locked his fingers together behind his head and looked at McCaine, obviously impressed. “That’s ingenious. Governments will have to do as we say for fear of not getting seeds from us.”

“Although we will never threaten them openly with this.”

“Of course not. When do we start?”

“I already have. Unfortunately, the stock prices of the genetic engineering companies are exorbitant. We will be forced to get rid of a few companies. And we will have to be prepared to arouse ill feelings. That means we should keep all our media companies to help dampen this some.”

“Ill feelings? Who can argue against us creating better seeds?”

“Genetic engineers are scarce, and many work for medical research. We will have to stop a few projects to get the required people.” McCaine rubbed his nose. “I’m considering stopping AIDS research.”

Ursula looked at John form across the opulently decked table. He returned from London clearly excited. Had mentioned something about an ingenious plan that would help fulfill the prophecy and seemed as euphoric as someone on drugs.

“Do you even like living here?” she asked him as the excitement in their conversation leveled off some and no waiters were present.

He was working on his dessert. “Why? The place is great, isn’t it? Like a fairy tale.”

“Like a fairy tale, right. I took a look around here today.”

“Don’t tell me that one day was enough. I’m disappointed.”

She sighed. “Have you looked at it yet? Have you seen every room?”

“Have I seen every room?” He looked up and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“John, I found rooms where the doorknobs had dust on them. There are dozens of rooms that have nothing in them, they are totally empty.”

He did not get it. She felt like shaking him. “Dust on the door knobs?” he said and looked confused. “That’s dreadful What do I pay all these people for?”

“You pay them to keep a castle that is far too large for you,” Ursula said grimly.

John licked his spoon pleasurably. “Do you know where I really liked it?” he asked as he gestured with it. “In my house in Portecéto. We should really go there one day. It is so beautiful there — it’s in the south — Italy. And it’s not too big … just right.”

“Then why don’t you live there if you like it so much?”

He looked at her like she was a dummy. “Because this is where the headquarters are. And because, if you want to know exactly, the Italian house is not up to my standards.”

“Not up to your standards? I understand. And who determines what is or is not up to your standards?”

John lifted his glass and looked at the golden-yellow wine in it. “Look, I’m the wealthiest man in the world. People have to see that. It is psychologically important to impress people.”

“Why is that important? By now every schoolchild knows you are the world’s richest man. There’s no need to prove it. And besides, who sees you here? The nearest road is three kilometers away.”

He looked at her patiently. “The prime minister was here, for example. Not Blair, but the other one, Major. He was impressed, believe me. And that was important.” He sighed. “This is all McCaine’s plan. I had to get used to it too at first. Hey, I’m a shoemaker’s son from New Jersey. Do you think I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth?”

She had to laugh when she saw the funny face he made. And maybe, she thought, she was looking at things far too grimly. She thought about her own childhood in East Germany and how they had talked at table about getting hold of something and who could get it and how. They lacked many things back then and it had been important to improvise. After the borders were opened their life improved steadily, but to be thrown into a world with abundance was at times a bit overwhelming for them all.

McCaine and John indulged themselves by going down to the cafeteria only when they were hosting guests. But otherwise they had gone back to their habit of having their food served in the conference room.

“Did you know that money really doesn’t grow on its own?” John asked as they ate.

McCaine looked at him while he chewed. “How do you mean?”

“People always say, ‘Put your money in the bank to earn interest.’ But when you do that the interest is really from other people who had to work for it.” In broad terms John outlined what he had learnt on Panglawan, without going into details or telling him about the shock he had felt at this discovery — it was just too embarrassing that these relationships had never been clear to him. To John it was as if he had still believed in Santa Claus and just recently discovered that the gifts were really from his parents.

“Correct,” McCaine agreed. “To invest money is to lend out money. And he who borrows it must know how to pay the interest for it.”

“And why do we keep telling people that then? I took a look at a brochure for our bank. It says the same crap: ‘Let your money work for you.’”

“We tell them that because people believe in fairy tales. And as long as they believe in them they won’t ask for the truth. Simple. Money, in reality, is nothing but a means to settle two things that are important for the coexistence of people. First, who must do what, and second, who gets what. When two people interact with one another, it is always about how you get the other person to do what you want him to do. What you want from the other person is very primitive: give it to me! Give me a piece of your spoils. Give me sex. Give me a part of what you have. That’s how people are, and because money is our invention it mirrors our nature. And what else?” McCaine made a wide gesture with the fork. “But all this sounds very ugly, you have to admit. Believe me, people much prefer fairy tales.”

Gradually, Ursula started to recognize a few of the household personnel. The name of the waiter who set the breakfast table was Lance. He had pale and sickly looking skin and chewed his fingernails. He talked little, in fact hardly spoke at all. Francesca was one of the chambermaids in their wing. She was a young woman who barely dared to look into her eyes and always seemed sad, but she did her job well. And the chauffeur with the hairy hands who took her into town to shop whenever she wanted was Innis. When she was in the car with him it was a good idea either to talk to him or raise the partition because otherwise he would whistle horribly.

John had given her a gold credit card with her name on it. It had a credit limit that would last most people for a lifetime, never mind a month. But Ursula used it as sparingly as she could. For the most part she just window-shopped, watched the people, looked at all the things she could have bought, and tried to forget the presence of the two broad-shouldered men that followed her every step she took, at a respectable distance, of course. Once, a drunkard came at her and acted rude in a dialect she could barely understand, except that he wanted money from her. As if from nowhere the two bodyguards appeared, one on the left and the other on the right, and — well — they “removed” the nuisance quickly and effectively. After this incident she was so deep in thought that she could not concentrate on the perfumes, dresses, and jewelry, and so she just went home.

During one of those shopping sprees, she was looking through one of the largest bookstores in town and found a large illustrated book about the Middle Ages. It had a nice image of Jakob Fugger the Rich by Albrecht Dürer. She bought the book and cut out the picture of the man dressed simply in black with a stern, alert expression on his face. She took it to a shop to have it framed and later hung it up in their bedroom in plain sight.

“Are you starting a gallery of my ancestors?” John asked her.

Ursula shook her head. “It’s just as a reminder.”

“A reminder? of what? Jakob?”

“That he was a lifelong manipulator dedicated to getting others to do what he wanted.”

John stared at her and there was a spark of anger when he understood. “Curious way to spoil a nice evening,” he murmured and turned away.

John had a large number of files brought to him from bookkeeping and studied them thoroughly. He worked out what was linked to what and didn’t think twice about ordering the man in charge to come see him and give him a few explanations about what was going on. When he was alone he pulled out the economics books that he kept under lock and key in his desk, and only when something was impossible for him to understand would he go to McCaine to get answers.

The first time he simply busted into McCaine’s office with the question: “Since when do we own stocks of arms manufacturers?”

“What?” Grumpily, McCaine looked up from his work. “Oh, that. That’s nothing of significance. Parked money, nothing more.”

John waved the paper around. “Those are billions. It’s a manufacturer of small-arms ammunition, anti-tank ammo and all sorts of explosives.”

“We know of an impending large-scale order form one of the Arabian countries. We will take the profits on those stocks.” McCaine lifted his hands as if he wanted to surrender. “We’ll do all that through a front-man and then put the profits into genetic engineering stocks. We have to move carefully, otherwise we’ll drive the prices up unnecessarily.”

John blinked, confused, barely able to discern the connections. “Oh,” he said and as he saw that McCaine was concentrating on his paperwork again, he left the office.

But the next day he once again found something that confused him and approached McCaine with it.

“Do you have a moment?” he asked kindly.

McCaine was sitting at his computer monitor, staring at an ocean of numbers. He obviously had trouble tearing his eyes away from them. “Discovered something else?” he asked tersely, his mind elsewhere.

“Yes, you could say that.” John looked down at the paper he was holding. “According to this statement, we paid over three hundred million pounds to a company called Callum Consulting just last year alone.” John looked up in confusion. “What the hell sort of company is that?”

“A consulting firm,” McCaine said reluctantly. “The name says it all.”

“A consulting company?” John echoed. “Why do we need that? At that price? That is … that is almost a billion dollars!?”

McCaine sighed loudly. He turned away from the monitor and got up. It was a quick and threatening kind of motion, like a boxer coming out of his corner for the first round. “These people did good work for us. They are all over the world and are the best you can get for money. And they are exactly the sort of people that I need for our plan, because it’s starting to get to be too much for me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but please, Malcolm! One billion dollars for consulting fees? That’s crazy!”

McCaine stood there, looking like a boxer in a bad mood. “John,” he said slowly, his lower jaw jutted out, “I think it is time for me to get something straight here. My day has twenty-four hours, and I can only be in one place at any particular time. I work day and night, while you, if I dare say so, cruise the southern seas, screw the most beautiful women in the world and play cops and robbers with your bodyguards, which, by the way, is something I will ask you never to do again. You have no idea what danger you exposed yourself and our whole plan to. I won’t complain about anything else. It was my idea, and since you’re the heir you enjoy certain privileges that I don’t want to argue with. But, the world empire we want to create does not come into being with cruises and sex orgies. Someone had to do the work, someone who is capable of doing it. The people from Callum Consulting can do it. They are my eyes and ears, my hands and mouths, all over the world. They do what is necessary and work as hard as is necessary. We may pay them a large sum of money, yes, but they are worth every penny.”

John stared holes into the paper he was holding and was sure his ears went as red as tomatoes. His pulse was racing. He hadn’t had a tongue-lashing like this since he was in school. “It’s okay already,” he mumbled. “It was only a question. I only want to understand …” he stopped and looked up. “If they are so good wouldn’t it better to buy them?”

McCaine dropped his shoulders and even smiled. “Certain companies can’t be bought, John, not even by us.”

“Really?” John wondered.

“Besides, I made good use of the time you were together with Miss DeBeers, distracting attention away from me. What you see here is just the tip of the iceberg. There would be no point in buying the company. You don’t buy a whole cow when you only want a glass of milk.”

“Hmm,” John said, still unsure. “Well, it was only a question.”

“Ask away, but only if you can accept the answers.”

John did not know how to respond to that so he simply nodded and left. He stopped by the door on his way out, turned around, and said: “By the way, I didn’t fuck DeBeers.”

McCaine looked at John disparagingly. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

He was on his knee in front of Ursula when she said, “I can’t do that, John, I can’t marry you.”

He looked at her and felt like he had just been hit by a twenty-two thousand pound sandbag. “What?” he croaked.

Her eyes glistened from the tears that formed. “I can’t, John.”

“But … why not?” He had made such an effort, really. He had arranged for a special dinner, chosen the menu, and hired a string quartet dressed in historic costumes to play romantic music. Everything leading up to this moment was to be perfect. And he had chosen a ring. He had a whole bouquet of roses — he’d personally picked out the most beautiful ones. Now, he understood nothing any more. “Don’t you love me?”

“Yes, of course, and that’s what makes it so difficult,” she told him. “Come on, get back up.”

He stayed on his knee. “Don’t you like the ring?” he asked stupidly.

“Nonsense, the ring is gorgeous.”

“Then tell me why not.”

She shoved her chair away and sat down on the floor beside him. They sat on the rug beside the table and cried together.

“I love you John. Since the first time I touched you it was as if I’ve always known you. As if your heart and my heart were beating together as one, as if I had lost you and found you again. But,” she said with a cracking voice, “the thought of marrying you makes me queasy.”

He looked at her with a confused expression. He wanted to run away and at the same time wanted her to never let him go. “But why?”

“Because, if I marry you then I would also have to say yes to the life that you live. I would have to share it, and that is something I dread, John, really.”

“You dread being rich?”

“I dread living a life that is neither yours nor mine. I spent days wandering through this palace, and I saw nothing that is you, nowhere. You’re here, yet nothing seems to have anything to do with you. Your personnel live here but you are only a guest.”

He felt his throat tighten. His world was cracking and within those cracks lurked a bottomless abyss. “Do you want to live somewhere else?” he asked with a numb tongue; deep down inside he knew there was nothing to be saved, that it was all falling apart. “I don’t mind buying a … house in the city or out in the countryside … wherever you want …”

“It’s not that, John. I want to share your life with you, but you have no life to share. You let a man who has been dead for five hundred years determine the meaning of your life. Your chief executive tells you where and how you should live. You even let an interior designer talk you into having a show bedroom, my God!”

“All that’s going to change,” he said. His own voice sounded weak and helpless. “It will change, I swear it.”

“Don’t swear anything, John,” she said with a sad voice.

He looked up and glanced around the room. They were alone. The musicians must have snuck out without him noticing it. The waiters had withdrawn tactfully. The dining room was empty, bleak, dead. “What will you do now?” he asked her.

She said nothing. He looked up at her, saw the look on her face and knew.

McCaine stared at him for a while without saying a word. He only nodded every once in a while and seemed to be thinking what he could say and do. “I’m very sorry for you, John,” he finally said. “She really gave me the impression that she was the right woman for you. At least as far as I can be the judge of that, of course. I’m not exactly an expert in matters of love.”

John felt dead, as if his heart had been removed and there was a hole in its place. “She insisted taking a regular airline flight,” he told him. “And she didn’t even want me to take her to the airport.”

“Hmm.”

“Do you think it’s true when a woman says she needs time to go away to think about everything? Do you think there’s a chance of her returning eventually?

Someone knocked. One of the secretaries stuck her head through the door. McCaine made her a rude gesture for her to get out.

“I don’t know, John. But if you want to know what I honestly think …” he hesitated.

“Yes?” John said with big eyes.

McCaine bit his lower lip, looking like he regretted to have started. “Naturally, I can only judge things from what you have told me, John.”

“Yes, and?”

“I’m sorry to say this, but she seems to be a woman with principles … principles that mean more to her than you do.”

John groaned. There still was a heart there … at least a spot that could still feel pain.

“And,” McCaine added, gouging the open wound, “it is obvious that she cannot deal with the responsibility that comes with the inheritance. You, John, can. It is a great burden, and it sometimes hurts, but you still carry it. That is what makes you a true heir. And as sorry as I am, but your partner in life must be capable of giving you support, or she can’t be your wife.”

Yes, that had to be it. John stared straight ahead, looked at the dark-blue and black lilies on the carpet and saw them coming apart like cracks, yes, cracks.

“You will get over it,” McCaine said. “But you can’t let yourself drift, John.”

“I just don’t know what to do,” John whined.

“John, dammit, you have a task. You have a responsibility. You are the heir!”

“If I weren’t then she would not have gone away.”

McCaine made a noise that sounded like a subdued curse trying to squeeze through his teeth. He walked a few paces across the room and ran his fingers through his hair. “For God’s sake, John that is below you. I can’t keep watching this. Now quit feeling so damn sorry for yourself.”

John flinched. It was like being struck by a whip.

“Out there is the true misery,” McCaine said somewhat loudly and pointed at the phalanx of TV sets. “We see it beamed on every TV channel right into our homes and no one realizes that this is a view of future — our future! If you and I, John, don’t get a grip on each other and do what must be done, you know what the outcome will be. Do you understand? We cannot afford to sit around licking our wounds and feeling sorry for ourselves. We must take action. Each day counts. So move on, there’s a lot to be done.”

“Lots to do? What?”

McCaine stomped through the room, stopped before the world map and slapped a hand against Central America. “Mexico City! The first preparatory environmental summit is to be held here next week. It is a meeting of experts from national working groups, and you must attend.”

“Me?“ Disconcerted, John stared at the map. His only contact with Mexico so far had been tacos in fast food restaurants … when he was sick of pizza. “But I’m not an expert on anything.”

“But you are John Salvatore Fontanelli. You are the donor of the Gaea Prize. They will attentively listen to you when you have something to say. And you will learn much about the state of the world if you listen to them.”

John rubbed his face with a hand. “To Mexico? I have to go to Mexico?”

McCaine folded his arms. “At least it will keep your mind off other things.”

McCaine took him to the airport and gave him last-minute instructions for the talks in Mexico City. The stack of documents and literature was impressive: there were binders, bound scientific studies from all over the world, data discs, resolution contracts, translations, and synopses. The nine-hour flight would be just enough time to flick through all this stuff.

As usual, the car was waved on through to the tarmac, where Money Force One stood at standby. There was a smell of jet fuel and burnt rubber in the air when they got out of the car. The ground was still wet from the previous night’s rain and there was a brisk wind blowing over the wide flat terrain.

“It will be a balancing act when you get there,” McCaine shouted to be heard above the engines warming up. “On the one hand we have to strive to get the groundwork started for a globally binding agreement on climate protection measures, but on the other we can’t let it cost us anything yet. That’s what the concept of the pollutant exchange is based on, do you understand?”

A handful of men and women wearing uniforms came hurrying over from the terminal bringing the boxes with the literature to load them in the plane. The pilot also came over with a clipboard with a checklist clamped under an arm. He shook their hands and told them it was high time to get going. “If we miss our allotted slot for take-off it could take hours to get a new one. EUROCONTROL is swamped once again.”

“Yes, yes,” McCaine called out. “One moment.”

“Why should it not cost us anything?” John was asking.

McCaine seemed to be avoiding his eyes and looking at the horizon instead. “I already explained that.” Now he turned to John. “We’re rebuilding the conglomerate for a new strategy. If we agree to this phase, to put in flue gas cleaners and so on, this would reduce our financial leeway, which could make the difference between victory and defeat.”

All at once it all seemed so surreal to John. It was as if they were standing on a stage performing an absurd play. He had an odd feeling in his stomach and was unsure if it was the beginning of hilarious laughter or diarrhea. “When will we start doing something concrete?” he shouted above the engine noise. “All we ever do is buy stuff and increase our power, but we do nothing with it. Sometimes it looks like we're making things even worse!”

McCaine looked at him with a murderous expression. Clearly, he had deviated from the intended text. A fatal mistake for an actor. “You are not seeing the whole picture,” McCaine shouted back, “but I’m afraid there is no time to discuss this now. We’ll do it when you’re back.”

Suddenly they saw a car racing towards them at high speed. A second later Marco was by their side and quickly planted himself in front of John protectively. He said, “Maybe it’s better for you to climb aboard the plane now, Mr. Fontanelli.”

“What the hell …?” McCaine exclaimed.

The car came to a screeching halt, the door opened, a man sprang out and ran towards them.

“I’m looking for a Marco Benetti,” he shouted. He was slim, wore a dark suit, had a thin mustache and carried a small travel bag.

Marco still had a hand inside his jacket. “That’s me.”

The man pulled out an ID card from their own firm’s security detail. “Our headquarters received an odd telephone call from your wife, Mr. Benetti,” he reported quickly. “At least, they thought it was her. When we tried to call her back no one answered the phone.” He pulled out the car keys. “I’m supposed to relieve you — you can take the car.”

Marco turned pale. “Is something wrong with my daughter?”

“We don’t know. They thought it would be best for you to go and check on them … here.” He handed him the car keys.

“Go ahead,” McCaine told him when Marco still stood there uncertain what to do.

The pilot stuck his head out the window and pointed at his watch; it was time to leave.

“Yes, go ahead,” John told him. “We’ll manage.”

“Thank you,” Marco said and then moved quickly.

Later on, as they flew west over the Atlantic, John gestured for the newcomer in the security team to come over. “I would like to know what your name is,” he said.

The man looked at him with dead eyes like dark cold lava. “Foster,” he said, “my name is Foster.”

He left the car in a no parking zone. He had gone through red lights, ignored stop signs, and disregarded every speed limit in the city — nothing else mattered except speed. The house was an older building with six apartments located in Walton-on-Thames to the southwest of London. It looked so peaceful and tranquil that he shuddered.

He raced up the stairs, pulling the apartment keys from his pocket as he did. He unlocked the door, and then …

Karen stood in the hallway holding a baby bottle and a messy bib. “Marco?”

“Madre dios!” he exclaimed, literally deflating with relief, went to her and almost smothered her in his arms.

She was confused. “Hey, not so loud, she’s asleep. Let me put away the bib at least. Tell me, did I misunderstand something? Weren’t you supposed to be going to Mexico?”

Marco released her. “Did you call the headquarters?”

“The headquarters?”

He told her what had happened. “My baggage is on the way to Mexico now. I guess I’ll have to buy another razor.” He shook his head. “What made them think that you called?”

Karen shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. But I didn’t. I wanted to call Betty to ask her to come by for tea, but I couldn’t get through.”

“Couldn’t get through?” Marco went to the phone, took it in his hand and listened.

“The dial tone sounded odd this morning, by the way,” she told him skeptically.

Marco shook his head. “That’s no dial tone; the lines are down.” He put the phone down with a slow, thoughtful move. Naturally, it could be a coincidence, a misdirected call, a misunderstanding, overreaction or a problem with the lines. But he still had a nasty feeling.

$40,000,000,000,000

MEXICO CITY LOOKED like an endless ocean of concrete towers from up in the air, surrounded by mountains and volcanoes and covered with a brownish haze.

John was looking down at the homes of twenty million people — one of the world’s largest cities and an environmental disaster-in-waiting. There was no doubt it was an appropriate place to prepare for the next environmental summit. He closed the file, put it away and longed for his bed.

From the airport they went onward via helicopter, because, he had been told, there was no chance getting through by car. Rush hour, everyone said. Indeed, from above John saw nothing but vehicles lining every street as stationary as if they were parked. The roar of the helicopter’s turbine almost popped his eardrums.

They headed south, flying over the growing shadows of dusk. Just before they landed John recognized the famous library of the university and its giant mosaic, which he had seen pictures of in a travel brochure on the flight across the ocean. The talks would be held in the university, but a few days from now, after he had gotten over the jet lag.

Chris and Foster helped him out of the chopper. They got into the car and he thought that he had gone deaf.

The secure compound, where his living quarters would be, seemed like a virtual Elysium surrounded by a high wall with palm trees and a manmade stream gurgling through it. There were rolls of barbed wire on top of the walls, and smiling guards with holstered revolvers, and very sophisticated electronic surveillance gear, made in the USA. All this to ensure that none of the residents would be bothered or get in any danger.

A young man in a light suit went ahead to show John his apartment. John saw the clear water flowing along beside them and remembered reading in a brochure how the city suffered from constant water shortages. Mexico City was situated at two thousand meters altitude, and even oxygen was sometimes scarce.

The apartment was modern and austere. It was large, with white walls and a lot of metal and glass. The sparse pieces of fine colonial style furniture underlined the spaciousness of the rooms — it was a dream.

“Where is the bedroom?” John wanted to know.

Chris placed the travel bag containing the bare necessities on top of a low chest of drawers. “Do you need anything, sir?”

“Sleep,” he said.

“I understand. Good night, sir.” He closed the doors from the outside.

John collapsed onto the bed feeling as if he hadn’t just flown to a city in another time zone but also one where gravity was stronger than he was used to. He would hardly be able to get back up today. He knew he would fall asleep in his suit and look terrible tomorrow.

The phone rang. I’m asleep.

But it wouldn’t stop. He finally rolled over and picked up. “Yes?”

“This is Foster, Mr. Fontanelli.” The bodyguard’s voice sounded far away. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but maybe it is important…”

“Go ahead and tell me,” John mumbled.

“I’m in the guard house by the gateway,” he said, “and there is a young lady here. She said her name is Ursula Valen…”

“What?” It was like an electric shock. The sound of her name was a shot of pure adrenaline. Automatically he quickly stood up. Ursula? How in the world did she get here to Mexico? And then to be right here this very evening? How could she have known …?

“Are you coming down, sir?”

“Yes!” John bellowed into the phone. “Yes, I’m coming down! One moment, I’m on my way.” Ursula? Here? Unbelievable, simply unbelievable. He slammed the phone down and ran. He pushed the doors open and hurried across the cool, smooth marble floor, almost flew down the stairs, ran along the serpentine pathway between the palm trees and bushes, everything illuminated and peaceful.

When he got to the portal, Foster was standing out on the street with a puzzled expression on his face. “Now that is really odd …” he murmured, his hands on his hips.

“What? Where is she?” John gasped. He felt a stroke of shock go through him at the thought that it might all be just a dream.

Foster was looking down the road indecisively and rubbed his nose. “She just disappeared. I told her you were coming and then…”

“Disappeared? Where?”

“Down there, around the corner,” the bodyguard said and pointed along the compound wall, up ahead to an intersection with a small side street with a few cars on it.

John darted off. “Sir, don’t …!” he heard the man calling after him, but somehow everything else seemed so unimportant. The only thing that mattered was catching up with her. He ran downhill, his legs pumping by their own accord; he was going to make it. The exhaust-filled air burned his eyes and choked him, but he kept running. He reached the end of the high wall, went around the corner, and saw a woman at the end of a small alley. He shouted, “Ursula!”

A blow to his head made the woman and the city and everything around him disappear.

McCaine woke up from the phone ringing on his nightstand. It was the telephone meant only for dire emergencies. He sat up and switched the light on. Three minutes before five. His alarm would have woke him in a few minutes anyhow. “They sure took their time,” he mumbled, cleared his throat and answered. “McCaine.”

“Chris O’Hanlon here, sir,” a voice said breathlessly. “Sir, something happened. We, uh, we lost Mr. Fontanelli.”

McCaine raised his eyebrows. An interesting way to put it, if you liked. “Could you tell me exactly what you mean by this?”

The man was obviously upset. “It was like this … well, Foster had the first watch at the gates and I took my turn to get a few hours sleep. I only woke up when the car came from the airport with the documents and the rest of the baggage, and that’s when he told me, he said it so matter-of-factly…”

“Told you what?”

“That Mr. Fontanelli came down and went out again after I had taken him to his apartment. He had told Foster that he wanted to go for a walk and that he had a meeting with someone from the university in a nearby restaurant…”

“Let me guess, he’s still not back.”

“Right, unfortunately, sir. And I could have sworn he would only drop on his bed from exhaustion, that’s how tired he looked …”

McCaine made a grunting noise. “Has that Foster ever thought about why secured living quarters exist?”

“I told him that already. He’s feeling pretty bad, it seems he’s worried about his job and…”

“And for good reason,” McCaine said. “Keep this to yourself for now.”

“Yes, sir.” O’Hanlon swallowed hard. “My God, sir that would never have happened if Marco had been here.”

“Yes, I agree,” McCaine said. He took his appointment calendar from the stack of files that were, as usual, piled on the never used other side of his bed, and opened it. He did not have a single appointment today. He took the pen. “Calm down, Chris, and listen to me. This is what you are going to do …”

At first he had no idea what was going on. He felt only an awful throbbing pain in his head. Dazed, he touched the back of his head and felt dried blood. His fingers found a large bump that hurt when he touched it. This was not a good situation. A weird pressure weighted down his wrists; the sound of chains rattled whenever he moved. He finally managed to open his eyes and to see what it was: handcuffs.

“Great!” he uttered. Kidnapped!

He really had been kidnapped. He managed to sit up a bit even though his head felt as if it would split in two. He leaned against the wall with a groan. He looked around to see where he was.

He was in a cell. Bare brick walls all around. The only window was bricked shut except for a narrow slit left open at the top, glowing brightly from the dazzling sun outside, yet there was still only a dim light inside. In addition to the musty smell, the place also stank of body odor and excrement. It was a jail, no doubt. He estimated the cell to be about three paces wide and four long. He had to guess, because he could not move. His handcuffs were attached to a chain that was attached to a massive cast-iron pipe that ran from the floor up to the ceiling. He could only move within the immediate vicinity of the mattress he was sitting on. There was a bucket in one corner with a lid on it and a roll of toilet paper on top. Disgusted, John turned away and decided he would rather be constipated.

He had stumbled into a trap… like a damn idiot! He let out a sigh and felt like shaking his head, but didn’t due to the throbbing pain in his skull. Where did the kidnappers get Ursula’s name from? Odd. Maybe from the newspapers? It was possible that his brief intermezzo may have gone unnoticed in Germany, but he was a well-known person, and his private life was of interest to the public. The damn paparazzi were never there when you needed them, like right now.

He saw movement on the dark floor and got goose bumps; he automatically pulled his legs closer. Something was moving. Holding his breath, he leaned forward and saw a fat cockroach crawling towards him. It was dark-brown and as big as a saucer and looked scary with its feelers and armored body. John took off a shoe, held it in both hands and hit the giant bug. He thought he got it, but instead of turning into a sticky mess on the floor it only turned around and hurried back into the crack in the wall from where it probably came from. John felt nauseous at the thought of the insect having crawled all over him while he had been unconscious.

He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. He felt the dull, throbbing pain in his skull and wished he was far away in another place and a different life.

He must have briefly fallen asleep, because he suddenly opened his eyes when he heard approaching footsteps nearby.

There was a knock at the door. “Hola!” a voice called out. “You waking?”

John grimaced which caused instant pain. “Not really.”

“Lay … face on mattress. Not look or kill you. Lay — andele, andele!”

“Okay, okay,” he said and did as told. The mattress stank. It was probably soaked with the sweat of fear from other kidnapping victims. He heard the door being unlocked, then footsteps and a scraping noise, and then the door slammed shut again. It sounded odd, as if the door were made of cardboard, and the lock clicked shut. The footsteps went away, and then all was quiet again.

That probably meant that he could move. John looked up slowly. There was a plate on the floor with a piece of bread and a tin cup, which smelled like coffee. A wonderful smell compared to the other odors in the room. His stomach rumbled, and he realized he was hungry. Apart from the headache he felt relatively fine. Well-rested, in fact, as if he had slept for days. He could not say for sure, since his watch, which would have showed the date, was gone.

He got the plate and the cup. The coffee was okay, even had milk and sugar. And the bread tasted fresh. No doubt they would raise the ransom money to cover such creature comforts — after all, you get what you pay for. This whole thing had an air of business to it. There was no suggestion of panic or emergency in the unknown man’s voice. It seemed more like kidnapping was his normal day job.

Kidnapped! Unbelievable! And nothing in the least had happened all the previous years. The bodyguards had been near him the whole time, and the most they had to do was to clear paths through hordes of reporters or gawking bystanders when they got in the way. He had never felt in any sort of danger, especially since he had run away with Ursula and there were no problems. But that must have been only luck. It all proved McCaine right again, as usual.

When he placed his plate on the floor, the chains rattled on the pipe. He looked up and studied it. The noise that the chain made would be heard loud and clear from above. Was this how they noticed that he was awake? For sure. And then they made coffee right away.

John stood up, but avoided making any more noises with the chain. He stood next to the pipe and thought, what works one way should work the other way around too. Or? He put his ear against the cool metal, pressed one ear against it, and put a finger in the other, which was not easy with the cuffs. Indeed, he could hear a TV, playing music, and then he heard the sonorous voice of a TV moderator. He heard someone working in what seemed to be a kitchen and whistling to the tunes on TV. A phone rang, was answered and then someone spoke with a melodious, but unintelligible Spanish. The pipe was a practical listening device.

It was a strain for his body to listen for a longer period of time, and since he didn’t understand Spanish the whole effort brought nothing but a rough overall picture of his situation. So he quit listening. At any rate, it sounded as if the kidnappers had everything under control.

He sat down again and concentrated on the crack in the wall where the monster cockroach lived. He fell asleep and was again awaked for another meal: a bunch of beans, a little meat, and a cup of water.

“Be patient,” the unknown man told John without being asked. He placed the plate and cup on the floor and took the ones from breakfast.

Napping was the best thing to do, according to the man’s advice. The light from the slit gradually dimmed as the evening approached. Before total darkness set in, John pulled himself together and dared to urinate in the bucket. He put it as far away from the mattress as he could when he had finished.

He listened on the pipe one more time. Some American program was on TV, probably with subtitles; it seemed to be some crime show that dealt with the kidnapping of some millionaire’s daughter. This could almost be considered to be educational programming, John thought as he lay down to sleep. But instead of sleeping he only stared into the featureless darkness and tried to listen for the potential march of a horde of monster cockroaches.

He must have fallen asleep again after all, because when he awoke it was broad daylight. And there were no cockroaches scuttling about. He got up without making any noise with the chains and listened, but he could not hear the TV, instead he heard several men talking. They sounded very relaxed, as if they were having coffee together and with nothing better to do then to kill time.

“Breakfast, por favor,” John mumbled and rattled the chains.

But instead of breakfast another man came, a different one from the previous day, and he didn’t knock or give instructions, he simply came in. He spoke English, and with a US east coast accent, no less. “We have never met,” he told John, “but we know each other.”

John looked him skeptically. He had a swollen face with rough skin, perhaps from a bad case of acne in his youth which had left its marks. He had excessive body hair spilling out from his collar and sleeves. Not exactly an appealing figure. It was someone John did not care to know. Then he remembered. Yes, he had seen this man before, but with a different hairstyle and on TV. “Bleeker,” he said, “You are Randolph Bleeker.”

Afterwards it was impossible to determine how the rumors got started. The Mexican police officials, who had been appointed to the special commission, had been committed to the strictest silence, and the final internal investigation into the case showed no reason to believe that one of their own had been the source of the information leak. Even so, foreign news and camera teams suddenly landed in Mexico City’s airport, requests for comment to the police were sent by fax and telephone, and the whole world wanted to know if it was true that John Salvatore Fontanelli had been kidnapped.

The headquarters of Fontanelli Enterprises in London refused to make any sort of comment. The police of Mexico City also refused to make a statement. The campus grounds of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico were suddenly flooded with police and people with cameras and microphones.

“It just won’t stop,” one of the secretaries complained to McCaine. “Even our own TV stations are calling us. What should I tell them?”

“Nothing,” McCaine responded. He closed a folder with a smack and shoved it into a drawer. “Cancel all my appointments for the next five days and book me a flight to Mexico City.”

“What’s all this about?” John asked. “Is this your revenge because your plan with my brother failed?”

Bleeker grinned mockingly. “Revenge? No. I’m not the kind of person who holds a grudge. I’m quite professional in things like this, you know. I’m only doing what I’ve been told.”

“So? What are you being told?”

“You’re not going to ask who I’m working for, are you? You’re too smart for that.”

John just shrugged his shoulders. “What happens now? What are you going to do with me?”

“Oh, I think your ransom money will make history.” Bleeker made sure he kept outside of John’s radius of movement. He was wearing a light and very wrinkled suit and kept on rubbing a small spot beneath his ear. “And besides, it depends.”

“On what?”

“You, for instance. Your behavior, your cooperation, and other things you have no influence over.”

“It won’t work,” John said, and he wondered over his own calmness. “You will fail again, Bleeker, just like before, when you ruined Lino’s life.”

Bleeker stared at John and then snarled, “You would be surprised how much detail your brother put into his potential role as father of a trillion dollar heir.”

John could easily imagine that it wasn’t a lie. Lino was always someone who lived by the motto “Take whatever you can” — regardless of whether it was with women, money, or anything else. John rubbed his handcuffed wrists. “I would suggest you tell me what it is you want.”

“Quality control,” Bleeker said. “I have to make sure that my … subcontractors have done a good job and got the right man.”

“Your subcontractors?”

“I’m only doing this for money, Mr. Fontanelli. Since no one hands it to me for nothing I have to work for it. I have discovered that you can live very pleasantly when you are ready to do unpleasant things once in a while. Like this here, for example.”

“And what else? Surely you won’t let me live. I could incriminate you as soon as I’m set free.”

“That really doesn’t frighten me. I’m already a fugitive, remember? I’ve learned a thing or two, and believe it or not, I like it like this. Life is pretty exciting this way.”

McCaine glanced warily at the giant chandelier directly above his head. Mexico City was earthquake prone and should one hit this evening that thing could flatten him. He cleared his throat. All eyes, microphones, and cameras were fixed on him.

The press conference took place in the big hall in the Hotel El Presidente. Green velvet cloth hung in elaborately pleated large, tent-like webs, draped across the ceiling and gold ornate pillars seemed to support the symbolic tent roof: all this in bizarre contrast to the huge, exotically colorful mural behind McCaine, which had been painted by legendary Mexican painter, Diego Rivera. There was no need to be an art connoisseur to know this; the hotel informed its visitors amply with brochures, signs, and engravings.

“So far,” McCaine said, after he explained the reason why he was there, “all we know is that Mr. Fontanelli has disappeared. The circumstances behind his disappearance do not support the notion that he was forcefully abducted, although this cannot be totally discounted. If indeed he had been abducted, there haven’t been any messages from the kidnappers yet.”

A woman put her hand in the air and spoke when McCaine gave her the floor. “Do you know who Mr. Fontanelli was going to meet?”

“No,” McCaine answered. “I even doubt that such a meeting had taken place. As far as I know, Mr. Fontanelli knew no one on the campus here.”

That caused excitement. “Why did he say that?” one man called out before McCaine gave him the floor.

McCaine leaned over the forest of microphones. “Everybody knows that Mr. Fontanelli likes to take a risk every now and then, to venture out without his bodyguards. There has never been any foul play in the past when he did this, but, of course, his bodyguards do not like this sort of behavior. I, by the way, don’t either. Mr. Fontanelli, however, is an adult and does not need to have anyone telling him what he can or cannot do. I’d like to add that one of the bodyguards is missing too. The police are currently investigating the possibility of a connection between the two disappearances.”

A heavy-set man wearing a tee-shirt with the logo of an American TV channel raised his hand. “Could this be a pre-mediated kidnapping?”

“I can’t see how someone could have planned this,” McCaine responded. “It was only decided a few days ago that Mr. Fontanelli would come to Mexico, and it was known to only a handful of people. As far as I’m informed, the police think this may have been purely opportunistic.”

“Will you pay ransom?” someone shouted out.

“How high is the sum?” another one wanted to know.

Flash-bulbs popped, dictaphones were pointed towards him.

McCaine stared blankly into thin air for a while, brooding before he answered. “Naturally, we will do whatever is necessary to get Mr. Fontanelli back in one piece, if he has indeed been abducted. But, as I said before, we know nothing definite.”

“There is a witness who saw Mr. Fontanelli running,” someone chipped in. “What do you say to that? Was he running away from something?”

McCaine raised his hands apologetically. “I can say nothing about that. I was not there.”

“What happens if Mr. Fontanelli is dead? Who will inherit the fortune?” a voice asked from somewhere in the rear of the hall.

“Yes, that’s right. Who is the heir?” another person asked. The hall erupted with everyone asking the same question, as if they had all been waiting for someone else to ask it, but no one had dared.

McCaine stared grimly into the crowd and waited until they had calmed down — more or less. “You can rest assured that all questions concerning the fortune have been duly addressed. But at the present time, I think it would be more than tasteless to give details of any sort.” He thought it unnecessary to mention that he flew to Mexico only after one of the most important legal experts of Britain thoroughly examined John’s hand-written will and assured him that it would be considered completely valid.

The waiting got on his nerves — badly. If he could have done so, he would have paced back and forth in his cell like a tiger in a cage, but the chains didn’t permit even that. If he could only get rid of them! When the man brought him his food, he asked, with his face pressed against the stinking mattress, to have the chains removed. But the unknown man only thought that was amusing. After he was alone again, John looked long and hard at the door and then understood; without the chains, he could easily kick the flimsy door down without any effort at all.

Out of pure boredom he got up every few minutes, stood by the pipe, pressed his ear against the metal, and listened. He did this until his back and neck got sore and he had to sit down again. Most of the time he only heard the TV anyhow, it seemed to be on the entire day. Sugary music played and then sentimental songs, and at times there were overly excited dialogue between guests on some cheap talk show, and then a news program, with the moderator rattling out the news at machinegun pace. Once in a while he could hear dishes and the clanging of pots and pans, or the chopping of food on a wooden board. Occasionally a couple of people talked to each other, always deep, mens’ voices, sounding bored. They spoke Spanish, but even if John had known the language they slurred their speech so much he would never have been able to understand a word.

Every time he sat back down he thought that he would just stop listening from now on, because he hadn't got a single piece of information about what his kidnappers had planned or what they wanted to do with him. That’s when he told himself that he would be satisfied just to watch the cockroach for a while. But then it became so boring he could not stand it anymore so got up and listened again.

As he listened he suddenly heard his name being mentioned. There is something slightly magical about hearing the sound of your own name. Even if you’re not paying any attention, even if you’re listening to a foreign language, even standing in the middle of a crowd with a jumble of other voices all around — as soon as your own name is mentioned, you hear it. And since you don’t expect to hear it, it shocks you when you do. John heard his name, but it was a voice from the TV.

He reeled back, startled. That must have been a hallucination, surely? For sure, the cracks and holes in the walls told him. He pressed his ear back against the pipe, holding his breath. Then he heard excitement in the men’s voices. They were watching the TV news program up there. He barely heard the men’s nervous whispering. The TV was switched to another channel, and the whispering changed to excited chatter. One interrupted the other and they got louder and more excited until one of them got the others to quiet down.

One of them seemed to be using the telephone, and he ranted at someone in a harsh tone of voice. The phone was hung up with a slam and the voices got excited again and now it even started to sound like panic.

Something had gone wrong.

John had to step away from the pipe and he placed a hand against his chest; his heart was pounding. This was not good. This was very bad. Something had not gone the way his kidnappers had planned, and he had read enough stories about abductions to know that this could end very badly for him.

He tried to calm down and not to make any suspicious noises with the chain. He returned to his listening post. He still heard the excited voices talking loudly. They were not calming down.

After a while a door was slammed, and heavy footsteps could be heard. Then he heard a new voice speaking broken Spanish and John thought he recognized Randolph Bleeker’s voice. The men verbally attacked him, throwing accusations at him and other, stronger words. Bleeker defended himself, talking loudly, even yelling and shouting. John started to understand what had gone wrong: the kidnappers had no idea who it was they had abducted. They did not know who he was. It was only when they saw his picture on TV that they learned the wealthiest man in the world sitting in their dungeon. And now they were scared.

Perhaps they were indeed professional kidnappers and abducted a relatively wealthy person every once in a while, and earned their livelihood this way. The police were probably overburdened with these cases, or did not even find out about some of them. But the abduction of John Fontanelli was like poking a stick into a beehive, and heaven and hell would be set in motion to find the abductors. This was more than they bargained for.

No doubt, Bleeker was trying to convince them otherwise. He cursed and he argued told them to stick to the plan, but the men were shouting all at once, chairs were falling over, and it sounded like there was a scuffle going on. They finally managed to throw Bleeker out. John heard the former lawyer shouting dirty American cuss words, but it sounded like they already had him out in the hallway, and then outside. A door slammed shut.

John stepped back. They’re going to kill me, he thought and felt cold terror crawling up his back. His heart and throat turned to ice. They will come down and kill me.

He fell to the mattress and asked himself how they would do it. Shoot him, or stab him? Would it hurt? And here, my God, in this hole that stank like urine. What an end for a man chosen to fulfill a prophecy. A choking ironic laugh spewed out of his lungs. How lucky the Padrone had been — to die peacefully after a long life and in the belief he had successfully accomplished his task, just in time not to have to witness how wrong he had been after all. Ursula had told him all along. The belief he had in the prophecy was nothing but a comfortable excuse not to have to make his own decisions. That would mean him taking responsibility. It was so convenient to say it was God’s will. Whatever happened, it would not be his fault. An easy way out for cowards.

John stared at the pale door his murderers would come through. He felt the flames of faith that had burned inside him until now simply die — a flame that had burst into life was suddenly extinguished without leaving ashes. Didn’t people say that when you're about to die you see your whole life flash by before your eyes? John saw every episode of his past in painful clearness … how he was always looking for someone who would tell him what to do. He saw his parents, his brothers … he moved away from home because Sarah wanted it. Marvin had told him to take the job at Murali’s pizza service. Cristoforo Vacchi told him he had a destiny, and Malcolm McCaine knew how this destiny was to be fulfilled. Damn, even going to bed with Constantina was set up by Eduardo. And Ursula? He didn’t listen to Ursula when it really mattered. The only time he had listened to her was when she wanted to go to Germany without the bodyguards.

The door remained shut. No footsteps could be heard. His murderers were not coming.

He looked at the pipe and decided not to listen anymore. He did not want to know if anyone was still up there. He did not want to know if they had run away and left him behind to die, never to be found.

He just sat and stared into the dim light and stopped thinking about his life. Actually, he stopped thinking altogether. He just stared straight ahead and did nothing but breathe. Time stood still, the light got darker, and then it was gone. Sometime later he finally heard footsteps.

It knocked on the door. “Hola? You wake?”

“Yes,” John’s voice said.

“You lie down — face on mattress.”

They were still going to keep this up! He had listened to other people his whole life, so why stop now? He got on his stomach, closed his eyes and surrendered to the inevitable.

The door opened, and this time several men came in. One hand reached for his head. John felt himself shudder within and clenched his teeth — just don’t beg for mercy! They pulled something over his head. Someone pulled his arms back and tied his wrists together. The cuffs were removed. Then strong arms pulled him to his feet. “Come,” the unknown man said.

They went up a set of stairs, down a hallway, where his shoulder bumped into a piece of furniture. He was told to watch for the step, and then they went down some more steps into a room that smelled of sawdust and diesel. Maybe a garage, because they lifted him up like a toy and put him into the spacious trunk of a car. He heard a door opening and the engine start. Then they drove away.

The drive seemed endless there was no point in even attempting to remember the way … whether they took a left or a right. To make matters worse, exhaust fumes were coming in from somewhere, making him so nauseous that he had to do his utmost not to vomit into the sack pulled over his head.

They finally stopped. Someone got out, returned again after a short while and got back into the car. The car turned around and drove in reverse over uneven ground and then stopped. The trunk was opened. Now his legs were also tied together with wire that cut into his flesh. John protested, but they paid no attention. Instead, they took him out of the trunk, carried him a bit, and then threw him into the air. John yelled.

He landed fairly softly on something that felt like cloth and paper, mixed with hard, sharp objects. The landing hurt him but not badly. There was a foul stench. He tried to turn around, but with every move he made he had the impression that whatever he was lying in, would let him sink deeper, so he remained still, his arms and legs tied together, his face downward. He heard the car drive away.

After a short while, a terrible odor entered his nose, a stink he had never encountered, like an incredible mixture of rot and decay and decomposition, a foul confusion of mold, mildew, and rust. The air in his dungeon had been a delight compared to this stench. Scarcely able to believe it, he realized what his abductors had done. This was a garbage dump. They had discarded him like trash.

$41,000,000,000,000

THE COLD CREPT up on him, persistently working its way through his clothing, through his skin, and all the way down into his bones. And the colder it got the quieter it got. At first, he had heard traffic far away and the sound of a machine. But the machine was turned off at some point and the flow of traffic died down, until the only thing he heard was his own breathing. Then he heard the sound of things crawling around down below him, things that curdled his blood: rats.

He flinched involuntarily. He tried to turn around and slipped further into the mess, but then stopped moving in horror. Naturally, there would be rats in a garbage dump. Rats that could bite — that could seriously injure a human being and maybe even kill. He could not help but imagine a horde of squirming, furry creatures with sharp teeth and naked tails burrowing through rotting kitchen waste and fermenting garbage. His body squirmed without him consciously telling it to until his arms felt like they would break.

Maybe if he lay still, maybe they would leave him alone then. He dared not breathe, listened, tried to keep track of every sound, his senses fine-tuned to the maximum, ready to thrash around wildly as soon as an animal even touched him, ready to shout and squirm to scare it away. Staying awake and alert was the only thing that could save him. He closed his eyes to concentrate …

He was startled as suddenly a hand touched his shoulder, realizing he must have been asleep. The noise of traffic was back, the boom of the distant machine too. And there were footsteps. He was freezing, as if he had slept in a refrigerator all night. His arms had turned into numb fleshy appendages, and his bound feet felt as if they had died.

“Help,” he croaked and shook his head, almost suffocating from the sackcloth, clammy and sticky now. “Please, untie me!” He could hear voices. Children’s voices. One of them nudged him with a foot, as if he were road kill. “Please, help me!” He shouted and wiggled around to prove he was not dead. Damn his lack of Spanish. Was it so hard to see what he wanted? “Please, untie me. Please!”

He felt hands on his body again, small hands with quick fingers. But they did not untie any knots or remove any wires. They were groping around, searching through his pockets instead. The voices sounded disappointed when the fingers found nothing, no wallet, no watch and no money.

“Hey, dammit!” he screamed, but the children made no effort to help him.

They seemed to discuss something, then their footsteps went away, rustling and crunching in the garbage heap and all his shouting did nothing to get them to return.

He lay there, helpless, abandoned, sweat running down his body. Sweat — that would attract animals. This was all Ursula’s fault, wasn’t it? If she hadn’t left him he’d never have fallen into the kidnappers’ trap. One day when his corpse was found, she would feel guilty, and it would serve her right.

He heard someone whimper, and after a while John realized it was him. He was shivering uncontrollably, making his entire bound body ache, but he couldn’t stop. He was totally miserable. The stink was so bad he could even taste it. It was probably seeping into every pore on his body, and he would start to decompose alive. Now he was hot, so miserably hot. His tongue was dried out and felt like a rubber ball.

A rustling sound was approaching. Footsteps? Rats? Let them eat him, who cares? But they did not eat him, they ate the straps that tied his arms to his back, and when the straps were eaten through his arms just dropped down lifelessly, like a rag-doll’s. They didn’t feel as if they were a part of him anymore. They just throbbed and pulsated and threatened to burst.

Then they went for his throat, but they were not teeth, they felt like hands — hands that undid the knots, and pulled and yanked and finally the hood was removed from his head. The bright light made his eyes water. He only saw an endless grayness above him and the blurred face of a woman — of a dark-haired woman. “Ursula,” he said happily. Ursula said something too and he was wondering why she spoke Spanish.

He felt an itch in his legs as the pain around his calves started to go away. She reached out a hand — she had a wide, angel-like face, deep dark eyes. She helped him to get up, and the child with her also helped him. It hurt to stand and his feet ached, as if they had open wounds. When he glanced down he saw that his shoes were gone. “That was mean,” he told the woman, “they were custom made John Lobb shoes for six thousand dollars.”

She only looked at him, and he leaned on her as they slowly went down the hill of garbage. They reached a hut with an entryway covered by a plaid cloth. It was dark and narrow inside and there was a place to lie down, so he did. Suddenly someone lifted his head and gave him some warm water to drink — water that tasted like metal. But it was wet and covered his tongue and throat and was absorbed by his body and when the cup was empty he was allowed to lie down again and to sleep.

He kept awaking from a restless sleep filled with feverish dreams and fear and desperation. He sat up shouting. Suddenly a hand held a cup of water to his mouth and then made him lie back down. There was a soft voice he did not understand, but it talked to him soothingly until he sank back down into numb darkness.

His heart raced, and his mind knew time was passing but he was so dazed he had no idea how much. It seemed to take half a lifetime to drive the poisons out of his bloodstream, to destroy the bacteria and to sweat through his nightmares. He was bathed in sweat, lashed his arms out, and heard himself crying and complaining and moaning until things he had forgotten brought him back again.

She talked to him, sang odd songs. This was not Ursula, no. This woman had velvety dark skin and sad eyes. She cooled his forehead with a wet cloth when he was hot, his eyes burned or his heart threatened to explode. And from time to time she placed a hand on his chest and seemed to pray to unknown gods, until his eyes got heavy and sleep took him.

John woke up to find the fever gone. He was weak. Even sitting up made his heart pound. But his head was clear, his body felt light, and he could see properly. He remembered what happened, and he knew that he had been saved.

There was the curtain, just as he remembered it, the plaid curtain, glowing because it was daytime, and the sun was shining. He heard voices, calls from afar, people talking nearby, hundreds of people all around. Metal clanged, stones were thrown on stones, and there was commotion all around. Everything was tainted by a caustic smell of garbage, smoke, rot, and decomposition. The air was filthy. He was filthy. His skin felt like it was covered in talcum powder. His underwear felt sticky and awful, and his head itched terribly. When he reached for his chin he felt a beard, a longish one. Great God, for how long had he been sick? The hair on his face was no five o’clock shadow; there were long hairs, longer than he ever had before.

He looked around. It was a miserable little shack made of corrugated sheet metal and cardboard. Only one wall was made of brick, though it was crumbling. He had lain on the only bed in the place: a knotty, ripped old mattress with a gray blanket. There were crates for oranges and a crooked, faded, woven basket with a few bits and pieces in it next to him. A charred picture of the Madonna was the only decoration. A shard of broken mirror hung below it, and standing on the floor in a row was a line of dirty, green bottles filled with water. There was also a box with wilted vegetables and other odds and ends and a pair of high-heeled shoes.

He turned around stiffly so that he could look into the mirror fragment. His face was unrecognizable: hollow-cheeked, his hair a total mess and then the strange beard. Not even his own mother would have recognized him. He must have lain here for two weeks or even longer; that was if this was really him that he saw in the mirror … if his soul had not been put into the body of an older man by some magical trick or illegal operation … into a vagabond and trash collector.

The curtain was pushed aside and light flooded into the shack driving away whatever minute aura of picturesque rusticity it might have had and revealing its wretched poverty. John turned around, batting his eyelids. It was her — the one who saved him — picked him out of the garbage dump, freed him, and nursed him back to relative health. She was a small, brown-skinned woman, with a broad Indian face and oily black hair, wearing a plain dress of some indistinguishable color. She stood there looking at him.

“You well?” she asked him.

“Yes, thank you,” John said nodding. “I’m feeling much better now. Thank you very much for saving me. I thought I would die out there in the trash.”

Her head moved side to side as if trying to work out what he had said. “You go,” she told him. “One hour, then come back, okay?”

John looked at her confused, unsure if he understood her correctly. “I should go away for one hour?”

“Yes. One hour away then lay down.”

“Okay, no problem.” He got up to go but realized it wasn’t that easy. He had to support his body against the stone wall until the fluttering images in his vision were gone. “No problem,” he repeated, despite the effort, and struggled to his feet. The ceiling was far too low to stand straight, so out he went, through the curtain and into the bright sunlight.

“I you call,” he heard her tell him from inside; a blurry figure in front of the bright background.

“It’s okay,” John called back, nodding vigorously.

He groped his way along an old wall that was waist-high. He did this for some time until an animal whooshed between his legs. It was a cat, and it reminded him not to stray too far from the hut. He wasn’t that well yet, far from it. With watering eyes he looked around for somewhere he could sit down for a moment. The smoke burned his nose and eyes, and he rubbed them with the back of his hand. That was when he discovered the smoke was coming from a fire close by. A dented pot sat on top of the flames with something cooking in it, which smelled like vegetables and corn. Two scraggy dogs were lying next to it, their tongues hanging out. An old hunch-backed woman appeared. She stirred the soup and croaked something that he did not understand and he was not even sure if she was talking to him or the dogs. But he got up again and wandered away.

There was a whole settlement here at the foot of the garbage mountain. A village made of sheets of metal and plastic, cardboard, and wooden boards, embedded in rubble, mountains of rotting newspaper, and plastic bags. John looked in awe at the children and adults working their way through the mountain of refuse, picking out whatever was still usable, such as scrap metal, piling it into large heaps, guarded by other members of this bizarre army of trash-pickers. He saw people flattening cardboard boxes, going through plastic garbage bags, pulling out old clothes, car batteries, bottles, cans and other rubbish. The elders wore old baseball caps and had cloth tied over their noses and wore gloves, and the children wore jeans and short-sleeved, striped polo shirts; they didn’t even look desperately poor. They only seemed to be playing hooky from school and killing time sifting through the trash.

Suddenly, a wave of excitement passed through the crowd of men, women and children; a heavy motor was rumbling somewhere above. There was a sound of crunching and screeching and then a large truck appeared at the top of the mountain. It maneuvered into place while the people below struggled to get into the best positions. With a groan and roar of its engine the dumper rose into the air and dropped a fresh supply of garbage down the slope of the mountain. It looked absurdly like a cornucopia of blessings being dumped on the people beneath.

There was an immediate scuffle below for the choicest pieces. One person got out a cable, another one dragged away a sack full of clothes, and a third one got a dented old microwave oven. Bottles were taken out and put in bags. Wood seemed to be usable regardless of size. Tin cans were crushed before they were thrown into bags.

Then John spotted a few well-nourished people off to one side, sitting on old mattresses and easy chairs. The garbage pickers went to them with what they scavenged. What they found was weighted and they were paid. Each one of them seemed to be responsible for one certain material, like metal, plastic, gadgets, one large woman bought glass and a fat man bought wood. So this was also all about money, just like everywhere else. If he asked enough questions he might even find out that in the end that all these people here were working to help increase his wealth. He felt ill at the smell, at the sight, at anything, and everything.

Someone called. It took John a moment to realize they were calling to him. “Come you,” the woman hollered to him from the hut and waved.

He struggled to get to his feet and stomped through rubble and shards. He bypassed a pool of brown water that oozed from beneath the mountain; the water had a thin, multi-colored surface. He saw a man appear behind the woman coming from out of the hut, still closing his pants. Now he realized that she was a prostitute.

The fever returned and practically burnt him alive The woman missed out on no end of clients because of him. Once, he awoke in the middle of the night and saw her light a candle in front of the Madonna, praying. He thought either she was praying for him to get well again, or that she could get rid of him in some decent manner. When he woke up during the day he saw a boy sitting beside him putting a wet cloth on his forehead.

“What’s your name?” John asked him.

“Mande?” the boy said in reply. He looked to be about seven or even younger. He wore shorts and a dirty plaid shirt.

John saw the woman cooking over an open fire in front of the doorway, and when she brought him some soup his hunger banished any questions about hygiene. This seemed to make her happy. At any rate she smiled and gave him more.

The fever was back, but not as bad, just a minor relapse, which diminished as the days passed. One day he sat beside her while she cooked and he watched her. She talked with her child as if having John there was the most natural thing in the world. They exchanged a word or two once in a while with the help of her bad English and the unspoken language of gesticulation. He found out her name; Maricarmen Berthier. She scribbled it on a piece of cardboard for him. He put it into his pocket.

“I want to repay you as soon as I can,” he explained to her, not knowing how much she understood. “I have an account in every bank in the world, can you imagine that? All I have to do is go in and say who I am, and then I get money. Then I will repay you, more than that.”

She stirred around in her pot and smiled wanly.

Finally the day arrived when he felt strong enough to leave. She told him to go west. He said thanks again and left. She stepped out of her hut and folded her arms, holding on to herself. She watched after him until he was out of sight.

When he reached the road a small truck coming away from the dump stopped and picked him up. They drove at breakneck speed along wide and narrow roads, through endless slums, smoky industrial areas, and dreary housing projects. It would have taken him days to walk this distance. At one point he noticed that he had no idea where the ride was taking him, and whether he might actually be being taken yet further away from his actual destination. What was his destination? He knocked on the cab window and made a gesture for the driver to let him off.

There he stood all alone and lost in a city, which made New York look uncomplicated in comparison. He waved to the truck who had given him the ride and a bare, brown arm waved back as it drove away. Then it was gone.

He looked around and saw a bunch of uninviting walls, weathered billboards, barred windows and dirt. The few people that were out and about made an effort to avoid him, and when he looked down at himself he understood why. His once elegant, light-colored suit was in tatters, colored with unknown shades of dirt. His shoes were gone, and his feet were clad in dirty socks full of holes. He had lost all sense of smell and wondered how badly he must stink. It was a weird feeling to realize that it might be very difficult to prove that he was the wealthiest man on earth.

At a place that looked like a bus stop there was a billboard bolted on a house wall. It was a simple wooden board with a bus schedule and a rough map of Mexico City and the surrounding areas. John studied it closely and worked out that he was somewhere in Azcapotzalco in the northern part of the city. He tried to retrace the route that the truck had taken and determined that the garbage dump had to be in Netzahualcoyotl, a place not far from Lake Texcoco. This meant that he should keep to the south.

Using the sun and the approximate time of day, he tried to find where south was. He wondered if there was any way he could get on a bus, but he could not think of a way. He would have to take a bath for a few hours, put on a fresh set of clothes and get some money before thinking about such a thing.

He turned around when he heard a car approaching. It was a police car. Of course, the police! There were presumably people out looking for him since he had been kidnapped. All he had to do is go to the first policeman he saw, and his worries would all be over. At this moment a window opened in the house across the street and an old woman stuck her head out, pointed a finger at him, and shouted something. The police car stopped and two police officers got out. With macho-style gait they went to John — their right hands resting on their batons.

It appeared they were not exactly out to help him. John started to walk, going the opposite direction, away from the cops, and was glad that they were satisfied with driving him off.

Maybe going to the police wasn’t such a good idea after all. He would be putting himself at the mercy of people with weapons, and he had enough of that for now. He remembered what he had heard on the flight to Mexico, perhaps from one of the bodyguards: nothing in Mexico is more dangerous than the police. No, he would do this on his own. Fontanelli Enterprises had a branch office in Mexico City; he needed to make his way safely there. Though he did not know exactly where it was, he did know it was somewhere in the city center. And he would have to get there entirely by foot.

He plodded on. What if it took days — what then? There was nothing he needed. He was not even hungry after all the time with fever. Once in a while he found a well or a small stream, where he could wash down the road dust in his throat. He didn’t even care that the water was sometimes brackish or had a thin, oily film on it. He walked along roads and the traffic got denser the further he went, which to him meant that he was heading in the right direction. He passed through tiny picturesque streets with colorful painted housing. There were flowers and herbs planted outside the house doors, growing in rusty iron barrels. Laundry dangled from lines strung across the road. Some children were playing with cats and they looked after him with curiosity. A woman waved him over to her and gave him a pair of worn sneakers … a gift that brought tears to his eyes. He went through miserable-looking neighborhoods where the roads were nothing more than tightly packed dirt and covered with trash, and where the houses to the left and right were half-finished concrete blocks, and had rusty reinforcement rods sticking out. The sky seemed covered with TV antennas and the power and phone lines crisscrossed wildly. Mangy dogs were digging around in dark corners and some kids had only blankets wrapped around them. Here, he did not attract much attention. At times he would sneak through better neighborhoods, where the houses had facades of stucco and little French style balconies, and places where the churches had small picturesque squares, surrounded by trees or large palms. As he walked the buildings got taller and taller, and there were more illuminated advertisements. When he finally found another city map he knew he did not have so much to go any more because it showed only the city center and not the surrounding areas.

Here, he saw the first beggars in large numbers; crippled men sitting on the streets holding out their hands and looking imploringly at passersby. There were women with babies following men wearing business suits until they got a coin or two, meant to make them leave the men alone. And children, wearing filthier clothes than he had even seen in the slums, surrounding Japanese tourists and begging. The locals let the beggars beg, but it was obvious that they tried not to take note of them.

He found a telephone booth that had a phone book in good enough shape to find the address of the branch office, and, using the city map in the book, where it was located. Plaza de San Juan, south of Alameda Park, which he thought would be easy enough to find. When he asked someone the direction they were glad to tell him the way as soon as they realized he did not want money. He only had to follow a hastily outstretched arm. “Alameda? Alla!”

He finally found the building. It was a narrow structure in colonial style with the dark-red Fontanelli f on a white background and it was surrounded by the press.

The man behind the steering wheel of the mobile broadcasting van emptied the Coke can to the last drop. His Adam’s apple bopped up and down as he drank. Then he squished the can and threw it out on the street. “Let’s assume that his corpse is floating in some lake,” he said to the woman who stood by the open door. “How would they ever find it? We could be waiting here for years.”

“We won’t be here for years, so calm down,” the woman said. She was slim, delicately built and had wild red curly hair.

John, standing behind the two reporters watching the Fontanelli building, knew they were talking about him. He was assumed dead. If he were to go into the building now they would be all over him thinking he was a bum and intruder and maybe he would then wish he were dead.

“Mexico City of all places,” the man complained. “This city makes me sick. I feel it in my chest, I tell you. Every morning when I wake up I have to cough as if I never quit smoking. What do you think of that? I quit smoking, and then I get stuck in this city for weeks, where it stinks miserably in every corner and crevice …” The man suddenly turned around, as if he sensed John. He grimaced. “Hey, Brenda, look, we have company.”

She turned around and looked to John. John was surprised to see that he knew the woman. Brenda Taylor from CNN, his still functioning memory told him. She was the one who had asked him a hundred years ago in the Vacchis’ house if wealth made him happy. And now she looked at him questioningly.

On impulse, John pulled his head in, reached out a hand and whined, using the same slang TV shows used to depict Mexicans speaking English: “Pleaze, señora, ten dallas, pleaze, señora!”

“Oh God,” the man said, “I hate that.”

She immediately turned away from John, crossed her arms, and told her colleague: “Give him the damn ten bucks so he gets lost.”

“Ten bucks? I think that’s a lot, Brenda. The others …” He reached into a pocket, fished out a bill and threw it towards John. “There you go. Now get out of here, vamos! Damn, I hate this city,” he griped and turned around too.

“Gracias,” John mumbled, having practically used up all the Spanish he knew. “Muchos gracias, señor.” He left.

A few streets away he found a small telefonos office that advertised with the words larga distancia on a blue and white sign. He went down a few steps and entered a room with low ceiling and a soda machine. A fat man sat behind a counter with a map of Mexico on the wall behind him. Thick layers of old posters hung on the other walls showing concerts and church services. The office was run down, but still tidy enough for the man to look at John disapprovingly.

“May I use the phone?” John asked and placed the money on the countertop.

The man’s bushy eyebrows rose when he saw the money.

“International call … USA.”

The eyebrows dropped again. A hand with a bunch of rings reached for the money and the other pointed to the telephone hanging on a wall to the right. “Está bien. Dos minutas.”

John nodded and grabbed the phone; now to dial the right number. He followed the instructions for international calls; 98 and then 1 for the US. Then he waited. He wanted to call the front desk of the New York branch office to have a security team come pick him up, but suddenly the idea felt strangely wrong.

The man behind the counter grumbled something and gestured for John to continue dialing. “Ándele, ándele!”

No, he didn’t know why, but it wasn’t a good idea. John lifted his hand and was about to hang up when another idea crossed his mind. It was an idea he followed through without a second thought. His finger dialed a zero and then a phone number he was unlikely to forget — his best friend’s birthday.

“Hello?” Paul Siegel’s voice said.

$42,000,000,000,000

ZÒCALO WAS THE center of the metropolis and the pride of the city’s inhabitants. It was huge, big enough to accommodate huge throngs of people and parades. There was a massive cathedral and a grand palace. The square was crowded with everyone from pedestrians to beggars to artists drawing pictures on the cobblestones, and love-struck couples, families with kids, and tourists with cameras. A never-ending stream of people crisscrossed the square and in the middle of it all the national flag fluttered. Every evening an honor guard marched onto the square to take down the flag in an elaborate ceremony. After that thousands of lamps went on to impressively illuminate the surrounding imposing facades.

John felt invisible here. He slowly walked around the square, always on the lookout, always ready to run at the hint of danger. But no one looked at him and no one paid him any attention. He wandered along the sheer endless front of the Palacio Nacional, was fascinated by the reliefs on the cathedral, and ambled through the arcades and the many little shops that either sold jewelry or hats, nothing else. Once, he stood in front of a display, musing as he stared at jewelry lying before him looking like Aztec Gold, when a stout matron with wavy hair squeezed a few coins into his hand so forcefully there was no way he could refuse. With the money he bought a taco a few stands onward, downed it in no time, only to find it lay in his stomach like a brick.

He felt invisible and oddly enough … free. During the past weeks the necessities of civilization seemed to have disappeared. All the pesky performances of personal hygiene, the myriad obligations of cohabitation, he remembered all these things as belonging to another person and it was as if he had only heard of them. He had nothing to do, yet he was not bored, and he actually felt satisfied when he got to sit against a wall somewhere and just stare off at nothing in particular. Once in a while he felt a bodily need of some sort, but the feeling was repressed, almost as if his body wanted to leave it up to him to decide how much of a need it really was. Hunger, thirst, fatigue … those were all there, yes, but they remained in the background and never got bothersome or demanding. It was a feeling of peace with the world that he had never felt before, and he almost wished that Paul wouldn’t turn up after all

Then suddenly he was there. It was unmistakably Paul with his gaunt figure and eyeglasses. He stood there in front the portal of the cathedral without paying the least attention to the historic structure just scanning the square. Sighing, John stood up and sauntered over to him, making a wide semi-circle and at an inconspicuous pace, until he was almost by Paul’s side without being unrecognized.

“Hello, Paul,” he said.

Paul Siegel spun to his right and stared at him, disconcerted at first. The longer he stared the less he could believe what he was seeing. “John …?” he uttered, and his eyes looked like they were kept from popping out only by the lenses of his eyeglasses.

“Have I changed much?”

“Changed?” Paul gasped. “My God, John … you look like a fakir come down from the Himalayas after twenty years of meditation.”

“And stinking like a sewage worker, I take it.”

“After spending twenty years in the sewage, yes.” He shook his head. “Good thing I rented a car.”

They left the city and headed north, with windows wide open because Paul couldn’t have taken the stench otherwise. He had brought a load of food along; cookies, fruit, and drinks in bottles and was amazed when John was reluctant to eat much. “It’s all clean and quite safe,” he told him jokingly.

“Sure,” John was all John said.

They stopped at a hotel that Paul found in a thick, highly detailed travel brochure. “I had plenty of time to read during the flight from Washington,” he said almost apologetically. “So you can ask me whatever you want, because I think I know Mexico like the back of my hand.” Paul checked them in and then smuggled John into the room. Paul had made sure that it had running water and a bathtub. “I thought this might be useful after you told me about the garbage dump. And this too,” he added as he pulled out a large bottle of special liquid soap from the travel bag. “Miners use this, and, well … garbage workers too.”

John took the impressive looking bright-red bottle, and even made a joke: “I see you are up to doing a few chores, pal. And let me guess; you’ve also brought fresh clothes?”

“In the trunk. I’ll go get them while you get cleaned up.”

“You’re a genius.”

Paul smiled. “Oh, really? Then why aren’t I rich and happy? Come on, off you go into the bath tub. You are a disgrace to humanity. Oh, and one more thing … I would keep the beard if I were you.”

After the bath and lots of the special soap, John felt like a newborn baby. The clothes that Paul got for him fit reasonably well — the style of shirt, slacks and shoes were chosen to look normal, nothing expensive.

Later on they sat together on the patio of the hotel and ate dinner while they discussed what to do next. “I flew to San Antonio and crossed the border at Laredo,” Paul explained, “and in case you won’t give me a reason not to, I would like to take the same route back. Oh yes, by the way — your passport.” He pulled out an American passport and shoved it across the table towards John.

“What’s this?” John took it and leafed through it. The photo showed a man with a thin beard on the chin. His name was Dennis Young, born on March 16, 1966, in Rochester. “Who is Dennis Young?”

“A good friend of a good friend who doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t know any journalists.”

“John looked at the youthful-looking face again. “And you think it’ll work?”

“You will need a passport if you want to get across the border, right? And I’m really amazed how well the photo resembles you after your stay at the garbage dump. I can’t imagine a border official getting suspicious.”

“Hmm,” John said pensively. “Well, I guess it’ll work.” He put the passport away. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Paul poured some more wine, and then he leaned forward with the wineglass in his hand. “You do realize the question I need ask you sooner or later?”

“Yup.”

“You could have gone to the police.”

“Sure.”

“They are still looking for you.”

“I should hope so.”

“You could have at least called your bodyguards.”

“I wanted to at first.” John took a deep breath. “I can’t quite explain it. It was … a feeling. Call it intuition … some a voice told me to keep a low profile, disappear, hide.”

Paul looked at him skeptically. “A voice.”

“Well, not really a voice,” John admitted. “I’m not sure what it was. A feeling you have sometimes, like running your tongue across your teeth and you feel something is not quite right, but when you look in a mirror there is nothing there.”

“Hmm,” Paul said.

John tided up some crumbs on the tabletop. “Bleeker said something about a person who gave him the job of kidnapping me. I can’t get that out of my head.”

Paul’s apartment in Washington was so like the one he had in Manhattan that John almost thought he had traveled back in time. The view was not across the Hudson, but the Potomac and the Capitol could be seen in the distance. There was the same furniture, the same exquisite taste and almost the same layout of the rooms.

“It was also the same construction company,” Paul said. “I suppose it’s cheaper to re-use the same set of plans.”

Everything had gone smoothly. They had driven over the Mexican high country, crossed the border at Laredo without any questions being asked, and then took the next possible flight to Washington. Paul had complained about the smell in the car when he returned it, and told them that it had gotten worse during their drive. The car rental employee thought that maybe there was a defect in the air-conditioner, offered a discount, and breathed a sigh of relief when Paul told her no, it was not that bad.

“I gave the cleaning lady some time off, by the way,” Paul said when he returned from shopping for the weekend. “So, we’ll need to clean up after ourselves as long as you’re here.”

“No problem.” John was sitting in front of the TV watching the news. McCaine seemed to have successfully forced the Yamaichi Bank into bankruptcy and got the Japanese government involved in a financial scandal. They kept repeating a sequence of an interview with the finance minister, who kept bowing and asking for forgiveness with tear-filled eyes. It was said that a bank director had committed suicide. The disappearance of John Fontanelli over three weeks ago was mentioned only marginally. A special police task force was thoroughly looing into every lead they received. That it was a kidnapping seemed more than certain, but there had been no demands for ransom yet, at least not any credible ones. In the end, it basically sounded as if nothing whatsoever was known.

“What are you going to do now?” Paul asked a while later. They were sitting at the dinner table in front of the window with the best view, and the food tasted great even though it was a simple meal. John wondered if there was anything his old friend was not good at.

“Yesterday, before I fell asleep,” he told Paul as his eyes gazed over the sparkling river, “I was thinking about something. It was something outrageous, to be honest, and I’d rather forget it totally and forever, but I can’t for some reason.”

“Sometimes thoughts have a habit of doing that.”

“It’s just a suspicion.”

“I thought so.”

John started moving his glass around the table and rearranging his knife and fork into neat positions. “A few days … before McCaine sent me to Mexico,” he began hesitantly, “I started getting interested in the firm’s bookkeeping. Up until then I didn’t care about it, you understand? In the beginning I just had no idea about all those numbers, but I’ve learned this and that since. Well, anyhow … I started to ask questions.”

“Exciting,” Paul said dryly. “Sounds like an episode from a soap opera.”

“Paul, Fontanelli Enterprises paid one billion dollars for consultation fees. One billion dollars!”

Paul looked at him confused. He sat there for a long moment before he burst out in a laugh. “So now you think that McCaine wants to get rid of you because of that? Because you caught him?”

John looked at his friend grimly as he laughed. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, John …” He actually had tears in his eyes. “Basically, you’re still a shoemaker’s son from New Jersey, and a million dollars is more than anyone can imagine. Seriously, John, that is real funny …”

“Do you mean that my suspicion is silly?”

“Silly? More than silly … it goes beyond words.”

John leaned back and waited for Paul to finish laughing. “Well, I’m sure glad that you’re having a fun time with me,” he said, “but I’d like a laugh too.”

“John,” Paul said still wiping tears from his eyes and cheeks, “you got interested in the bookkeeping; so maybe you can give me a few important figures, and then we might be able to put this into perspective. How high, for instance, was the sales turnover last year?”

John crinkled his forehead. “About two point four trillion dollars.”

“The operating profit?”

“That would be almost one hundred and eighty billion dollars.”

Paul did some calculations in his head. “Well, not exactly mind-boggling, but I guess a pretty decent showing for a company that size. How many employees does Fontanelli Enterprises have altogether?”

“Seven and a half million.”

“More than Finland’s population, by the way. How high are the total personnel costs?”

John shrugged his shoulders. “No idea.”

“Hmm,” Paul said. “To be on the safe side, let’s say a half a trillion dollars per year. That’s about right for cheap labor countries.” He grinned. “And you think McCaine cares about a lousy billion? Given the dodgy plans he’s working on? Please …”

John nodded. He was relieved to hear that. His sudden mistrust towards McCaine had been bothering him even though he was loath to admit it. “I think you’re right — about the shoemaker’s son. By now I’ve got used to a million. But one billion for consultations …? My God, I thought, that’s a monster sum …”

“To me it sounds trivial,” Paul said shaking his head. “I’ve been wondering the whole time how McCaine is doing all of this. I mean, he is a monster of a manager, to create such a conglomerate in such a short time…”

“He does have all my money available,” John argued.

“Then think of how far you’d be if you were alone,” Paul countered. “No, it is quite an impressive accomplishment that hardly anyone else could copy. Okay, he might not be the most sympathetic person, but Henry Ford wasn’t either.” He thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single big boss who didn’t have at least some sort of quirk. I guess that’s the price they pay.”

“Hmm,” John said. He still was not very satisfied. There was still something … some sort of detail that he could not get a grasp on, which was still important though. Some connection, but he had no idea where to look.

“It is not all that difficult to imagine McCaine having to call on the help of consultants without first having a crisis as an excuse,” Paul said, and now he sounded as if he were giving a lecture on economic research to a room full of novice investors. “It is often the case that a person in McCaine’s position may get into a dangerous rut of not hearing enough critical voices and end up seeing his every decision as being infallible. This could make him lose touch with reality without even realizing it and then make more and more decisions that are nonsense or even downright dangerous. It seems he was aware of this danger. To keep a measure of criticism alive within a company is difficult, and in a conglomerate the size of Fontanelli Enterprises almost impossible. An external consultant can exercise the necessary critical eye and assure a balance, especially when getting paid for it. And for the management of critical projects it is often better to get an external decision maker who does not care if he is hated or not at the end of the day.”

“I just had the feeling that we were financing the entire consulting industry,” John admitted, who had been listening only marginally.

“Oh, not all of it but a large portion, no doubt. I’m not totally sure, but I think the combined yearly turnover in the consultation area is somewhere around forty or fifty billion dollars. What are some of the firms again? I suppose the bigger ones were just good enough, oh yeah … McKinsey, Anderson, KPMG …”

“No, it was only one, Callum Consulting.”

Paul was puzzled. “Callum? Never heard of them.”

John crinkled his forehead. “Looks like you’re not up to date then.”

“Guess so,” Paul agreed and got up. “Excuse me, but there is something I have to check.”

He climbed up the spiral staircase that went into a small office beneath the roof. John followed him and they both watched the computer boot up. There was a nice view from up there too; you could see the bicycle paths and gardens.

“There are a number of information bureaus that work for the IMF,” Paul explained while the computer connected to the Internet. “I will log-in on one of them. Actually, I’d have to ask you to look the other way while I enter the password.”

“Anything else?” John grumbled.

A homepage appeared with an impressive coat-of-arms. Paul typed in his access data, and then a notice appeared saying that a secure connection was being made. The loading icon circled endlessly.

“Callum Consulting,” John said again. “Something about that rings a bell in my head. Callum … what does that mean?”

Paul shrugged his shoulders. “I think it’s a name … a Scottish name, if I’m not mistaken.”

“A first name?” Damn it, that was important for some reason. A dime dropped, but it got stuck on its way to the floor.

Paul started to ask questions of his own. “In my first year at Harvard I shared a room with a guy named Callum,” he said. “He was pretty stuck-up. His dad was a successful lawyer, but can you believe I can’t think of his last name any more.”

The log-in icon was still circling.

“McKinley?” Paul guessed. “No, not McKinley.”

John suddenly felt as if hot water flowed in his arteries. I’m not very good at dreaming up names for my firms. I always name them after family members. “McCaine,” escaped his lips.

“No, not McCaine, that would have…”

“McCaine’s father’s name was Philipp Callum McCaine,” John said. “That’s why Callum Consulting. His mother’s name is Ruth Earnestine, and his brokerage firm was called Earnestine Investment. He dissolved it, but I never asked him if he had another firm…”

“What?” Paul asked blankly.

“Just punch it in — Callum Consulting.”

Then a new page appeared on the screen showing the search result for the last request. Callum Consulting was a business-consulting firm headquartered in Gibraltar. It was organized as a one-man firm with a grand total of ten employees and the sole boss and chief executive was Malcolm McCaine.

It was barely three weeks until Christmas, and Arturo Sanchez wasn’t sure if he should love or hate the job he’d been given. “Wait here,” the lawyer told the driver of the little delivery van. The man wrinkled his nose and the lawyer understood why. It stank around here. And it did not get any better as he walked over to the garbage dump and started asking the pepenadores, the garbage-sifters, who were staring at him like he was a two-headed donkey.

He finally made his arduous way through the dump, and located the crooked little sheet metal shack at the foot of the garbage mountain. He asked a young, overworked and filthy looking woman: “Are you Maricarmen Berthier?”

And she said, “Yes.”

Sanchez sighed with relief. Finally. “Did you save a man from the garbage dump about four weeks ago and take him in while he was sick?”

She nodded reluctantly. “An American. My son found him,” she told him in Spanish. “I thought he would die of fever, but he did not die. Mother Mary saved him.” She lifted her hands. “But he is not here anymore. He went away one week ago.”

“Yes, I know.” Arturo Sanchez looked around. “Can we go somewhere and …? Oh, what the heck.” He placed the briefcase on the closest stone slab and let the shiny locks snap open. He took a notepad and pencil out and handed them to the woman. “Please, write your name on this piece of paper.”

She seemed to blush, but then wrote her name down. The lawyer took out the photocopy that had been given him and compared the handwriting. It was her, no doubt.

“Señora Berthier,” he said, “the man’s name you took in is John Fontanelli, and he gave me the task of finding you. He wants to display his thanks to you for having saved his life. And because he is a wealthy man he wants to give you something.”

A little boy came from out of nowhere and hid behind his mother’s skirt. Sanchez stopped and looked at the two standing there in the midst of all this poverty. They deserved what’s coming now, God knows.

“Give something?” she asked with big eyes.

Sanchez nodded and got out some documents. “It is an apartment in a new neighborhood in San Rosario, a certain amount of money for furniture, clothing, and whatever else you need and a nice monthly stipend for the rest of your life. Mr. Fontanelli wants me to tell you that he would be happy if you’d accept these gifts. Your son could go to school there,” he added.

“Go to school?” she echoed wide-eyed. She looked round, as if for the first time she realized what dump –literally — she lived in, and looked disgusted by it.

Sanchez put the documents back in the case. There would be time enough for that later. “I have a car up by the road,” he said. “If you wish, we could go right now.”

$43,000,000,000,000

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1997 was a moist, chilly day in London. There was a thick fog over the city, which even swallowed the tops of the skyscrapers, made the silhouette of the Tower Bridge look like a bony skeleton and made Big Ben’s bells sound ghostly. It had rained last night, a cold, biting drizzle to announce the coming of winter. It was the sort of day when no one went outside unless they had to.

The sun tried to peer through the fog around noon, looking like a white disk in the haze rising out of the broad Thames River. The city streets, lined with sober, old-fashioned facades and impressive buildings, were virtually empty except for a few watchmen with their collars turned up making their rounds, and a man here and there in his fine threads walking hastily to the Tube station. The doorman, at the entrance to the Fontanelli building looked up from his newspaper when one of London’s instantly recognizable taxis stopped in front of the steps.

A man got out. He was wearing a dark-green waxed coat with a hood, and without giving the cab driver another glance, which the doorman knew almost everyone did, came walking towards the building. There was such determination to the way the man moved it was almost alarming. He seemed like a human tank with the intention of breaking through the front doors, despite the bulletproof glass. The doorman put the newspaper away and let his finger hover above the alarm button.

He was relieved to see the man stop and punch in the access code, which every employee had to do when coming in after hours. But the lock did not click. Instead a little red lamp lit up on the front desk console: wrong code. The doorman watched with interest, though it might be best to call the security guards. Let them go out and take a closer look at the guy.

The man tried to put in the code a second time, but it still didn’t work. Then he gave up and walked around the entrance directly to the window, knocked on the window, and pulled back his hood.

“Mr. Fontanelli!” the doorman exclaimed.

The boss himself! The man all of Central America was looking for. Many believed him dead, but there he was right outside the window! The doorman waved to him to let him know that he’d open up the door. Of course … immediately! He hurried around the console to the front doors, stuck his key card into the slot, and pulled the door open to let John in, along with a gush of moist, cold air.

“Mr. Fontanelli, what a pleasure … I didn’t know … I thought that you …”

“Yes, thank you,” John replied. “I’m doing fine.”

The doorman was out of breath. “I’m sorry about the code, but Mr. McCaine had it cancelled, just to be sure …”

“Please activate it again.”

“I … well, he’s not here today, Mr. McCaine, I mean.”

“I know.”

“He’s in Copenhagen, you know, because of the awards …”

The Gaea Prize,” John nodded. “I know. Say, how many security people are here today?”

The doorman batted his eyelids. “Oh,” he said a bit surprised by the question, “I think … I suppose it’s the usual weekend crew. Twelve men, I think.”

“Call them together,” John ordered. He pointed at the red telephone at the doorman’s console. “I want ten men to accompany me. I want them to take along whatever key copies, tools and crowbars there are in this place.”

The members of the string quartette wore smart tailcoats and were tuning their instruments. An older man in livery walked down the hall adjusting the chairs so they stood perfect straight rows. The lighting people were screwing around with their cables and light stands and going over details with the TV crews. Two stagehands were doing last-minute preparations with the stage sets and the artistic banner bearing the symbol of the Gaea prize.

In all this bustle three African women in splendid costumes were trying to understand what the grand marshal wanted from them. The three women were representing this year's prize winner: they had started a women's initiative that accomplished an amazing reforestation project at the edge of the Sahel.

McCaine sat in a chair in the very last row and watched the final preparations for tonight’s show. Christiansborg Palace is a sprawling, awe-inspiring gray building within sight of the harbor, and it was an appropriate venue for tonight’s event. After all, it was home to both the seat of the Folketing, the Danish parliament, as well as the Supreme Court, and the royal audience rooms left nothing to be desired as far as pomp and circumstance went. Unfortunately, they had not managed to get Her Royal Highness Margrethe II, by the grace of God, Queen of Denmark, to present the award. The task now fell to the senior judges. But at least the queen and prince consort would be attending the festivities, and McCaine had told the TV teams emphatically to show the royal pair on the TV screens as much as possible. They had sent out invitations to environmental groups around the world, most of which were enthusiastically accepted. The best hotels in Copenhagen had probably never heard so much debate about environmental protection as occurred that weekend.

Fontanelli Enterprises had, relying on the experienced advice of public relations companies, imposed utmost restraint in the arrangement of the ceremony, and the signature dark-red f was extremely inconspicuous. McCaine was there to represent John Fontanelli, whose whereabouts were sadly still unknown, but would give only a short welcome speech.

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 anaphylactic 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.

Nevertheless, it was all in vain. He actually wanted to sell the estate and get an apartment in the city, but he never got around to doing it. He contemplated setting up a bed in another room adjoining his office, but not even that idea got finished. He did not even find the time to call Ursula, but he had to admit that even if she wanted to come back to him, he simply would not know how to integrate her into his all-too-busy life.

He slept through most of the Christmas holidays, a period of rest he desperately needed. With reluctant respect, he wondered how McCaine had managed such a lifestyle for so long.

"Unfortunately," the lawyer said, rubbing his ivory hands, and when they were not kept busy, they reached as if by themselves to the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket, but only to flinch back with a twitch at the last moment.

John looked at him and felt tied and weary. A glow of anger still glimmered somewhere within him, barely noticeable and close to dying altogether. “But what McCaine did was embezzlement, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“That’s not the question. The question is will we get a conviction? And I doubt it,” the lawyer said in a quiet voice. “It might take years just to settle where the jurisdiction in this case might lie. McCaine is a wealthy man. He could hire the best lawyers there are.”

“The best lawyers? I thought we had them?”

“Well, let’s say it’ll be a fight among equally talented sides, which would be very interesting and would certainly keep the legal world well-employed for several years.”

John stared at the lawyer and the charges listed on the paper and had to think about Lorenzo, who was the true heir and who had died from bee stings because McCaine had other plans. He would never be able to prove it even though he was absolutely convinced that was what had happened. And if he could not get McCaine for that, then he at least wanted to send him to jail for embezzlement. “Sue him,” he said with sadness in his heart. “I don’t care how long it’ll take.”

“As you wish,” the lawyer nodded showing his thinning crown. “And if it will reassure you, McCaine’s counter-claim is equally unlikely to succeed.”

“What counter-claim?”

“I would be surprised if he didn’t sue you for continued pay, allowances, and wrongful discharge. There are some rather odd-sounding clauses in his contract of employment that allows him to do just about anything.” He smiled loftily. “But as I said, this could take years to resolve. We can do the same just as well.”

During the first few days of 1998, there were an unusually high number of top managers who quit their well-paid and highly responsible jobs within the hierarchy of Fontanelli Enterprises. Only when one of the chief analysts came forward and told John that he had been called by McCaine the day after Christmas, and had been offered a new, better-paid job if he left the firm, did John realize that he had an even more dangerous adversary than just lack of time and overexertion. Those who had already quit never gave John any reasons; only one of them vaguely mentioned something about weak leadership and securing a future, but without telling him concretely who or what he meant by this. During talks with a few of them John had the impression they weren’t leaving willingly, but rather because McCaine had them by the balls, so to speak, for some reason.

A few of the newly vacant positions opened sensitive holes in the firm’s administrative structure and added more stress. And with time it became clear that there was something even worse than having some managers leave to join McCaine; there was growing corruption among those who remained. Suddenly, warehouses were empty, because someone had “forgotten” to order new goods on time, with the result that entire production facilities came to a standstill. “Stupid” mistakes happened in important announcements, bids and contracts, mistakes that caused a loss of business or troublesome legal battles. “Inexplicable” computer crashes caused entire factories to come to a standstill or left the worldwide logistics system in disarray causing the business to lose money and damaging its reputation. The firm’s foreign exchange sector suddenly had a spell of “bad luck,” after enjoying two years of remarkable success. It incurred such losses that John was forced to close it down.

John called Hartford in mid-January. Even the somber voice of Professor Collins made it obvious that he had no good news, and after asking how things were going John was not even surprised to hear: “Not good, a computer virus wiped all our data.”

The days in which Professor Collins had briefly cared for his overall appearance were over. The few strands of hair he had left did what they wanted, the fact that his shirt had stains and his jacket sleeves were torn at the ends seemed not to bother him. Judging by the bags below his eyes he hadn’t been sleeping much lately either.

“It could only have been sabotage,” he explained. “Not only were the UNIX computers affected, but also those that had the program codes. Everything is gone and there’s no chance of recovering it.”

The springtime sun shone brightly down from the light-blue sky and flooded the conference room in an inappropriate cheerfulness. John was tempted to lower the blinds, if only to stop the sparkling light reflecting off the coffee pot into his eyes. He made do with moving the coffee pot.

“I don’t understand it,” he said tiredly. “Surely you must have backed-up the data.”

“Of course we did, but the disks aren’t readable anymore. Not a single one. Someone must have sabotaged them too.” The scientist wearily rubbed his forehead. “Everything is destroyed. Now we’re in the process of reconstructing as much as we can from our written records, but this will take months. It’s a catastrophe.”

“When did all this happen?”

Collins sighed. “In mid-December. It was during the night going on the fourteenth — a weekend.”

“And why am I only hearing about this now?”

The researcher looked at John, confused. “Yes, that’s what I’ve been asking myself … No, no, but I did send you a fax. I remember precisely. We spent the entire Monday trying to determine the extent of the damages, and then on Tuesday I sent you a fax. I didn’t want to phone you because I was too upset. I can remember that too. I had to let you know because of phase two.”

“Phase two?” John shook his head. “The fax never got to me, professor. Unfortunately, such things have been happening quite often lately. And I never heard of a phase two either.”

“But, did McCaine never…”

“No.”

“Oh.” He nodded, understanding suddenly. Then he explained the details of the meeting with McCaine that particular evening and how he told him about the results of phase one. “The following morning McCaine came back, and wanted a version of the program put on a laptop. That took quite some time and while we waited we discussed the specifications of phase two. It was rather fanciful. For instance, he wanted to know the results of a worldwide epidemic in the year 2008, and so forth…” His overtired eyes blinked. “That reminds me … that laptop! He should still have it. He didn’t leave it here somewhere, did he?”

“No, he probably took it with him.” John made a dismissive gesture. “I hope it makes him happy.”

Towards the end of 1998 one topic more than any other gradually made its way up the headlines until it was the lead item in every news bulletin: President Clinton’s sexual antics. No sooner had he testified under oath in the case after a judicial tug of war, which went on for months, than new names and suspicious tapes appeared, taking the debate to new heights. It was said that the president incited a female trainee to commit perjury to get the case dropped. While his opponents called for impeachment, the president denied ever having had an affair with the woman. His wife accused right-wingers of conspiracy. The dollar’s value fell in the international monetary markets, and the financial crisis Southeast Asia, which was reaching a new peak, threatened to spill over to the United States.

John followed the news reports on TV with an oddly surreal feeling. He still heard the conversation he had with McCaine on the phone when John was in the Philippines. He let the anchorman on TV talk as he got up and went over to McCaine’s old file cabinet. In it he found a folder titled Clinton, William, and found it contained a well-planned outline for defaming him. Attached to the cover was a short dossier on the special prosecutor of the so-called Whitewater Affair, and next to the image McCaine had scribbled some notes: Born in Vernon, Texas; father pastor; owns a thriving law practice (1997: one million dollars), clients, among others, tobacco industry. It was followed by the summary of an agreement, which the U.S. government tried to force upon the tobacco industry: to protect the cigarette manufacturers from further lawsuits they should, in return, pay a total of 368.5 billion dollars for medical costs to ailing smokers over a period of 25 years. How much do they earn? McCaine wrote, and next to that: Clinton wants to up the sum to 516 billion dollars.

A vague feeling of impending doom crept over John, like some evil premonition.

It was like having all his fears confirmed when he opened the Financial Times shortly afterwards and read that Malcolm McCaine was appointed chief executive of Morris-Capstone. There was little more known about this company other than that it was almost entirely in the possession of an old American family of entrepreneurs, for whom the term "publicity-shy” must have been invented; there weren’t even any photos of most of the family members in the public domain. John had to quiz all his analysts to learn that, besides owning shares in some of the most secretive genetic engineering companies and a factory for handguns, Morris-Capstone was also one of the largest tobacco manufacturers in the world.

Also owned by the aforementioned old American entrepreneur family was the television station that granted Malcolm McCaine the first interview after his departure from Fontanelli Enterprises. He had given an extensive statement but never directly answered the relevant question as to whether he had been dismissed Instead he claimed he had had enough of John Fontanelli’s escapades, especially after his last trick — faking his kidnapping in Mexico, and had no other alternative but to resign.

“Imagine being kidnapped,” he said to the interviewer, “and then getting released again. What would you do? You would go to the police, right? Everybody would do that. Not John Fontanelli. He simply disappears without a trace, only to suddenly reappear in miraculous fashion weeks later apparently unharmed in London six thousand miles away from the scene of his abduction. Do you consider this normal?”

Of course the female interviewer thought it anything but normal.

McCaine fervently argued that he had used all his energy to create a stable company that would secure jobs for millions of people even during this age of globalization. “Fontanelli thinks he can do everything alone,” he went on. “But he’s been at the helm for barely two months and already the company is in dire straits. It hurts having to watch this,” he said with a bitter expression. Then he described in detail the crises in every nook and corner of the Fontanelli empire in such detail that he might as well have admitted to having internal informants in the company.

“What is your prognosis?” she asked him. “Are all those jobs in danger?”

McCaine nodded earnestly. “Absolutely.”

John had to turn off the TV after seeing only part of the interview. He told the secretary not to disturb him for the next hour then stepped over to the window to watch a wild snow shower coming down over London. He asked himself what in the hell was going on around here.

The snow, interspersed with drizzle, doused the high windows, making the city scenery behind it look blurred in black and white blobs. A secretary had served some coffee and cookies, but Lord Rawburne had not touched anything yet. The economic and environmental journalist, wearing a thick white Irish-made wool sweater, dark green corduroy pants and boots instead of a business suit and dress shoes, sat comfortably in his chair and listened attentively to John explaining why he had invited him.

“To be honest, I’ve been waiting for this moment since that memorable dinner at your house,” he told John and then clasped his hands together. “Back then I thought I had managed to get you curious, but … well.” He lifted his hands and then dropped them on his lap again. “So, you want to know how Homo sapiens can still be saved.”

John nodded uneasily. “I guess you could put it that way.”

“Good.” He smiled briefly. “Well, the first step is a simple one; get rid of income tax.”

For one moment John thought he was watching a stand-up comedian telling a bad joke on stage. “That’s a joke, right?”

“I assure you, I’m totally serious.”

John groaned. “That’s not at all what I was expecting.”

“Of course, that’s because you had read my book. But that was twenty years ago. I haven’t stopped thinking about the problem since then. And when you think about something long enough and hard enough you will eventually come up with new ideas.” Rawburne shuffled in his seat. “I admit that the abolition of income tax would be primarily a way of winning general acceptance for my other reforms. If you consider what people are willing to do just to save on taxes, you will find that a measure like this will win them over to making the necessary changes. Besides,” he added with a smirk, “I love this idea because it elicits such great reactions.”

John folded his arms and leaned back. “That it does.”

Rawburne fell back into a lecturing tone, as if he said all this more than once. “It is interesting to study the history of taxes. Duties from the general population have been collected since the first urban civilizations. It was a method for the ruling classes to finance their livelihood, their military adventures and other projects. By the way, many of the taxes invented back in historic times are still around today, even if they have changed a bit. They actually represent only a tiny fraction of government revenue and in some cases it costs more to raise them than they bring in. One reason is that we pay more taxes, relatively speaking, than ever before. For many centuries even the tithe, which was a ten percent tax, had been considered a burden too high for most.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled in an aristocratically sarcastic way. “We would drop onto our knees with thanks if our taxes were to be cut to such a low level, which, by the way, they never will be. Ever since the industrial revolution and the associated changes, such as higher costs for weapons and warfare, increases in social spending, and the invention of subsidies for certain sectors of the economy and so on, government spending has been growing much faster than the economy, so high in fact, that today virtually all countries are in debt and you can only wonder how they get away with it.”

“That’s real simple,” John said, “they borrow it from me.”

Rawburne did not go into that. “Great Britain conceived the idea of income tax in 1799 to finance the Napoleonic Wars, and disposed of it in 1815. But they had tasted blood. They reinstated it in 1842, supposedly as a temporary measure, but as we all know it is still with us. And that’s more or less the way it went in all Western nations in which taxes on revenues, yields, wages, and income make up the lion’s share of government revenue.” He raised his index finger. “What I want to say is that income tax is neither God-given, nor untouchable. It can be abolished the same way it was introduced, at the flick of a switch.”

“But why?” John asked. “I mean, although I agree that no one loves income tax, I don’t see it being so evil that we have to get rid of it.”

“Naturally, something else would have to take its place,” Rawburne explained. “After all, a modern country can’t exist with a tax on salt alone.”

“Your idea is for a tax on environmental pollution.”

“You’re close, but, as I said, that is a twenty-year-old concept. My deliberations have since gone a few steps further.” Rawburne made a vague gesture with one hand. “At first, you have to keep in mind that taxes influence the direction of the economy; they dampen whatever they are levied against. Taxes on value-added activities such as work, investments or trade have a direct effect, because they are calculated as a percentage, which increases over time. They are a factor you can never neglect, no matter how much you earn. Tax on wages in the USA brings in about 500 billion dollars, but, of course, labor costs go up at the same time, and that means that fewer jobs can be created, simply because the hurdles to overcome before a new job is worth it are higher. The consequent loss to the economy has been calculated at around a hundred and fifty billion dollars. You can do similar calculations for all forms of taxes in all countries, and there is no trick to uncouple the relationship, because we are dealing with a mathematical law, as eternal as the stars and immutable as the law of gravity."

John thought for a while. “But these consequences come with every type of tax, don’t they? You can’t avoid them unless you abolish tax altogether.”

“Correct,” the journalist agreed. “The point isn’t trying to prevent them, but understanding the way in which taxes affect people’s behavior and decisions. Taxes govern: they punish whatever they are levied on — they damage it.” He turned his hands palms up. “The foundation of my ideas, as you said, was to levy taxes on pollution. Sounds good at first, right?”

“Yes, and that’s why we’re sitting here.”

“And thus the sins of youth catch up with you,” he sighed, though he did not really sound troubled. "The devil is always in the details, because how do you calculate environmental impact? In my book I dodged these issues. How much tax should we pay on what amount of emissions? Should cadmium-contaminated soil be taxed more heavily than carbon monoxide in the air, and if so, how much more? Should a tax on waste be calculated by volume, weight or composition? And how should I measure the heat emissions of machines? All this is a complicated topic that is literally asking for manipulation and trickery. Back then I thought these were questions of a secondary nature, but then I put more thought into it and spent a decade or so doing different calculations trying to find a simple and fair system until I realized what the fundamental problem was.”

He took his coffee cup, filled it, spooned sugar into it, and stirred it serenely. John noticed what calm hands Rawburne had, hands of a musician or artist, which made for an odd contrast to his otherwise rustic appearance.

“In the eighties, I got hold of a report describing the economic balance of Costa Rica that looked promising at first glance, but a closer look was a pure horror. These people had cut down about forty percent of old growth forest — centuries-old trees — and exported the timber. What shocked me so much was that this reflected positively in the calculation of their gross national product. Judging by these standards, it would have been best if they had cut down and sold every single tree in the country. That would have conjured up an agricultural disaster during the following years, which the numbers simply did not and could not show. I thought a long time about that and came to the conclusion that this was the root of all evil: all the calculations are simply being done incorrectly.”

John was about to life his own cup, but stopped in mid motion. “Miscalculated balances? I don’t get it.”

“Oh, the balances itself were correct, that’s not what I meant. The formulas used to create them were wrong. The definition of gross national product is nonsense, because they don’t put such factors as environmental damage and limited resources into the calculation. In the mean time there is another parameter, the gross domestic product, but this is not much better.”

“You are actually criticizing economic science itself, if I understand you correctly”

“There are prominent people who deny that such a thing like economic science even exists.”

“Are they the same people who deny the moon landings?”

“I was not present during the moon landings. Were you?”

“I was two years old.”

“The difference here is that I don’t have to believe what I’m being told, I can calculate it myself. And since this has become clear to me I’ve learnt that every calamity starts with someone’s miscalculation.” He finally took a sip of coffee. “Take nuclear power as an example. Regardless of all arguments for and against the use of nuclear power, which are usually dominated by emotions rather than nourished by rational thought, it is a fact that not even a single civilian nuclear power plant would have been built if the correct calculations had been done. The alleged cheapness of nuclear energy was only cheap as long as the cost of disposal of highly contaminated waste was left out of the calculations. Since nuclear power was politically desirable, they knew they could palm it off on the general public, particularly in those days when there was little chance of them ever being called to account for it. If any power company had been left with the choice to build a nuclear power plant or something else, they would have realized that nuclear power simply does not add up. That is what I meant with not calculating correctly. If your bookkeeper did something like that, Mr. Fontanelli, he would go to jail.”

He put down his coffee cup. “So I put some thought into calculation methods and how such aspects like Costa Rica’s loss of forests could be integrated into them. I found out that the mistakes made in such calculations are that natural resources are considered unlimited and only the acquisition costs are considered. That's about as reasonable as if a merchant had a store with a large stock of, say, toasters, and calculated the costs simply by the effort of going into the warehouse and getting a toaster from the shelf. But that’s exactly what’s being done. There is a forest, the warehouse if you will, but they calculate only the cost of cutting down the tree, in other words the labor, the equipment, fuel, the transport to harbor, and consider whatever is left to be profits. Our economics lessons even encourage us to think this way, to calculate this way, and to act this way. We can see that this cannot be completely correct when dealing with a forest, but as soon as something is extracted from the earth, such as oil, ore and whatever, we stop thinking about this.”

Because Rawburne had paused and was looking at him expectantly, John said: “I understand.”

He was satisfied with that, and continued. “That’s what I was contemplating for some time, as I’ve mentioned, and finally, after ten years of working away at it, I realized that I had found the right approach to this problem.” He made a short dramatic pause before going on. “How would it be, I asked myself, if all taxes were abolished except those levied on natural resources?”

“What?” John yelped. “But that would be highly … oh?” He paused. “I wanted to say that it would be unjust, because this would hit only those processing raw materials, but…”

Rawburne lifted a finger like a teacher. “Take note, such taxes would have to be regulated on a worldwide basis to prevent industries moving to other low-tax jurisdictions. And it would be whoever does the extraction — the oil company, coal mining company, the iron ore company, or whoever — would pay the tax. Naturally, they would all pass the costs on to the next tier of industry or customers, and in the end we would all pay. Only there would be far less bureaucracy than today. There would be no income tax forms to be filled out, no taxes levied on income, only items of daily life would cost more.”

“Because, the prices that the manufacturers calculate for their products contain the taxes on the raw materials.”

“Exactly.”

John let this sink in for a while. Was this the greatest nonsense he ever heard, or an ingenious line of thought? Like the egg of Columbus? “It would make everyone more careful with the use of raw materials and energy,” John said. “It wouldn’t be worthwhile to transport canned food across half Europe, or be sold for only a few cents. The packaging would be more expensive, so people would choose products without so much packaging.”

Rawburne nodded. “It would pay to recycle. Today we must force the manufacturers to take back used cans and such. Why? Because raw materials are far too cheap, and because their prices don’t reflect the true costs, neither the economic costs nor the ecological costs. But if you raise a tax on raw materials, you would suddenly have people ringing your door bell looking to buy your trash.”

“It would also be a way to make it worth manufacturing things that lasted longer,” John added to the line of thought. “Even if they cost more, it would still be good business.”

“That’s right. If raw materials were expensive, there would be far more careful consideration whether or not they were distributed in the environment in the form of pollutants.” Rawburne raised a hand. “And keep in mind that all forms of value-added taxes would be abolished. This means that labor would be cheaper because it would no longer be burdened with taxes. Services of all kinds would get cheaper too. Unemployment would cease to be a problem.”

John nodded thoughtfully. Then he remembered something. “But would this be fair? I mean, we need a certain amount of resources simply to stay alive. Does this sort of tax not burden the poor more and give the rich an opportunity to spend their money on environmentally destructive activities?”

Rawburne stretched out his arms. “You, Mr. Fontanelli, have surely already noticed that all forms of inconveniences hit the poor harder than the wealthy, except maybe a crisis in caviar production. Isn’t this our definition of wealth?”

“Sure, but I don’t have to make it worse with an unjust tax. Think about those countries with different levels of resources. Japan, for instance, has virtually none, so it would take in almost no taxes.”

“This argument is indeed a good one,” Rawburne admitted. “And I have a possible solution to this problem too. As I mentioned, taxes on raw materials would have to be homogenous worldwide, but I would allow certain countries or even regions a free hand to tax peoples’ wealth at their discretion. This would hit the wealthy and assure a more just social structure. Furthermore, this way it would be possible to remove many of existing obstacles to real freedom of movement — borders, immigration quotas, work permits and so on — because the differing levels of attractiveness of certain regions would regulate migration by itself.”

John had to admit that this sounded good, and suddenly he had to think about his first visit to London, in another office, under different conditions, and about how good all that sounded, even downright awesome. How long ago was that? So much had happened in the meantime, but yet … nothing had really happened. Then John asked, “But won’t you have the same problem again? How do you determine how much taxes a certain raw material should cost?”

Rawburne nodded as if he had been waiting for this argument. “It is the same type of problem, but the difference that there is a solution to it. It’s practically a brutally simple mathematical solution. You must, in fact, account for a correct turnover, using exactly the same standards that apply in a company. Take coal or petroleum, for example. No one will deny today that they are limited raw materials. There are different theories how large the reserves are, but the fact that they are limited is accepted by everyone. Well, in business management, inventories are part of the active capital and should therefore be accounted for in the costs for replacements. And that’s exactly what you must do here too.”

“The replacement value?” John asked. “But how do you replace crude oil?”

“Oil is a fossil fuel, and fundamentally stored solar energy. To determine the replacement cost, you must start with the costs that it would take to recover the corresponding amount in solar energy. Since the combustion of a given amount of crude oil also causes a measurable reduction in air quality, it would, admittedly, be somewhat difficult to determine the surcharge for air purification, but that would still have to be added to the calculation. Voilà, a tax on fossil fuels.”

John frowned. “This would mean that solar energy would be far cheaper than any other form of energy.”

Rawburne smiled shrewdly. “Congratulations. You’re beginning to realize what great benefits my deductions would bring humanity.”

“But how do you calculate the replacement costs for, say copper? That would have to be brought in from another planet, or what?”

“Sure it would, but here we can allow ourselves to think pragmatically. As you probably know, practically every element that is found in the earth’s crust is also dissolved in seawater, and in such breathtaking quantities that the reserves will last longer than we can hope to survive as a species on this planet. The only problem is the high amount of energy required to extract them. For energy, as we said earlier, we found a cost approach. We’ll do the same thing here, and that will give us our tax on copper.”

“But that sounds like raw materials could become terribly expensive.”

“Which would create great incentives to develop technologies that save raw materials,” Rawburne explained. “There are great stories about how a lack of certain materials stimulated the development of alternative technologies.”

“But if the oceans have more than enough of all the needed resources,” John realized, “then there really are no shortages … only energy, maybe.”

The aristocratic journalist pointed a finger at him. “The candidate gets one hundred points. We’re approaching the core of my concept. Taxes on raw materials won’t preserve them. Our reserves won’t run dry as fast, except crude oil and natural gas. But what we will run out of is the ecosystem’s capacity to absorb our waste products and excessive energy. We could turn the entire planet into a giant garbage dump and there would still be enough metals in the earth’s crust to keep our manufacturing processes going. The decisive point is that raw materials and energy inevitably have an impact on the environment. The principles are the same as in my book, only the other way around, which makes things easier. The fundamentals are the same: tax whatever does environmental damage to redirect the economy in another direction. The beauty of my concept is that people would change direction of their own accord. You won’t need rules, no ten-year plans, no environmental police force, nothing of the sort. You can let the market handle such details. The market will solve these issues as it always has done. One must only create the appropriate circumstances for it to work this way. Get rid of tax on human labor and levy it on resources instead, and you will save humanity automatically.”

After Rawburne left, John paced around like a tiger in a cage, like the thoughts going around in his head. The conversation had given him hope for a new idea to fulfill the prophecy. But, instead of a clear concept and confidence, he was filled with confusion and trepidation.

“How should I do this?” he had asked. “I don’t levy any taxes — governments do that.”

Rawburne only shrugged his shoulders. “You are the mighty man, they will listen to you.”

Would they? Would they listen to a businessman who wants the tax system changed? Never.

“I can only provide the concept,” Rawburne had told him. “It’s up to others to put it into action.”

And that was that.

John stared at the snow covering the windows. Would it even work? It all sounded good enough, but he was no expert and could not be the judge of that. He could get his economists to work on it. Or he could initiate a study on the matter with some university. Or invite people from the IMF or World Bank for talks, people who had experience in such matters. “I just can’t do it,” he said to himself and listened to his inner voice. “I can’t,” he repeated and it sounded true enough to him. He was no longer able to embrace someone else’s plan for the salvation of the world, no matter how promising it sounded. McCaine had also sounded so convincing at the start. John sensed himself running out of steam for engaging any plans of fulfillment with the required enthusiasm. He slowly balled his right hand into a fist and watched his fingers as they closed. “I only wish I could have my own idea just once in my life,” he said to his reflection in the window, through which nothing of the outside world could be seen anymore, as the world outside sank into bleakness and cold.

Later on he called Paul Siegel, and said, “I need you.”

“Again?” Paul responded.

“I want you to take over as CEO of Fontanelli Enterprises.”

Something like a long lasting breath could be heard from the other end of the line. "John, that's nice of you and certainly well intentioned and it’s absolutely an honor. But I'm an economist, not a business administrator."

“Paul,” John said, “my firm’s turnover is larger than most countries’ GNP. I have more employees than Finland has people. Who other than an economist could deal with all this?”

There was a moment of silence. Then Paul Siegel said, “That is indeed an argument.”

$45,000,000,000,000

THE TEMPLE TOMORROW Society sent out invitations to a congress with the slogan “Planet Management”. They contacted Nobel laureates, U.S. ex-presidents, graying former heads of state and those who, in its opinion, were the most influential business leaders from around the world. The congress was to be held over three days at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, that symbol of affluence, and would have the theme The roadmap into the 21st Century, and the path towards a New Civilization. Soaring upwards in the glass elevator on the outside of the hotel tower to the Crown Room Restaurant there is a grand view of the Golden Gate Bridge, the distant hills of Berkeley and Silicon Valley,; the society felt the venue both appropriate and inspirational. The fact that John Fontanelli was not among the invited business leaders did not seem to bother anyone.

“I’m not offended or anything like that,” John told Marco as he came in with the dossier put together by the people from John’s security organization. “I only want to know what’s going on there.”

“Of course, Mr. Fontanelli,” Marco said.

John looked at him. “You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” the bodyguard said and inserted the slide into the projector.

The Temple Tomorrow Society had been formed just before Christmas 1997. Founder and honorary chairman was Bradford C. Temple, up to then the CEO of Morris-Capstone, who retired when Malcolm McCaine took over his post. Temple was a blond, big-bellied man from the Midwest, according to the few photos of him. He looked more like someone interested in horse racing or young naked pole-dancers than in a foundation dedicated to the future of humanity.

“So McCaine is behind all this,” John said. Now it was crystal clear why John was not invited.

The "Planet Management" congress met in conclave, strictly shielded from the media. Only a small, hand-picked crowd of journalists was admitted to a number of semi-public meetings, all reports had to be submitted before publication and any sound or video recording had to be checked.

Marco played one of the videos. It had cost a small fortune to get it from San Francisco to London so fast. An economics professor was talking about free trade and its future development. A billionaire explained investment schemes in new markets. No one spoke more than five minutes, and everything was kept as short as possible. A top executive of a computer company described how their software developers from around the world worked via networked computers anytime, anywhere, around the clock, when they wanted and for as long as they wanted, without the hassle of traveling, and were independent of national governments and their labor laws. “The employees are hired by computer, work with computers and are fired by computers.”

A trade magnate from Southeast Asia prophesized that due to the increased productivity of labor, twenty percent of the world population would at some point in the future suffice to keep the entire global economy going. One fifth of the world’s population would be enough to produce all wares and perform all services that the world can afford.

Then Malcolm McCaine stepped up to the lectern, looked around with a grim expression on his face and asked the question that needed to be asked: “But what about the other four fifths of population, the surplus people?”

John could not believe his ears. McCaine really did use the term “surplus people”. And no one complained. There was not even a whisper in the audience.

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, the 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 was 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.”

John drank a gulp and felt the desire to get drunk tonight. “Sounds great. Maybe they’ll have to spend a few million for the last bucket of clean water at some point in the future. Who knows?”

“Hey, you could donate your money, if that suits you better. Old Rockefeller did that when he was hit by crisis of conscience and nowadays it’s hard to imagine not having his charitable foundations in medicine, education, and science.”

“Maybe I need to find someone with a vision. Someone who’ll invest a half million dollars for five hundred years and then some poor slob will inherit a quadrillion dollars or whatever the name of the money will be in the year 2500.” He downed the drink … enjoying the burning sensation in his throat. It felt good to numb the pain in his soul. “Who knows, maybe the Fugger fortune got started like that too. I would laugh myself silly if I found that out one day. Hey!” John lifted the empty glass and said loudly: “Another one … a double this time!”

Paul gave him a critical look . “Are you planning on getting sloshed?”

“You got it,” John said nodding.

“Don’t.”

“I have to. I have to, or else my head will blow up with all these thoughts that are going round and round. But he waved to the man behind the counter. “Order rescinded. One Coke, please.”

No one said anything until the Coke had been brought over. Then Paul sighed and said, “You know, maybe we’re living through a much more significant phase then we realize. Maybe we’re witnessing the re-birth of the Middle Ages.”

“The Middle Ages?” John had in his mind, for whatever reason, the stern looking face of Jakob Fugger, from the painting hanging in his bedroom.

“I once read something like this, but I can’t remember where. Someone once put together some comparisons of today’s companies and the structures of the ruling classes in the Middle Ages. You, for instance, are the king and I’m your chancellor. The directors are the dukes you appointed, and so forth all the way down to the regular employees, your peasants.” He gestured from the ceiling down to the floor. “You have a castle, protected by brave knights, don’t you? You have your own communications system, and when you think about the cafeterias, the company gas stations for the company cars, and all the places where company ID cards are used to pay, you also have your own monetary system. And while all around you the countryside is getting desolate and traditional customs are getting lost, the barbarians are assaulting the boundaries, and as smoldering crises occur everywhere, you and the other kings reinforce your kingdoms yet even more, making your power grow, and the old empire — back then it was Rome, today probably America — will fall and you will establish a new order.”

“Hey,” John said, “that’s pretty good.” He imagined defensive walls of castles, towns and monasteries, armored knights, and colorful caravans. He almost felt the ermine-fur cloak around his shoulders.

“It is, isn’t it?” Paul agreed, but then added soberly, “But the Middle Ages were dark centuries of ignorance, wars, diseases and misery. Maybe we should establish a number of monasteries while as we still can, so that they can at least preserve today’s knowledge. That is, if freedom and democracy should succumb to feudalism after blossoming for such a short period of time.”

John nodded impressed. “Yes, maybe we should do that.” He looked out over the city. The tall buildings looked like impressive castles, the streets the bastions and moats. Fog rolled in, like the smoke from an encroaching battle. “What a concept …”

Afterwards he could not say what the final trigger had been. He suddenly felt stiff, as if he had a cramp, as if the skin he had thought was growing over the wound of his soul was expanding into a boil, and that it would burst and pour out whatever had accumulated inside it, pouring out in waves of images, ideas and feelings. He was certain it must have been what Paul had said that triggered the chain of associations swirling in his mind, like a falling row of dominoes, and while all this was happening, the world around him collapsing, he himself collapsed into pieces and slowly he put himself back together from the same constituent parts, only now rearranged so that they fit together better, more efficiently… working better than he could ever remember. It was like an avalanche of thousands of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, rearranging themselves into a recognizable image. It took no effort, because he had already gone through all that already, all he had to do was brace himself for the impact and take a deep breath.

“Now I’ve got it,” he whispered hoarsely. He remained seated, staring out at a building with a brightly lit window, somewhere in the distance, a yellow point of light.

“Excuse me?” Paul said.

“I know what we have to do.” He was motionless, because the slightest movement could shoo away the vision.

Paul leaned forward and looked at John warily. “What we have to do?” he repeated.

“To fulfill the prophecy.”

“John, are you…”

“It’s so simple … so simple. We should have thought of it a long time ago.”

“Oh,” Paul said, confused. He thought for a moment while John kept his eyes fixed on the small point of light in the distance. He finally asked, “So, tell me?”

John told him … he told him what they had to do.

The room was quiet after he had finished, as if the air was frozen. John relaxed then looked at Paul and saw big, round, disbelieving eyes staring back at him. For the first time in his life he had managed to flabbergast Paul Siegel.

$46,000,000,000,000

NEW YORK, CAPUT mundi, capital city of the world. It was the first really nice day of spring and the sun shone down upon the city on the Hudson River, causing a haze to rise from the damp street canyons and letting the glass facades of the skyscrapers shine far out into the Atlantic. You could go up to the panorama deck of the World Trade Center and look down upon the freshly washed world without ice-cold winds and rain forcing you to seek shelter inside. No one took note of the snow-white aircraft landing at JFK International Airport with the dark-red f on the tailfin. The plane landed here often enough to be a normal sight. “Money Force One, you have permission to land.” No one knew that this time John Fontanelli was coming to change the world.

The United Nations Headquarters, situated on the East River, is a large, inviting building designed by architect Le Corbusier. It radiates size and optimism even today. Nevertheless, anyone who wants to enter it must wear a glossy photo-ID, issued only after a thorough background check, and must undergo meticulous inspection of his baggage and person. Armed security personnel, x-ray machines, and metal detectors are permanently stationed in the lobby, and are a normal sight.

The limousine that brought John Fontanelli and Paul Siegel here from the airport was directed to its usual parking spot by a guard the size of a bear. A cordon of armed guards escorted them up the stairs. They were allowed through all the checkpoints without anyone even asking to see their badges, and were escorted up to the 38th floor, where they entered the large, nondescript rooms where the secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, personally greeted them.

“I always knew that we would meet one day,” Annan said. “Welcome.”

Later on, sitting together comfortably and exchanging mutual niceties, John found an opportunity to make his proposal. “You know that I’ve been attempting to fulfill my ancestor's prophecy,” he began. “For a very long time, I was in the dark as to how to accomplish it. But now I know. I have to add that I do not need your support, but I’d rather have it. I could do what I need to do without help, but I’d rather not.”

“Then how may I be of assistance to you?” Annan asked.

“Please, let us first discuss globalization.”

In 1998 there were some 25,000 mergers of companies worldwide, amalgamations or acquisitions. One of the most spectacular was the merger between the German Daimler-Benz AG and the American Chrysler Corporation forming the first transatlantic corporation. Daimler Chrysler, which became the third-largest automaker in the world. An even bigger deal was the takeover of the investment bank Bankers Trust Corporation by the Deutsche Bank, which, with total assets of 1.4 trillion deutsche marks, was ranked number one of all banks in the world, ahead of even before the former leader UBS — United Bank of Switzerland.

“What are we talking about?” Paul Siegel said. “We’re saying that barriers are being taken down, that communications are expanding. We’re talking about something that we’ve had for a long time in the Olympic Games — worldwide competition without respect to heritage, skin color or religion — and this is spreading into the world of economics. Programmers from India, engineers from South Korea, directors from Argentina, doctors from Egypt … it is now obvious that there are talented people all over the world.. Yesterday’s prejudices are fading fast and will soon be a thing of the past. People are talking to one another not because they have to but because they want to. We're talking about ever-broadening global networking that makes peace more attractive and more likely than war. That on its own would already be justification enough. When we talk about globalization, we are talking about, to put it in a sentence, a process that has the potential to solve the great problems of all mankind.”

The secretary-general nodded sympathetically. “You're talking about my purpose in life,” he said.

Now John Fontanelli took over. “The dark side of globalization is that corporations have developed that are capable of pitting countries against each other in order to force them into ruinous concessions. I know that, because I’ve done it plenty of times myself. I’ve put governments under pressure, bribed officials, and I’ve held up potential investment as bait and threatened to take away jobs. I’ve done it all to get what I wanted — things such as prospecting rights and other licenses, lucrative monopolies or privileges that allowed me to neutralize the competition. Sometimes I’ve destroyed national industries to gain access to their markets. The result was that we wiped out any semblance of a level playing field. For a normal company to go up against Fontanelli Enterprises is like playing a game of chess except I have fifteen queens.” He raised his hands as if to apologize. “I’m not proud of what I’ve done; I’m only telling you how it is. I was acting under the influence of my former chief executive, but I know I’m still responsible, all contracts, letters, and other documents have my signatures on them.”

“No one is blaming you,” Annan said.

John nodded. “Yes. But that is precisely the problem, isn’t it? There is no one who could blame me. There really aren’t any laws that can control me. I can do or not do whatever I want.” John leaned forward. “We have a word for organizations that do what they want, the word is Italian … mafia.”

The French national soccer team won the World Championship on July 12, 1998, after a deserved victory over the Brazilians, who had been the favorites to win. It is interesting to note that many of the French players came from former French overseas or North African colonies. For a while after the World Championships, the right-wing parties in France mostly dropped their racist campaigns.

“It should be obvious,” John said continuing with the topic. “The level of wages and social expenditures are going down everywhere, but at the same time our profits are rising at a double-digit percentage rate, not to mention our gains on the stock markets. I mean, it should be obvious that governments that really care about the well-being of their populations should not support a situation like this. But in truth they have no choice. Even if many heads of state believe themselves acting as sovereign leaders when making decisions on important topics, they really can’t, and it’s the multinational corporations profit from this.”

The head of the United Nations nodded with a look of concern.

“When I say they profit, I mean they are making money. Everything is sacrificed, everything subordinated to that one aim. Despite our noble intentions, I discovered at a later stage even Fontanelli Enterprises had let toxic waste escape into streams and rivers, discarded industrial waste in normal garbage dumps, polluted the air, ignored industrial safety regulations, and disregarded environmental laws everywhere it was possible to do so without penalty. Why? Because if we don’t, then others will. In some cases I put a stop to it, and the result was that our competitors were able to offer their products cheaper and our share of the relevant markets declined, until we had to get out of that sector altogether.” John stretched out his hands, palms up. “We don’t do this because we’re greedy, nor are we simply bad people, we do this because we feel that we must. We chase each other in circles, so to speak. And because we can get away with it, we don’t dare stop doing whatever we need, however vile, to stay ahead.”

For an irritating moment John had the feeling that he had always known he would be sitting here one day. Even back when he was cycling through the streets with pizzas on the bike, down there where now the limousine was parked. As if his entire life had only been a preparation for saying these very words one day. “But is that ideal? To have companies that can act independently of the law? I can’t see how companies that act like this are much different from organized crime syndicates.” John shook his head. “I don’t think that anyone really wants this. You might want to be wealthy, but you can be that with valid rules in place. They only have to be fair and applicable to all. That is the crucial point. Such rules, such laws don’t necessarily have to be restrictive. On the contrary, they should make life easier. The problem is that currently they don’t exist.”

The secretary-general said nothing. He only sat there, looking at John.

John locked his fingers together. “Back in the days of the Wild West, people explored and settled new territories further and faster than the government could follow. Outlaw gangs made large parts of the land unsafe, until the law caught up. But it wasn’t easy. We find ourselves in a similar situation today. Some multinational corporations have become mightier than many countries. In effect, the old principles of national sovereignty have become obsolete. What we need is a transnational power, capable of establishing law and order at a global level.”

Kofi Annan looked at John with even more concern writ large on his face. “Surely you don’t mean the United Nations?” he asked.

“No,” said John Fontanelli, “I don’t mean the United Nations.”

Currently, the building at 40 Wall Street, previously known as Fontanelli Tower, was undergoing a major overhaul. Battalions of uniformed movers dragged out furniture, boxes, and crates, and loaded them into moving trucks that pulled up outside in a never-ending queue. At the same time, work was being done on the façade. The bottom five stories had stylized human figures painted on it in red, yellow, black, green and blue. The entire rest of the upper part of the structure was painted with a new type of paint that contained optical brighteners similar to that in washing powder, which made the building gleam.

“What’s that going to be?” a reporter asked the foreman.

“The bottom five stories,” he explained, talking loud enough to be heard above the noise of the trucks and the compressors for the paint guns, “will be the headquarters…”

“No, the white part.”

“Oh, that …?” The foreman took off his helmet and wiped the sweat, paint splatters and dust from his forehead. “Well, that’ll be quite something else …”

“Just like all the other international organizations, the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and so forth, the United Nations had been set up by governments to provide a forum for questions of international significance. But the institutions themselves do not have power. Nobody ever intended to create a world government. On the contrary, what they wanted was to prevent a world government. That’s why the United Nations was never given any power.”

The secretary-general looked perturbed. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“There really is only one true power on this planet,” John said. “It took me a long time to figure it out, even though it should’ve been obvious.”

The man with the rust-red curly hair waited until the photographers were ready, then he pulled the white cloth off the sign with a demonstrative jerk. In a blaze of camera flashes, the man stood there pointing at the logo he had just uncovered.

It showed a world map, which was reminiscent of the emblem of the United Nations; five stylized heads in the colors of the Olympic rings — blue, yellow, black, green, and red — arrayed in a similar pattern to the Olympic logo.

Underneath it said: We The People Org. — Headquarters.

John felt as if there was a fire burning inside his chest, forcing him to speak out … to say what had to be said before it was too late … without delay, without hesitation, and without worrying about the consequences. Other disconcerting thoughts — a shadow of a doubt — hovered on the edge of his consciousness. He no longer allowed Paul to speak, even though they had discussed their roles in advance. And the secretary-general … was his polite interest in the end only that … polite? And was it only because even the secretary-general of the United Nations didn’t dare anger the wealthiest man in the world? But in the next moment those thoughts faded away, and then were gone, forgotten, as if they had never been there.

“I can no longer count the occasions,” John said, “where I misled, lied, and or simply placated the public, the occasions on which I tried to divert public attention from certain things by manipulating the media. I do not know how many hours I've spent worrying over what the public would think of the things I intended to do. I have spent tons of money to manipulate public opinion in favor of one thing or another, in a word, to influence people’s attitudes, their emotions, their decisions. And now I ask you: Why?”

The question seemed to hang in the air, like the reverberations of a distant echo. John Fontanelli looked around him, at the silent faces of the others. How had Giacomo Fontanelli felt when he told other people of his vision? Did those moments of despondency plague him too, and did those sparks of glimmering fear overcome him the same way?

“Why all this effort?” he continued, his voice shaking. “People tell me I’m a powerful man. Why do I put in so much effort to influence the common people on the streets, in the factories and subways? I don’t need to give a hoot what you or they think, do I?”

The sound of his voice seemed to fade into nothing amidst the bare office walls and the view over the sheer endless ocean of buildings that disappeared in a brownish haze on the horizon.

“Think about all the really commanding men in history, the powerful dictators. Each was obsessed with having total control over the media, to control over what was printed, drawn, or said. Why, if they were so powerful, did they care about all this chit-chat?” John interlocked his fingers and could feel the beating of his own pulse. “Because in reality they didn’t have power … because I really don’t have any power. It only seems like it.”

Now … at last, as if he was coming out of shock, the secretary-general relaxed a little, began to nod gently, and a thin smile appeared on his lips. For the first time John suddenly realized the truth of the surreal situation in which he found himself: the son of a shoemaker from New Jersey, sitting together and talking to the top man of the United Nations … and the man was listening attentively.

“There is only one true source of power on this Earth,” John said, his words hammering home “and that is the people themselves. The people. And when I say this I don’t mean that’s how things should be. This is not just some noble idea or bit of wishful thinking. No, I’m this is a truth as unchanging as the movements of the stars and planets. Anyone who wants to take power must convince others to support him — that is democracy. Or they have to make the people forget that they have power and feel like they are simply pawns — and that is tyranny.”

He looked over at Paul, who nodded encouragingly to him, and then to Annan, who was stroking his beard, deep in thought. But to John it seemed as if he was back in Leipzig, sitting in the Nikolaikirche. Back then, he did not — could not — feel what he was feeling right now. “I only started to really understand this fundamental principle a couple of weeks ago,” he admitted. “In Leipzig, I realized that people can simply get up and say ‘enough,’ and I saw the results. I was amazed. I told myself it must have been a remarkable moment — and it undoubtedly was — but I had not understood that it was nothing more than a demonstration of a very basic principle.” John lifted his hands as if he was surrendering. “You can even see this in democracies if you look closely enough. It is not just a question of holding elections every few years. No, almost every week some minister or secretary of state utters a seemingly casual comment or expresses a suggestion, and then waits to see how the public reacts. If people get upset you can still back away and deny it, or say it was taken out of context, or that it was a misunderstanding. In other words, the people influence political development, without even realizing it!”

He pointed a finger at the secretary-general, and felt his hand jitter. “The people never voted for you, and no one who sits alongside you in the plenum was put there by the people. The UN has no democratic base. And that is why you are weak.”

“I believe I think I know what it is you have in mind,” Annan said.

“No,” John Fontanelli said, “I don’t think you do.”

The four-story building was set back a bit from Zurich’s Paradeplatz, home to all major Swiss banks and the biggest money transaction center in the Alpine republic. From the window of the office where Ernst Färber, head of the Fontanelli Foundation for Money Education worked, you could see one of the cast-iron lions and some of the grape-like lanterns and hear the tram bells ringing as they rattled by.

“A few decades ago,” the solidly built man with a mustache and intense blue eyes told his visitors, “a campaign was launched worldwide to create global awareness for the importance of basic hygiene. This was followed up with large-scale efforts to teach illiterate adults to read and write. We see ourselves pursing aims like this in the future.”

One of the journalists lifted a pencil. “So, does this mean that you want to teach Third World people to do math?”

Färber turned red and his eyes narrowed. “If you write that, young man, you will never be invited to another press conference. We want to teach people how to handle money. Math …? That is a very small part; most can do math already.”

“But most also know how to handle money,” another reporter argued skeptically.

“You think so? Then why are there so many households hopelessly in debt? Why do so many people work their entire lives and are still poor when they’re old? How many people don’t have the slightest hint how much they spend or what they spend it on?” Färber shook his head. “I will introduce you to Dr. Füeli later on, our psychologist. He believes that more people have problems with money than with sex. I will leave it up to you if you share his hypothesis. But, ladies and gentlemen, handling money well is no idle pastime. It’s not a subject you can just gloss over, like flicking through a brochure before booking a vacation. Money is a building block of life. No one can avoid it, not even a monk in a monastery. Money problems can ruin your marriage or make you sick. Too much debt can cause you to die younger. Whether or not you fulfill your dreams depends a lot on your ability to correctly calculate the cost of a loan.”

He led the group of reporters through the bright, airy building and let them look into the offices, both big and small, where busy employees were working at comfortably equipped desks

“We have our own TV satellites that can reach every point in the world,” he explained. “Starting next Friday our TV stations will begin producing and transmitting educational programs in one hundred and twenty different languages at first. Currently, we’re setting up at least two institutes a day somewhere in the world. They generally begin work right away by having a local printer produce educational material and books.”

“It sounds as if you have plenty of money available for all this,” a female journalist said.

Färber nodded. “The capital available to us for the project is around sixty billion Swiss Francs. This makes Fontanelli Foundation for Money Education the largest endowment that ever existed.” He allowed a thin smile. “At least for the moment.”

“There is a saying that money rules the world, but oddly, hardly anyone thinks about who rules money, or what rules it follows. There’s no more mysterious realm than that of high finance.”

John suddenly felt uncomfortable, even afraid, as if he had set foot behind the lines of a powerful enemy. But that was crazy, wasn’t it? He owned one of the largest banks in the world. He owned the largest private fortune of all time. He was the enemy! But he did not feel like that. He was not really one of the other wealthy people. To the directors of his bank he was a stranger, an interloper, a usurper. Even after three years, he was neither accepted nor one of them.

“Most people look on the monetary system if it was the water supply … boring, essentially unimportant, something that already functions according to unchangeable laws, so there’s no point in wasting time thinking about it.” John had the feeling he was talking about himself; this was how it had been for most of his life. You either had money or you didn’t, and if you had it you spent it. Even a savings account had been beyond his means. That was something for other people. The business section of the newspaper was, at best, something you used to line the trashcan.

“But nothing else could be further from the truth. The laws of money are not irrevocable, and especially not unimportant.”

He looked at the gray computer monitor on the secretary-general’s desk and pointed at it. “The monetary system is like the operating system of our civilization. Its rules determine how everything else functions. Whoever makes the rules, rules the world.”

Annan raised his eyebrows. “A few minutes ago I would have said your aim was to set up a world government in control of all armed forces across the planet. And I would have told you that was impossible.”

John agreed. “Unquestionably.”

“But now it sounds more as if you want a worldwide supervisory apparatus for the financial system.”

“Correct.”

The secretary general folded his hands. “This has been attempted often enough in the past, Mr. Fontanelli,” he said earnestly. “No one argues that this would be a very good thing. However, all such attempts failed because nations do not want to relinquish their sovereignty.”

John nodded. He suddenly understood that it had been a misunderstanding to believe that a vision could provide certainty. It did not. But it did provide determination.

“Your aims are honorable, Mr. Fontanelli,” Kofi Annan continued, “but I simply cannot envision how you could reach this goal.”

“No?” John Fontanelli raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I thought it would be obvious.”

Larry King leaned across the table, his thumbs hooked in his wide trademark suspenders. “Mr. Fontanelli, what do you think an institution of the sort you are suggesting could do, this — what do you call it? — Global Central Bank?”

“I would prefer the term ‘world finance ministry,” his guest replied.

“Is this something we really need?” the famous talk show host asked. “Mr. Fontanelli, I seem to recall that you were attempting to fulfill some ancient prophecy about restoring humanity’s lost future. People might think — I certainly would — that meant fixing the hole in the ozone layer, or preventing climate change, or a population explosion. Instead you’re tackling money and taxes.”

“But money is what’s causing all our troubles. People starve because they have no money to buy food. People have lots of children when that is their only means of being cared for when they grow old. Having a livelihood means earning money and, in the end, everything in the world comes down to finances.”

“But will it save the world if I pay the same tax rates as, say, a rice farmer in Southeast Asia, or a rural doctor in Tanzania?”

The richest man in the world smiled. “The goal is to change the entire tax system.” He adjusted his seating position. “I want to give you an example from my own experience. You are aware that unbelievable amounts of money gets swapped back and forth in the money markets — about one and a half trillion dollars per day — one currency traded for another in seconds to earn money from tiny differences. It is a type of business, to be honest, that produces nothing, no product and no service. It doesn’t feed anybody. More money changes hands this way on a single day than you would need to buy all the products in the world for an entire year, and yet by the end of the day there is not a single slice of bread more as a result. Huge gains are made, but each gain means a loss for someone else right down to the last decimal point. Until a few weeks ago I also had a section that dealt with currencies, but I’m not proud of it, believe me, sir.”

“But the people in this business are in a unique situation, aren't they? It's a bit like gambling in a casino. What's that got to do with me?”

“Because it affects you. You see, a wave of money constantly on the go is like a virtual tsunami that can flatten developments in the real physical economy by the sheer force of the numbers. The Asian crisis, with all its misery, plundered shops and bankrupt firms, was due to a sudden storm in currency trading.”

“Which Fontanelli Enterprises caused,” Larry King threw in, batting his eyelids behind the thick-framed glasses. “On purpose, to put the governments there under pressure.”

“Yes. We did it for a simple reason: because we could. It may not have been nice, but it wasn’t illegal either.”

“But what could a world finance ministry have done to prevent such a particular crisis?”

“Something awfully simple and effective,” John said. “There has been a plan in existence since the seventies developed by the economist and Noble Prize winner James Tobin, which is scientifically sound. His plan calls for a tax on all currency transactions, and it doesn’t need to be higher than one percent.”

“So if I go to France on vacation, I’d have to pay a one percent tax on francs that I buy with my dollars?”

“But this would be hardly noticeable compared to the charges the bank applies anyhow. Normal exports would also hardly feel the effects of this tax, and neither would long-term investments.”

“Okay … but what’s the purpose of this tax?”

John explained, “Currency speculators trade a large amount of a currency, say one hundred million US dollars, for another currency. A few hours, or even minutes later they trade it back again. Let’s say the currency rate has improved by a hundredth of a percent, he just earned ten thousand dollars. However, if they had to pay a tax of one percent, which in this case would be one million dollars — on each transaction — this sort of business would suddenly not be worth it anymore. The tax doesn’t even have to be one percent — even a few tenths of a percent would put a damper on this sort of dealing.”

Larry King put a hand to his chin. “All right. The boys just lost their jobs. Then what? What good will it do the rice farmer in Southeast Asia?”

“In this day and age a financial crisis in one part of the world affects the rest immediately. The capital invested flees, which worsens the crisis. There’s a real possibility that that rice farmer will suddenly get less money for his rice and ends up in financial trouble, just because some bank in Japan went broke, or the Brazilian economy is losing steam.” Fontanelli made two small walls with his hands on the table. “The Tobin tax would act like a dam protecting the land from a flood. To a degree it would isolate different regions from one other and allow the central banks of the affected countries to readjust their interest rates to reflect the actual economic conditions. In reality, of course, it wouldn’t really be a wall, more a sort of breakwater, governments still couldn’t do what they want.”

“But this would also mean less freedom in the currency markets, wouldn’t it?”

“Why? It wouldn’t restrict the freedom of the market at all. You could buy and sell any currencies you want: you just have to pay the price to do it.”

“But would it be worth it? If there is as much money going around as you said earlier, wouldn’t a legion of computers be necessary to control all that?”

“Sure, but all these computers already exist, otherwise this sort of trading wouldn’t even be possible in the first place. You would just need to load the appropriate software. This sort of tax would be one of the easiest to implement.”

The talk show host cocked his head. “I don’t know. If it really is as easy as you insist, then why wasn’t it been implemented a long time ago?”

“Because the people it would target have been pitting governments against each other. If even a single currency exchange market in the whole world declined to implement the tax, it would draw the entire currency exchange business. It can only function if it is put into place absolutely worldwide.”

“And how will it save the future?”

“This would be only the first small step. There are other concepts that still need to be looked into. For example an environmentally targeted taxation.”

Larry King looked into the camera. “We will discuss this topic when we come back. Stay tuned.”

The secretary-general of the UN looked skeptically at his visitor.

“I have founded an organization that will start work soon,” John explained. “It is an independent foundation that has at its disposal one hundred billion dollars. It will organize a global referendum in the coming months, a referendum on whether humanity would like to see such an institution given a global remit. The name of the organization is We The People and the headquarters is on 40 Wall Street.” Now he had come out with it — the entire crazy plan. “It will organize an election for a ‘World Speaker,’ someone to represent the entire world’s population and help coordinate national governments in making decisions that have global consequences.” John raised a hand to block any objection. “The ballot will, of course, also allow people to vote against the scheme.”

Kofi Annan leaned forward, placed his elbows on the armrests, and looked at John. “That is audacious.” It sounded as if he really wanted to say something less diplomatic. He shook his head. “That is absolutely … audacious,” he said again for lack of any other semi-diplomatic term.

John had been preparing himself all along for an outright rejection, ever since he stepped into this building, even before he got on the plane. Now, to his utter surprise, he realized that now that he had effectively got it, it had given him strength and determination instead of discouraging him.

“Everyone says the same thing. Do you doubt that such a referendum can be carried out?”

“With a hundred billion dollars to back it up? I’d be happy with a single billion. No, I don’t doubt you can carry out such a vote. I only doubt that it will achieve anything. What makes you think the world’s governments will listen to what this so-called World Speaker has to say?”

“The fact that he or she has the support of all the people in the world.”

The secretary-general was about to respond to that but stopped to pause a while, staring into space, deep in thought. Then he said, “That is unquestionably a strong moral position.” He looked up at John. “How will you deal with possible accusations of having manipulated the ballots?”

“Everything except casting the ballot itself will be done openly. Every polling station will have voting monitors present, after the end of the voting period the ballot papers will be counted in plain view. We will use normal ballot papers, not computers or other machines that could be manipulated. Even the finances of We the People will be transparent. Since there’s nothing to hide, everyone who wants to can check all account transactions and entries.”

A silence ensued, as if some ancient mythological monster were drawing breath.

“We the People,” Annan repeated contemplatively.

“That’s right,” John said. “Just like the people who went out onto the streets in Leipzig and other former East German cities back in 1989 shouted ‘we are the people’. That’s what this is all about.”

“Nobody has ever attempted anything like this before,” the secretary-general said.

“Then it is about time someone did,” John told him.

Name of Foundation: We The People Organization.

Head Office: 40 Wall Street, New York, NY, USA.

Purpose of the Foundation: Organization and implementation of global elections and referendums.

Foundation Capital: The Foundation's capital is 100 billion U.S. dollars. Foundation donor is John Salvatore Fontanelli. The amount of the endowment was chosen so that all anticipated expenses may be paid from capital gains in full.

Managing Director: Lionel Hillman.

Main function: To establish ballot stations (5.1 million in total) in all countries of the world. To hire and train election workers from the local population. Registering voters, and drawing up voter lists. Acceptance of nominations and publicizing the names of candidates. Printing and delivery of ballots. Announcement and supervision of the referendum. Publication of results.

Disclosure: All documents, account transactions, financial entries and other operations of the Foundation are public. The Foundation website (www.WeThePeople.org) offers all users access to its accounts. Anyone requesting so by telephone may have physical access to all accounts.

Exceptions to Disclosure: The voting register will not be made generally available. On request, however, any citizen may check whether or not he or she is registered and in which list, and request, if requested, transfer to another list. In this case they will be required to produce a valid identity document: contact your regional WTPO office.

During voting: Election observers will be present in all polling stations and are permitted access at any time, both during voting and during the public count of votes cast. The results of all votes will be broken down by polling stations, and published in regional newspapers.

Election Basics: All votes will be secret, free and equal to all. Voting is open to all adults, 18 years or older at the time of the vote and who are not incarcerated due to a crime, or who are in care due to mental impairment.

Tourist Information: The offices of the foundation are in the lowest five levels of the headquarters building (marked by its colorful façade, a painting by Chilean artist Chico Roxas). The upper, white painted part of the building from the 6th floor upwards is the future residence of the World Speaker.

Annan was leaning back in thought, his slender fingers intertwined. The expression on his face reflected an inner struggle between skepticism and fascination. "Have you ever thought," he said finally, "that you will need candidates?”

John and Paul exchanged looks. “That’s one reason why we’re here,” said John.

“An ideal candidate for world speaker,” Paul explained, “would be a former head of state or someone in a similar position … someone who is known throughout the world, who has a good reputation, and has connections to at least a few governments.”

“We were thinking of you,” John added.

Kofi Annan raised his eyebrows in surprise. Then he held up his hands defensively. “Oh no. I’m not suitable.” He shook his head. “No, thank you.”

“Why not? You…”

“Because I’m a diplomat. I’m a mediator between opposing viewpoints — an administrator.” He stretched out his hands. “Let’s forget that. You basically want someone to be world president, and I would not be accepted as a world president.”

“But there is nobody in a better position than you.”

“On the contrary.” The secretary-general shook his head. “If only for reasons of political integrity, I should be the last person to be expected to run for this office. I would be charged with supporting your idea just to further my own career.”

Paul cleared his throat. “To be honest, we asked Mikhail Gorbachev first,” he told Annan. “He didn’t want to either, because his wife is very ill and he wants to care for her. It was he who suggested you.”

“I feel honored, but I must decline.”

John felt suddenly exhausted. Could the question of finding an appropriate candidate prove to be a problem? No, surely not. Visionary ideas aren’t defeated by minutiae. He brushed a strand of hair from his face, his arm as limp and heavy as a wet rag.

“However,” Kofi Annan went on, “I could suggest someone else, someone I admire very much and who would be more suitable for this office than anyone else.”

$47,000,000,000,000

EVEN AS JOHN’S airplane was still flying over the Atlantic the press agencies had been informed and the first news reports of the impending global referendum were being broadcast around the world. As they drove from Heathrow into London, John’s phone rang in his jacket.

“John?” someone shouted into the phone, “have you gone totally mad now?”

He took the phone away from his ear and glanced at it. Then somewhat bemused, he said “Malcolm? Is that you?”

“Yes dammit. Tell me, didn’t you understood anything? A worldwide vote? Let uneducated people who have no idea decide what should be done? I simply can’t believe it. For years I explained to you how the world functions and no sooner am I gone than you wander off into cuckoo land. What answer do you expect from some farmer in a rice field in Jakarta or a miner in Peru on how they want to live? A life of sacrifice and modesty?”

“I won’t ask them that,” John answered coolly.

“John, if you ask everyone in the world how they want to live, then you may as well cover the planet with suburbs littered with mansions, swimming pools, and shopping centers. That will mean the end, I hope you realize that.”

“I’m certain that most will be satisfied with justice and a future for their children rather than a swimming pool.”

McCaine sounded like he was yelling and gasping for air at the same time. “John, you are a dreamer!”

“That’s what my mother always said too. I guess that’s why fate made me the heir instead of you. Take care, Malcolm.” He hung up and then called his secretary. He told her that calls from McCaine should be directed to the legal department from now on.

The music droning from his room was so loud that it almost burst his eardrums, even out in the hallway. It sounded vaguely familiar.

Unborn children
want your money
and their screaming
never stops.
House on fire,
god is leaving,
you don’t matter
anymore.
Wasted future, wasted future,
all you offer me are tears …

The crashing sound and croaky vocals — unquestionably Marvin’s CD. But hadn’t he thrown it away after playing it only once?

When John went into the living room he saw Francesca standing in the middle of it with her eyes closed and her arms crossed as if she was hugging herself, swaying passionately in time to the bass guitar. John stared at her like she was the eighth and ninth wonders of the world all at once — she really seemed to like this droning cacophony of electronic noise!

She startled when she saw him standing by the door and raced to the stereo to turn it off. The sudden quiet was almost too much. “Scusi,” she whispered as she retrieved the silver disc from the CD player, and put it back into the case. “I forgot you were returning today.” She gestured shyly around the room. “But everything is cleaned and straightened up.”

“Va bene,” John said calmly, but she was already scurrying out with a barely audible “Buona notte,” the CD with Marvin’s image on it pressed against her breast, like some treasure. John looked after her and in a diffused way he was troubled to realize how much people’s taste and values could differ. And Marvin, for heaven’s sake … he hadn’t heard from him in ages. He didn’t even have a clue where he was living these days.

When Marvin was allowed out, he enjoyed going up the rough mountain slopes into the woods that surrounded the valley like majestic guardians. There he wandered for hours through the forests, the underbrush, climbed over fallen trees, breathing in the cold, clear air and listening to the near silence, hearing only the sounds of nature, his own breathing and the sound of his footsteps. If it were not for the red and white stripes on some of the trees and steel rods, which marked the boundary between the region in which he was allowed to move and the rest of the world while wearing the electronic ankle bracelet, he would have felt free as never before.

By now, the clinic allowed him to go out in the afternoons for up to four hours at a time. Yet the beeping signal from the electronic gadget on his ankle when time was up always seemed to come too soon. From up near the top of the mountain the clinic looked like an elegant white country house, oddly out of place nestled within this wilderness. One had to get much closer to see that it had barred windows and that the access road was guarded. And the other patients? They were all junkies: arrogant, cold-hearted sons and daughters from wealthy families, the black sheep who were kept here in no-man’s land by dad’s monthly check. He saw them only when he stepped back into the clinic. Marvin always hated that moment.

On this day he had the feeling he wasn’t alone in the forest. There was no one to be seen. It was more like a scent. Was it one of the others? He hoped not. Marvin went back to a part of the forest’s periphery where he could see the clinic and counted the pathetic figures walking around in the garden pathways. No one was missing. Whoever it was sneaking around out here, it was not a patient.

He decided not to worry about it. He climbed up the trail through the brush and gasped for breath, and when he saw the smoky white wisp in the chill air about it took him back to his previous life in the city with exhaust gases in the streets and smoking his joints by the window. It really did seem like another lifetime. He could have sworn that he had lived in the clinic for a hundred years already, in the room with the barred windows looking down on a piece of grass as featureless and boring as a green carpet. And it almost looked like he would have to remain here until his death.

Suddenly there was a man in front of him, in a moss-green parka and a dark-blue baseball cap, standing motionless in the brush on the other side of the boundary, watching him.

Marvin looked at him. He could simply have gone on his way — after all, it was not forbidden for him to be there in the forest. But he didn’t, instead he called out: “Hey, how’s it going?”

The man lifted a hand and waved, then he gestured for Marvin to come closer.

“Sorry!” Marvin said and pointed to his right foot. “I have this gadget on my ankle that’ll pump me full of anesthesia if I go on. That’s just how it is around here, you know.”

The man seemed to understand because he clambered closer over roots and stones. “Is the discipline really so strict here?” he asked Marvin when he got close enough.

Marvin shrugged his shoulders. “Twenty steps max and an alarm will go off, got somethin’ to do with the distance to the transmitter. And if they have to come get me with the dogs I’ll get a minimum two weeks of no fresh air — know what I mean?”

“Sounds bad.” The man had a rough looking face with scars and a bushy mustache.

Marvin had a vague feeling he had seen him before, but he often had such feelings lately. Dr. Doddridge, his therapist, assured him it was a side effect of the medication he had received in the start of his treatment. Marvin shrugged his shoulders. “I guess they have to do that. There are a few dudes here who are pretty wacko in their heads.”

“You don’t seem to be one of them. The wacko ones I mean.”

“God no, I was never that bad. I could have stopped anytime I wanted.” Marvin pulled out a stalk of grass and stuck it between his teeth. Looks cooler, he thought. “It’s all part of the rock star image, you know. You’re under such awful pressure. That can really be a problem sometimes — if you know what I mean.”

“Hmm,” the stranger said. “But you seem to be well again.”

“Yeah, sure.” Only the memory of the state he was in before coming here were still a bit fuzzy. The doctor said it would all come back one day. “It’s actually great all the things they do with you here; spa therapy, detoxification, hypnosis, conversational therapy … yeah, sure, they got me fixed-up pretty good again.”

There was something snake-like in the hooded gaze with which the man looked at him. “Then why are you still here?”

“No idea. Guess I’m not fixed totally one hundred percent yet.”

“And you really believe that?”

Marvin was suspicious as he looked at the man. He had on a dark-red sweater and there was thick, black body hair protruding from the collar. “What do you mean?”

“You understood me. Have you never asked yourself about what was really behind everything that had happened to you?”

“Like what?”

“Think about it,” the man said and turned around to leave.

“Hey, what are you talking about?” Marvin asked and was tempted to follow him. “You can’t just leave me standing here. Who are you anyway?”

The man only raised a hand without turning around again. “I will come back,” he called out. “Think about it until then.” Then he disappeared into the trees.

If it were up to Marvin he would have erased the incident from his memory, but, of course, instead that was all he could think about for the rest of the day. And in the middle of the night he remembered, and knew where he had seen the man before.

The media didn’t like the term “World Speaker,” not even the newspapers and TV channels that belonged to Fontanelli Enterprises. Instead, what the people were told on the news was that they would be voting for a world president. The first commentators did not know if they were the butt of a silly joke or not.

They would have done well to check with their advertising departments. Only the day before, there were double page ads placed in virtually all newspapers in the world — even in some government-controlled ones, where this sort of thing had never happened before — publicizing the creation of We the People and explaining its plans, its timetable, and modalities of coordinating them. All over the world people were amazed to hear that every adult could apply for the post of World Speaker, provided he or she could collect a sufficient number of supporters, of which not more than half the signatures were from people of his or her own nationality. In pubs and cafeterias around the globe the first candidates were already being considered, even before the world’s governments had recovered from their surprise. Just two days after the start of the campaign, the first applications were sent to New York.

And the series of giant ads went on, this time with minutes-long spots on TV, broadcast during the most expensive primetime programs. The logo with the five colored heads suddenly popped up everywhere, on billboards, subway stations, on the back of cinema tickets, at the perimeter of football fields, on buses and trains and shown before every film in every movie theater everywhere on the planet. The We The People website claimed that the organization would have spent more on ads by election day than the Coca-Cola would have in ten years. It was obvious that We The People had an endless amount of money available, and that it would spend as much on educational work as was necessary. People all over the world began to understand that the campaign was serious.

Politicians in office were smart enough not to comment on Fontanelli’s plan unless they were asked. Instinctively they realized that this would only give his plan more publicity. But even if they were asked, they held back, spoke only vaguely, reminded people of the right to free speech, and praised the tested structures of democracy. An EU commissioner, a member of this powerful organization where not a single executive had been voted into office by the electorate of the diverse European Union governments, said he saw no reason to change the existing power structures.

The interview John Fontanelli gave on Japanese television was just one stop on the world tour he undertook to promote his project. After only a few days of this he began to learn the usual sequence of the conversations, to the point where he was almost capable of predicting every word beforehand. Wherever he went, the respective interlocutor explained to him in great detail how different his country was and how different his culture was from the rest of the world — only to ask the exact same questions as everyone else had done!

“Mr. Fontanelli,” said an athletically built Japanese man, whose name John had forgotten right after their introduction (though he had taken his business card just in case), “do you really believe that countries such as China, Iran or North Korea will allow secret voting to take place?”

Beijing had already agreed, but John did not want to trumpet it to the world just yet. China needed wheat, it was an easy matter. Cuba, now that was a problem child. “A government that does not allow its citizens to vote,” John said, sticking to his well-rehearsed statement, “must be aware that it will then not participate in any global talks on restructuring the financial system.”

“Will you apply pressure on such governments?” the man wanted to know.

His highly paid staff of psychologists, rhetoricians, and speech writers had developed an equally impressive though as meaningless answer for this type of question, which had been anticipated all along. But what the hell, in that case you might as well send a taped message, right? John’s desire to be defiant was suddenly irresistible. He cleared his throat and said with a grim smile: “Let me put it this way: if someone still thinks that a single country can withstand the influence of multinational corporations, then it’s about time for him to wake up and smell the coffee.”

It took a week before the man came back.

Every day Marvin was on the lookout between the giant redwood trunks, in the rain and the cold, but no one came. He should have taken a closer look for any footprints at the spot where they first met to make sure it hadn’t been a dream. So when he went there a week later he was relieved to see the man waiting for him.

“I know who you are,” Marvin told him right away.

“Impressive,” the man responded.

“I saw you on TV. Your name is Randolph Bleeker. You represented John Fontanelli’s brother, and the police have been looking for you since the swindle was uncovered.”

That did not seem to bother him in the least. “That’s correct, Mr. Copeland,” he said simply. “But did you know that the police are looking for you too?”

Marvin stared at him as if he had been slapped. “Me?”

“The French police would like to ask you a few questions in connection with the death of your girlfriend, Constantina Volpe. Do you remember Ms. Volpe?”

“Constantina…?” The memory came back in a flood. He saw dark alleys and an Algerian man counting franc notes and a plastic baggy with white powder in it. And then … nothingness. He remembered waking up with cold, stiff, bluish arms and legs. He tried to dial a number with shaky hands. Then he was in a jail cell again until a man came with vacant black eyes.

“Someone brought you here to safety. This is not only a clinic, Mr. Copeland, this is also a hideout. At least it is for you.” This man, Bleeker, who had tried to con his friend John, and the whole world, in fact, looked at him disdainfully. “Have you never asked yourself who that was? And why he did it?”

No, indeed he never had. Marvin hesitantly shook his head. “No,” he admitted, “I have no idea.”

“Do you want to know?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Bleeker took a breath. “You won’t like it,” he said with a doubtful expression. “You are involved in something far bigger than you could ever imagine — even in your worst nightmares.”

“Let me worry about that, okay,” Martin said.

Bleeker looked at him for a while, and then seemed to have made a decision. “All right. Let’s go over to that log, it’ll be better if you’re sitting down.”

Now Marvin got a bit worried. Something pounded in his head, like an animal trying to escape. He sat down beside Bleeker on the fallen tree trunk that some storm had blown over, ready to find out what Bleeker knew.

The man with the rough face began to speak. “Can you believe whatever happens in this world is actually controlled by a small circle of powerful people who pull all the strings, manipulate the media, and surreptitiously follow their own interests? That nothing is as it seems?”

Marvin nodded. “Yeah, man. That’s what I’ve always thought.”

“It is all true. I know because I have worked for these people.”

Crazy! If only this awful headache would go away. “Really?” he asked and tried to remain cool.

Bleeker leaned forward as if there was an invisible weight on his back, and placed his hands on his knees. “Good. That’s why I’m here if you want to know the truth.”

$48,000,000,000,000

NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA, born in 1918, had been a political prisoner from 1962 until 1989 in the Republic of South Africa. He was also the elected president of that country since 1994. He stepped before the bundle of press microphones from around the world and explained that John Salvatore Fontanelli had asked him to be a candidate for the office of World Speaker. “And I have decided to accept the nomination,” he told the crowd.

Journalists are generally hard to baffle. They are used to hearing the most unexpected statements, the most surprising announcements and the most shocking revelations, but there was a commotion in the auditorium on hearing those words. All discipline vanished, questions were shouted across the room, mobile phones pulled out, quick dictated messages excitedly passed on and people out in the hallway were running to the phones.

It was a known fact that Mandela did not want to run for a second term as president of South Africa, and it was assumed that age was a factor. But world president?

“We will soon say good-bye to a century that has been a very painful era in mankind’s history. Looking back, we must realize that conflicts and wars still dominate many parts of our world. A large part of the world population lives in poverty, and the relationships between nations favor the most powerful. I’m not saying this to spread despair and hopelessness, but to name some of the challenges that will accompany us into the new century.

“We have witnessed terrible examples of inhumanity among peoples. We have destroyed plant and animal species, and brought many others to the verge of extinction. And we have in many other ways abused our natural environment. However, we cannot deny that we also have witnessed many triumphs in human intellect in the fields of science, literature, art and many others. Modern methods of communication and globalization have made the world into a smaller, more manageable place, in which no country exists on its own, or can solve its problems by itself any more. We require international organizations that can effectively represent the interests of everyone and that can strengthen our sense of common humanity.

“For this reason I will accept with gladness and humbleness the request to represent the world’s peoples in this office. At the same time, I appeal to everyone around the world to seize the historic opportunity and to participate in the ballot, and I ask each of you for your vote. I promise with all my strength to support those whose honest interest it is to create a world where people can coexist with each other in dignity and friendship. Thank you.”

“Holy shit,” an English journalist said to a colleague, “but I’ll be damned if it isn’t just possible.”

“No reason to curse,” the other one replied.

In the Colombian jungle an anti-drug commando uncovered a secret packaging camp in a raid. The soldiers secured five thousand pounds of cocaine packed in plastic sacks bearing the Morris-Capstone Company logo. A speaker of the company wasted no time in explaining that Morris-Capstone had nothing to do with the drugs. The sacks were intended for Brazilian tobacco plantations and must have been stolen while en route.

At about the same time, McCaine was speaking on a talk show where he remarked that he was against any government-subsidized programs to rehabilitate drug users. “These programs don’t work and only cost money,” he explained. “They can’t work because those who fled life’s responsibilities for the artificial gratification of drugs lack self-responsibility. To finance such programs is a mockery to everyone else who wants to live a normal life and works hard for it. Since this world is already overpopulated, we should be glad for each person who voluntarily exits the world.”

Exiting the world not quite voluntarily were the arrested drug dealers in Columbia. They had been murdered mysteriously in jail before a judge could even question them.

Just play it cool when the signal sounded, that was the plan. After all, he had four hours — that was a lot of time. The white-painted steel door closed behind him with a thump and clicked as it was locked. Marvin held his nose in the cool, crisp air … but did it for no longer and no shorter than usual. Then he trudged onward up the slope at the same leisurely pace as he had every afternoon for the past few weeks.

They were watching him from one of the windows down there, glistening in the sun, he was sure of it. They never gave him a hint of doing so, instead they always pretended to be unconcerned about where he went, as long as he returned on time. After all, they had this radio device inside his ankle gadget. They knew everything about him they needed to.

He had four hours, but it only took barely ten minutes to get to the clearing in the forest.

The sign was a yellow ribbon tied around one of the trees, which was visible from his room if you knew exactly where to look. It was quite a way through brush and over rough terrain before he got to that tree. Indeed, in a hole on the tree’s trunk he found a plastic baggy and in it was a map of the area, a set of car keys, three hundred Canadian dollars and two hundred American dollars, and something that could only be a key for his ankle bracelet. It looked slightly different than the ones the clinic personnel used, but it fit. Marvin removed the device and did as Bleeker told him; he closed it up again right away.

However, he could not help playing a joke on the clinic wardens. He found two young trees growing close together with crossed trunks as thick as ankles. He locked the device around one of them. Now it looked like some magician had turned him into two trees. He enjoyed imagining the stupid faces they would make when they got there and wondered what the hell was going on.

He pocketed everything and went on his way. His route led along the access road, up on the mountain ridge. It was rough terrain, rocky, full of crevices and dangerous slopes. It was hard going, and although it was easier without the stupid thing on his ankle, he was soon drenched in sweat and out of breath. Every muscle in his body cried for a break, but that was impossible. He had four hours, but it was not as much time as he had thought. And there he was, on the most important mission ever entrusted to any man.

The candidacy of Nelson Mandela opened a new dimension in the debate about the pros and cons of a global referendum. Whether the initiative was to be taken seriously was no longer up for debate, now the discussions had narrowed down to the question if there would be a World Speaker and, if so, who it should be.

The South African president’s popularity around the world was immense, as reflected by the positive reactions to his announcement as a candidate. The actor, author, and special UN envoy Peter Ustinov, who had been one of the first contenders, withdrew his candidacy to give his full support to Nelson Mandela. Those journalists who were against the referendum, and who tried to bring Mandela into disrepute, did themselves and their cause little good when the people, especially in developing countries, labeled them racists. In many places spontaneous rallies were held, and signs reading “Mandela for World President” were soon a common sight at nearly all demonstrations, even those on completely unrelated issues.

However, there were other opinions being voiced. A European initiative group called for the nomination of the Czech President Václav Havel instead, and despite his refusal diligently collected many signatures. In the U.S., a movement was formed to promote former President Jimmy Carter who was six years younger than Mandela as a candidate. However, he turned down the candidacy with the words: "I do not think that a white man has a chance of winning this first candidacy."

CNN in a special broadcast presented an interview with the CEO of the organization We The People, Lionel Hillman. "Mr. Hillman," the interviewer greeted the man with the rusty-brown curls, "is it true that Gaddafi announced his candidacy?"

Hillman smiled. “If you’ve been following our announcements, then you know that this is true. Muammar al-Gaddafi submitted a valid candidacy yesterday.”

“This means that the Libyan head of state will be on the list of candidates?”

“Of course.”

The interviewer, a dark-skinned woman named Deborah Norris, looked surprised. “Do you think that this is okay?”

The future world election supervisor considered it acceptable. “That is democracy. The rules apply to all. And if you don’t like a candidate, then vote for someone else.”

Mrs. Norris thought it best to change the subject. “How many countries are involved? China will allow the vote. How about Iraq, Cuba, or North Korea?”

“It’s a go in Cuba, that’s certain. Castro was against the referendum at first, because it was initiated by a capitalist, but after he had a private talk with John Fontanelli he changed his mind. Iraq will also allow the vote to take place. But we will keep a close watch to see if the population will be intimidated from going to the polls. Unfortunately this is a tactic that happens in many places, in Afghanistan and Haiti, for instance.”

“And North Korea?”

“As it looks now, North Korea will be the last enclave of total dictatorship. I truly regret this, but presently there is nothing that can be done to change that.”

“Many governments declared that they will not recognize a world speaker, should one be voted into office.”

“What do you mean many? Almost all of them,” Hillman said shrugging his shoulders. “But I don’t have a problem with that. My job is merely to organize the vote. We’ll see what happens afterward.”

“And on the subject of John Fontanelli, how much does he have to say in We The People?” Deborah Norris asked provocatively.

“Nothing,” Hillman responded promptly. “He is a citizen with exactly one vote, just like any other.”

“But he is the one who provided all the money you’re working with.”

“That’s right, but when you donate money you say good-bye to it. In any case, I don’t know of any special status for anybody in our organization. We all eat in the same cafeteria and use the same bathrooms. The foundation rules can only be changed only by the world speaker and even then only through a referendum.”

She nodded, satisfied. “What will the procedures be? How many voting rounds will there be?”

“Two. The first round will be open to all the candidates. The second round will be for the two candidates with the most votes.”

“Who do you expect to win?”

Hillman cocked his head. “Officially, I will refrain from comment.”

“And unofficially?”

“Unofficially, I think that it’ll be between Nelson Mandela and the ‘no’ vote.”

“Meaning a vote against the concept of world speaker?”

“Correct.”

“What result would you like to see?”

Hillman gave a smile that would have done justice to Solomon. “A voter turnout of at least seventy percent.”

“And what are your plans if the ‘no’ vote wins?”

“The same thing I always do after a vote: organize a new one in four years’ time.”

“We already have a world president,” Malcolm McCaine said during a television interview. “Everyone knows him: his name is John Salvatore Fontanelli. Isn’t this obvious? Things are happening exactly the way he wants them to happen, all over the world. He wants polling stations to be set up because he has a utopian idea in his head, and although everyone knows what nonsense this is, it is still being done.”

McCaine was the first to take an offensive stance against the Fontanelli plan. In advertisements, posters and television ads, paid for by Morris-Capstone, John’s project was attacked and ridiculed. In Europe, propagandists argued on intellectual talk shows that although the idea of a world government, of course, had “charm,” it was still too early for the world even to take a first step. Weekly magazines and newspapers illustrated how in the future, if Fontanelli’s plan went ahead, a billion Indians and a billion Chinese would have a say on the fate of Europeans. In Israel, radio ads warned about giving Arabs even the hint of a say about the well-being or otherwise of the Jewish state, while special broadcasts on Arab television declared that a “yes” to Fontanelli’s plan would mean the floodgates of the corrupt, depraved Western influence opening all over the world. In the United States, full-page ads and many minutes of commercials during the most expensive airtime announced: "America's president is the most powerful man in the world. There is no reason to change that.” And bumper stickers could be seen on cars with two words above the We The People logo: “Just Ignore!”

The UN ambassador of the United States criticized Kofi Annan’s decision to support the “trillionaire” referendum unusually brusquely. In well-informed circles it was assumed that the secretary-general’s days were numbered.

Marvin stopped on the graveled shoulder of the road and watched the motel from afar. The place matched the description he had been given: there was a log carved into the shape of a grizzly bear next to the door, the yellow-painted walls and shape of the building also matched. To judge by the cars in the parking lot only two rooms were occupied. One of the vehicles, a Ford pickup, was being loaded up by two burly men who looked like lumberjacks.

He put the car into gear and drove to the motel parking lot. He parked the car and peered around before getting out. He played it cool as he entered the office. Sitting behind the counter in the lobby was a sloppy looking man with an odd chinless face and a ponytail, who cheerlessly went through the registration procedure.

“Are there phones in the rooms?” Marvin asked as the receptionist put the money into the cash register.

“Just dial zero and then the rest,” the man answered with a grumble.

“International numbers too?”

“Yep.” He shoved the key over the countertop. “Number three, on the left.”

The room had appalling brown wallpaper, but otherwise was okay. Marvin washed his face, looked out the window and saw nothing but forest, forest, and more forest. He sat down on the bed and lifted the phone. No mobile phones, Bleeker had told him. They can pinpoint every mobile phone in the world down to ten paces. Logical, that was part of their plan. But he was going to ruin it for them, if it was the last thing he did.

Marvin thought for a second and dialed a long number. A woman answered. He told her his name then it rang again. Another woman answered the phone … in English with a charming Italian accent.

“Hello, Francesca,” he said, “it’s me, Marvin.”

“Marvin?” she breathed, almost fainting. “Where are you? What…? I’m always thinking of you, Marvin, every day and … I bought your CD …”

“Francesca,” he interrupted her, “I need your help.”

“My help?”

“Francesca, darling … you have to find a telephone number for me.”

“South Africa’s peaceful change is often considered a miracle,” Nelson Mandela said during an official visit to Australia. “The entire world had been convinced that South Africa would one day go under in bloody racial conflict. But the leaders of the various communities and political parties refuted the prophets of doom with their willingness to negotiate and to make compromises. If the experience of South Africa means something to the world as a whole, I hope it sets an example for people of goodwill to come together and overcome their differences for the common good, in peace, and that solutions may be found for even the most difficult problems."

The visitors, gathered outside under a blue sky, clapped warmly. The trees bore the colors of autumn, and winter was on its way to Australia.

“Very smooth,” one of the journalists whispered to his neighbor and raised a hand. “What do you say to the rumors that you would be answering to the Fontanelli Corporation once you’re world speaker?”

Mandela looked at the questioner pensively. “I’ve heard of this rumor,” he said. “It is not true. It is not Mr. Fontanelli who will elect me but the people of the world. I will answer to them. But what you may expect me to do if I should be voted into this office is what I’ve done for my country: strive for truth and justice.”

The people in the crowd started to whisper and make comments to each other. Some of the guests, especially those invited from the economic and political realms considered the journalist’s question out of line.

“A whim of fate,” Nelson Mandela went on to explain with a gentle almost apologetic smile, “has it that John Fontanelli himself will to be the first person to feel the consequences of the planned financial restructuring, very seriously indeed. He received his inheritance without paying inheritance taxes — and that is something we cannot allow.”

$49,000,000,000,000

SO, THIS IS how it would all end.

The light in the foyer seemed to be dimmer than usual, the voices in the hallway more muffled, the colors of the furnishings a little grayer. People who yesterday considered him master of the world avoided him today as if he was a condemned man.

The lawyers, sitting around the massive table like a pack of vicious dogs, fell silent when John Fontanelli entered the conference room. They had sweat stains on the armpits of their shirts and stacks of papers on the table, and some of them looked like they had spent the entire night howling and gnarling.

The tension of an impending massacre permeated the air.

“So where are we?” John asked as he sat down.

“So far everything is still up in the air,” the head of the corporation’s legal team bellowed loudly. He was a stocky fellow with veined skin and thick fingers. “In which country is the tax to be paid? Italy … the USA? What is the legal justification for demanding back payment?”

“Which jurisdiction would any trial fall under?” another heavyset lawyer asked, his Adam’s apple going up and down.

“What about the settlement you made with the Italian government?” snapped an almost skeletal blond waif, wielding her pen like a rapier.

“Mr. Fontanelli never fulfilled his part of the bargain,” a fat guy with pockmarked skin argued. “We won’t be able to make that point.”

John lifted his hand and waited for the people sitting around the table to calm down. Everyone looked at him expectantly, breathing heavily, eager to be freed from this cage and let loose on their prey. But they sat and looked at him and waited. “How much?” he asked.

“Five hundred billion dollars,” one of them bellowed out.

“At least,” another one said.

“And only if no other demands are made.”

“All we need is someone to realize that the Vacchis never paid any taxes either.”

“But why should we pay for them?” one of them barked and slammed his fist on one of the leather bound folios lying scattered on the table.

John lifted his hand again silencing them. “I will pay,” he said. Their jaws fell open. Their eyes almost bulged out of the sockets. “What other choice do I have?” he added.

They looked at each other, looked for someone who would know what else there was to do, but there was nothing there, only a few undetermined noises that sounded like groans. John had also been surprised by this unavoidable conclusion when he thought about it during his sleepless night. To vote for someone who is supported by the majority of all the people of the world — when he had first thought of the idea and then discussed it with others over and over until it was polished to perfection, they had never thought for a moment that they themselves might be affected by the consequences. They had been too accustomed not having to adhere to the laws of individual nations, so adept had they become at pitting countries against each other for their own benefit that the mere idea of a world speaker making demands on them was a shock to them all.

He had heard Mandela’s words on television. There was no escaping them on any channel. Almost triumphantly every station had picked up the statement and discussed and commented on it. At first, John felt something like mocking contempt. It had never really concerned him what politicians talked about or decided — he had been beyond that. During the years that McCaine was by his side, he had gradually grown accustomed to thinking like this he realized, but by now it had become second nature. He and McCaine had sneered and scoffed at them all, confident they were all losers and time wasters they could easily outwit. It had become natural for him to think like this. But he came to the painful conclusion, that he could not isolate himself from the remit of a world speaker. Who did he want to pit against him? There was no one. Taking away his money was one issue in which the nations of the world would only too willingly follow the world speaker’s lead. He didn’t have a chance.

“I will pay,” John repeated. “This means that I will be forced to sell a large portion of the corporation. I would like to ask everyone here to start concentrating on this matter now and to make the necessary preparations. I’ve already issued instructions for the analysis department to make some preparatory plans. There are still a few months before the vote that should be enough time to avoid panic and obtain the best price.”

One of the lawyers wanted to say something, but clapped his mouth shut again without uttering a word and then nodded like all the others.

“And hmm … I’m sorry to have made you all work under so much pressure yesterday,” John said, standing up to indicate the meeting was over. “I wasn’t thinking, so please forgive me.”

They nodded again, and kept on nodding until he was out the door.

He bumped into Paul who had been looking for him. “What a mess, isn’t it?”

It felt good to get out of the meeting, to be striding down the hallway. “Why?” John asked. He suddenly felt lighter, why almost cheerful. “It’s what I wanted, isn’t it?”

“For Mandela to take all your money?”

“He’ll let me keep one or two million. I didn’t know what to do with the rest anyway. Let him decide who gets what.”

“I don’t know …” Paul shook his head. “It all seems so thankless to me.”

John stopped suddenly. “It’s what we always want, isn’t it? Justice for all, but special rules for us.” He laughed. “Paul, don’t you get it … what’s going on here? Don’t you see it? It’s working. The plan is working!”

The call came through as John sat in the car on his way home … a home that would soon no longer be his home, he reflected as he pulled the phone out of his pocket. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” a voice said that John had not heard in ages, “Marvin.”

“Marvin?” John repeated with surprise. “That’s a …” That was more than a surprise. “How are you? Where are you calling from?”

Marvin’s voice sounded far away and with some delay, like calls across the Atlantic sometimes sounded. “Don’t matter where I am, man. I’m not calling to talk about old times. I’m calling because of you. You’re in the process of letting everything go to shit. You’re flushing us all down the shitter and you think you’re doing everyone a big favor. That’s why I’m calling, man.”

“What?” John blinked his eyes confused. Outside the car the street lanterns whizzed by like a row of moons.

“John, I know you’ve been the head honcho lately and that everyone does what you say, but this one time in your life, I’m begging you, just this one time you must please listen to me … until I’m finished, because this time it’s damned important. Do you understand?” A deep breath. “I’ve been in rehab. It was in a clinic, but I can tell you all the nice little details some other time. The important thing is that I met someone there who knows what’s going on. Who knows absolutely everything, do you understand? He knows absolutely what goes on behind the scenes. He was part of the scheme but decided to get out, and that’s why they’re after him now, by the way. So far so good?”

“Hmm,” John said, frowning. “Sure.”

“The first humdinger is your money — your one trillion dollars. The whole thing about interest and compound interest and five hundred years and the whole story everyone heard on TV, read in newspapers and books … are you sitting down?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. The Fontanelli fortune doesn’t really exist.”

It was hard to say why, but Marvin sounded different. He did not seem to be drunk or on drugs, but also not like John remembered him. “Interesting,” he said carefully. “Marvin, at the moment I’m riding in an armored Mercedes that cost one million dollars, and I thought I paid for it, but not with the money I earned while delivering pizza. I know what’s what.”

Marvin did not seem to be in the mood for jokes. “Yeah, sure, man. They gave you a bunch of money, but that’s not the point. The point is that it doesn’t come from where you think it does. There really was a Giacomo Fontanelli in old Florence, and he really was a merchant. He may have even been your ancestor. But he didn’t leave any money … nothing, nada, niente.”

“Oh?” John said, wondering how Marvin could know what Ursula had found out. Who else knew anything about that? “Then where did the money come from?”

Marvin explained, “Sometime during the mid-eighties there was a secret project called the Millennium Fund. It was a sort of savings fund, but only those with especially big wallets had access to it. People, like bankers, industrialists and other super-rich paid into it until there was a trillion dollars in it. That is the money you got. All that other crap, the prophecy and so on … it’s all a con. The testament and all those other documents are all fakes. You got involved in a totally planned scheme, man, and they all know what’s goin’ on, only you don’t, and the public don’t either. Everyone else knows — McCaine, the Vacchis they all know. There never was a Michelangelo Vacchi, man. Have you ever looked into a history book … the past five hundred years? No one is capable of keeping a fortune like that intact through all those chaotic times, I tell you. That’s absolutely out of the question. You got caught up in a con, believe me. They used you the whole time, just used you, man. You’ve been their puppet from the word go. And now, John, its payday, now they’re coming to cash in. These people, you know, they don’t just want to pay into an investment fund, sooner or later they want something out of it too. And they’re not going to be happy with a little taste.”

“Payday?” John echoed, disquieted. What Marvin was blabbering gave him goose bumps. Or was it his voice — the way he said it? “What exactly are you talking about, Marvin? Let’s assume it’s all just like you say: what can anyone gain out of what has happened?”

“That’s not what it’s about … shit! It has nothing to do with what happened, man, it has something to do what’s going to happen. Well, does it ring a bell now?”

John felt an impulse to open the window and toss the phone out into the night. “No, sorry.”

“The world government, man. You are in the process of establishing a world government, and that’s what they want. All the other stuff — the youngest male descendent, the inheritance, the prophecy — that’s all lies, fantasy, a fairy tale to impress everyone. They want a world government, man, and you are the tool to get people enthusiastic about it all, because the people believe in you, ‘cause you are the heir, you will fulfill the prophecy, and you will give back our future, amen. Shit, man! You will do shit. A world government. All that means is that they can run the world the way they want even more easily, bribe and steer in any direction they want, all from behind the scenes. Everything will be so much easier for them. They will have total control over everyone. They will tattoo barcodes on our skin and we will cheer about it because we don’t need credit cards anymore. They will forbid us to have kids and raise their slave workers in their genetic engineering labs just the way they want them. Some time in the future there will be only them, about a thousand families who will be the absolute masters, the master race, man. And us, the rest, we’re their slaves — the brainless and the defenseless, nothing but meat. John, I’m begging you, you gotta stop this!”

For one moment John almost believed him. For a moment it seemed a curtain had been drawn back to reveal a scene of unspeakable atrocity, a conspiracy of monstrous proportions — a world so gruesome that the very sight of it would drive you mad. Then he remembered Marvin's other obsessions: the aliens at Roswell, the legends of the Hopi Indians, the drug philosophy of Carlos Castaneda, the prophetic powers of runes and the healing powers of gemstones. “What did this man say about your secret acquaintance, Elvis?”

“What?” Marvin blared. “What the hell?”

“Marvin, forget it. This is way too much, too crazy. No one could ever have planned it the way it happened.”

He heard something akin to a howl, with the delay of an intercontinental call. “You don’t know what they are capable of, man! They have infiltrated everything, every organization, every political party … they are behind everything, really everything … They have technology that you can’t imagine, like hypnosis, unbelievable drugs, they can even influence your aura …”

“Yeah, I bet they can.”

“Yeah, man, I’m telling you they also have the alien technology from the spaceship crashed in the forties. They can fly to Mars with hyper-magnetic discs and have been building cities and then telling us believe that there’s nothing but desert.”

“Marvin?” John interrupted him, “that’s all bullshit. Who ever told you all this is off his rocker or is lying. Not even the part concerning the world government is true. I’m not establishing a world government.

“But that’s where everything is heading to.”

“Maybe in fifty years. Right now an effort is being made to vote for a world speaker, and he will change a few taxes at most and…”

“Oh, man!” It sounded like Marvin was vomiting. “I should have known — they have brainwashed you already. They have control over your mind. Shit, man, they’re in your brain, John, and you don’t even know it!”

“No one’s in my brain.”

“Shit man, I can hear them talking from inside you!” Marvin shouted, and then the connection ended abruptly.

John took the phone away from his gave it a worried look, and then turned it off. How did Marvin get his number? McCaine seemed to be right about one thing: it would really be better to avoid contact with Marvin.

After the first malicious round of glee over the setback for the trillionaire John Fontanelli had died down, other people began to understand that they too had to worry about the law focusing on their money. A new kind of pressure arose. Lawyers everywhere who had the rich and powerful as their clients and had previously been secretive and stealthy about it, suddenly "discovered" that it might be considered treasonous to participate in an election for the world speaker. After all, most law books forbade the joining of foreign armies: Wasn’t voting in a global referendum the same thing? Disturbing debates in panel discussions, talk shows, and newspapers flared up among legal scholars with differing views.

Many companies made employees and workers sign clumsily worded statements in which they committed to refrain from voting. "Not legally binding," other lawyers said, and sued the companies for obstructing the right to freedom of expression. But the trials would drag on until after the vote, and at the moment everyone was completely unsure about the entire matter.

Groups against the referendum announced that they wanted to send observers to polling stations; not so much because of the election, but to watch those who participated in the election and record their names. They remained silent over the purpose of the lists, and this was more intimidating than any real threat they might pose. The We The People organization could hardly forbid them from making such lists, since total openness of the electoral process was the basis of the process. The right to inspection was guaranteed to every citizen, including those who were against the whole project. People began to feel the pressure, uncertainty, and intimidation. Polls showed a rapid decrease in the expected voter turnout, and many of the surveys were falsified to discourage the people from voting.

He was waiting, sitting on the double-sized bed with the dark-yellow covers, which clashed horribly with the brown wallpaper. He stared at the door of his room and waited. Every few minutes he jumped up, darted to the window and peered through the curtains, which stank of hundred-year-old cigarette smoke. He scanned the walkway, the parking lot and the road. Traffic came and went. A young couple got into a car, speaking French and looking like they had had just spent a passionate night together. Old, lonely men wearing flannel shirts and hats with fishing lures hanging on them loaded fishing gear and coolers into pick-ups. Babies cried in the backseats and were calmed down by their mothers.

There sure was a lot going on here on the weekend.

The motel had a small shop called Super Marché, but with a floor space barely larger than a spread out newspaper. He would go to it every once in a while and buy something to munch on: chips, candy bars, and all those ready-made sandwiches the motel had had there for who knows how long. They were leathery, rubbery things with plain tasting chicken or bland ham that smelled awful, but he still ate them all. Not because he was so hungry, but because it was a change of pace. He tried to get quarters for loose change when he bought something. They were Canadian quarters and looked strange, but they were the only coins that the TV accepted. One hour of TV cost a quarter, and most of the time the money ran out just when there was an interesting scene, and the screen would just go black bringing him back into reality.

He was restless — it felt like there were tiny creatures crawling around underneath his skin eating away at his mind bit by bit. His bones were jittery and he could do nothing about it. So there he was, waiting, sitting on the dark-yellow covers, covered with crumbs, staring at the door, and when the man finally arrived he could barely get up to shake his hand.

“I screwed it up,” he said before even being asked.

The man looked at him. At first he did not want to sit down. He merely shoved all the plastic bags and cracker boxes to the side with a foot and looked at him. But in the end he had to sit down. “What do you mean?” he asked, and Marvin told him about his conversation with John.

After Marvin had finished talking to John, he thought it had maybe been a mistake to tell him about the UFOs and the cities on Mars; these were details that Bleeker hadn’t mentioned, and it was solely Marvin’s idea to add them. After all, he had read a couple of books and heard a thing or two, so to him it was obvious what’s happening on Mars and all that. It simply was too much for John. But he decided not to tell Bleeker about such details; Marvin had made a decision that it was better not to let everyone know how much he knew.

“What exactly does that mean?” Bleeker asked again after Marvin told him more or less what happened.

Marvin looked at him and waited, afraid to tell Bleeker what he had found out. But then he finally said, “They have control over him … somehow, maybe through hypnosis, I don’t know. But he … he blocks everything out when you try to explain the situation to him … totally. There’s no chance of getting through.”

Bleeker turned pale as a dead man at those words and stared at Marvin with eyes as big as saucers. “Then the fate of humanity is sealed,” he said.

He said it again, over and over like an incantation and his voice was as low as a Chinese gong reverberating in the deepest parts of his soul.

On Friday, June 26, 1998, at midnight EST, the ten-week deadline for nominations for world speaker ended. A total of 167,411 applications had been submitted, of which only 251 met the required criteria. Most did not have enough signatures and some had none whatsoever. Many lists did not meet the prerequisite that the names had to be verifiable and 12 lists that did have the required number of signatures were discovered to be forgeries, which led to the exclusion of the candidates. Nevertheless, the ballot in the first round would be impressively long. There were only 12 women among the candidates, which was lamented by many. But, nothing could be done to change that according to ballot administrator Lionel Hillman. He said, "It probably says something about the state of the world." In addition to applications from several former heads of state, there were also famous actors on the ballot, successful entrepreneurs, renowned writers, and famous athletes, including a South American soccer idol (whose chances, at least according to the bookies, were astonishingly good), the leader of a controversial sect, a former porn actress, a real king (from an African tribe) and an amazing number of unknown people, which was puzzling as to how they had amassed the required number of supporters. Only 34 candidates were younger than sixty and none was younger than forty. The statistics of the candidates were published, listing them by home countries; there were no other categories on the list.

On Saturday, June 27, a ceremony was to be held in the General Assembly of the United Nations to mark the start of the vote. Secretary-General Kofi Annan would speak for the occasion. Further, his guest, top election official Lionel Hillman, would also speak explaining once again the by-now familiar rules of the voting procedure. And the cameras, which broadcast the event around the world, would pivot over to John Fontanelli, invited primarily as spectator. The ceremonial occasion and the location had been highly controversial, but the members of the General Assembly had voted for it by a narrow margin, and since they were the ones responsible for determining what happened on the eighteen-acre UN compound on the east side of Manhattan, their governments could rant over their decision as much they wanted. (In personal interviews with the delegates, it was said that the secretary-general had made no secret to them of his belief that the United Nations would be wise to at least unofficially consider the world speaker as a future leader, since otherwise one day it might be likely that a world parliament could be formed elsewhere, thus making the UN redundant.)

On the eve of the Global Plebiscite Opening Ceremony, John Fontanelli and his staff traveled to New York. During the flight the results of the latest opinion polls were announced, and this time they were not amateurish efforts by unprofessional interviews with passers-by on the streets around the world, but had been commissioned by The New York Times with a renowned research institute doing the polling. The methods used were state of the art, the selection of respondents representative of the general population, and the numbers were validated.

And the result was devastating.

“It’s going down the drain, John,” Paul said, worriedly. He held the fax in his hands studying it as if he could still do something to change the facts printed in black on white. “If only fifteen percent vote, then you can forget the world speaker — then he is a joke.”

John took the papers from him, read them and returned them without comment. “No,” he said, stopping Paul from speaking as he opened his mouth to say something, “this is not up for debate. We will go through with it, regardless what anyone says about it.”

Even the hotel’s largest assembly hall was not large enough for the press conference held in the evening after their arrival in New York. There must have been thousands of journalists holding out their microphones and flashing their cameras, and they all, every one of them, had read the latest polls.

“A poll is not a vote,” John Fontanelli told the crowd. “It is merely a small snapshot. We still have a twenty-week voting period ahead of us, in which the candidates for world speaker will vie for our votes. In November, after the votes have been counted we will know more.”

A general shouting and tumult ensued, which made it impossible to hear individual questions. John just kept talking and told them whatever he could think of. He was tired. The possibility of the project failing upset him more than he wanted to admit.

“We’re not only confronted with a decision to vote for one of the two hundred and fifty-one candidates,” he said, “but the establishment of the foundation for a new form of democracy, or for a new age of feudalism, and this time it will be a feudalism run by corporations.”

How they scribbled down those words, absorbed the new term, carried it onward, imagined seeing it in the headlines in big letters!

John felt drained. A voice deep inside him warned him to stop talking now rather than saying something he might regret later on. But he could not stop, for whatever reason the desire to talk was stronger than any arguments against it and the wisdom of public relations. “If it was indeed God who put me in this place and accorded me this task,” John Salvatore Fontanelli said, making his staff gasp and the crowd to be delighted, “then he indisputably will want me to do what I think and believe to be the right thing. And I believe that what is about to happen is the right thing. We are facing great challenges, and if we cannot solve them the best way imaginable then we no longer deserve to exist.”

It had sounded like the talk of a depressed patient with his therapist, Paul Siegel told him afterwards, after abruptly interrupting the press conference at this point.

During the afternoon, at two o’clock local time, the participants in the ceremony were asked to attend a dress rehearsal of the exact ceremony procedures; who was to come in when, from where, and to where they should exit. This also helped the lighting technicians adjust the lights optimally. John arrived in his limousine, after a difficult night and a quiet morning, this time alone, accompanied only by Marco and two other bodyguards because Paul would spend the day talking with representatives of American corporations. It looked like the first company they had bought would be the first one to be sold. The Mobil Corporation was interested in acquiring Exxon.

He almost missed him. John got out when the car door was opened for him, walked down the red carpet as he had done countless times before around the world, went past guards and other personnel as he watched for other VIPs, when suddenly a voice in his ear said: "Hello, brother."

John spun around, searched the faces in the line of people along his path, and then he saw him. “Lino?”

“Surprise,” Lino said with a crooked grin. He simply stood there with other security guards, wearing the same UN security uniform.

“Lino …? What are you going here?”

Lino slapped the leather holster hanging on his belt. “They thought I should keep an eye on you,” he joked.

“You?” John shook his head. “But why?”

“Orders are orders. I was still freezing my butt off at the Bering Sea last month and didn’t know what luck I would have.”

"And where did you leave your fighter jet?"

With tight lips Lino faced the projecting roof high above them and to the row of flagpoles with the flags of all the UN member nations. "Well," he said, "it might be a bit tight flying it around here." He looked older, as if the cold air of the far north had dug wrinkles in his face and caused his once so dark, thick hair to form strands of icy white. Pain gleamed in his eyes.

John grabbed his sleeve and pulled him away, into the entrance hall where they found a quiet corner. “Lino, I'm so sorry," he said with a lump in his throat, "for everything that had happened back then…”

Lino shook his head. “You don’t have to be sorry, John. It was my own fault. I …, well … I thought I was so damn smart. But I was a total idiot.”

“You aren’t allowed to fly anymore, right?”

“Not because of you. It can be damned lonely where I was stationed and sometimes you need a lot of whisky…” Lino chewed his lip; at least that had not changed. “I let myself go pretty much after Vera married that real estate agent. They were close to throwing me out … real close. But I guess they thought it was a better punishment to send me guard the polar circle.”

“And because you screwed up again they threw you out.”

Lino grinned thankfully. “Yeah … I guess I hit the commander a bit too hard.”

They laughed and then embraced clumsily for a brief moment because they were children the last time they had done so

“It was really strange,” Lino said wiping his moist eyes discreetly. “I mean how I ended up here. After I finished with the Air Force I came back to the lower forty-eight. Since I knew someone who works in a senior job at the UN I decided to call her and bang, here I am in uniform again and after my training I was put on duty here and now … just in time to see you arrive. I guess fate wanted us to bury the hatchet — I don’t know.”

“Could be,” John said nodding. He looked at his brother. “Have you been home lately?”

Lino nodded gravely. “For their fortieth anniversary. Mother was very disappointed that you thought a Bulgarian factory more important than their celebration.”

“Hmm,” John said. “I think it’s their forty-second anniversary next Friday, isn’t it? I could go and stay with them for a week when all this…”

At this moment a delicate looking woman with Asian features approached John. “Mr. Fontanelli? Excuse me please, but you are expected inside.”

John looked at Lino with an apologetic expression. “It’s not over yet, as you see.”

“Orders are orders,” Lino said and saluted John jokingly. “Go ahead, I’ll watch things out here.”

“Thanks.”

The hall of the General Assembly of the United Nations is probably the most impressive parliament building ever built. It is the only meeting room on the UN premises that contains the emblem of the United Nations — a stylized globe wreathed by olive branches. Highly visible, it is emblazoned on the shimmering gold front wall of the cavernous room, surrounded by architecture that guides the viewer's eye in a unique way and offers an image that reflects perfectly the spirit of the statutes. Two huge, slanting, dark wall projections boldly sweep around the floor. Behind narrow windows you can see the interpreters who are indispensable to the work done here. The eyes are inexorably drawn forward to the podium and down at the lectern and whoever stands there, at the architectural focal point of the chamber, can’t be overlooked but is still small, just another human being relying on the community and cooperation of others.

The hall has room for eighteen hundred delegates. They sit behind long, curved tables, lime-green and lined with yellow and each seat has a microphone on the table. A large dome arches overhead with spotlights shining down like stars. Those who enter this hall for the first time gasp at the majestic sight, and those who have not completely fallen prey to cynicism suspect that this is the forum for great deeds to be done in the name of all humanity.

During the afternoon of June 27, this majestic room was almost empty. Before the podium stood a handful of people talking, two of them had television cameras shouldered and high above them spotlights flicked on and off. Someone with a clipboard in one hand and a squawking walkie-talkie in the other waved around and gave commands. Men in overalls laid thick cables and fastened them on the floor with black tape. The secretary-general stood behind the lectern and patiently endured having someone fiddle around in front of his face with a light meter. Lionel Hillman waited at some distance, his arms crossed, listening attentively to what another man also with a clipboard was saying.

John Fontanelli, however, had nothing to do except sit in the chair he was instructed to sit in and to wait for the moment the cameras would be focused on him, and then to look dignified, or at least not pick his nose. The only thing he had to remember was when to enter the auditorium through which door, and this was made clear very fast. Now he sat there, happy at unexpectedly making peace with his brother. He watched the others do their jobs and let the atmosphere of the place and the occasion impress him.

There seemed to be a reassuring sense of confidence in the room, a tolerant, hardy, almost stubborn confidence, as if the souls of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., were at home here. “Nevertheless,” these walls seemed to say, and “one day” whispered the empty benches. “It is only a matter of time”. One day there would be a world parliament, a government for the whole earth, and that would be completely natural to people by then. Children would learn in history classes that the continents had once been divided into nations, that the countries had had their own governments, their own armies and their own money, and that will sound as absurd to them as it seems absurd now that there was a time when North America had been an English colony and had traded slaves like cattle.

John lifted up his eyes and looked up at the dome. Perhaps this would one day be the assembly hall of the World Parliament, with its historic tradition steeped in folklore. He could almost physically feel such a possible future. He saw Mr. World President — or Madame World President — in his mind, making a policy statement. He heard the invisible, unrest in the ranks of a parliament of those yet unborn, because there still were different parties, different viewpoints, disputes over money and influence, and different ways to solve these imaginary problems. Those were things, he suddenly saw with lucid clarity, that would remain so for as long as there were people on this planet, because it was part of human nature. And he sensed the world beyond those walls and beyond the present, which would be a large, wild, complicated world full of strange fashions, bizarre technologies, people, thoughts and still unthought-of ideas; a pulsating cosmos of differing ways of life, held together by a stunningly complex web of dependencies and mutual relationships, leaving no room for separation. He imagined a world that had no desire to waste resources on separate solutions, and he liked it. Yes, he thought. Yes.

He came eventually drifted back to reality and looked around, blinking to see the man with the walkie-talkie point at him and say: “Are you ready, Mr. Fontanelli? We’re going to play it all through now.”

The anteroom was unexpectedly light and busy. The media were holding their own rehearsals, light flooded out from dozens of huge spotlights, people busy working walked around crisscrossing each other’s paths, plugs inserted into outlets, cameras mounted on tripods, props adjusted.

John looked around and saw the car waiting outside. He was keeping a look out for Lino, who was nowhere to be seen. He waved at Marco, coming through the crowd towards him. "Someone wants to speak to you," he said, pointing over John's head.

John turned to feel a jolt go through his body, accompanied by hot pain. His legs collapsed. Suddenly people were running and shouting everywhere — a mixed chorus of voices and movement. He looked down and saw blood on his chest and hands pressing against the wound. The blood was bright red, virtually squirting out, and all of a sudden he remembered that he had forgotten something, something he had overlooked the whole time.

The testament, he wanted to shout out to those around him, but they were screaming, yelling, running about, and didn’t pay any attention to him. Somehow he felt that he couldn’t get a sound out of his own lips. There was the taste of iron in his mouth and a warm liquid running down his throat, drowning his vocal chords.

Now the whole world was starting to revolve around him, like a slow ballet; he understood everything now. Why didn’t they understand him? The last will and testament. That was the key. The great mistake. There was blood pouring from him but nobody would listen.

Someone leaned over him; it was Marco, with tears in his eyes. The last will and testament! He had to tell someone. He could not allow himself to sink into merciful darkness — no matter how attractive, peaceful, and quiet it might seem. He had to tell them what he had just remembered, what may be too late …

The testament. McCaine still has my testament. I had forgotten to write a new one. If I die, McCaine will inherit everything …

A commission led by Chief Detective Robert A. Wilson, presented, after completion of all investigations, a thousand-page report, which would be later called the Wilson Report. In it, it said that Marvin Copeland, born 1968 in New York, was admitted on September 3, 1997, into the Landsteiner Clinic near Quebec under the pseudonym Marvin Bruce with moderate symptoms of heroin withdrawal and was treated for heroin addiction. The use of assumed names was described to investigators as a common practice by the clinic to ensure the anonymity of members of well-known families often treated there. The fact that Copeland was sought by French police at this time was not known to the hospital staff according to their statements.

Copeland’s disappearance seemed to be in connection with the death of the former Italian assistant DA, Constantina Volpe, who died from an overdose of heroin on August 31 in a hotel room in Paris. Copeland was arrested after other hotel guests heard screams coming from Copeland’s room prompting them to call the police. Copeland could not be questioned upon his arrest due to heroin intoxication, and was taken to the clinic of the detention center of the 19th Arrondissement. It was still unclear how he managed to disappear from the clinic later that same night.

It was also unclear how Copeland managed to get to Canada. Upon his arrival at the drug clinic he had been accompanied by a middle-aged man who said his name was Brian Smith. The clinic’s bills were paid monthly by bank transfer from an account in the First Pacific Bank of Vancouver, which belonged to one Ron Butler. This account had been opened with a large sum of money on September 2, 1997. The only movements of monies from this account were those to the clinic. It was not possible to find said Ron Butler; all documents that were submitted to the bank upon opening of the account were falsified, a fact that had gone unnoticed until police investigations brought this fact to a bank employee’s attention.

Copeland spent nine months in the clinic, undergoing the standard treatment for heroin addiction: detoxification, physical regeneration, and psychotherapy. According to the medical staff of the clinic, Copeland escaped three weeks before his planned discharge. Since the clinic had extensive measures to prevent escape, it is highly likely that he received outside help. His disappearance was noticed four hours after he was allowed out for his daily walk, upon which the clinic immediately started a manhunt with dogs and the clinic’s own helicopter. Tracks were found leading through the forest and ending at a parking lot on the clinic’s access road. It is likely that Copeland continued his escape by motorized vehicle, underlining the presumption that he had received outside help.

In the afternoon of June 11, Copeland rented a room in a motel called Wooden Grizzly, situated on Highway 113, where he stayed until June 14. The motel’s records said that he was driving a gray Mitsubishi Colt, which was found to have been stolen in Toronto. According to the motel employees Copeland bought food at the motel’s little shop, and ate it in his room, which he otherwise did not leave. He made two lengthy long-distance phone calls, the first on the day of his arrival — June 11, and the second the following day. After checking with the phone company, the first call was made to the London residence of John Salvatore Fontanelli, and the second to Fontanelli’s private mobile phone. Copeland received a visitor in the evening hours of June 13, by a man driving a black sports car, thought to have been a Corvette. He stayed for three hours. Copeland left the motel the following day.

The route he took from the motel to the crime scene cannot be reconstructed with certainty at this point. There is evidence that he bought a conspicuously large amount of fruit, mainly melons, in La Dore near Lac St. Jean. Witnesses at Lac Le Barrois, a small lake off of Highway 167, report to have observed a man practicing shooting there. Remains of fruit found at the site later could easily have been destroyed by gunshots.

Statements made by friends and relatives of Copeland indicate that he had never possessed or fired a weapon, further, he had no military training. It remains unclear where he crossed the US-Canadian border. One border guard thought he remembered noticing a nervous young man in a gray Mitsubishi who would fit the description. He searched him and his vehicle for drugs, but found neither narcotics nor firearms.

Copeland arrived in New York on June 22, 1998. His car was found in a no-parking zone and identified by Officer Warren Martin as being stolen. Copeland, however, did not return to the vehicle. It was not possible to determine where he stayed the week before the shooting. None of his acquaintances had taken him in, they insisted. It was assumed that he may have been given shelter by one of his former girlfriends.

That the official opening of the legislature for the election of the world speaker — the Global Plebiscite Opening Ceremony — was to be held at the United Nations on Saturday was generally known due to ample coverage by the media. It was also easily possible to find out when the rehearsal was scheduled, for example by a simple call to the facility management. The entire UN compound was closed to visitors on that day. For this reason the otherwise standard security checks (metal detectors, screening of baggage) had not been performed; however, several of Mr. Fontanelli’s bodyguards present were cooperating with the UN's own security force, so that it was assumed adequate safety precautions were in place.

Special mention should be made of the remarkable circumstance that led to the presence of Lino Fontanelli, the elder brother of John Fontanelli, among the UN security forces that day. Lino Fontanelli, a former fighter pilot in the US Air Force, had become known in connection with the so-called "Bleeker Affair" in May 1995. He had been demoted and taken from active flight status because of mental health issues and multiple alcohol-related infractions. He had been sent to a weather station in Shaktoolik on Norton Sound, Alaska, and later finally discharged from the Air Force. From there he came back to New York and found employment as a security guard at the UN through an acquaintance.

Lino Fontanelli was placed on duty with the UN security detail at the General Assembly Hall’s entryway. His duty began at 1 p.m. and was to end at 11 p.m., including one break between 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. He was armed with a Smith & Wesson .41 Magnum revolver.

John Fontanelli arrived outside the General Assembly Hall about ten minutes before 2 p.m. After he got out of his vehicle, an armored Lincoln, he was surprised to see his brother Lino as a member of the UN security detail. They had a conversation together, and at about 1400 hours John Fontanelli entered the assembly hall while Lino Fontanelli went back to his post at the entrance. The main rehearsal lasted one and a half hours and ended at 3:30 p.m.

One of Mr. Fontanelli’s personal bodyguards, Marco Benetti, born in 1971 in Rome, married, residing in London, England, made the statement that he was approached by a UN security guard by the name of George Brown, born 1976 in Alliance, Ohio. Mr. Brown asked Mr. Benetti if he knew of a guest Mr. Fontanelli was supposed to be expecting, whereby Mr. Benetti responded by saying he knew of no such visitor. Mr. Benetti then accompanied Mr. Brown after Mr. Brown asked if he might do so, but not without Mr. Benetti first notifying another of Mr. Fontanelli’s bodyguards, Mr. O’Hanlon. Both of Mr. Fontanelli’s bodyguards were in touch by radio and had agreed that Mr. O’Hanlon would notify Mr. Benetti immediately when the rehearsals came to an end.

Guards protecting the premises had apprehended a person who had attempted to enter the cordoned-off UN compound. This person, as Benetti found out upon his arrival, was Marvin Copeland, whom Benetti personally knew. Copeland claimed to have phoned John Fontanelli, and claimed that the latter had asked him for a meeting after the end of the main rehearsal. When Benetti expressed his skepticism about Copeland’s story, the latter displayed a note with a number on it that Mr. Benetti recognized as Mr. Fontanelli’s mobile phone number. At this point, Mr. Benetti assumed that the call had actually taken place, and offered to take Copeland into the building. Although Mr. Benetti assumed that Copeland had already been checked by UN security personnel, he personally checked him once more for weapons. Copeland agreed and understood the reasons for tight security.

They arrived at the main entrance shortly after 3 p.m.. The preliminary preparations for that evening’s television broadcast had already begun in the foyer. Copeland suggested waiting outside and Mr. Benetti agreed. They continued their conversation and Copeland told Mr. Benetti that he had returned to New York over six months prior, bought a small apartment in Greenwich Village from the royalties of his first CD, and was working on his second one, but had no producer yet. Mr. Benetti assumed that Copeland wanted John Fontanelli’s help to get a contract with a music producer, as he had done before.

Mr. Benetti was called by Mr. O’Hanlon shortly before 3:30 p.m. and told that the main rehearsals were ending. Copeland got excited and asked Mr. Benetti where the washrooms were, Mr. Benetti told him. When Copeland returned Mr. Fontanelli had just left the assembly hall and was in the foyer. Copeland and Mr. Benetti hurried to get to Mr. Fontanelli. However, on their way there, Mr. Benetti and Copeland got separated when each went around a buffet table that two florists were preparing with flower arrangements. This was how Copeland ended up approaching Mr. Fontanelli from behind. At that moment as Mr. Benetti attracted Mr. Fontanelli’s attention to his visitor, Copeland, to Mr. Benetti’s total surprise, drew a firearm, a SIG-Sauer 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, and fired at Mr. Fontanelli several times in quick succession.

It is highly likely that Copeland may have hidden the weapon in the washroom during one of the usual tours for sightseers earlier in the week. He managed to so cleverly hide the weapon (hung on a blackened thread in a downward-leading ventilation shaft) that the hiding place not only escaped the checks carried out previously, but might even have remained undetected after the assassination.

Overall Copeland fired five shots, four of them hitting Mr. Fontanelli; two in the stomach, one in the upper right lung and one was a grazing shot to the neck. Then Copeland was hit by one of several shots fired by Lino Fontanelli from seventy feet away, taking a significant risk, given the number of other people present. The first round from Lino Fontanelli’s weapon hit Copeland in the head and killed him on the spot. A number of witnesses reported that Lino Fontanelli was screaming continuously while he fired, until he was himself overwhelmed and given a strong sedative.

$50,000,000,000,000

HE AWOKE BUT found it difficult to open his eyes. It felt as if lead weights had been placed over his eyelids. He felt separated from his body, which ached terribly. But luckily the medication flowing through his veins prevented him from experiencing the full force of the pain. He blinked eyelids that felt as if they were made of the same material used to protect nuclear bunkers. He could hear a steady beeping sound coming from one of them.

Oh, no, that was coming from above him. It was some gadget in a dark-blue metal case that looked like those he’d seen in one of the doctor shows. This image rolled around inside his head for a while, dully, lethargically, until he started to think more clearly. Could it be that he was lying in a hospital bed?

Uh-oh.

What happened again? His mind saw fuzzy pictures of blood oozing between his fingers — people screaming and running around madly, and how everything began to grow faint and his field of vision narrowed as a black shadow crept in from all sides.

A gunshot — was that possible? Had he been shot? Was it always so damn terrible? You never feel the pain when you see somebody get shot on TV.

His mind went fuzzy and he floated between consciousness and sleep, floated between stars and a golden ocean until he heard voices that brought him back. This time it was easier to get those heavy lids open, but it took a few moments before he could focus. He saw a spot of light, which materialized into a face, a woman’s face with almond eyes.

“He’s awake,” she told someone and disappeared.

Another face appeared and said, “Hello, John.”

He knew her, Yes, clickety-click, it was all coming back now, all the memories, his life. Ursula. If only his mouth were not so dry, and his tongue not so thick and sticky … and, was there something stuck in his throat? And in his nose? Every thought took so much effort.

“You don’t have to say anything if it’s too difficult,” she said with a sad smile. Her eyes were red, as if she had a cold or just stepped off a long, long flight. There was another reason people got red eyes, but he could not remember what it was. He only knew that eyes could turn red from the dry, thin air in airplanes.

“I …,” he finally got out.

She smiled and touched his arm, it felt so far away.

He made another, greater effort. “I tried … to call …”

“Yes, I know.”

“You weren’t there?”

“I was in Florence the whole time,” she explained with a sad smile, “in the archive … you know. I buried myself in my work.”

He tried to nod, but he couldn’t. “But … now you’re … here.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He felt happy. He looked at her again and thought about their time together. “Do you know?” he said. “Everything will … be different from now on … believe me. I have to pay … inheritance tax. Can you imagine …? You probably heard … I think I’ll give the rest away too … well, except a few million maybe. If you … if you … well, if you could imagine … I don’t know how to … say it …”

Odd, she didn’t seem to be listening to him. “John?” she called out and her eyes wandered to the gadgets above him in panic. “John — what’s the matter?”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nurse!” She ran out. He wanted to look after her, but all he saw were the double doors swinging with a soft squeak.

But he was not alone … there was someone else in the room.

It was the Padrone.

He stood there as casually as John always will remember him and he said, “Hello, John.”

“Hello,” John said hesitantly. He was surprised to see him. There was a reason why he should not be here, but at the moment John could not remember what it was. “I messed up, didn’t I?”

“Why do think that?”

“I was supposed to fulfill the prophecy … to give back the people’s lost future.” He felt so sad all of a sudden. “But I couldn’t do it. Now I’m dying, and McCaine will get the fortune. God only knows what he’ll do with it.”

“Why do you think that McCaine will inherit the fortune?”

“I forgot to write a new will and testament,” John admitted feeling ashamed. “I couldn’t even do that right.” He looked away, up at the ceiling and its dark patterns started to fall apart. “I was the wrong heir, right?”

The Padrone stepped close to the bed and looked down at John. “All McCaine has is a piece of paper. What is that worth?”

“A valid testament,” John said frustrated.

“No. Something is only valid if it is accepted as such.” The Padrone placed a hand on John’s forehead, cool and soothing. “Have you forgotten that the vote had begun? You prompted the people to decide. Now, after your assassination they know the truth: if they opt for the status quo, they decide for McCaine. Then he will inherit the fortune and be master of the world. But that isn’t the way it has to be. There will be a vote, a single referendum, nothing more — just a few marks on paper — yet still mightier than all the weapons of the world, because it will be a vote of all people. They may vote to have things change. It is only one step, but all things begin this way.” He looked at him; it was a gracious looking face, almost transparent. “And it was you who made this possible. You opened the door to the future. It is now up to all the rest to go through that door or choose another way — this is no longer your responsibility. Right now and over the next few days the people of the world have a future, and it is because you gave it to them.”

John looked at him and felt tears welling up. “Is this true?”

“You know it is.”

He knew it was, but it was still disquieting.

“And me? What’s going to happen to me?”

The Padrone stretched out his hand. “Come.”

John hesitated. “But what if it was a mistake? What if I should have done something differently? Maybe I should have tried … at least tried to change the tax system. There is so much I haven’t even tried yet …”

The silence seemed to last forever. Yet the longer it lasted the more his frustration faded away, like water soaked up by a sponge. His tears stopped, and it got quiet.

“Tell me one thing,” the Padrone said. “Have you done what you could?”

“I don’t know. I…”

“Not what someone else may or may not have done, but what you could do?”

John thought about his life, the many twists and turns it had taken. “Yes,” he said. “I have not always done everything well, but I did my best.”

The Padrone nodded gently. “More,” he said, “cannot be expected.”

John sat up and let the Padrone help him to his feet. The floor was smooth and cold beneath his naked feet, but there were no shoes or slippers there, nothing.

“Come,” the Padrone said.

John looked around, he saw a sick man in the bed he had just arisen from, looking awful, awful with all the hoses and cables attached to him, all those gadgets with blinking lights around him. He did not feel good about leaving him behind.

But the Padrone was standing by the door beckoning him. “You don’t have to worry, John, you have fulfilled your task.”

Suddenly, John found himself overwhelmed by it all, the endless argument about the meaning of life and what one was supposed to achieve. “Do you know what, Padrone?” he said. “I’ve got to the point where I don’t care anymore.”

Finally the swinging doors opened before them and they stepped into a warm, heavenly light.

END

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & CREDITS

BEFORE ANYONE ELSE I want to thank my wife, Marianne, who gave me courage again and again and helped me maintain the enthusiasm for this work. Without her support this book would not exist.

Then I have to thank many other people who have supported me during my research — I hope I don’t forget anyone.

I am indebted to Timothy Stahl for providing information about everyday life and legal regulations in the United States, Robin Benatti and Nirbija Fuchs for relevant information about Italy. Thomas Braatz, Manfred Orlowski and Dirk Berger from Leipzig explained to me in detail everything I wanted to know about life in the GDR — the former East Germany — including the Monday Demonstrations and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ralf Wagner, professor of economics in Berlin, patiently answered my questions on a number of difficult questions, especially about money creation — but I would like to emphasize that he is in no way responsible for the use I made of this information.

I also want to thank my friends Thomas Thiemeyer and David Kenlock who read the novel in draft form, and for their suggestions, criticism, and encouragement. David Kenlock convinced me to start the novel the way it now stands — and to delete over a hundred pages of it!

I also wish to thank the staff of the Public Library of Kornwestheim for their generous interpretation of the term “book must be returned by,” as well as the operators of the online archive of the newspaper DIE WELT (www.welt.de), which was an invaluable help to me.

It was impossible to avoid including real personages in this work, and sometimes I had to put words in their mouths that they have never actually said. Victims of this outrage, used widely by many writers, include in particular the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan; I hope he will forgive me. The building at 40 Wall Street is, as far as I know, really owned by Donald Trump (whom I made disappear a little prematurely in my novel The Jesus Video; sorry, Mr. Trump).

My views of the world economy, the monetary system, and the interdependence of corporations are based on the following
sources:

Edward Lehmann, Dynamik des Geldes — Dynamics of Money (Zurich, 1998).

Johann Günther König, Alle Macht den Konzernen — All Power to the Corporations (Reinbek 1999).

Rüdiger Liedke, Spezial: Konzerne — Special: Corporations (Reinbeck 1995).

Vance Packard, Die Ultra-Reichen — The Ultra-Rich (Düsseldorf 1990).

Joel Kotkin, Stämme der Macht. Der Erfolg weltweiter Clans in Wirtschaft und Politik — Tribes of Power: The Success of Worldwide Clans in Business and Politics (Hamburg 1996).

Hans Christoph Binswanger, Geld und Natur. Das wirtschaftliche Wachstum im Spannungsfeld zwischen Ökonomie und Ökologie — Money and Nature: Economic Growth and Tensions Between Economics and Ecology (Stuttgart 1991).

Margrit Kennedy, Geld ohne Zinsen und Inflation — Money Without Interest and Inflation (Munich 1990).

Anthony Sampson, Globalmacht Geld — Global Power Money (Hamburg 1990).

The magazine Der Blaue Reiter, Journal of Philosophy, gave me some important impulses in edition 11, published in Stuttgart in January 2000; the topic was devoted to money.

I learned the essence of the political importance of raw materials in Die strategischen Rohstoffe — Strategic Raw Materials (Wuppertal 1988) by Dieter Eich and Karl Hübner as well as in Zum Beispiel Erdöl — For Example Crude Oil (Göttingen 1991) by Ekkehard Launer.

Full details of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are based either on its homepage (www.imf.org) or the book IWF und Weltbank — IMF and World Bank (Göttingen 1999) by Uwe Hoering

A compendium of global economic data I found at www.ntu.edu.sg/library/statdata.htm.

Financial information about Exxon I found at www.exxon.com, which publicizes the company’s annual reports. The story of John D. Rockefeller, the Standard Oil Trust and its dismemberment into the oil companies known today can be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Essential details to money’s role in history I found in Allgemeine Münzkunde und Geldgeschichte des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit — General Numismatics and Monetary History of the Middle-Ages and the Modern Period (Oldenburg 1976, reprint of 1926) by A. Luschin von Ebengreuth, in Geschichte des privaten Lebens — History of Private Life (Frankfurt 1991) by Philippe Ariès and Roger Chartier and in Ernst Samhaber’s, Das Geld. Eine Kulturgeschichte — Money: A Cultural History (Munich 1964).

As for books that cover the topic of humanity’s survival on this planet, I can only list the most important at this point:

Dennis Meadows, Donella Meadows, Erich Zahn, Peter Milling, Die Grenzen des Wachstums — The Limits of Growth (Stuttgart 1972).

Dennis Meadows, Donella Meadows, Das globale Gleichgewicht — The Global Balance (Stuttgart 1974).

Mihailo Mesarovic, Eduard Pestel, Menschheit am Wendepunkt — Humanity at the Turning Point (Stuttgart 1974).

The Global 2000 Report to the President (Washington, 1980).

Herbert Gruhl, Himmelfahrt ins Nichts. Der geplünderte Planet vor dem Ende — Ascension Into Nowhere. The Plundered Planet Before the Final End (Munich 1992).

On the subject of overpopulation, it was enlightening to read Heinrich von Loesch’s, Stehplatz für Milliarden? — Standing Room Only for Billions? (Stuttgart 1974).

The dynamics of the Gulf Stream and how it could collapse was described by Wolfgang Jeschke in the editorial to Science-Fiction-Jahrbuch 1998 — Science-Fiction Yearbook 1998 (Munich, 1997): However, this is not science fiction, but the summary of some of the theses from the book Der Schritt aus der Kälte — Klimakatastrophen und die Entwicklung der menschlichen Intelligenz — Stepping Out of the Cold; Climate Disasters and the Development of Human Intelligence (Munich 1997) by William H. Calvin.

Extensive details on the history of the Fuggers was described in Kauf dir einen Kaiser — Buy an Emperor (Munich 1978) by Günter Ogger. I found additional information from the brochure Die Fuggerei — The Fuggery, which may be purchased from the Museum der Fuggerei in Augsburg.

The scenes that take place on the Philippine island Panglawan are inspired by real events portrayed by the authors Günter and Peer Ederer in their non-fiction book Das Erbe der Egoisten — The Legacy of Egoists (Munich 1997). The Mexican rubbish collectors also exist in real life. Valuable sources for this were the books 18-mal Mexiko — 18 times Mexico (Munich 1986) by Alan Riding and from the article ”Vom Leben auf Mexikos Müllhalden” “Living in Mexico's Landfills" in the Stuttgarter Zeitung from October 16, 1996.

A major inspiration for the development of the path that McCaine took in the story was the book Hitler als Vorläufer — Hitler as Precursor (Munich 1998) by Carl Amery; the most obvious and at the same time blood-curdling analysis of National Socialism that I have ever read.

The ideas put forward by Lord Peter Rawburne in the story were initially my own. In one of the annually published reports by the World Watch Institute, explicitly that of 1996 (Zur Lage der Welt 1996 — State of the World 1996, Frankfurt 1996), I found an article by David Malin Roodman, "Using Market Mechanisms for Environmental Protection,” which I used after thoroughly revising it. For part of the argument, I have also leaned on the article by Günter Purwig, "Ohne korrekte Bilanz keine korrekte Ökonomie” “Without Proper Balance no Correct Economy" (published in the November 1997 issue of the magazine Der Dritte Weg — The Third Way, Treuchtlingen). The two articles and authors, however, have nothing to do with each other.

The conference at the hotel "Fairmont" in San Francisco did actually take place, not in 1998 but in September 1995. The host was at that time the former head of state of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. One of the few journalists who were allowed to participate in the meeting was DER SPIEGEL editor Hans Peter Martin, who then together with his colleague Harald Schumann wrote the bestseller Die Globalisierungsfalle — Der Angriff auf Demokratie und Wohlstand –The Globalization Trap: The Attack on Democracy and Prosperity (Reinbek 1996). The original statements can be found in the first chapter of this book.

Also informative on the subject of globalization were the corresponding articles in the issues 39/1996, p. 82 ff, and 25/1999, p. 121 ff, in the news magazine DER SPIEGEL.

The ideas that Lorenzo Fontanelli developed in his article are, in part inspired by the essay I Want The Earth Plus 5% by Larry Hannigan, Australia 1999, which can be found on the Internet.

The suggestion of the dawning of a new Middle Age, which Paul Siegel described in the story, must be accredited to none other than Umberto Eco, Auf dem Wege zu einem neuen Mittelalter — On the Way to New Middle-Ages (Munich 1989).

The concept of a tax on foreign currency trading comes indeed from the economist and Nobel laureate James Tobin (1981 Nobel Prize in Economics), it is therefore also referred to as a "Tobin Tax". For details, I drew on the book Die 10 Globalisierungslügen — The 10 Lies of Globalization, by Gerald Boxberger and Harald Klimenta (Munich 1998).

The statements made by Nelson Mandela in the novel are, for the most part, taken from his speech on January 28, 1999, during the presentation of the Deutschen Medienpreises — German Media Prize in Baden-Baden.

And finally, I owe substantial insight to the work of Giovanni Sartori, Demokratietheorie — Theory of Democracy (Darmstadt 1992).

ONE TRILLION DOLLARS

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BASTEI ENTERTAINMENT

August 2014

Digital original edition

Bastei Entertainment is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe AG

This title was acquired through the literary agency Thomas Schlück GmbH, 30827 Garbsen, Germany

Copyright © 2014 by Bastei Lübbe AG, Cologne, Germany

Written by Andreas Eschbach

Translated by Frank Keith

Edited by Peter Millar

Cover design and illustration by Travis Harvey

Project management by Lori Herber

E-Book produced by Urban SatzKonzept, Düsseldorf

ISBN 978-3-8387-5312-6
www.luebbe.de