C13 Dinner with Chuck

Yeo went to the intercom and discovered that Chuck Maitland was waiting downstairs to take him to dinner.

They walked over Fifth Avenue.

It was a balmy New York evening and everyone was out on the streets.

They walked downtown to Chinatown.

The markets were still open.

The restaurants were crowded.

The rise and fall of guttural voices filled the night air.

They found a seat in the rear at the Eternal Flower Blossom.

It was Yeo’s favorite restaurant.

It was filled with Chinese.

It was the perfect place for them to convene and talk in private.

No one else in the restaurant spoke English.

“We served notice to our clients that we’re going to shut down the hedge fund today,” he told Yeo as they looked over their menus.

Yeo looked up and gazed at him. Chuck had started in hedge funds.

He opened his own when he was twenty-six and was hailed as the wunderkind of the business within two years.

They became partners at TransGlobal after Yeo bought up half the stock in Chuck’s company and became its chairman.

It was a time when Yeo was making massive acquisitions, based on Chuck’s method of evaluating companies.

Watching Chuck build the company, based on Yeo’s investment, was a sight to behold.

Their wealth increased exponentially.

“That must have been tough for you,” Yeo said.

It was all a game to Chuck—he was more of a master chess player—in a game where multiple moves and counter-moves could shift direction at any moment.

He knew the winds of capitalism.

It all came down to detail.

Before he bought stock in a company, he went to the plants, he talked to the managers, he walked among the employees, he checked the equipment.

Only then, did he check the numbers.

He brought clients a return of twenty percent on their money every year.

During downturns, his clients thrived even more.

The thrill of the game was shifting gears and finding unheard of opportunities among the weak and the broken.

Chuck was no idealist. He could be as rough as the rest of them. But he never cheated anyone.

“None of it’s got the high for me anymore,” Chuck said. “I was a young bull when I first started. I thought it was a level playing field. I was naïve. The sharks at the top own the crap tables. They set the odds. The game’s fixed for the few.”

“So you don’t feel at odds with the plan as a whole,” Yeo said.

They had not spoken with each other at this level since the early meetings started. The meetings consisted of the various planners reporting to Yeo, and then Chuck reporting to Yeo on the level of financing available, and how it was changing from day to day. The numbers were enough to keep up with for Chuck. He didn’t want to press Yeo at a personal level at such a difficult time.

“I was stunned at first. I thought you were insane. But I’ve been thinking for some time that the game doesn’t work anymore—not even for the heavy capitalists, the one’s who own it all.

“They have no idea what their avarice has brought on the planet as a whole. They think world domination will bring them happiness. There won’t be any world left to dominate and they won’t be here to dominate it.

“We can only consume so much before there’s nothing to consume. We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. It’s just a matter of time. In an expansive economy we destroy the environment. The plants fire up. The cars fire up. Cars get marketed to millions of more people who will only add to the heat that’s closing in on us.

“We can’t continue living like this anymore. An impoverished planet leaves people open to destroying each other. I see no other way out of it, except for the rare possibility that your plan could sew the seeds of how the world could be, if we all turned our minds to it immediately.”

“That’s my goal, Chuck,” Yeo said. “I think addressing the water wars is a good way to call that people’s attention to the global water crisis.”

“How long do you think it’ll be before the authorities track it back to us?”

“About the same time we execute all of it.”

“What then?”

“A global revolution against everything that’s destroying us.”

“You were always the best idea man in the business.”

“How did you pull off that operation in Israel?”

“Former Israeli soldiers.”

“The genuine article.”

“We paid through the nose for secrecy.”

“Like my father always said—if you’re paying for talent, pay for the best of it—anything else is a waste of money.”

Chuck had heard it a million times.

“We’re all set to go into Kenya and Ethiopia,” he said.

“Let’s do it,” Yeo said as the waiter came to the table.

As always, Yeo ordered for both of them in Chinese.