CHAPTER 1

   As far back as I could remember, I always wanted to be a billionaire. I was born on November 8, 1960, in Boston. My mother was of Irish descent, my father was of French-Canadian descent. The day of my birth was the same day that John F. Kennedy was elected President. This was a monumental moment for Catholics across the country, let alone the world, and my parents were no exception. They named me Patrick Francis Brodland, after my mother Patricia and my father Francis.

  The 60s and 70s were some of the wildest times in our nation’s, and possibly even the world’s, history. The deaths of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr, the Vietnam conflict, the hippie and peace movements, feminism, Watergate, busing, and so on. But hardly any of it mattered to me. None of these things affected me. I only had my mind on one thing and one thing only: get rich quickly.

  After graduating high school in the late 70s, I was accepted into Harvard School of Business. One day, I happened to com across an announcement for a lecture by the dean of the school. This seemed like a godsend, so I signed up eagerly. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I had a feeling that it would probably be the answer to my desire of getting into business quickly.

  The dean told us that the best way to get hired after graduation was to sign up for a two-year pre-MBA program at one of the large Wall Street firms, such as Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, or Enron. As soon as the lecture ended, I wasted no time bombarding all the firms I could come across with letters and phone calls, asking them for a job or to sign up for their programs. It was a tedious task, especially in the days before the Internet when information was at your fingertips and you could send and receive communication in the blink of an eye. For me, I had to spend countless hours on hold whenever I called. Worse, I had to wait for several days for a reply to my letters, if I was lucky to get a letter in the first place.

  Each day bled into the next, and each passing day accumulated into weeks and months before I final got accepted for a job at Salamander Brothers, one of the largest firms of that time. I could not believe my incredible stroke of luck. What made this even more amazing was that I received this offer on my 20th birthday, which just happened to be the day that Ronald Reagan was elected President. Think about it, the day I was born was monumental for Catholics, and now this day was monumental for capitalists. This job offer could not have come at a better time. Wall Street was happiest in decades, and they were eager to expand themselves in new ways.

  Of course, once I arrived at my place of work, I had expected to find a quiet office where I could perhaps do my work with an attractive secretary who would answer my every beck and call. But once I set foot in the building, I was greeted not by trumpets and red carpets, but by a well-dressed vice president who was just a few years older than me. He was a little rude, perhaps because he hated the task of having to greet me and show me to my place of work, which was a noisy, open office, where all the other young stockbrokers worked.

   My task was simple, at least on paper. Generate ten times my salary by the end of the year, or else I was fired. And so I set to work immediately, although at first I was not comfortable with my environment. The guys sitting at the desks would be shouting over the phones, and to each other, almost all the time. They would be running in and out of the room, making lots of noise whenever they entered or exited. But before long, I became one of the guys. I would be shouting constantly at the other guys in the room while still talking on the phone with clients and other traders. I would be running out of the room to tell my bosses that I had just made a large sale, exceeding my goals.

  Working at Salamander Brothers was like joining a fraternity. The employee makeup was a diverse melting pot of Irish, Italian, Jewish, Russian, Canadian and WASP guys.  At that time us guys ruled the market place, just like we always did. Wall Street was a place of both unrestrained capitalism and testosterone. The guys and I would bring in hookers and fuck them in the bathrooms. We would use the office phones to call phone sex lines and broadcast our conversations over the intercom. The few female employees there were not spared from us either. We would put our hands on them whenever we wished, hit on them like we were in a strip club, and call them whatever we wanted. Many of these women sued the company for sexual harassment.

 For a devout Catholic, this was jarring, as I was always taught that sex outside of marriage was a sin. Even lusting after a woman who was not your wife was a serious offense in the eyes of God. And if I was still living in Boston, I would have taken these sins seriously, as that place was full of devout Catholics like me. But I wasn’t in Boston anymore. I was in Wall Street. This place made Boston look like a small town my comparison. In Boston, almost everyone knew each other.  And over here, it did not matter if you were a Catholic or a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist. All that mattered was that you could allow your heart’s strongest lusts to be fulfilled without any fear or guilt or retribution. And if you still somehow did fell guilt, then there was always a church you could go to for confession.

  I always took the time out on Sundays to attend church. And New York City had no shortage of Catholic churches. Every time I attended service, I would always go to confession. I would lay out all the lusts of my heart and all the bad things I did, from inappropriately groping women to banging hookers to committing pump-and-dump schemes on my clients.

   No matter what I did, or what I confessed to, I knew that I should never tell my family or my friends back in Boston about it. They would all disown me if they found out about all of this. So I felt that weekly confessions were a way to clear my consciences.  But after a while I stopped doing confessions. As time went on, I began to make tons of money. My annual income, excluding bonuses, was in the six figures. I would always send money back to my parents, and to the little church that I attended there since I was a child.  No one ever bothered to ask for the full details of how I made this money. They felt that this was all God’s blessing upon me. And I saw it the same way. I figured that if God was indeed blessing me with all this money, then there was no reason to feel guilty about myself any longer.

  The 80s were a great time. A time that I enjoyed so much that I wanted it to never end. But it was all going to end someday in some way, whether we were prepared for it or not. I am not sure when exactly was the beginning of the end of it all, but for me it was one day in 1987 when I came to my desk and turned on my computer. I saw on my screen a red Associated Press headline: Billionaire Found Dead On Mexican Beach. As I read the article, it was obviously about Matt Ress, who was none other than the CEO and President of Salamander Brothers! My colleagues and I stared at our screens as the article detailed that Ress was sailing off the coast of Mexico when her apparently fell overboard and washed ashore. To this day it was never been officially established whether it was an accident, murder or suicide.

  Everyone at the firm was as pale as a ghost. Most of us, including myself, had never met the man, but they way his reputation was, it felt like he was part of our family, regardless of whether you loved or hated him. He was just as much of a frat boy as us, only he would be fucking hookers on his yachts or his mansions instead of in the offices.  The fallout from his death was immediate, as just hours after his death was announced, the company’s shares plummeted. This was not surprising, as things like this happened all the time. But we were all worried as to how this would affect our jobs once his successor was named.

  A few uneventful days later, I was called into my boss’s office. “Pat” he said, “we are proud of what you have accomplished so far this year. So we are going to give you a bonus of half a million dollars!”

  He handed me a handwritten check. I was appalled by this. “Thank you so much” I stammered. I walked out of the office and resumed work in high spirits. When evening came, I went to my bank to deposit the check. There was no online banking at the time, and ATMs were only used for depositing and withdrawing cash only. So I went to the teller and presented the check. “Could you please sit down, sir, it will take a while” she said calmly. I did so and waited.

  This was not the first time that I had to wait for a check to clear. But it was the first time that I was told to sit down and wait a while. I thought nothing of it. After all, I had never been given a check that big, so I knew that I could take some time. But the minutes dragged on. I glanced around the building, gazing at the people walking around and minding their own business.

  After more than half an hour, a middle-aged man with gray hair approached me. “Mr. Brodland?” he asked.

  “Yes” I replied as I stood up.

   “I am the manager. I am sorry to tell you but there are insufficient funds to clear this check.”

   “Oh” I said as a took back the check from him. “Well thank you very much then” I said before I walked out of the building. I then approached a pay phone and told my boss what had happened. There was a long silence after I’d finished.

   “Well, this is not good, Pat. Everyone else here, including myself, will be getting our own bonuses soon. And you know that mine will be bigger than yours. So if they can’t cash yours, then they won’t cash anyone else’s.”

  “I just can’t understand how a multimillion-dollar company does not have enough money to cover a half a million dollar check” I moaned.

    “Neither can I, Pat. Perhaps it may have had something to do with Ress death. Maybe once new management takes over this could be resolved. It’s entirely possible that maybe the account has been frozen temporarily. Hopefully this will all be resolved quickly. For now, I think that we should all just go on as usual.”

  The next I went back to work as usual. But not for long. That afternoon a bunch of guys suddenly appeared into our office. “FBI!” one man shouted. “This is a crime scene! You will all comply with us or be arrested!” The man repeated this statement all around the place as the others went into offices and placed yellow crime scene tape everywhere, including on our computer screens! They asked us questions, took down our information, and then ordered us to leave.

  “When can we come back?” asked one of my coworkers.

  “That is for the new management to tell you” replied one of the agents. “For now, all of you must take what is yours and leave!”

  As we exited the building, still trying to sort this out in our minds, we were swarmed by reporters on the street. “What have you to say about the fraud?” they kept asking us. But we didn’t answer because we had no idea what they were talking about. They followed us a few steps and then gave up.

  “What could all this be?” I asked.

   “Maybe it’s all a joke” said one coworker.

   “If it’s making the news, then can’t be a joke” said another.

    When I got back to my apartment, I immediately turned on the news. The lead story on every news channel was the discovery of more than $600 million missing from the company accounts. It seems that Ress had used Salamander Brothers as his personal piggy bank to fund his lavish lifestyle and cooked the books to hide his embezzlement.

  A few days after the raid, the company declared bankruptcy. Sure enough, I did hear from the new management—that I was fired, as were most of my coworkers. So I applied to other firms on Wall Street. But having Salamander Brothers on my resume was a kiss of death, as no company was interested in hiring me. Just when things were looking bad, they got worse. On October 19 of that year, Black Monday happened. The stock market had collapsed, causing countless other firms to fire their own employees. Even without the stigma associated with Salamander, it would be nearly impossible to land a job now on Wall Street.  

CHAPTER 2

  Trying to find a new job on Wall Street was basically beating a dead horse. So I had little choice but to return to Boston and move back with my parents. They were sympathetic towards my plight and assured me that it was none of my fault. “When God closes one door” said my father, “He always opens another. It’s just a matter of time before you find it.”

  And so that’s just what I did. I cold-called various firms in Boston, asking for a job. If they expressed any interest in me, then I would fax over my resume. As I expected, I was still rejected. But one day I got a call from the Boston office of the Royal Banking and Insurance Co., or RBI. It was a Mr. Neville Winthrow, and he asked me to come into the office the next day to conduct an interview. I agreed to it immediately.

  I entered the office wearing my best suit. The receptionist guided me to the office and introduced me to Winthrow. He was middle-aged, but still had a full head of hair, and spoke with a Boston Brahmin accent. We went over the same things we went over on our phone call.

  “Well, Mr. Brodland, I am impressed with your performance at Salamander, and I am sorry that you have fallen upon such bad luck. Now we are trying to expand our operations into North America, and so far we have begun here in Boston. We plan on expanding towards the Midwest, the South, and the West in the next decade. Right now, we don’t have any openings in this office. But we do have several at our headquarters in London. Would you be willing to relocate there if they offered you a job?”

   “Why, yes, I would go there if needed.”

    “In that case, I shall call London and recommend you. You can expect a call from them within the next week.”

  I did get that call, and I was very elated. I told my parents that I finally landed a job, and they were just as elated. Then I told them where I’d be working. They looked at me as though I told them I had cancer. They were both Anglophobes. Mom’s ancestors came to America during the Irish Potato Famine, and dad’s ancestors were Huguenots who fled France. Both of their ancestors faced hostility from Protestants, both in their native countries and in their new homelands. So my going to London was akin to selling out on my heritage. In their minds Great Britain was still a nation full of Protestants, and thus was to be avoided at all costs.

  “I know how much you don’t like the British” I assured them, “but I have no choice. This is the only job offer that I have received. Perhaps someday I could come back to America and get a good job, but for now, I need to find work elsewhere, and fast.”

    I knew it would probably be a while before they could fully accept this, but I didn’t care about what they thought. I had already accepted the offer and got myself a ticket to London within a week. My parents gave me their half-hearted blessing before I boarded the plane. Once the plane hit the ground, so did I. As soon as I was able to recover from jetlag, I went straight to headquarters and got straight to work.

  My new job was not all that different from my old job on Wall Street. The salary was roughly the same as well. But perhaps the biggest difference was the work environment. In New York, traders like myself would be screaming frantically all the time. Here in London, the screaming was largely replaced by loud murmuring. But when something big did happen, such as a sharp increase or decrease in stock price, that’s when the screaming and yelling and running would begin.

  Soon I began to attend a Catholic church close to my apartment. It felt good to be amongst my people again. When I told this to my parents, they were completely surprised. They thought that Britain being officially Protestant meant that Catholicism was either banned or discouraged. But there was an added bonus to attending this church. I saw her one day at Mass. She had the appearance of an angel. Her name was Elaine. After seeing her on several occasions, we began to see each other more often and hang out often. Very soon we began to date seriously.

  I decided to travel back to Boston and visit my parents for the week. With their permission, I brought Elaine along. She had never been outside of London at all, so she was a little nervous.    My parents were glad that I had found a Catholic girl, but they were not too pleased about her being a purebred Englander. We arrived at their house, and I felt good to be back home. When mom and dad saw Elaine, they were totally taken in by her beauty. So much so that they were in no mood to hate her just for being English. While dad and I were catching on each other’s stories, mom and Elaine were chatting like old friends. When it was time for us to head back to London, mom and dad were heartbroken to see us both go. It was like seeing both of their children leaving the nest at the same time. But mom and Elaine had developed a strong bond, and they would speak often on the phone. We both married in 1990, and moved into my apartment.

  During the late 80s and early 90s, I did my job well without event. But soon, things would change a little at a time. The first time this happened was in November 1989. It was all over the news that the Berlin Wall had just come down. Weeks later, the communist government of Czechoslovakia had fallen. Years later they would split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. But at this time, the communist walls of Jericho were falling down.  

  It was obvious to us in the West that capitalism was winning. Every time such an event like this would happen, stocks would soar astronomically. The quick-thinking ones, like me, would urge our clients to sell or buy now whenever it was appropriate. With the prices rising, we were bound to generate not only large sales but also earn large bonuses.

  Then the big day happened. On December 25, 1991, the world received the perfect Christmas present—the collapse of the Soviet Union. The final nail in the coffin was in for communism. I remember that every news outlet, tv, print and radio, had some financial guru talk about how capitalists could and should take advantage of this new territory that was dying for years to be under the free market.

  It was during the year 1992 that I also began reading in various papers and magazines that, to transition from communism to capitalism, the new Russian government under Boris Yeltsin was giving away the state’s property to its citizens. The government was doing this in several ways, but one that particularly caught my attention was the voucher program. Each citizen was granted a government-issued privatization certificate to each citizen.  At the time, there were about 150 million Russian citizens, and each voucher cost $20. So that the total value of the vouchers was more than $3 billion! Unbelievable! As an added bonus, there were no restrictions on who could own a voucher. Foreigners were allowed to own as well, and there was no limit as to how many vouchers one person could own.

   But there was a bit of a downside to all of this. The press reported that the Russian people had almost no idea on what to do with these vouchers which they had received for free. So they gladly traded them for food and necessities. I also learned from the news that some shrewd people would collect as many of these vouchers as they could in the small towns and villages, head over to Moscow, and sell them by the block there at auctions.

  Upon learning about this, I did what any savvy investor would have done. I decided that it was time that we take advantage of this opportunity and privatize those industries. Already Western capitalists had begun the process in the rest of Eastern Europe, so this was to be a no-brainer. But while every capitalist was eager to invest in Eastern Europe, no one seemed openly interested in investing in Russia. So I decided to take the initiative and pitch the idea to the bosses at RBI.

  Much to my surprise and disappointment, everyone I spoke to behaved as though I suggest that the firm invest on Jupiter. They would ask me all kinds of stupid questions, such as “What are the advisory fees on this?” or “Can I look at the spreadsheets?” or “Has anyone else begun investing in Russia?”

  I was totally surprised with their routine narrowmindedness. I expected to be hugged for having presented such a brilliant and original idea for investment, but instead I was getting stonewalled or laughed at by everyone. It turns out that not one person I spoke to within the company was eager to invest. Their reason being that I was a stockbroker, not a stock owner. In their minds, I was basically a middleman between clients and the company, nothing more. I had no experience owning stocks myself, so I was not qualified to lecture them on these things in their opinion.

  Frustrated, but not undaunted, I decided to approach other companies and investors across London with the same proposition. This time I got a slightly friendlier response. But still no one would take up on my vision. Even if I was an expert in the field of investing, no one wanted to try Russia for a good reason: there were no investment banks there. Everything had been controlled by the government for decades, and no one knew how to begin private sector investing.

  With no one willing to take me up on this unique opportunity, I decided to take matters into my own hands. During the spring of 1992, I asked for a two-week vacation to visit back home. But once it as granted it, I did not go to the States.  I went in the opposite direction—to Russia. As soon as I landed at the Moscow airport, I hurried to a public phone and searched for a translator. Since the phonebook was in Russian, I had to hustle someone in the terminal who could speak English.

  I managed to get settled into my hotel. Any visitor will tell you that Moscow hotels are nothing short of terrible. But I was lucky to get a decent one that had good plumbing and furniture, though it had no air conditioning. Once my translator arrived, we drove all around Moscow, searching for as many vouchers as we could buy. At the end of that day, we took several armfuls of bundles of vouchers over to the government offices to claim ownership of the enterprises. My translator looked at the ownership certificates and told me that I now owned several thousand shares of Trausk Petroleum, the nation’s largest oil company. At that time Trausk was one of the wealthiest oil companies in the world. And now I was the first private owner of this lucrative once-government-owned enterprise.

  During my two weeks there, I repeated this process, buying vouchers all day in and around Moscow and taking them to the offices in the evening. But in addition to Trausk, I also owned shares in other entities such as railroad, bus, airline, and manufacturing. But my translator and I were looking specifically for Trausk vouchers. In my years as a stockbroker, I instinctively knew that oil was very profitable, so I zeroed in on that.  

  I had set up and account with a bank in Moscow. This bank was one of the first privately-owned ones in the nation. It turned out to be owned by a German businessman, who apparently was trying to find a way around the bureaucracy of the other banks. This man had started it o accommodate his own business ventures, but anyone could open up an account. So I did just that  in order to house my dividends from my investments.

  When I returned to London, I was hellbent on telling everyone what I had just done. I wanted to show them my certificates proving that I now owned a significant share of Russia’s largest oil company. But during the long flight, I had time to think it all over. I realized that those sons of bitches had missed out on a precious opportunity. I was right along, and now I had the proof, but those people treated me like an outcast. They had stopped going to lunch with me and had stopped calling me outside of work. I was very cross with them and decided that I was just going to have to pay them back with the fruits of my labor.

  So upon arriving in London I quickly went back to work. Not one person said to me “Patrick, it’s great to see you back here!” No, they decided to just keep mum and be business as usual. And so I played along, not once did I tell about my trip to Russia or my business venture. I stopped talking about investing in Russia at all, just to avoid drawing more attention to myself.

  A few weeks after my return, I was in my apartment when I  made a long-distance call to my Moscow bank to check and see if and when the dividends had been paid out. After being on hold for a few minutes, the manager told me that my account had ballooned from the equivalent of just a couple of dollars to just over $200 million! I gasped, hung up, and told Elaine the good news. We were both beyond excited.

  “So what’s next for us?” Elaine asked.

   “Well, as soon as I quit my job, we will move to Russia!” I replied excitedly.

  Elaine’s face fell. “Move to Russia?” she asked worriedly. “But we don’t speak any Russian.”

  “I’ve picked up on a little Russian myself. But we don’t need to be fluent in it. Besides, now that Russia has opened up for business, there are people coming from all over the world, including Britain and America. There are pockets of English-speaking expats in Moscow, so we can blend in just fine.”

   Elaine sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll give it a try. But if we are so rich, then why should we move to Russia? Can’t we just stay here and enjoy a quiet, luxurious life? After all, $200 million is enough to last twice our lifetimes put together. There is no reason for us to be making more money.”

  She was right. After all, at that $200 million would have made you among the richest person in the world. “I completely agree with you” I conceded, “but you have to understand, this is not just about making money. This is about making a difference. We are going to a country that has not had the free market in a lifetime. This is our chance to be a light on a hill. Besides, Russia is a very beautiful place, with mountains, rivers, and forests. If you get tired of living in Moscow, we could always have a cabin in the countryside sometime just to get away from it all. Trust me, it’s all for the best.”

CHAPTER 3

  In the summer of 1992, Elaine and I moved to Moscow. But soon afterwards she became homesick. There were not enough English-speaking expats here, so she was clearly not comfortable in her new environment. She wanted to stay permanently in London, while I wanted to remain in Moscow. Not because I liked the city, but because this was where I made my business come into fruition. So we came to a compromise. Elaine would remain in London while I would take up dual residence in Moscow and London.

  I had already created my own investment firm, Hermit Crab Inc. Its office was in a semi-abandoned downtown building. Once the place was set up, I called up every investor I could think of across the world, from New York to Germany. Even the people in London who recoiled at my initial offer to invest in Russia were now expressing some level of interest. In no time at all Hermit Crab had a large international client base spanning across Europe, North America, and Asia.

  By the end of the year, my net worth had mushroomed from $200 million to just a little over $1 billion. It was no small feat to achieve so much in so little time. For one thing, I had given up my US citizenship and took up dual UK-Russian citizenship. I realized that in this way, I could save tens of millions of dollars in taxes. Another perk that came in handy was that, since Hermit Crab had clients from around the world, they all knew of some tax haven that I could take advantage of.

  And that’s exactly what I did. Whenever someone told me about some offshore bank, I would stash a couple of million here and there. I set up shell companies everywhere from Ireland to Switzerland to Panama to the UK Virgin Islands. No stone was left unturned. In the US or UK, tax authorities would normally scrutinize tax evasion at some level. But in Russia, the government was thankfully either too incompetent or just plain corrupt to be cracking down on us.

  When 1993 rolled around, I had become a major celebrity. I had gone from being a simple stockbroker on Wall Street and now was the first post-Soviet billionaire . I was profiled by every major news outlet from across the world. I was on the covers of Time, Newsweek, Fortune, the New Yorker, and Forbes. My parents and my friends and former coworkers were also proud of me, and it was so good to have gone back in touch with them after many years.  

  But in my years in investments, I can tell that there will always be some dark side to it all. Only thing is, I could have never imagined just how it would have played out in Russia. I learned this the hard way when day Elaine and I were at the beach in Italy. This was our first vacation since I had started Hermit Crab. The warm and golden sun was the perfect escape from the constant cold of Moscow and London.

  Suddenly my cell phone rang. I had specifically ordered everyone at the company to not call me at vacation unless it was something urgent regarding the company. When I answered the phone, it turned out to be Igor Brokz, my trusted financial analyst. Upon hearing his voice, I had a feeling that something big had happened, whatever it was.

  “Pat” he said somewhat nervously, “I know how much you want to enjoy your vacation, but something has just come up that I think needs your immediate attention.”

  “If you really think it’s important, Igor, then please go ahead and tell me at once.”

   Igor sighed. “I just looked came across some very disturbing news from Reuters. It seems that Gustof Oil is issuing shares. They’re going to quadruple the total number of shares, and they’re selling them for extremely cheap, like 99% lower than the market price!”

  “So, why is that so disturbing?”

  “Because they are allowing every shareholder, except us, to buy these new shares!”

  I gasped. “No way! Are you completely sure, Igor? Perhaps you misunderstood the article, or the article itself got it wrong.”

 “I have been unable to verify it just yet, but I think that for now we need to assume it is true.”

  Gustof Oil was owned by Leon Gustof, who was deputy prime minister of Russia then and was a major oligarch himself in his own right. In the 1970s and 80s, he was a prominent official within the Communist Party. Early in Hermit Crab’s history, we bought significant amounts of company stock, enriching both ourselves in the short run and Mr. Gustof himself. But now that ungrateful son of a bitch was openly biting the hand that had fed him by diluting our stock. I could not understand him. What had possessed him to be so treacherous?

  I soon found out the answer in a famous Russian parable. One day a poor villager is walking along the riverbank, minding his own business when he happens to come across a fish. But this was no ordinary fish. This was a magic talking fish that could grant him a single wish. The man is overjoyed as he weighs his options. Perhaps a million gold bars, or a castle or enough food to last a lifetime. But then the fish interrupts his thoughts with a warning: whatever the man received his neighbor will receive double of that. Immediately, the man tells the fish, “Strike me blind in one eye.”

  It was soon clear to me why Gustof was doing this. When it came to money, Russians will not hesitate to kneecap their own success in order to kneecap their competitors, even they were friends. It did not matter that Gustof was ten times richer than me, or that he came from a very rich and prominent family. For him, it was unbearable that anyone else, especially a foreigner like me, could be even slightly successful in anything.it was Russian custom to destroy your enemy at any cost.

   My vacation in Italy was almost at an end when Igor called me, so a couple of days later I went back to Moscow while Elaine returned to London. The next day I headed straight over to Gustof’s government office and waited there in the windowless conference room. I waited for more than an hour. The more time passed, the more I began to get paranoid that I was being watched by hidden cameras. Perhaps, if Gustof was trying to bring me down, then he was keening me waiting too long on purpose as a psychological warfare tactic.

  Finally the door opening and in walked in the man himself. Without offering to shake my hand or even greet me, he sat down in the chair right next to me. He stared at me with his usual poker face before asking, “Pat, what brings you here?”

  “You know what” I said angrily. “You are trying to dilute Hermit Crab’s.”

  “So?” he asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “So if you go forward with this, then I will lose all my hard work. And not only will I be at a total loss, but my clients and my employees will be left holding the bag.”