Beyond Sexyland
The day was bright and cheerful. Very auspicious. Yesterday had been quite blustery, with sudden downpours that would have been quite out of keeping with the sense of optimism that had been so carefully nurtured during this project. With the better weather, of course, the bicycles were out in force. They had the right of way over all other traffic if for no other reason than that of numerical superiority. A murderous stream of them seemed to be aimed directly at Jan van Oldenbarnevelt, but he meticulously avoided getting in their way as he navigated the labyrinthine streets, by pure instinct and with no conscious effort. He was born and raised in this town.
The clacking of little wheels was everywhere. Tourists who came from places with pavement and concrete sidewalks didn't often appreciate how ill-suited those little wheels were to dragging their overstuffed suitcases along sometimes centuries-old cobblestones, or recent cobbles made to look centuries-old. De toeristen verpesten deze stad. Soon enough they'd all be at their bed-and-breakfasts and then off to line up for hours and hours somewhere not knowing they should have booked a timeslot. Later on the fattest and most annoying of them would be off to De Walletjes to make people angry by taking pictures of the red windows while making macho red-neck comments. The truly ignorant ones would make people stifle polite laughs by doing the same things at the blue windows, until they found a blue window that left no doubt in their addled minds about the difference.
Jan progressed through the Oud-Zuid. He was on his way to De Wallen himself, but only to pass through. Colourful windows held no attraction for him, and it was early morning in any event. It would be many hours before the area around De Oude Kerk would come to life and this time of day it would be more likely for one to sip a coffee on the Leidseplein. But he had no time for either amusement. There was pressing business on the other side of the water in the Ijplein, and he was keeping a brisk pace to the docks. Enroute he passed by the Museumplein; there was a wonderful street band playing classical music on such things as accordions and guitars, soliciting tips of course. Jan made a mental note to come back this way.
As he approached the Burgwallen Nieuwe Zijde the ring of canals encircling the old city filled him with a sense of something - maybe nostalgia? national pride? It was hard for Jan to put a definite finger on emotions. He smiled and shared platitudes with people living on the barges. Those that were not simply foreign tourists in any event. A curious device crawled down the length of the nearest canal; it was retrieving a wealth of bicycles, likely stolen and abandoned, from the murky depths.
Jan mentally shook himself. He was letting his mind wander too much on the sights and sounds of his beloved city. There was work to be done, and he must keep to schedule. It wouldn’t do to be late. Or too late, he corrected himself. He would be just the absolutely correct amount of late, showing up the exact amount of time after he was expected in order to make everyone start fidgeting.
He got on the ferry just as it was about to leave. Of course it was jammed full of bicycles but there was still an adequate amount of room for pedestrians such as himself. The ride was less than 10 minutes to the other side of the expanse of water separating this side of the city from that. At the other end of the ferry ride he set off to the right, towards the Noordwal. In short order he passed that strange club, the one that boasted a different owner for every night of the year, and so therefore a completely different party. And just beyond that there was an upscale restaurant made out of large shipping containers.
Jan walked around the entrance and headed to the patio which was on the water, and there he spied his party, sitting at one of the outside tables. The table was quite apart from the rest, and what with the noise of ferries and seagulls and tourists it would be very difficult to overhear a meeting at such a table, if one were going to have a business meeting involving billions of Euros and the forging of empires, for instance, and wanted everything to be fairly secret. And yet, this was no stuffy board room which could have been anywhere. This was downtown Amsterdam. You could literally smell the tulips, sort of a light spicy-honey note overlaying the normal smells of waterfront. It was, as Jan had fully intended, the perfect backdrop for this discussion.
“Thank you gentlemen for coming on such short notice. I trust you found the instructions comprehensible and had no trouble finding this venue? I have to confess this town can be a bit of a maze at times.”
There was a nod of agreement from his guests, although they were guarded nods, the nods of those who did not agree to anything spontaneously. But still, Jan took note of those who seemed weak, and those who seemed strong, even with so trivial a matter as directions to a restaurant. Like avoiding bicycles, it was second nature.
“Then let’s begin, shall we? No doubt the conversation prior to my arrival was light, and mostly about the weather, neh?” A round of chuckles. The atmosphere had no doubt been tense, and some levity seemed appropriate. “I believe we can skip the introductions. At any point this morning any of you may simply get up and leave the table, and then you were never here. Of course, you will never be invited back.” This brought barely perceptible but serious nods from all, the nods that were the equivalent of dozens of pages of signed paper. Jan noted these nods too, and was pleased that he had invited the correct people. The people with gezag.
“You have all been briefed to a point, and have all agreed to a point, as is evidenced by your being here. To summarize for the record, although you can all be assured there is no record…” and Jan put his phone on the table for anyone to inspect, and opened his jacket to show everyone he had no further devices. “So, to summarize, we have been somewhat at cross purposes in our various endeavors. I am reminded of a time long ago, when a meeting such as this must surely have taken place amongst people representing the Seven United Netherlands for the very same purpose. Then, as now, there were new worlds being discovered. Unimaginable riches were there for the taking. Literally unimaginable. How can you imagine the wealth of a land that was not even on the maps yesterday? How can you assess the risks? You can wait, until others have taken most of the risks, but then you will find that they have also taken most of the wealth, and you are now late to the game. No, gentlemen, that is not how our voorouders played the game. They were there even before the game started, before others knew there was going to be a game. And they succeeded mightily. For almost two centuries other people called themselves ‘Empires’. What is that word? It is simply a word. For others, it has no meaning. But we Dutch. We actually had an empire. We had the empire. The empire of economics. The empire of conquest. The empire of trade with new lands. The empire of knowledge. The Gouden Eeuw. Our empire spawned and nurtured the greatest thinkers of the times. Men like René Descartes. Christiaan Huygens. Jan Leeghwater. Spinoza. But more importantly, men like Hugo Grotius, who showed us how words can shape reality. He gave us the Mare Liberum which granted anyone who had balls the right to go anywhere and trade. Unless we were there first, of course.” He said with a slight smile. Polite chuckles from his audience.
“But all good things must come to an end. The fact that we are conducting this meeting in English is an indication of that, I think.” Nods of agreement all around.
“But gentlemen, I suggest that all of you - all of you who need to - should begin brushing up on their Nederlands. We are on the brink of a new Mare Liberum for those who have the foresight to take advantage of it. And to be the people who were there first, when others come late to the game. And this time, with a little planning, the good thing does not have to ever come to an end.” Jan looked around the table to make sure his words were resonating. They were. Good. He sat down and removed several papers from his briefcase. It was made of carbon fibre and was custom made to match Jan's black Bugatti, which he rarely drove, and never within the city.
“You have all been given a brief outline of the proposal. That proposal had some estimates attached to it. They were of course not the real numbers. I would like you all to square those numbers, and then multiply them by two million Euros. Those are the real numbers.” And he proffered his phone which was in the calculator app. No one took it, and no one referred to their notes. And no one seemed shocked. Good. Very good.
“I assume you can all find this amount in your tier two capital?” a brief round of chuckles. This group had a vast amount of tier two capital, the capital that was inherently hard to account for. Or at least it could be assumed they all had vast amounts of tier two capital. The nature of that kind of money was such that no one could really say whether it existed or not. It was the undisclosed reserves that never quite made it into the books; or all of the books at any rate. It was the excess between the billions in real holdings the company controlled versus the nominal amount paid for them between shell corporations. It was the subordinated debt owed to yet other shell corporations and which would never be paid... the list was endless. So were the numbers involved.
Jan had actually taken the name Tier Two as the name of his latest venture, partly as a witty nod to these shadowy funds that were going to finance it, but also, on a deeper level, as a witty play on Týr, the old Norse god of war. But unlike Mars, the Roman god of the art of war and, oddly, agriculture, Týr was the god of the formalities of war. Treaties, contracts, oaths and the like. Jan felt that the mechanics of war were evolving from the battlefield to the boardroom, and Týr would be his deity if he had to have one. Also, calling this project Mars Two would raise uncomfortable questions.
“And now for the missing piece of the puzzle. Of course, you gentlemen have all been involved in prior rodeos, to use a lame metaphor, so you know that we have no intention of absorbing all of the risk, or even a significant share of it. There are others out there who will be quite willing to actually pay us to assume most of the risk. And herein lies the crucial difference between our endeavor and that of a prior age. In the seventeenth century we were discovering and travelling to lands that already had people in them. People to exploit, by and large. In this new endeavor, we will be travelling to new lands that have no people. So we’ll have to take some with us. With any luck, this seeding will prove fruitful and then there will eventually be a resident population. And then, yes, we’ll exploit them. The people we will recruit to have the honour of paying us so they can absorb most of the risk will also pay us for the privilege of supplying the seeds of a future population. A population to gather the resources of strange new lands for our exclusive benefit. Our benefactors will realize too late that the price we ask for getting people to the new colonies is stiff but fair. But the price of returning anyone or anything not of our choosing will be more than they could possibly afford. In essence, although the seas will be free, passage will be at our discretion.”
This caused a lusty round of applause, which the Maître d’ took as his cue. He very noisily, as opposed to stealthily, pushed a small trolley with a few buckets of expensive looking champagne towards the table. He bowed to Jan and filled Jan’s glass from a separate bottle, and then withdrew to well out of earshot. This was understandably a self-serve thing, so there was a long moment of popping corks and pouring glasses.
“I am now going to propose a toast. Since you are all still at this table then you are all about to embark on a journey of discovery and unimaginable wealth and unimaginable power. You will help to usher in the new Gouden Eeuw of Holland. You will be behind the throne. But you will be the power behind the throne. Gentlemen - to the new Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie - to the new Dutch East India Company.”