All Chapters of Rise Of The Trillionaire: Robert Jackson: Chapter 121
- Chapter 130
144 chapters
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE
The Okafor announcement was on a Thursday morning.Marcus had made the process go with the particular narrow focus with which he approached all that was important, and had provided a completed acquisition framework in twenty-six days, compared to four weeks that Robert had committed to Gerald. Gerald had personally attended all the major review meetings. He asked questions which the legal team of Robert did not anticipate and was given straightforward answers and was moved by the honesty and not the answers.This announcement was issued at eight AM via the investor communications channel of Zenco at the same time with a press release and a direct communication to all of the institutional investors on the register of the company.Robert was not present at the press conference. He had a statement ready that was read by his communications director. He remained at his desk and observed the reaction in the market in real time with Dave standing near him.Though nothing dramatic was done in
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO
Diana responded in the first ring.It was the first time that Robert had heard her respond to the first ring. She always let calls reach the second ring at minimum. Not deliberately. The natural rhythm of a woman who did not do urgency. The first ring informed him that she had been anticipating the call or something like it.“You saw the investor suspensions,” Robert said."This morning," Diana said. “All six. I have been staring at the mechanism since seven AM.”“What did you find?” Robert asked.“What the financial analysis team of Wei Liang disseminated,” she said. “The reason it works and why it is so hard to refute is because it is constructed using real numbers. He did not make up the figures regarding the debt exposure or the regulatory review costs he has put together accurate facts in a particular order that yields a particular result.” A pause. “The conclusion is not false, but it is incomplete. An incomplete thing is more difficult to prove wrong than a false thing because
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE
Roxanne was not asleep when Robert returned home.It was past ten. He was at the office since six AM and had breakfast at his desk, and talked to Marcus and Dave and Diana and Carlisle and Gerald Okafor and three institutional investors personally and had reserved a flight to Singapore at seven AM the next morning.He came through the door and she was at the kitchen table. Not working. Not on her phone. Simply sitting and having a cup of tea and that special quietness she made when she had been thinking over something a long time and she had reached the point where the thinking was done and all that was left was the talking.He dropped his keys. He poured water. He was opposite her.She looked at him. She got the entire image of him as she had always done before she talked. The tiredness. The particular sharpness of concentration which had been at maximum capacity for weeks. His phone was put face down on the counter."Singapore," she said."Tomorrow morning," he said. “There is a wom
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR
On his way to the airport, Robert was calling Loretta on the phone from the car.It was half past five in the morning. The city was grey and quiet and the roads were clear in the sense which they were only clear before six. The driver had nothing to say. Robert was holding his phone in his hand and had been staring at the name of Loretta on the phone ten minutes before he called.Her critical skills were required. Her capacity to detect structural weaknesses of complex systems. The specific quality of her thinking that cut through the accumulated noise of a problem and located the load-bearing element underneath everything else.On the fourth ring she answered.Her voice was not what he usually hear. Softer. Slightly slow. He had woken her."Robert," she said. Not surprised exactly. Just his name.“I am sorry about the hour," He said. “I am going to the airport. Singapore. I need to ask you something.”“Well, go ahead,” she said.He explained the situations. Wei Liang. The investor su
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE
Dave was called by Robert at the gate.Forty minutes before boarding. The airport was in its early morning routine around him, families with much luggage, businesspeople who were in a hurry, the special anonymity of a place that was meant to be passed through and not arrived at.He was sitting in a row of seats facing the gate and called Dave.Dave answered immediately. He had already reached the office. Robert was able to hear the building behind him."Loretta has a boyfriend," Robert said.He put it in the same manner as he puts financial figures. Flat. Direct. The tone of a person telling a fact and waiting to realize what the fact was.Dave said nothing. Then he said, “Tell me what you felt.”Robert looked at the gate ahead of him. At the desk where the attendant was preparing to board. At the mundane work of a departure.“I do not know exactly,” he said."Try," Dave said.Robert thought about the car. About the name coming before he knew its meaning. About the two seconds before
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX
At six fifteen Roxanne read the message.She was in bed. She had caught him going at five thirty, the very quiet of him not to disturb her, the very distinct sounds of one walking cautiously through a place familiar in the dark. She had sat there and pretended that she had fallen asleep since she had realized that the discussion of the previous night was still in the room between them and contributing to it at five thirty AM before a long flight would not benefit either of them.She read the message twice.She dropped the phone face down on a pillow next to her.She looked at the ceiling.She reflected upon what he had written. Not one of those 'I'll handle it' conversations. A real one. She tossed those words about. Across the years she had come to understand the exact language that Robert Jackson used, he was a careful word chooser and the lines that he drew between objects were never imaginary lines. The difference between having a conversation and managing a conversation was a poi
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN
On a Thursday Wei Liang heard of the engagement.Not through an announcement. No announcement had been made publicly. Robert and Roxanne had told nobody except Dave and the information had not travelled beyond that single conversation. A restaurant. A comment. The particular quality of two people who have jointly made a decision and implement it differently afterward. It only took one person paying the right kind of attention to the right kind of details.Thursday evening Wei Liang was told the news in Shanghai. He read it. He sat with it. Then he opened the file he kept on Robert Jackson, not the company file, but the personal one and put the information in the exact place where it belonged.He understood immediately what it meant.Not the engagement itself. The timing of it.Robert had given a promise to Roxanne during the most economically difficult times that Zenco had ever experienced. That was not the conduct of a man who had properly divided his personal life and his profession
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT
One Friday morning Dave hired Carlisle to investigate the history.It was a narrow brief. The personal professional history of Wei Liang prior to the existence of the investment group. Not current operations Carlisle had those mapped comprehensively. The formative period. The people with whom he had collaborated in constructing the methodology and not in implementing it. The relations that were already there prior to the system becoming his trademark and his insurance.The brief was read by Carlisle. He replied with three words.“Already partially started.”Two replied Dave.“Go deep.”The report was received 9 days later. Four pages. The more specific the intelligence grew, the shorter the reports by Carlisle. Specificity did not need as many words as comprehensiveness, and Carlisle realized that saving of language was a kind of respect to the time of the reader.The background was discussed on the first page. Wei Liang had not come to the full. Six years with a middle-tier Shanghai
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE
It was a Tuesday morning that the first message was received by Shen Mei.It was by Priscilla. The woman who ran a small legal advisory practice in Singapore and had known Shen Mei in a professional manner prior to Shen Mei having changed her name and her profession and her whole visible life. Priscilla was among three individuals in Singapore who knew both identities and had been trusted with that information since Shen Mei was acquainted with her long enough to trust that she would be discreet.Priscilla called and not texted. That alone was a signal.“Somebody is making an attempt to get in touch with you,” Priscilla said. “Through one of my acquaintances, quietly. Specific and carefully.” A pause. "They are fighting Wei Liang."Shen Mei was sitting at her desk going through a restructuring proposal of a regional logistics company. Ordinary work. The type of life she had created for her quiet life. She had heard the name, and felt the specific stillness which came to her when that
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY
Robert arrived in Singapore on a Wednesday.Eleven hours in the air. Three hours sleep. The other eight was spent passively reading what Carlisle had compiled of the methodology and thought about Wei Liang, and thought about what the meeting needed to deliver, and what he would do with whatever Shen Mei handed over to him.He even had Roxanne in his mind.Concerning the kitchen table. About what she had said, and what he had not been able to give her. About Dave at the airport saying to him to come back prepared. He had sat with it all at an altitude. The way it could only be sat with when the usual pressure of the ground had been temporarily removed.Being somewhere over the Pacific, he had reached a conclusion.And he knew what he was going to do when he got home. Without the qualification which had been a part of him at the kitchen table. The altitude had done all that Dave had anticipated. He had considered it in the absence of the building and the numbers and Wei Liang crowding u