“You’re asking me to set up a hedge fund and a private equity fund?”

“Yes. Please set up hedge funds and private equity funds. I need European, American and Asian ones. And set up a few hundred corporations in tax havens—Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Virgin Islands, Liechtenstein, Andorra.”

“Ah!”

Robert was rattled.

He’d passed the interview yesterday and been given the title of director on the spot.

His salary had been set at three million dollars.

He couldn’t believe the number.

In his last job, as an administrator rather than a fund manager, the most he’d ever made was a million dollars.

His salary had jumped threefold.

On top of that, he was guaranteed first class on every flight while traveling for work and a royal suite wherever he stayed.

That was the kind of privilege only a director at a major financial house got.

He hadn’t slept all night.

He’d spent it lying awake in the soft bed of the royal suite that was now his to use.

The luck that had come out of nowhere set Robert’s blood running hot.

It was the same excitement as being young and full of ambition all over again.

The grandson of some conglomerate family, minding their secret money? Or the grandson of somebody who used to be in power?

The reasons for setting up corporations in a tax haven were nearly always the same.

Robert had no information about the young man in front of him.

He looked quite young.

He was Korean, but his English was fluent enough to make a native speaker weep.

His eyes had a depth that made it impossible to take him lightly for his age.

Robert had handled a lot of clients over the years, and he was certain that this CEO named Daniel Jang had something enormous behind him.

He could feel the deep weight that only people who have it ever carry.

“Director Robert.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I asked you for this yesterday too, but let me say it once more. My way of investing is unusual. I’m not looking for returns. Think of it as administration. All you have to do is follow along quietly. Keep it strictly confidential. It isn’t slush money or drug money, so don’t worry about that either. The point is to keep my own clean assets protected and out of sight. You know how it is. Every kind of pest lands on the flower with the most honey in it.”

“Understood. I’ll do exactly as you instruct, sir.”

“To start, please set up a hedge fund company on each continent. Every one of them starts with three billion dollars in capital.”

“!!!”

The CEO said three billion dollars without a flicker, and Robert was startled all over again.

By no means a small sum.

“How many investors are there?”

Investors in a hedge fund or a private equity fund were all guaranteed secrecy.

It was the legal place to put money for people who wanted to invest without showing what they had.

The sources were the secret funds of powerful politicians and rich men, corporate slush money, that sort of thing.

“For now, none.”

“What? Then…”

“I’m investing all of it myself.”

Robert’s mouth wouldn’t close.

From the way Daniel spoke, three billion dollars was clearly only the seed.

“I’ll provide as much manpower and as many assets as the incorporations need. Please put a team together too.”

“Do we start right away?”

“Write up a report and send it to me by email. Hire the specialists and get it wrapped up quickly.”

“Full authority?”

“Handle it on your own signature, Director Robert.”

“…Mr. Daniel.”

“Yes, Director.”

“I’d like to know why you trust me this much. We met one day ago. By anything I know, a relationship like this makes no sense.”

Robert asked him sincerely.

He knew he had caught hold of enormous luck.

Hedge funds that moved secret money like this shared their fate with their key officers.

It’s why the godfathers of the hedge fund world, men like George Soros, don’t retire however old they get.

“When I look at you, Director, I feel like I’m looking at myself in the past.”

“What? What do you—”

“There’s a fierce poison in a man that only comes from failing hard enough to feel like he died once… I can see it behind your eyes, Director.”

“!!!”

“When a man gets the chance to live his life again, isn’t it human instinct to live it harder than the first one?”

The words were unhurried and the facts were exact, and Robert couldn’t say anything at all.

He had made up his mind to kill himself, at one point.

But he’d held on out of sheer spite, because he couldn’t end it like that.

Those years had been so bitterly unfair.

He wanted to live again and make the world know he hadn’t died.

“Trust me and come along. You’re going to live beyond anything you’ve imagined, Director Robert.”

The CEO’s words landed heavy in his heart.

Robert had to fight to keep the tears from spilling.

In all his life, nobody but his parents had ever believed in him like this.

He’d thought of his wife and children as part of himself, and their betrayal had wounded his soul; now it felt like that wound was closing.

“I swear on the name of my father, Chris Ryan, that I will follow you, sir… like a god!”

His beloved father, who had passed away in a traffic accident when Robert was young.

Robert swore it on the name of the man he had respected most in the world.

And then Robert understood.

This man in front of him.

He was a dangerous man who was going to set off something huge in the world.

“So he had a reason for swearing on his father’s name after all~ Heh heh.”

I’d put three billion dollars in Robert’s hands.

Big money if you want to call it big money, but the right amount for testing what my business partner could do.

Next to the money I’d be turning over from here on, it was pocket change.

If he got greedy over this, then Robert’s measure stopped right there.

But my worry turned out to be the worry of the man from Qi. (TL Note: 기우 — from the old story of a man in the state of Qi who lay awake afraid the sky would fall on him. It means a worry about something that was never going to happen.)

Just as I’d read in his face, Robert was the real thing.

Over the few days I was in Hong Kong, Robert showed tremendous skill.

He quietly gathered up the useful fund managers and staff from among the people he’d known over the years.

He went back and forth to America from Hong Kong several times.

Every time he came back, he handed in a report built down to the last detail.

In half a month I became the owner of hedge funds registered at addresses in tax havens.

We ran the money around in circles a few times and washed it.

Legally there was nothing whatsoever wrong with it.

He really was a man who’d played on Wall Street—not a gap anywhere.

I took an office in Hong Kong too.

Quiet enough that even Clara didn’t know.

Hedge fund companies were registered in London, Manhattan and Hong Kong.

The administrator access numbers and passwords came to me and nobody else.

Another of my secret weapons was finished.

These boys were going to stir up the public markets.

Of course, Robert was the only person alive who knew I owned all three.

Robert became their CEO.

The English hedge fund I named Potentatus, the Latin for power, dominion, a man of influence.

The American hedge fund was Still Star, meaning a quiet star.

The Hong Kong hedge fund was White Stone, meaning platinum.

More hedge funds went up after those.

They were unlisted hedge funds, so there was no obligation to disclose the capital.

The money came in after being run around a few turns, so it was hard to tell whose capital it was, too.

Every preparation was finished.

Now it was time to start striding around the open market for real.

“I’m a little jumpy, actually~.”

Clara and I enjoyed a Hong Kong date every day.

Clara was Hong Kong born, and she knew the good restaurants and the sights ordinary tourists never hear about.

A few days into all that—the business preparations and the dates with Clara—I got an unexpected invitation.

Clara passed on that her parents would like to have a meal with me.

I had no reason to refuse, so I accepted.

Clara had come to my house in Korea too and rested there comfortably before she left.

We weren’t in a romantic relationship, so it didn’t weigh on me.

Clara had made a few passes at me, but I’d held firm.

I still had a lot to do.

Clara is an attractive woman, but not to the point of staking my life on her.

In the life I had before I died, I would have shouted an unconditional thank-you for the sole reason that Clara liked me.

But that wasn’t how it was now.

I knew very well that it wasn’t time yet.

Rather than become somebody’s boyfriend or somebody’s lover, I wanted to live free.

I’d been through several lifetimes of fierce romances, so I wasn’t in a hurry.

“We’ve arrived, sir.”

The hotel had lent me a limousine.

A service for guests who take the top suites on a month-long lease.

I liked the hospitality mindset.

“Thank you.”

“Not at all. It’s an honor to drive you.”

The driver, in a tuxedo, got my gifts out of the trunk.

I’d arrived at the place Clara had written out for me in a text.

I’d prepared a small bouquet for Clara’s mother.

Forty-seven roses.

I’d also learned only today that in France, oddly enough, you give an odd number of flowers on a happy occasion.

For Clara’s father I’d prepared genuine fifty-year-old Moutai.

The fifty-year-old Moutai I’d asked the hotel for cost only five million won in 2007.

By 2020, where I’d been living, the price of that famous Chinese liquor had shot through the roof.

And so, standing there with my bundle of presents, I was briefly at a loss.

Isn’t this an incredibly rich neighborhood?

Repulse Bay, the rich district of Hong Kong I’d learned about while traveling around the city.

Even now, before the global housing bubble went up, they said it ran a hundred million won per pyeong.

And the house I’d just stepped out in front of was…

“A detached house? Three stories, no less?”

Hong Kong packs a huge population onto a narrow piece of land, so housing costs more than you can imagine.

Among all of it, Repulse Bay, with its man-made white sand beach, is far and away the king of houses.

I stood there thrown, in front of a vast detached house that held the throne by itself among those kings.

A solid steel gate stood in the way, and security cameras were running on every side.

You could tell me this wasn’t a house but a small castle and I’d believe it.

Do they really live here?

The address was not wrong.

However expensive a house gets, a hundred billion won would cover it, but I couldn’t believe Clara lived in this place.

“Daniel!!!”

Just then Clara opened the door of the house and appeared.

She must have been watching on the CCTV and come out.

Ohhhhh!

Watching Clara run to me, glad to see me, I couldn’t help admiring her.

Clara, coming toward me in a cheongsam embroidered with a red phoenix.

She gave off Eastern innocence and Western sex appeal at the same time.

She’s a woman who gets called a model wherever she goes, and she was in perfect harmony with the dress.

“Clara. Your house is something.”

Every time Clara and I went on a date, she took a taxi home.

Not once had she let me take her home.

“It isn’t my house. It’s my father and mother’s house.”

Clara smiled brightly and sidestepped the point.

Clara, it’s all going to be yours later. What wouldn’t they do for an only daughter?

I’d learned Clara was an only child when we did our background questions. (TL Note: 호구조사 — literally a census of households, the word Koreans use as a joke for the round of personal questions you ask someone new: family, hometown, siblings.)

What on earth does he do? To live at this level in Hong Kong, he’d have to be seriously rich, wouldn’t he?

I was curious about Clara’s father.

Anybody alive would be curious who a rich man living in a Hong Kong mansion with a French wife actually was.

“Let’s go in~.”

Clara linked her arm through my left one and led me along.

She had the sense to take one of the bottles out of my hands, too.

And so I went into the mansion where Clara lived.

The garden’s incredible too. Are you allowed to live like this in Hong Kong?

Land is so expensive that most ordinary people live in apartments like chicken coops.

What came into view was a garden of several hundred pyeong, the kind that would make those commoners’ eyes roll right out of their heads. (TL Note: 눈이 돌아가다, for the eyes to spin — to be knocked sideways by wanting something, or by rage. Here it’s the wanting.)

Here and there in the garden, strange rocks, trees and small pieces like tables had been arranged just right.

A curious combination of European and Chinese.

And just as I crossed the garden and reached the front of the house.

A middle-aged man and woman stood in front of the entrance with the door thrown wide open.

“Dad! Mom! Daniel’s here~.”

Clara introduced me to them first.

“Welcome. I’m Clara’s mother, Emmanuelle Pierre. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

A tall, beautiful woman in her mid-forties smiled broadly.

“Thank you for inviting me.”

I held out the flowers.

“Thank you, Daniel~.”

Emmanuelle came toward me, beaming as she took them.

Mwah. Mwah.

And she gave me a light kiss on each cheek.

It’s the French way of greeting, called a bisou.

I was slightly flustered.

Since hair first grew on my head, I’d never met a foreign custom like it. (TL Note: 머리털 나고 처음 — since the hair grew on my head; Korean for the first time ever in a life.)

That didn’t mean I disliked it.

Emmanuelle, giving off a faint perfume.

She was where Clara’s looks came from.

The tall slim figure, the slender build, the deep blue eyes and the bright smile made her a striking middle-aged woman.

What’s more, her name is one Korean men find very friendly(?). (TL Note: 엠마뉴엘, Emmanuelle — the name of a French erotic film that ran for years in Korea; to Korean men of a certain age the name means only one thing.)

“I thank you sincerely for a welcome from Emmanuelle, who is lovelier than the roses.”

“Oh! Daniel~ you speak French?”

Emmanuelle marveled at the French coming out with a buttered tongue and was delighted. (TL Note: 버터 바른 혀, a tongue spread with butter — Korean for a Western accent so smooth it sounds foreign-born.)

Language really is that attractive a diplomatic tool.

“Daniel. Come in. Welcome to my house. I’m called Lee Zhangchang.”

The middle-aged man, who had been sending jealous looks at how Emmanuelle was welcoming me, held out his hand.

Maybe to test me, he gave the greeting in heavily accented Cantonese.

“It’s an honor to meet you. My name is Jang Tae-san.”

I answered in clean Cantonese and took his hand.

Craaack!

A powerful grip clamped down on my hand.

And then!

Huh? Who is this uncle???

(End of Chapter 63)