Chapter 22: A Tale Of Two Presidents

July 1971, age 16

With my American friend, Corey, gone back to New York with his family, it barely took a day or two for me to get bored of the beach and pool. I enjoy my own company up to a point, and I suppose it’s true that I’m a bit introverted in some ways (mainly because of all the secrets I keep). But somehow, being on holiday alone (except Ewan) now seemed a bit of a mistake.

Dan’s foresight had proved annoyingly correct here, as he’d given me a shopping list of tasks to complete while I was in California, ‘should I find myself bored’. I’d successfully ticked off Messrs Spielberg and Lucas. Next on the list was a day-trip up to Silicon Valley to visit Intel. They were in an exciting phase, with their IPO imminent and their very first microchip, the 4004, four months from its big launch. Grandpa’s $2.5 million startup-loan had been converted into a 25% stock holding, so they were very happy to help us out with a little favour. After signing non-disclosure agreements, three of our guys would be allowed in to make a head start on industrial applications for the chip.

The three guys I met in Mountain View were Chris Curry, Tom Wise and Gunpei Yokoi.

Curry worked for Sinclair Radionics back in the UK, which we had contracted to build us an ATM. The first ATM had appeared at an English bank four years earlier, but I thought it looked positively prehistoric. Of course, I was used to using Grandpa’s iPad from the future, so in comparison, prehistoric was about right. Curry and his team had been tasked with building a microchip-powered ATM with a CRT display, unlike anything else on the market.

Wise worked for the British Aircraft Corporation, his team developing a ‘glass cockpit’. Intel’s tiny microchips would power sensors and displays that would replace some of the myriad dials that pilots had to monitor. NASA was working on a similar proof-of-concept. We already knew the concept would work, and the 4004 gave us a head-start on building the thing.

And finally, Gunpei Yokoi worked for the little toy company we’d recently bought in Kyoto, Japan. They currently made playing cards and novelty toys, but the dawn of the microchip would change that. I gave Yokoi a modern pocket calculator to demonstrate the power of microchips, then told him to go build a handheld computer game. We talked about the basic input, output and power options, plus the idea of interchangeable game cartridges. I left him figuring out how to build an early version of the Game Boy.

I was still madder-than-hell with Dan over his manipulating, and, to some extent, with Ewan too. I literally trusted Ewan with my life, so brooding didn’t seem sensible. The day after visiting Intel, I decided to confront him head-on.

“Ewan, you and me need to go somewhere for a chat where we can’t be overheard or bugged by anyone, including our own side.”

He looked down at his shoes for a moment, then nodded. Without calling for my usual platoon of heavies, he drove me down to Marina del Rey, where we hired a speedboat. It was just the two of us — no crew. Ewan took us out of the harbour and a little way out to sea, before killing the engine and letting us drift, now isolated.

“Ewan, do you remember last summer in that cafe in Bordeaux when you warned me about Dan manipulating me?”

“I do.”

“Good. So do I. I didn’t really believe it at the time, but things have changed. And now I know that you’ve been helping Dan to do it.”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes, staying silent.

“I know you have to report-in on things that happen while you’re protecting me. I get that. But Dan let slip how closely he’s been monitoring me. That could only be done by you. You want to deny that?”

“I wish I could”, he said with feeling. Raising his eyes, he almost pleaded, “I’m so sorry, Finn. I hated doing it.”

I nodded. “That I believe.”

We stared at each other in silence. I really couldn’t wait to be eighteen and run my own life.

“Do you want me to quit?”, he asked me. “I will if you want.”

I considered it, but concluded, “No. That wouldn’t gain me anything. Where would your replacement’s loyalty lie? Plus you know too much.”

Ewan cracked a grin, and I briefly wondered how the mafia dealt with former employees who knew as much as Ewan. I shut that thought away.

“In future, if you can’t bring yourself to tell Dan to go fuck himself, please at least warn me what you’ve been ordered to do.”

He nodded in agreement, adding, “To be fair to him, this sort of thing is rare. Most of the time I wouldn’t doubt he has your best interests at heart.”

My only acknowledgement was to repeat, grimly: “Most of the time.”

I had been due to stay in Los Angeles for two weeks, then fly back to New York to pick up Concorde for my next adventure. It didn’t quite work out like that. When Ewan and I got back to the hotel, he picked up a message at reception, read it and announced, “Dan wants you back in New York tomorrow. Or, if not, Philadelphia first thing on Monday morning.”

The mention of Philadelphia gave away the reason for this sudden summons.

“Holy shit!”, I exclaimed, using the Americanism I’d picked up from Corey. “Project Hudson?”

Ewan handed me the message and commented, “That’s all I know. When d’you want to go?”

On Monday morning I was dutifully scrubbed up and dressed in a suit for our appearance in court. Bankruptcy court: somewhere I have no desire to return if I can help it.

The corporation under the hammer of bankruptcy protection was the Penn Central Transportation Company, which operated railways throughout the states of Pennsylvania and New York. It had been the biggest corporate bankruptcy in American history, and now we were going to try and profit from it, like vultures circling over a corpse.

You see, Penn Central had extensive real estate holdings, some of which were now like ghost towns, desolate and never likely to be used again. At the top of that list were the two vast rail freight yards at West 30th Street and West 60th Street in Manhattan, which were now prime targets for developers. History said that one such New York tycoon would quietly pull off back-room political manoeuvres to secure the two sites before anyone else could get a look-in.

Not this time.

We knew how gigantic a deal this was, and we had the advantage of time. That’s because those sleazy backroom deals would centre around the future Democratic Mayor of New York City, Abraham Beame, who wouldn’t be elected for another two years. In the meantime, the current mayor was much less tied-in to the New York Democratic horse-trading system, because when he was elected, he’d been a Republican (who later switched sides). By getting in early and moving quickly, we hoped to neutralise some of the other guy’s advantages.

Dan’s team had been working on this project (which, together with the purchase of the Yankees, we’d named Project Hudson) for a full year, since the bankruptcy filing. We’d hired a professional outfit of lobbyists very early on, and now had three big things to tip the scale our way.

The first was that we weren’t going it alone. As foreign nationals, we were forbidden by law to make anything resembling the political campaign contributions that were so integral to a big deal like this. So we built a syndicate of local developers that would partner with us in a joint bid. When we approached five of the top New York firms, one wasn’t interested (we learnt later that they had financial problems), one decided to go it alone and submit a competing bid (we took great pleasure in crushing them), and the remaining three signed on enthusiastically. We had offered them a sweet deal. We would put up the full funding for the land purchase, and they would get a lease on two plots each to build tower blocks. It was good for them because they paid nothing up-front, only paying rent to us after completion. It was good for us because each of our partners brought their own lobbyists and political connections to strengthen our cause. Plus, there’s no way we could have found the money to develop the two rail yards on our own — they were simply massive.

The second alliance we forged was with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. With commuter trains in NYC still being operated by the bankrupt railway, the MTA was only too happy to make a deal that salvaged something from an otherwise ungodly mess. We pledged to give them the land west of Penn Station free of charge if they put their considerable weight behind our bid. They were keen to get that land so they could convert it into a train storage yard for the Long Island Rail Road (as history said they would eventually have done anyway). And crucially, we would retain the air rights to build on top of the yard, which were phenomenally valuable.

The last and perhaps most powerful thing we had in our favour was that we were now the owners of the Yankees. That transformed us instantly from anonymous foreigners to an integral part of New York’s social fabric. In fact, Dan told me it was Johnny Dorrington’s article in the Times that swung things sufficiently in our favour to have our proposal put before the court. Not just because we were now someone, but because of the hint about a new stadium. Our lobbyists may have quietly suggested that one or other of the former rail yards might serve that purpose nicely.

Sitting in the courtroom in Philadelphia as our bid for the two parcels of land was presented, it was obvious this would not be a short hearing. There were dozens of lawyers representing the various stakeholders and competitors, and they all seemed to like the sound of their own voices.

Edward Eichler was first up, as counsel for Penn Central. He had submitted a Bible-length dossier to the court in advance, which evaluated the possible commercial and residential uses of the two sites and gave an appraisal of their value. That valuation was shockingly low (as we knew it would be). The underpricing was nothing to do with us, or, to be fair, the other interested developers. The appraiser wasn’t a New Yorker and had somehow come up with the figure of $124 million. Most amazingly, he then discounted that price by 50% because of the assumed lengthy and costly process of clearing and decontaminating the industrial sites and securing rezoning. That took forever to explain in court.

The actual value of the sites was probably about half a billion dollars in 1971 money, but nobody in the court had any interest in saying that. None of the developers could afford that figure, and the representative of the stockholders and creditors, David Berger, knew his best chance of securing a quick repayment of debts was to settle for a realistic price. When it was his turn to speak, he made the argument that the 50% discount was grossly over-generous — it really was — but he didn’t make any fuss about the un-discounted price.

Then it was our turn. Our lawyer placed great emphasis on the local support enjoyed by our bid. The climax of his argument came when he dramatically pulled out a cheque. “Your honour, we have heard argument that the discount applied to the valuation should be set aside. My clients do not object. I have in my hand a cashier’s cheque for sixty-two million dollars. Our understanding is that this would be very welcome to the company’s many creditors and could be cashed today. My clients wish to propose that, by the court’s order, this payment constitute a fifty percent first instalment on the purchase, with two further payments of twenty-five percent due within six weeks of the rezoning of each site.”

Waving that bit of paper around in front of the creditors and stockholders caused a buzz in the room which didn’t go unnoticed by the judge.

The lawyers for each of our partners and the MTA then got up in turn to endorse our bid, followed by two rival lawyers making contrary arguments and submitting offers from their clients. The critical difference between our bid and theirs was that they wanted ‘exclusive options’. In other words, they wanted the court to order that they had the right to purchase the land for a stipulated price within a fixed time frame. That was the typical way to do this sort of thing because banks were unwilling to provide massive mortgages on un-zoned land. Our way was much riskier because we had raised the $62 million through loans secured against our many other business assets. Betting that we would eventually get the necessary rezoning was a huge gamble, but the up-front money also gave our bid a decisive advantage over the others.