Rich Uncle’s Conspiracy

A tall, dark-haired man impeccably dressed in a dark-gray Armani suit entered the lobby of the Buck’s Head Suites and Conference Center. He checked the bulletin board and found that Investments International Group (IIG) was meeting in conference room A. Warren Hudson, CEO of International Technical Enterprises, had arrived early. He made his way to the conference room where the meeting was scheduled to be held and walked into the room. No one had arrived. Only a few of the catering employees were putting the final touches on the audiovisual equipment and bringing additional glasses, cups, and saucers to the beverage table. He said to himself,
“Ah ha, they were smart enough to bring the coffee early.”
He went over to the table and poured himself a cup.
The room had been set up in a U fashion with the center open to a large screen at the end. All the participants’ place tags and notebooks were in place. Warren walked around while looking at the names.
“There we are,” he said to himself. “Bruce Wallace and Warren Hudson.”
He took the liberty of taking our name tags to a “better location” and swapped seats with those seated there. He didn’t recognize their names.
Slowly the room started to fill with people. Warren sat down and began sipping his coffee and reading the agenda. None of us were clear on exactly why this meeting/seminar had been called; however, it was emphasized that it would be in our long-term interest to attend.
Warren’s thoughts were interrupted by a man with a Scottish brogue shouting orders to the greeter at the door. Warren laughed and said aloud, “I recognize that gruff old bark.” It was the voice of his good friend Ian Mac Donald, who was chairman of the Royal Scottish Investment Bank (RSIB).
Ian had graduated from Oxford, but for some reason he still couldn’t explain, his father sent him to Wharton School of Business for his doctorate degree. Warren and Ian met during Warren’s second year at Wharton. They had the same Friday night interest of slipping out of school and heading over to Smokey Joe’s for a few beers. They became fast friends. Over the years, they had worked together on numerous projects in Europe and now in China.
“Ian!” Warren shouted.
Ian looked up and hastened to meet his old friend with a warm handshake and a hug. “What brings ye here, lad?” Ian asked. And they began to chat.
I arrived at the meeting just in time to grab a cup of coffee and find Warren. I was quite surprised, and pleasantly so, to see Ian. We exchanged brief greetings and agreed to have dinner together. Warren and I sat down.
The speaker for the event went around the room and briefly introduced the attendees. Several major international banking institutions were represented: HSBC, Barclay’s, UBS-Warburton, Deutsche Bank, Tokyo Bank, and Royal Scottish Investment Bank just to mention a few. Many individual angel investors, venture capitalists, and project firms such as ours who were seeking money for specific client capital investments were also in attendance. There were several people sitting in the rear of the room that I recognized as World Bank employees and several others that I didn’t know.
I leaned over and whispered into Warren’s ear, “I must be getting old. A meeting of this group doesn’t make sense to me. Usually we are beating on each other for the few available investment dollars.”
The speaker lowered the lights in the room and began the slide presentation by indicating money for foreign capital expenditure had become much more available in the private funding market despite the US government’s propensity to increase regulations on lending institutions and making it difficult to lend money. He went on to show graph after graph and slide after slide to explain why we should act now and “rush to the well” before the funding dried up. I looked over at Warren and then to Ian. They both looked like they would rather be somewhere else other than at this meeting . The speaker went on to the point that all I heard was a voice fading into a boring drone and all I wanted was a coffee break.
The door to the conference room was over my right shoulder. The room was dark, and I noticed the light as it opened and saw the shadow of two large well-dressed men in Armani leather jackets standing in the entrance entering the room. They went over to the coffee table and each of them poured a cup of tea. I turned back to the speaker and the slide presentation. After what seemed to be an eternity, the speaker finally said,
“Let’s take a break, there are refreshments for you on the table in the rear, let’s try to reconvene here again in twenty minutes.”
As the lights in the room came back on, two men sitting next to each other at the side table were bent over and looked to be asleep. From the back of the room a comment was overheard,
“They were really into this presentation”
Quiet laughter followed. Then Simon Chang from HSBC went over to wake them. As he touched the one man’s shoulder, his hand felt wet, he looked down. It was covered with blood. Quickly, he looked over at the other man next to him; he too was covered with blood. Simon cried out,
“These men are dead, someone quickly call 911.”
Immediately, my eyes stared to survey the room, I quickly realized that the men I saw in the leather jackets were conspicuous by their absence. I glanced over at Warren and Ian. Ian looked stunned. Warren was ashen white beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. I knew Warren well enough to know something was very wrong. Nobody else would sense it, but over the years when playing poker with someone as much as I have with Warren, you learn to read people.
The police were quick to arrive.