Chapter 11. Investor
Aspen, Colorado, Earth, October 2024
Ulfin, thu hauest wel isaed.
Ich the giue an honde thritti solh of londe
That thu Merlin biwinne and don mine iwille.
(Ulfin, you have spoken well.
I shall give you thirty ploughlands of land
If you do my will and win Merlin.)
Layamon—Brut
Ruxton Carr loosened his tie, doused the lights, poured himself a generous measure of Talisker, and sank into one of the two chesterfields before the fire.
His retinue of lawyers, accountants, assistants and general hangers-on had left, freighted with decisions (his), whisky (also his), and purpose (theirs). He loved a party but the enjoyment was sharpened by the thought of the solitude to follow. It was solitude, originally, that had led him to buy the Lodge, this cabin perched on a deck of massive ashlars some distance out of Aspen. Just near enough for convenience, just far enough away to deter casual visitors. That, and the fantastic view from the floor-to-ceiling picture windows down one side.
He’d originally come for the skiing—a sport he’d long wanted to indulge in but couldn’t really afford until he sold his first company. He’d gone public in 1985; made an absolute killing in 1986; and, with what turned out to be an impeccable gift for timing, sold it for a fortune on 13 October 1987. Six days later, the Hong Kong markets crashed. He was safe, secure, but any feeling of schadenfreude he might have had for his competitors was tempered with an understanding of the fragile, makeshift nature of the present. Misfortune might strike anyone, at any time. The secret of not getting fooled was to diversify, and to plan ahead. Very far ahead.
Had there been anyone to see him, he’d have been visible only from the still glints in his cat-like, yellow eyes and the starry spangles refracted from the heavy tumbler. He drained it, refilled it, and thought back… and back.
He started—when was it?
Ah yes, it was in Khan’s shop on the Tottenham Court Road, selling music centres and SLRs. (Music centres! SLRs!) He had always been a good salesman, but there he’d really taken off. He could trace the change, he thought, to a very wet day in ’79, or maybe it was ’80, when for some reason he’d fainted while serving a customer. Just disappeared below the counter. One minute, he was there, on the money, the next… He always joked he’d banged his head on the counter on the way down. Don’t worry, Mr Khan had said, just overwork. Take the rest of the day off.
But Ruxton had done more than that: The very next day he gave in his notice and within three months he’d opened his own shop. He remembered the smell of new paint, the heart-in-mouth moment when he opened his doors for the very first time, and the sign above the shop. ‘Merlin Electronics,’ it read. It was a proud moment.
After that he couldn’t put a foot wrong. He had an uncanny knack of what people wanted, before they even knew they wanted it. When people woke up to CDs, he was already thinking about music downloads. When they first thought of mobile phones, he was into what eventually became smartphones. People were still wrestling dial-up when he was exploring the possibilities of wireless broadband, and when people had cottoned on to that, he was selling the idea of cloud computing. Merlin had tablets when people still had laptops. Merlin became the place for trendsetters and go-getters. One shop became two, then three, then a dozen, then a hundred. Mr Khan’s shop was his twelfth acquisition. When Merlin Electronics went public the share value quadrupled within twenty minutes.
Problem was, he couldn’t find suppliers that saw the future the way he did. The only way was to take over the supply side, too. So, while other manufacturers were still in Japan and Taiwan and Korea, he set up shop in mainland China, making his own silicon: Merlin Technologies was born. Within three years there was hardly a computer or mobile phone on the planet that didn’t have his chips inside. Then the spacemen and the scientists and the military men came to call, and soon there were Merlin chips in every satellite guidance system, every missile, every fighter jet and every kind of esoteric piece of high-end equipment on Earth—and above it, and beyond it. Before long he’d left shopkeeping far behind. So that’s when he’d sold his chain of shops, took to the slopes and effectively disappeared from view while he planned his next move.
Ah, that was when Jade came into his life. He’d never had much time for women—correction, he’d never had any time for women—except, of course, as colleagues and business associates. That’s how it started with Jade. At around the time Merlin Technologies was founded and he’d decided to move here more or less permanently, Jade came into his life. Jade Marks she was, tall and skinny with long black hair, fake tan, and an Essex accent that could have etched silicon all on its own. She started as his assistant’s assistant, and moved around the company, but she never seemed far from view. Reports of her work were good—more than good—and so, to cut a long story short, she became his personal assistant, sharing an office, and, eventually, a bed. It was Jade who first heard his plans. It was often Jade who came up with the best ideas. It was Jade, for example, who alerted him to the tax advantages of philanthropy.
Wow, he’d forgotten that. That was her idea. Selling things? Been there, done that, she said. Making things to sell? Top of the tree, Jungle V. I. P., she said. The next step is give money to people who invent the things to make. Scientists. Engineers.
And then Jade disappeared, as suddenly as she’d arrived. She handed in her notice at the company’s New Year’s Eve party as 2020 became 2021. He begged her to stay, but she simply wouldn’t be persuaded. She had a mother in Basildon or Billericay or Braintree or somewhere who had Alzheimer’s, she said, and needed looking after. And so she just vanished. He remembered the last thing she said as he paced, impotently, while she packed her few belongings. “Don’t forget the past as well as the future, Ruxie,” she said. He couldn’t make much of it back then. But now, he thought, light was beginning to dawn. There’s some promising work in Cambridge, his advisers had told him. Archaeology, of all things.
He wondered what Jade was doing now.