Only the Strongest Survive (34 page)

“
Alex, you
get one hundred thousand dollars today, George, you can have four
hundred and fifty thousand …
.” In this
way she determined the limits of everyone’s trading, while she made
all the decisions regarding large deals.

“
At the
moment, there’s a great demand for shares so we must make good use
of it. I estimate that this will go on for about two weeks. You
know what you must do after ….” This is how she spoke at the
morning meetings, preparing her employees for the day and giving
them guidelines.

*

The next
day
, what Emely had predicted actually
happened. Zone Mider published good results and the price of their
shares grew by 4 percent by the end of the day.

When Emely
went out for a while, Mike said to one of his
colleagues
, “The boss got it right again.
I don’t know how she does it.”

George looked at him with a dour expression
and took a deep breath. Ever since he had worked there, he had been
in love with Emely. He admired her beauty, but was even more
attracted to her desire for success and the way she thought. As he
looked at the computer screen, he imagined her returning his kisses
while he held her tight.

“What’s happening with bonds?” Lara asked
him.

“
Oh, nothing
special, there’s no point in buying anything at the moment.
Everyone has gone mad over shares, so the demand for bonds is way
down.”

“
And when
will all the changes take place?” These were stupid questions asked
by someone with nothing better to say. Lara was not really
interested in what they were talking about, but she had liked
George ever since joining the company, whereas he wasn’t interested
in her.

“
I don’t
know. I have a feeling that everything will drag on for another
month or so.—No, hang on a minute. Emely said this morning that it
would be two weeks. We’ll see.”

“Shall I bring you a coffee or something?”
Lara offered.

“
Thank you,
Lara, I’ve got everything I need.” He gave her a friendly
look.
Except
Emely
, he thought with bitterness. As
soon as Lara set off for her desk, he began thinking of his
boss.
That body … she’s so
smart … so beautiful ….

“George, sell the Royal Chicken bonds. Remind
me again, how many do we have?” He shook when he heard Emely’s
voice.

“
Hmm, unless
I’m mistaken, we’ve got four thousand five hundred
lots.”

She smiled,
showing her perfect, white teeth. George felt a lump in his throat
that was stopping him from breathing.

“
Look at the
file. I’d like the exact number.”

“
I’m on it.
OK, it’s five thousand five hundred. I don’t know why I thought it
was four.”

Emely smiled
once more and he could feel
the blood
rushing to his cheeks.
Damn
it, I’m such an idiot. Only yesterday I saw how many there are. I
always say something stupid.

He immediately carried out the transaction as
ordered. He knew she needed the money in order to buy the
securities that would bring in more money at that particular
moment.

When at
lunchtime the brokers went to lunch together, Mike said, “I really
don’t know how she knows exactly which papers are worth buying. As
long as I’ve worked here, her predictions have very rarely not come
true.”

George wisely
remained silent. He had been working for Emely from the
beginning—as her first employee—and had experienced her good and
bad forecasts.

*

At that time, he was not in love with her
yet. He could still remember seeing her for the first time. She was
waiting for him in a shabby office which held only three desks and
one computer. A strong smell of old furniture hit him as soon as he
entered.

“We’ll remodel the office soon,” she told him
encouragingly when she saw the horrified look in his eyes. “Please,
sit down.”

He sat on an
old chair and looked at her leaning on a desk. Her appearance was
nothing special; she was wearing a pair of slacks and a white
cotton shirt. He liked her face, but he admired her body even
more.

“I’ll be quite open with you. May I call you
George?”

“Yes, no problem.”

She put her hands on her knees. “I’ve not
started trading yet, I intend to begin next week. I’ve got quite a
lot of experience in trading and decided to set up on my own, after
having worked in a stockbroking company.”

“I see,” he said.

“I need someone who will take care of my
contracts and later sell and buy for me.”

“Aha.”

He was
looking at her symmetrical face and reddish-brown hair, at the same
time noticing the moldy patches on the walls which hadn’t seen
paint for at least ten years. The office disgusted him and he found
the thought of working for a company that hadn’t even begun doing
business less than attractive. He had had a few interviews already
and been rejected everywhere. He was in his last year at college,
studying economics, and was interested in becoming a broker or
something similar. Everywhere he had applied to, he was told to
come back when he had finished his course. But he needed work
urgently since he had had an argument with his mother, packed his
clothes, and left the house where he had grown up without even
saying goodbye. Nothing in the world could make him go
back.

“It’ll be a bit hard at first because I don’t
have much capital to play with yet. In about a year I should be
able to apply for a bank loan. So, are you interested at all?”

“Of course I am,” George lied.

In fact she
hadn’t told him anything that he would find attractive, but he knew
he’d have to take the job. Nothing else was out there for him.
Whatever the job, he needed it. Anything was better than going back
home.

The next day
they began organizing the office. Emely bought some paint and
brushes and they painted the walls first and then the window
frames. Next, they varnished the desks and in four days they were
in business. Emely bought a big plant, which added some refreshing
scenery to their working environment.

At the
beginning, there was not much work. They bought a few securities
and then waited, doing analyses. The stock market was going through
a quiet phase. But only a month later, things changed. The price of
the shares they had bought began going up drastically, which meant
the company’s capital was growing proportionately.

“Shouldn’t we buy some bonds, too?” George
suggested.

“No,” she said, “can’t you see we’re doing
alright.”

“That’s true, but having all our capital in
shares could be risky. Just like prices go up, they may fall
again.”

Emely knew he
was right, but her desire for money was blocking her. She knew they
should invest a part of what they had into more secure papers, but
she didn
’t do it, relying on the thought
that she was smarter than others and would not make mistakes. She
needed to increase her capital and didn’t want to wait for years to
do that.
I’ll be more careful
later,
she thought,
a little bit of risk at this stage can’t do any
harm.

“If you think so. I do hope these prices keep
going up for a while longer.”

And they did.
The prices went up for a few months and Emely took advantage of
this. As soon as the value of a particular type of shares fell by
over
20 percent, she sold them and bought
others. In a few months she managed to treble her capital. These
were days—and nights—filled with tension.

Emely often
couldn’t sleep. So much money invested in shares worried her and
often she woke in fear that she had lost it all. George noticed it
every morning as she sat down at her computer. He was tense all the
time also, but the money was not his, lessening the burden for
him.

I’ll stay here until I find another job,
he thought at the beginning, but later he got so engrossed
working for Emely that the thought of working somewhere else never
entered his head. His salary barely covered the rent, and he knew
that Emely was unable to give him more. The knowledge and
experience he was gaining seemed much more important. He admired
her as she drew the diagrams, explaining to him why she thought the
price of certain shares would grow. She told him things you
couldn’t learn from books. And yes, her forecasts did come true,
usually. Until that dark day.

*

Emely was the
first to come to work and when George entered the office, it
already
smelled of coffee. He never found
it difficult to go to work and was always pleased to be able to
spend a day with her. But this morning she seemed absentminded. As
if she was sensing something terrible. And it really was terrible.
As soon as she turned on her computer, she gasped. All the share
prices were falling rapidly, by 6 percent at first, but within the
next half-hour, by 8 percent. It was clear there was a general
panic on the stock exchange, something that hadn’t happened for
several years. Emely immediately entered into the program a demand
for specific shares to be sold, but the problem was that everyone
else was doing the same. Everyone wanted to sell their papers
immediately and no one was buying them. This could only mean one
thing—a catastrophe.

Emely was
still hoping that it was just a short crisis
so she didn’t sell all the shares. She believed that she
had bought good companies that would not be affected by this
crisis. With horror in their eyes Emely and George stared at the
computer monitor and the rapidly falling numbers displayed on it.
Emely was in a panic. George had a stomachache, watching her going
through this agony. He would have done anything to be able to help
her. But nothing could be done and they both knew it. It was like
watching a house burn down with no firefighters in
sight.

Those were
terrible days. Two weeks passed before Emely was able to sell most
of the shares. She had to admit she had made a big mistake. She
looked as if she had spent two weeks on a lonely island with no
food and water. She came to work without makeup and had no will to
live. Only a quarter of the money left to her by her mother
remained. She wondered if there was any point in going
on.

She decided to close the office, but this
time it was George who insisted that they had to persevere.

“But I can’t pay you,” she said.

“
It doesn’t
matter, you’ll pay me when you can.” He kept it to himself that he
had to pay his rent; otherwise the landlady would evict
him.

“No, George, I think it’s best if I start
working for someone else again. It’s clear I’m not fit to run my
own company.”

“
Of course
you are. This was just a very useful experience. All is not yet
lost.”

He kept
telling her this every day and after a while she recovered.
Together they decided on the proportions of money they would invest
in secure papers, the proportion set for low-risk shares, and the
proportion for high-risk ones. And so they created their investment
portfolio and laid the guidelines for future
investments.

“
Profits
won’t be quite so high,” Emely said, “but at the same time we won’t
be able to lose most of our capital.”

“Yes, slow and secure is better,” George
agreed.

*

During the
next few years they slowly and securely increased their capital.
George bragged to his friends about the
Internet investments he was making with his boss. “Since
I’ve been working for her, my capital has grown all
along.”

After a while
he saved up some money and began investing it like Emely did,
simply buying the same securities she bought, only a smaller number
of them. This was his capital and all the profits were
his.

“
In a year,”
he told his friends, “the increase is 30 to 100
percent.”

“What? You invest one thousand dollars at the
beginning of the year and at the end of the year, you have two
thousand. Is that right?” asked one of his friends.

“That’s right,” George said proudly.

He boasted so
much that, later, one of his friends said, “Listen, George, I’ve
got some money. Why don’t you buy shares and bonds for me and
increase my capital, and I’d give you a share of my
profits?”

George gave him a surprised look. “I don’t
know if I can do that.”

He told Emely about the suggestion and she
waved it off. “It’s not quite that simple.”

But she thought about it during the
night.

“Listen, George, why not?” she said the next
morning. “Why don’t we sign a contract stating that we manage his
capital? Banks and other stockbroking companies do it, why
shouldn’t we? If he wants to invest his money, let him. Our risk is
minimal.”

George stared
at her. He didn
’t know when he began
finding her eyes so beautiful. A number of times now he had caught
himself thinking about kissing her on the mouth while he was gazing
into her eyes. Coming back to reality, he blinked and said, “Yes,
why not?”

Not
having
this type of contract ready, Emely
sent George to one of the stockbroking companies under the pretext
of investing some money. She then copied the contract he was given,
almost word for word.