Off the Algo, page 16
After a quick tour, Thomas opened a refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of white burgundy wine – fancy speak for French chardonnay - and three glasses. “It’s pretty nice outside, so let’s head out on the deck and enjoy the weather,” Tom suggested.
They sat on cushioned chairs. “I’m a little guilty of excessively tricking out my man cave, I think. At least that’s what my ex-wife claimed,” Thomas said, as he punched a couple of buttons on a small box mounted near his seat. Eight wooden slots on the deck, each about 4 feet long by 10 inches wide and arranged in an octagon around them, folded back like an automatic roof on a convertible car. Then, a stack of long clear acrylic panels arose from each hole, unfolding upward like a complicated multi-part car window being rolled up with the touch of a switch. Both John and Frank were fixated, watching the panels rise. In half a minute, the little deck sitting area was surrounded by a four-feet high fence comprised of eight see-through acrylic panels. As the panels completed their synchronized-swimming sort of formation, a flock of three ducks glided over the deck and splashed into the canal, with a few muted quacks as they landed.
“Are the birds controlled by that button, too?” joked John.
“No, but there is a little tent awning I can put up, on a circus pole right in the middle here, if it rains,” said Thomas, evincing both pride and a little bit of bourgeois embarrassment. “This will sound all first-worldly, but Paris tends to get a bit breezy and cold in the evening, and I finally just hacked around the problem,” he said. “I can also run an electric current through the panels, which polarize in one direction and make the panels opaque from the outside. No one can see in.”
As Tom finished, a small drop of pigeon poop landed on the deck next to him, a missive from one of the flock of tens of thousands in Paris. “Like I said that awning can be useful,” quipped Tom. “Perfect protection against bird poop, and the prying eyes of Parisian tourists, at the flick of a switch.”
John did notice that the acrylic walls more or less ensconced them in a draft-free cocoon right on the deck of a boat moored in the Canal St. Martin, as the city of Paris went about its frenetic gestures just fifty meters away up the steep canal wall.
“We had a phrase for this that I learned in law school,” said John.
“Really? What was it?” replied Tom, eagerly.
“It was, ‘Holy fucking shit this is cool,’” quipped John.
All three of them laughed and sipped. Whether Thomas did this daily, or this was a special event in the history of this specific man cave, John didn’t know. But the spot had been designed for this, and they were doing it.
“If you think this is cool, wait until Frank tells you about some of the man caves he’s seen,” said Tom.
“How on Earth did you end up here, doing this?” John asked. “Your dialect is Midwestern United States. That’s a long way from the bywaters of the Second Arrondissement.”
Thomas didn’t give away any confidences to John or Frank, but he did give an overview of how he had arrived where he was today. He explained that he had not been born into the highfalutin world of international wine brokering. When he graduated from St. Olaf College in the early 1980’s, jobs were scarce, and landed a job in a suburb outside Paris coordinating travel study groups from America. Then he took a clerk post with World Wine Brokers in Paris. Even though he didn’t know much of anything about wine, his willingness to work the graveyard shift landed him the clerk position.
Many US merchant buyers, notoriously penny pinching, waited until 5 pm, or even 11 pm local time, to place cheap calls to Paris. Tom’s job was to take the incoming orders. Customer preferences were kept on paper ledgers, with the customers’ prior years’ orders. Thomas was expected to pull the customer ledger before calling the customer back, to compare current orders he was taking against prior orders, which helped verify preferences, shipping addresses and payment information.
It was during these late-night clerking sessions that the newbie clerk first spotted an anomaly: Some American buyers were doubling or tripling the size of their previous orders.
On one call, Gallier took the opportunity to ask the buyer him why he was buying so much more wine this year. “Because of the rating that the Wine Advocate newsletter gave to the 1982 vintage last week. Robert Parker says it’s the vintage of the century,” replied the customer.
The next day, Gallier asked his boss if he had ever heard of The Wine Advocate or Robert Parker. “Isn’t he the South African doctor with the wine store in Johannesburg?” replied his boss. Gallier may have been young, but he was getting a quick study in arbitrage and inside information. If his boss – a major European wine broker - didn’t yet know about this “inside information,” how would anyone else? Perhaps only someone with access to the prior orders on the ledger cards that Gallier had sitting next to him.
That evening, Gallier made a decision. He borrowed every penny he could, and drained his own savings account of what was supposed to be future tuition money. He persuaded his French girlfriend to chip in from her trust fund. Cash on hand, Thomas Gallier placed deposits on advance orders for scores of cases of 1982 Bordeaux, a year prior to their release. The rest of the money – which he didn’t have – would not be due for a year, upon delivery. Gallier had in effect made a leveraged commodity bet.
A mere six months later, the “futures” market for 1982 Bordeaux had doubled, based upon emerging critical consensus for the vintage. Gallier’s investment had increased twenty-fold in value. Gallier decided that he liked the wine business. And international business dealings…and the 1980s. In the early 90’s, he opened his own wine brokerage – Thomas Gallier Wines. The 1990 Gulf War had caused a worldwide bust as the 1989 Bordeaux futures were being offered to the world, which provided Thomas with another wine buying opportunity.13
At the same time, the supposedly deep pockets of the world’s reinsurance pool, including “Lloyd’s of London,” were crippled by asbestos claims and other policies. The famous Lloyd’s of London went bust.14 Hundreds of Lloyd’s guarantors, called “names,” faced catastrophic capital calls, and they scrambled to raise cash by selling off assets. Elite families of England and Europe were forced to make wrenching decisions about what to sell - the family home, jewels, art treasures or the wine cellar? Often, the Lloyd’s investor “names” raised quick cash by dumping thousands of cases of fine wine onto the world wine auction and broker markets. Prices slumped. The world was awash with Bordeaux, and prices were ravaged by war, recession and huge new vintages coming to market.
Some of those bankrupt Lloyd’s names lost their wine holdings to bankruptcy proceedings, and thousands of cases in bonded storage were turned over to various UK bankruptcy administrators.
For a small fee, Gallier had provided price appraisals to those insolvency administrators. Gallier was the messenger delivering the bad news. Inevitably, Thomas was asked whether he could find buyers – any buyers, at any price - for thousands and thousands of cases of various vintages of Bordeaux, as well as vintage port and French Burgundy. Buyers were scarce, but Gallier was able to locate some who made bona fide purchases albeit at steep discounts. Seeing those low prices, and optimistic that the world would always be thirsty, Gallier decided to roll the dice again. He risked most of his bankroll to purchase the wine inventory that was being dumped onto the markets in the early 1990’s. He was often the only bidder.
Before closing out positions, the bankruptcy administrator typically sought the approval of one of the chief creditor groups in the Lloyds’ bankruptcy, which were a group of reinsurers based in Bermuda. Kirk Woodbury had been assigned the task of approving such sales. Kirk Woodbury had called Gallier directly about Gallier’s offer to buy thousands of cases now controlled by the UK administrators. Woodbury intentionally stretched out the “negotiations” with Gallier for a month, because they were the most interesting phone calls that the wine-lover Woodbury got to make. And with Woodbury’s blessing, as a matter of “due diligence,” Gallier made sure that five “audit sample” cases made their way to Woodbury at his Bermuda offices.
The world wine markets rebounded sharply a few years later, and Gallier had done it again. He now had the capital and the worldwide contacts that made him a leading global wine broker. Instead of the century of time it took other firms to build a worldwide wine brokerage, Tom Gallier had built his business in a mere decade.
Thomas turned to Frank Clicquot and said, “So that’s my enthralling story of the past few decades in the wine business. Do you think John can process a story about several centuries in the church organ business?”
John, again feeling the liberty of ethanol plus being on a mini-vacation, couldn’t help himself, and asked Frank, “So your last name, Clicquot – is it the same one as on the famous champagne house, ‘Clicquot’?”
Frank paused a moment, took a sip, and said, “Actually, yes. Another branch of the family. My great-great grandfather was the cousin of the Widow Clicquot’s father-in-law, who started the champagne house. My given name is actually Francois Clicquot.”
John was dumbstruck for a moment. It was like asking someone named Ford if they were related to Henry Ford, and getting a “yes” answer. He jumped right in. “Okay I’m confused. What does a bottle from the family of the Grand Dame Rose have to do with fixing old organs?” he asked. Frank took note of John’s particular reference to one of the best but rarest champagnes on Earth – Grand Dame Rose – virtually unknown to 99% of humanity. Clicquot, like Volkswagen, is a popular consumer brand. But comparatively few know that Volkswagen owns Bentley, Porsche, and Lamborghini. Similarly, few would know the specialized holdings of the house of Clicquot.
“It’s an old story. Predates the Revolution,” deadpanned Frank, who then described the seven-generation, centuries-old connection between his branch of the famous organ-building Clicquot family, and the champagne house “Clicquot.” Tom already knew the story, but Frank genuinely appreciated retelling it to those who could appreciate it.
John asked an almost joking question of Frank, having no idea of the color and depth which would be revealed in the response. “This may be naïve, but which clientele are more interesting – the organ clients or the champagne clients?”
A smile came to Frank’s face. “I didn’t understand why my ancestors stayed with this line of business, until it started happening to me,” said Frank. “Let me give you a sampling.” And then Frank began to tell a story.
Frank recounted how he had been called in by the Chinese ‘government’ on an emergency basis. The subject was a grand two-story pipe organ which had originally been imported into Shanghai in the early 1800’s for the Anglican Cathedral of the Trinity. It was moved to various locations within Shanghai over the decades, and when Mao Zedong and the Chinese communists seized control of China in 1949, several millions of people were executed - including most landlords - and their properties confiscated. This particular organ was commandeered by Mao loyalists and presented to Mao as a gift, who installed the instrument in a party hall near one of his private residences. It disappeared in the chaos of the ensuing decades as genocide raged throughout China in its “Cultural Revolution.”
Like many valuable artifacts which disappear in purges, family members stole it. One of Mao’s many grandsons, Mao Zhisui, a powerful general in the Chinese Army, came to possess the organ and built a wing on his villa to house it. Mao may have been long gone, but if there were 40 people who ruled China, the grandson Zhisui was in that group. Several of Zhisui’s children played the great piece, but several of the key mechanisms has recently failed and needed repair. Frank Clicquot was summoned.
Frank was met at the Shanghai Pudong airport by a coterie of general Zhisui’s staff, who whisked Frank off to his hotel and an hour later directly to Mao Zhisui’s home. Wise to the exertions and even extortions that might be involved, Frank had fully cleared his Chinese visit in advance with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the U.S. State Department, and had arranged for one of his college classmates and a friend to play a part. They had dressed in ostentatiously Western apparel and were waiting in the hotel lobby to greet him as he was departing with the General’s staff. Frank’s friends referenced their dinner plans with Frank later that day at the residence of the French charges d’affairs, and Frank loudly confirmed for everyone to hear that “General Zhisui” would have him back by then, for sure. It was a clunky piece of spy craft, but effective. Any option of not returning Frank to the company of the French ambassador had just been nixed. Failure would become an international incident.
Frank arrived at the site and after he inspected the organ, he inquired as to when he would be speaking with the general. Zhisui’s staff indicated that General Zhisui wasn’t available. Frank had been through this dance before, in many countries and cultures. As had his ancestors.
“Well, why don’t you take me back to my hotel, I’ll catch tonight’s flight back to Paris after my dinner with the charges d’affairs. I may be able to return in three months, if the general is available then,” said Frank, matter-of-factly, as he zipped closed his well-worn leather bag of hand tools.
The general’s aide quickly withdrew from the room. A few minutes later, General Zhisui entered. Undoubtedly fully briefed that Frank was expected at the French embassy in a few hours and that he would be departing if the general was not present, General Zhisui had no choice but to employ charm. After all, it was imperative that his children continued their organ lessons, and his wife had been insufferable for weeks with the organ in disrepair.
The conversation proceeded quickly, and Frank even employed a few choice Chinese phrases. His expert eye discerned some decorative Chinese calligraphy on the organ console. Knowing that Chairman Mao had famously admired calligraphy and even invented a popular style of the lettering, Frank asked Zhisui, “Is that your grandfather’s calligraphy? It’s beautiful.”
Zhisui wasn’t expecting that, and the stoicism on his face broke with the swelling of pride. Here was this Westerner, summoned to fix this priceless spoil of the decades of civil and external wars, standing in his home – and the first thing he mentioned was his grandfather Mao’s exquisite artwork. Zhisui, in his best broken yet excited English, dropped all eminence pretense and began to tell the story. His interpreter, waiting in the wings, stepped in and assisted with the translation. Zhisui spoke excitedly for 20 minutes. The discussion ensued for another hour, much of it by Zhisui proudly telling both his family history and the known history of the organ. Frank provided some details about the style of organ which Zhisui did not know, and Zhisui hung on every word. A few times, Zhisui had his interpreter ask for clarification, so that every detail could be included in meticulous notes without error.
Frank Clicquot then realized that, from that moment onward, there would be no one running interference between General Zhisui and Frank. In effect, he had Zhisui’s direct line. In the future, the general would personally take Frank’s call, and extend him any favors inside China that Frank might one day need.
Frank was now hooked up at the highest levels of China. Because he could fix an organ.
With a bit of drama, Frank finished his recounting of the story by noting that as he had boarded his outbound flight the next evening, the airline seat included an anniversary brochure decorated with the flags of the many countries to which the airline flew. Frank counted the number of flags and reckoned that he was on a first-name, direct-call basis with the leaders of at least as many countries as depicted on the airline’s flashy brochure.
“And that, John, is the best way I can answer whether I get to meet interesting people in my line of work,” said Frank.
Later, Frank excused himself from Tom’s boat in order to attend a dinner engagement, and John and Thomas headed off to dinner at Marie-Helene’s, a small bistro in the Marais district about six blocks from Tom’s office. Thomas was a regular there, and among its clientele, he was the only person allowed to “BYOB.” Thomas knew there was an underground well-stocked cellar dating back over two centuries. The lore was that Thomas Jefferson had frequented the cellar during his years in Paris.
Thomas Gallier told John he was going to show off a little bit. By the end of their dinner, they had polished off three bottles. Gabriel was enthusiastic about picking Gallier’s brain regarding the Bordeaux wine trade, and they spent almost an hour discussing the pricing anomalies pertaining to these specific bottles, versus their more famous competitors. This later melded into a discussion of perceived valuations of antiques and relics, and after Gallier made a specific literary reference, they discovered that they had both been fans of author Philip K. Dick and his themes of alternative histories juxtaposed against the market for real antiques versus counterfeits.
Thomas gave John an overview of the clients for the high-end Bordeaux and Burgundy wines. Gallier explained to John that when he first started his brokerage, he had studiously maintained his ledger of the buyers that he had arranged for Lloyd’s, and Gallier’s rolodex was now the Who’s Who of the international elites.
Gallier confided to John that all his business really needed was a good phone, a good computer and a call answering service. And, of course, his rolodex ledger.
“Hasn’t it all changed with the internet?” John asked. Tom paused and then gave a considered explanation. Sure, there were internet sites and newcomers to the wine business. But the real value was information that wasn’t public. “Google’s algorithm is pretty good, but the most valuable information isn’t there,” noted Tom. And possessing that information led to getting more of it. Gallier gave John a few examples of events which he had been asked to outfit the past few years.
Thomas told John that he could always call him to pick his brain on wine matters, if and when John might need a particular introduction into a particular echelon in a particular part of the world – the echelons which had always been on Thomas’ ledger of buyers, and which seemed to keep increasing as the world’s wealth increased.
They sat on cushioned chairs. “I’m a little guilty of excessively tricking out my man cave, I think. At least that’s what my ex-wife claimed,” Thomas said, as he punched a couple of buttons on a small box mounted near his seat. Eight wooden slots on the deck, each about 4 feet long by 10 inches wide and arranged in an octagon around them, folded back like an automatic roof on a convertible car. Then, a stack of long clear acrylic panels arose from each hole, unfolding upward like a complicated multi-part car window being rolled up with the touch of a switch. Both John and Frank were fixated, watching the panels rise. In half a minute, the little deck sitting area was surrounded by a four-feet high fence comprised of eight see-through acrylic panels. As the panels completed their synchronized-swimming sort of formation, a flock of three ducks glided over the deck and splashed into the canal, with a few muted quacks as they landed.
“Are the birds controlled by that button, too?” joked John.
“No, but there is a little tent awning I can put up, on a circus pole right in the middle here, if it rains,” said Thomas, evincing both pride and a little bit of bourgeois embarrassment. “This will sound all first-worldly, but Paris tends to get a bit breezy and cold in the evening, and I finally just hacked around the problem,” he said. “I can also run an electric current through the panels, which polarize in one direction and make the panels opaque from the outside. No one can see in.”
As Tom finished, a small drop of pigeon poop landed on the deck next to him, a missive from one of the flock of tens of thousands in Paris. “Like I said that awning can be useful,” quipped Tom. “Perfect protection against bird poop, and the prying eyes of Parisian tourists, at the flick of a switch.”
John did notice that the acrylic walls more or less ensconced them in a draft-free cocoon right on the deck of a boat moored in the Canal St. Martin, as the city of Paris went about its frenetic gestures just fifty meters away up the steep canal wall.
“We had a phrase for this that I learned in law school,” said John.
“Really? What was it?” replied Tom, eagerly.
“It was, ‘Holy fucking shit this is cool,’” quipped John.
All three of them laughed and sipped. Whether Thomas did this daily, or this was a special event in the history of this specific man cave, John didn’t know. But the spot had been designed for this, and they were doing it.
“If you think this is cool, wait until Frank tells you about some of the man caves he’s seen,” said Tom.
“How on Earth did you end up here, doing this?” John asked. “Your dialect is Midwestern United States. That’s a long way from the bywaters of the Second Arrondissement.”
Thomas didn’t give away any confidences to John or Frank, but he did give an overview of how he had arrived where he was today. He explained that he had not been born into the highfalutin world of international wine brokering. When he graduated from St. Olaf College in the early 1980’s, jobs were scarce, and landed a job in a suburb outside Paris coordinating travel study groups from America. Then he took a clerk post with World Wine Brokers in Paris. Even though he didn’t know much of anything about wine, his willingness to work the graveyard shift landed him the clerk position.
Many US merchant buyers, notoriously penny pinching, waited until 5 pm, or even 11 pm local time, to place cheap calls to Paris. Tom’s job was to take the incoming orders. Customer preferences were kept on paper ledgers, with the customers’ prior years’ orders. Thomas was expected to pull the customer ledger before calling the customer back, to compare current orders he was taking against prior orders, which helped verify preferences, shipping addresses and payment information.
It was during these late-night clerking sessions that the newbie clerk first spotted an anomaly: Some American buyers were doubling or tripling the size of their previous orders.
On one call, Gallier took the opportunity to ask the buyer him why he was buying so much more wine this year. “Because of the rating that the Wine Advocate newsletter gave to the 1982 vintage last week. Robert Parker says it’s the vintage of the century,” replied the customer.
The next day, Gallier asked his boss if he had ever heard of The Wine Advocate or Robert Parker. “Isn’t he the South African doctor with the wine store in Johannesburg?” replied his boss. Gallier may have been young, but he was getting a quick study in arbitrage and inside information. If his boss – a major European wine broker - didn’t yet know about this “inside information,” how would anyone else? Perhaps only someone with access to the prior orders on the ledger cards that Gallier had sitting next to him.
That evening, Gallier made a decision. He borrowed every penny he could, and drained his own savings account of what was supposed to be future tuition money. He persuaded his French girlfriend to chip in from her trust fund. Cash on hand, Thomas Gallier placed deposits on advance orders for scores of cases of 1982 Bordeaux, a year prior to their release. The rest of the money – which he didn’t have – would not be due for a year, upon delivery. Gallier had in effect made a leveraged commodity bet.
A mere six months later, the “futures” market for 1982 Bordeaux had doubled, based upon emerging critical consensus for the vintage. Gallier’s investment had increased twenty-fold in value. Gallier decided that he liked the wine business. And international business dealings…and the 1980s. In the early 90’s, he opened his own wine brokerage – Thomas Gallier Wines. The 1990 Gulf War had caused a worldwide bust as the 1989 Bordeaux futures were being offered to the world, which provided Thomas with another wine buying opportunity.13
At the same time, the supposedly deep pockets of the world’s reinsurance pool, including “Lloyd’s of London,” were crippled by asbestos claims and other policies. The famous Lloyd’s of London went bust.14 Hundreds of Lloyd’s guarantors, called “names,” faced catastrophic capital calls, and they scrambled to raise cash by selling off assets. Elite families of England and Europe were forced to make wrenching decisions about what to sell - the family home, jewels, art treasures or the wine cellar? Often, the Lloyd’s investor “names” raised quick cash by dumping thousands of cases of fine wine onto the world wine auction and broker markets. Prices slumped. The world was awash with Bordeaux, and prices were ravaged by war, recession and huge new vintages coming to market.
Some of those bankrupt Lloyd’s names lost their wine holdings to bankruptcy proceedings, and thousands of cases in bonded storage were turned over to various UK bankruptcy administrators.
For a small fee, Gallier had provided price appraisals to those insolvency administrators. Gallier was the messenger delivering the bad news. Inevitably, Thomas was asked whether he could find buyers – any buyers, at any price - for thousands and thousands of cases of various vintages of Bordeaux, as well as vintage port and French Burgundy. Buyers were scarce, but Gallier was able to locate some who made bona fide purchases albeit at steep discounts. Seeing those low prices, and optimistic that the world would always be thirsty, Gallier decided to roll the dice again. He risked most of his bankroll to purchase the wine inventory that was being dumped onto the markets in the early 1990’s. He was often the only bidder.
Before closing out positions, the bankruptcy administrator typically sought the approval of one of the chief creditor groups in the Lloyds’ bankruptcy, which were a group of reinsurers based in Bermuda. Kirk Woodbury had been assigned the task of approving such sales. Kirk Woodbury had called Gallier directly about Gallier’s offer to buy thousands of cases now controlled by the UK administrators. Woodbury intentionally stretched out the “negotiations” with Gallier for a month, because they were the most interesting phone calls that the wine-lover Woodbury got to make. And with Woodbury’s blessing, as a matter of “due diligence,” Gallier made sure that five “audit sample” cases made their way to Woodbury at his Bermuda offices.
The world wine markets rebounded sharply a few years later, and Gallier had done it again. He now had the capital and the worldwide contacts that made him a leading global wine broker. Instead of the century of time it took other firms to build a worldwide wine brokerage, Tom Gallier had built his business in a mere decade.
Thomas turned to Frank Clicquot and said, “So that’s my enthralling story of the past few decades in the wine business. Do you think John can process a story about several centuries in the church organ business?”
John, again feeling the liberty of ethanol plus being on a mini-vacation, couldn’t help himself, and asked Frank, “So your last name, Clicquot – is it the same one as on the famous champagne house, ‘Clicquot’?”
Frank paused a moment, took a sip, and said, “Actually, yes. Another branch of the family. My great-great grandfather was the cousin of the Widow Clicquot’s father-in-law, who started the champagne house. My given name is actually Francois Clicquot.”
John was dumbstruck for a moment. It was like asking someone named Ford if they were related to Henry Ford, and getting a “yes” answer. He jumped right in. “Okay I’m confused. What does a bottle from the family of the Grand Dame Rose have to do with fixing old organs?” he asked. Frank took note of John’s particular reference to one of the best but rarest champagnes on Earth – Grand Dame Rose – virtually unknown to 99% of humanity. Clicquot, like Volkswagen, is a popular consumer brand. But comparatively few know that Volkswagen owns Bentley, Porsche, and Lamborghini. Similarly, few would know the specialized holdings of the house of Clicquot.
“It’s an old story. Predates the Revolution,” deadpanned Frank, who then described the seven-generation, centuries-old connection between his branch of the famous organ-building Clicquot family, and the champagne house “Clicquot.” Tom already knew the story, but Frank genuinely appreciated retelling it to those who could appreciate it.
John asked an almost joking question of Frank, having no idea of the color and depth which would be revealed in the response. “This may be naïve, but which clientele are more interesting – the organ clients or the champagne clients?”
A smile came to Frank’s face. “I didn’t understand why my ancestors stayed with this line of business, until it started happening to me,” said Frank. “Let me give you a sampling.” And then Frank began to tell a story.
Frank recounted how he had been called in by the Chinese ‘government’ on an emergency basis. The subject was a grand two-story pipe organ which had originally been imported into Shanghai in the early 1800’s for the Anglican Cathedral of the Trinity. It was moved to various locations within Shanghai over the decades, and when Mao Zedong and the Chinese communists seized control of China in 1949, several millions of people were executed - including most landlords - and their properties confiscated. This particular organ was commandeered by Mao loyalists and presented to Mao as a gift, who installed the instrument in a party hall near one of his private residences. It disappeared in the chaos of the ensuing decades as genocide raged throughout China in its “Cultural Revolution.”
Like many valuable artifacts which disappear in purges, family members stole it. One of Mao’s many grandsons, Mao Zhisui, a powerful general in the Chinese Army, came to possess the organ and built a wing on his villa to house it. Mao may have been long gone, but if there were 40 people who ruled China, the grandson Zhisui was in that group. Several of Zhisui’s children played the great piece, but several of the key mechanisms has recently failed and needed repair. Frank Clicquot was summoned.
Frank was met at the Shanghai Pudong airport by a coterie of general Zhisui’s staff, who whisked Frank off to his hotel and an hour later directly to Mao Zhisui’s home. Wise to the exertions and even extortions that might be involved, Frank had fully cleared his Chinese visit in advance with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the U.S. State Department, and had arranged for one of his college classmates and a friend to play a part. They had dressed in ostentatiously Western apparel and were waiting in the hotel lobby to greet him as he was departing with the General’s staff. Frank’s friends referenced their dinner plans with Frank later that day at the residence of the French charges d’affairs, and Frank loudly confirmed for everyone to hear that “General Zhisui” would have him back by then, for sure. It was a clunky piece of spy craft, but effective. Any option of not returning Frank to the company of the French ambassador had just been nixed. Failure would become an international incident.
Frank arrived at the site and after he inspected the organ, he inquired as to when he would be speaking with the general. Zhisui’s staff indicated that General Zhisui wasn’t available. Frank had been through this dance before, in many countries and cultures. As had his ancestors.
“Well, why don’t you take me back to my hotel, I’ll catch tonight’s flight back to Paris after my dinner with the charges d’affairs. I may be able to return in three months, if the general is available then,” said Frank, matter-of-factly, as he zipped closed his well-worn leather bag of hand tools.
The general’s aide quickly withdrew from the room. A few minutes later, General Zhisui entered. Undoubtedly fully briefed that Frank was expected at the French embassy in a few hours and that he would be departing if the general was not present, General Zhisui had no choice but to employ charm. After all, it was imperative that his children continued their organ lessons, and his wife had been insufferable for weeks with the organ in disrepair.
The conversation proceeded quickly, and Frank even employed a few choice Chinese phrases. His expert eye discerned some decorative Chinese calligraphy on the organ console. Knowing that Chairman Mao had famously admired calligraphy and even invented a popular style of the lettering, Frank asked Zhisui, “Is that your grandfather’s calligraphy? It’s beautiful.”
Zhisui wasn’t expecting that, and the stoicism on his face broke with the swelling of pride. Here was this Westerner, summoned to fix this priceless spoil of the decades of civil and external wars, standing in his home – and the first thing he mentioned was his grandfather Mao’s exquisite artwork. Zhisui, in his best broken yet excited English, dropped all eminence pretense and began to tell the story. His interpreter, waiting in the wings, stepped in and assisted with the translation. Zhisui spoke excitedly for 20 minutes. The discussion ensued for another hour, much of it by Zhisui proudly telling both his family history and the known history of the organ. Frank provided some details about the style of organ which Zhisui did not know, and Zhisui hung on every word. A few times, Zhisui had his interpreter ask for clarification, so that every detail could be included in meticulous notes without error.
Frank Clicquot then realized that, from that moment onward, there would be no one running interference between General Zhisui and Frank. In effect, he had Zhisui’s direct line. In the future, the general would personally take Frank’s call, and extend him any favors inside China that Frank might one day need.
Frank was now hooked up at the highest levels of China. Because he could fix an organ.
With a bit of drama, Frank finished his recounting of the story by noting that as he had boarded his outbound flight the next evening, the airline seat included an anniversary brochure decorated with the flags of the many countries to which the airline flew. Frank counted the number of flags and reckoned that he was on a first-name, direct-call basis with the leaders of at least as many countries as depicted on the airline’s flashy brochure.
“And that, John, is the best way I can answer whether I get to meet interesting people in my line of work,” said Frank.
Later, Frank excused himself from Tom’s boat in order to attend a dinner engagement, and John and Thomas headed off to dinner at Marie-Helene’s, a small bistro in the Marais district about six blocks from Tom’s office. Thomas was a regular there, and among its clientele, he was the only person allowed to “BYOB.” Thomas knew there was an underground well-stocked cellar dating back over two centuries. The lore was that Thomas Jefferson had frequented the cellar during his years in Paris.
Thomas Gallier told John he was going to show off a little bit. By the end of their dinner, they had polished off three bottles. Gabriel was enthusiastic about picking Gallier’s brain regarding the Bordeaux wine trade, and they spent almost an hour discussing the pricing anomalies pertaining to these specific bottles, versus their more famous competitors. This later melded into a discussion of perceived valuations of antiques and relics, and after Gallier made a specific literary reference, they discovered that they had both been fans of author Philip K. Dick and his themes of alternative histories juxtaposed against the market for real antiques versus counterfeits.
Thomas gave John an overview of the clients for the high-end Bordeaux and Burgundy wines. Gallier explained to John that when he first started his brokerage, he had studiously maintained his ledger of the buyers that he had arranged for Lloyd’s, and Gallier’s rolodex was now the Who’s Who of the international elites.
Gallier confided to John that all his business really needed was a good phone, a good computer and a call answering service. And, of course, his rolodex ledger.
“Hasn’t it all changed with the internet?” John asked. Tom paused and then gave a considered explanation. Sure, there were internet sites and newcomers to the wine business. But the real value was information that wasn’t public. “Google’s algorithm is pretty good, but the most valuable information isn’t there,” noted Tom. And possessing that information led to getting more of it. Gallier gave John a few examples of events which he had been asked to outfit the past few years.
Thomas told John that he could always call him to pick his brain on wine matters, if and when John might need a particular introduction into a particular echelon in a particular part of the world – the echelons which had always been on Thomas’ ledger of buyers, and which seemed to keep increasing as the world’s wealth increased.
