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The two twenty-something employees of Aquinnah Capital, Chris Langley and John Kapinos, flew out of Kennedy Airport directly to Antananarivo, Madagascar.

Chris Langley called Paul early the next day from his room at a boutique hotel in the capital city. Between him and John and the two security officers, they had bought out the entire small hotel. The weather was warm and humid. In Madagascar, it was the wet season.

*

The next few weeks were anxious ones as Paul watched the satellite weather service get the weather in Madagascar just about right. The cyclone hit the country, causing landslides and flooding and wiping out the entire new crop of vanilla. The price of vanilla beans shot up to nearly $700 a kilo. As expected, the share price of Nestlé dropped suddenly, from $118 to $95. Those October puts were now each worth over $25 per share. That $5 million was suddenly worth $55 million.

Paul sold the vanilla beans a few weeks later for $680 per kilo.

Within three weeks, he had turned $100 million into just over $500 million. He knew of bigger trades before. Much bigger. A hedge fund manager named Bill Ackman had once turned $27 million into $2.6 billion in a little over a month, the single best trade of all time.

But this one wasn’t too shabby.

So why wasn’t everybody doing this? Maybe not everyone wanted to take a chance on the vicissitudes of weather on the other side of the planet. Also, not everyone knew how thinly traded vanilla beans really were, how small the market. It was all a black box to most people.

It was a bet, but a bet he had won.

*

Arkady Galkin’s office was located on the fortieth floor of a modern skyscraper on Fifth Avenue, at the southeast corner of Central Park. The interior had the look of a private equity firm, or a hedge fund, or any other kind of mahogany-wainscoted long-established financial office.

Paul waited for ten minutes on a couch behind a glass coffee table on which the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal had been arranged, a folded statement for Arkady Galkin’s account in his breast pocket. Finally, a pretty black-haired woman with brown eyes—Galkin seemed to surround himself with attractive women—emerged to escort him to Galkin’s office. She asked if he wanted coffee or tea or water, and Paul said no.

Galkin’s office was, no surprise, enormous and grandiose. Glass walls on two sides, a long walk to a long glass desk that was bare except for a landline phone and a three-array monitor.

Galkin was wearing an expensive-looking gray pinstriped suit with a blue open-collar shirt. He embraced Paul and said, “Why do I owe pleasure to see you this morning?”

Paul handed him the statement.

For once, Galkin was stunned into silence. He finally said, “Paul Brightman. Appearances can be deceiving. Tell me how you do this.”

Paul laughed. “I don’t know that I could do this again,” he said. “There was a lot of luck.”

“Then I would like some of your luck,” Galkin said. “Come work for me.”

“Thank you, but no,” Paul said. “I like my job.”

“You haven’t heard my offer yet.”

*

When Paul told Tatyana about her father’s job offer that evening, she looked up from her iPad, where she was editing a photo. Her eyes widened. “What did you say?”

“Haven’t responded yet.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I like working at Aquinnah Capital. I like working for Bernie. He’s a decent guy, and he supports me. It’s a good job.”

Paul didn’t even tell her what kind of a deal her father had offered. It was admittedly pretty spectacular. Paul could easily double or triple his income, and that was just to start. He’d be jumping several rungs up the career ladder. He’d be Galkin’s head of all U.S. equities, a major promotion.

Tatyana nodded, rueful. “I get why working for my father wouldn’t appeal to you, sure. But I have to tell you, I’m actually shocked Papa made you the offer.”

“Why’s that?”

“Business is one thing he’s unsentimental about. So he must actually think you’re hot shit.”

Paul just smiled.

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Hot shit.”

Teasingly, he shrugged. “Why don’t you come find out?”