The thing is that Hans Eiger did not create Die Festung because it was a good idea, he created it because he wanted it to be a good idea and honestly it is a terrible idea. But Hans Eiger cares about stability so much that he cannot see that and someone who cannot adjust to reality is not a good person to be running a company. No sir.

The truth is that no one gives a shit for physical storage these days except a few old folks and Hans Eiger. You care that much about physical stuff and you are that rich, you build your own vault in a volcano—but honestly wealth is vapor now. It is concept more than it ever has been and the hoarding of British Empire diamonds in gold nests like an evil chipmunk is no longer considered a sign of taste and distinction. There’s a certain class of person that has shit that needs to be hidden away somewhere like Die Festung and that class is old-money sinners with no future and there are fewer of them every year. When you have a dwindling client pool you got to be the only sensible choice for the evil-chipmunk people and as it turns out Hans Eiger is not. Not only is Swiss law getting less and less amenable to the stashing of secret money and secret stolen stuff but also there is competition for the evil-chipmunk market. There’s private islands and there’s Hatton Garden and old nuclear bunkers in Dipshit, Milwaukee, and there’s museum loans with maintenance grants and a condition that the item not be displayed for twenty years, and a dozen other ways to get the job done that do not require putting your expensive and illegal shit in a bunker with a rob me sign on the door.

Eiger built his dream just in time for almost everyone else to realize they didn’t need it.

He cannot sell because the moment he does the few remaining customers he has—the legacy mob, your older Chinese and Russian oligarchs with fixations on physical wealth, some real traditional gold-standard believers and yeah likely also some of Those Guys that Ottavio Leopold was talking about—those good friends will feel that he has betrayed a sacred trust. A few of them will probably take steps to prevent any sale. Hans Eiger needed an alternative and that alternative was me.

Oh indeed this was not about running off with the proceeds of robbing his own bank and balling dancers under Mexican stars. This is about the darkest reaches of the human heart.

I’m talking about advertising.

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Sharkey says he figured Eiger was legit intending to rob his own bank and claim the insurance on goods he actually still had. Sharkey is wrong. Sharkey is uninterested in revolutionary change. Sharkey is lumpen.