I'm going into airplane mode. Okay. Now, which one am I reading here? The top one or the bottom one? May 1997, somewhere over Asia.

What can I get you, Mr. Kajne?

The young businessman settles back in his private jet.

Allow me to recline the seat for you.

The plush plump, calf-skinned seat, caresses his buttocks.

There you go, sir.

That soft cream-colored leather, it smells so good.

Can I offer you the Dome Perillon 1962?

The champagne?

Or.

The crook, 1975.

It's exquisite. Just don't spill it on that leather, okay?

Yes, it's a wonderful vintage. Oysters.

And the order ofs?

Or beluca caviar. Mr.

Cotney. Man, this is the way to travel. Flying commercial? That's for schmucks. Okay, the itinerary, Egypt. Good morning, sir. Hungary. Romania. Hello again, sir. Mongolia. Japan. Welcome back on board, sir.

Uzbekistan. The local time is 9:00 PM.

And, lest we forget, Azerbaijan. Don't forget that oil. He's not yet 34, but Victor Kozany is killing it. Yes, Mr.

Berk? Now, Victor has a friend on board, and it looks like he's taking him for a ride in every way. Welcome to.

Russia.

Gentlemen. Touching down in Moscow, they pick up a couple of surprise guests. Two women. Welcome on.

Board, madam.

Okay, who is that fella on the plane with Victor? His new pal. Rick Berk of the luxury handbag company, Dunian Berk. More caviar, Mr. Berk. And as I once heard some wise guys say, There's a lot of money in handbags. Another bleeding? And what about those two women? Who are they? Well, here's what the US attorney would write to Victor's lawyer. I'm assuming you're going to have to read this.

The government will offer a trial evidence that during the defendant, Frederick Burk's trip with co-conspirator, Victor Kajne, Kajne and Burk obtained the services of two prostitutes in Moscow, Russia, who were transported to, among other places, Baku, Azerbaijan, before being returned to Russia. This evidence will be offered for the purpose of showing the background of the conspiracy.

Conspiracy, huh? So why does this guy, Rick Burk, matter?

Just a little turbulence.

Because on that day of reckoning, which will come-.

Probably best to fasten.

Your seatbelt. When the party's over and there's no more champagne and no more orders and no more alleged prostitutes, the only way is down. And as the engines fail and the wings fall off and the plane falls out of the sky, it's not Victor who'll be left without a parachute. When Victor's grand plan crashes and burns, Yep, it's Rick Berk. He's the fall guy. By the way, all this plane crash stuff, keep your hair on. It's just a metaphor. This is The Pirate of Prague, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Am Joe Nocero.

Chapter Two. The best student Harvard ever had. To understand a guy like Victor, we have to go back, way back. You see, Victor has a history, and a good place to start is 1980, when Victor is fleeing Czechoslovakia. Remember, in those days, you couldn't just book a plane ticket and leave. You could only leave with permission. And if you couldn't get that permission, you had to use your initiative, which is not something Victor lacked.

He had managed to escape as a member of the Czech Junior Handball Team.

He was a 17-year-old handball player on a trip to France.

Was it France? I seem to remember a flight through Austria? Or had he-.

Defected to the West on a trip to Germany.

Okay, I'm getting the picture now. But how did he get there? Wherever there was? There are those.

Who said he jumped out of a train.

He tunneled this way out. He floated over the border in a hot air balloon.

His story was unbelievable.

Unbelievable. After arriving in Germany.

Paypass, please. -aha, so it was Germany.

He was approached by the Czech secret police. Or maybe it was the KGB.

Okay, so Peter, which of these fantastical stories is actually true?

Well, Joe, to be honest, we do not exactly know.

So, Victor-like, is there anything he.

Wouldn't do? I would not put anything past him, but he clearly made it to the West somehow. Because what we do know for sure is that by 1982, Victor was in Munich in what was then West Germany. There's one night in particular that we know about.

The greatest thing that.

Came before- Victor's just 18. He's sitting in a lecture hall at a physics talk.

Victor's into physics? That's not really how you get rich, is it?

No, there's not a bunch of money in it. But the thing is, it is not about the physics tonight because Victor has spotted an opportunity, and it's a big one.

Now, that sounds like Victor.

This lecture, it's being given by a fellow named Marlin Scully.

He is a big time theoretical physicist, and at the time, he was a distinguished professor from the University of New Mexico.

Exactly right.

Thank you, Professor Scully, for a fascinating lecture.

Okay, so the lecture is over. The students are drifting out. But not Victor.

A kid came up 6 feet plus, red hair, big grim.

Oh, yes, there's that sensational smile again.

He said, Look, I'd really like to talk to you about my research. Here's my stuff.

Victor waves a notebook in the professor's face. He says he's a physics whiz. And the cherry on the cake? He's on the run from communism.

He showed me a stack of calculations. I thumbed through it and it looked realistic. The right tone of mathematical rigor.

Anyway, this fellow, Victor, may be young, but to the professor, he's convincing. He likes this kid and he makes him an offer.

I said, Well, look, why don't you come to the University of New Mexico and join us there?

The eminent professor has fallen for Victor's charming, but he's not thinking Victor will actually take him up on the offer. Then again, he doesn't know Victor very well.

The next thing I knew, he showed up at my door. I didn't really expect that he would be there that fast. He just simply showed up. The kid had Hudson.

You can say that again.

So I was, of course, a little surprised.

The professor had bought Victor's story, hook, line, and sinker.

What's he going to do? He's here. He doesn't have any money, as far as I could tell. And I didn't want to just leave him wandering the streets of Albuquerque.

And can you blame him? This is a professor with a heart of gold, and this was a kid in need.

Stray cat. He was a refugee from Czechoslovakia. Nobody needs to say anything more.

He offers Victor a room in his house just for a few days, a few weeks tops, while he finds his footing. And then another generous invitation to the family ranch over the mountains outside of Santa Fe.

My family is out there, my boys, why don't you come out, spend the weekend with us? It's dirt under the fingernails, good American farm labor, buck hay, brand calves, work with us and treat you like my own sons. And I thought that he would really love it since he come from a communist country. Communists are people who emphasize the work ethic, right?

Oh, wrong. At least not in this case.

Saturday morning, we got up early. I told him jump in the truck. We pull up the first barbed wire gate and I said, Okay, Victor, get the gate. And he was stunned. Well, no, I can't. Look, I've got my beautiful new Angora sweater. I can't open the gate.

To this. Don't snag that Angore sweater, Victor. But the professor wasn't giving up that easily.

So I gave him a shovel and asked him to go to work.

But that beautiful new sweater wasn't the only obstacle to hard labor.

He had loafers. He didn't have shoes that he could work with, and he was not really able to do that either.

So far, so good, eh?

I thought it was great. We had a real working farm. Out, but Victor wasn't interested in working.

So safe to say Victor didn't know much about farm labor, and it turns out he didn't know much about physics either.

During this time, I'm getting to know him a little bit, and it's clear that he really has a very unorthodox training.

Well, that's one word for it.

He doesn't know basic physics in the way that I thought he would. First time we sat down, I said, Well, right to Maxwell's equations.

Peter, Maxwell's equations. Now, I've never heard of them, but then again, I'm not a physicist. I understand they're a big deal in physics.

Oh, yeah, they really are, Joe. I can tell you all about this. They are a set of coupled partial.

Differential equations. All right, all right, all right, all right. You know as much about physics as I do, so you obviously got this from Wikipedia for crying out loud.

You caught me cheating, but Joe, that's really not what's important here. What's important is that Professor Scully knows all about Maxwell's equations, and so does anyone who's serious about physics and knows what they're talking about.

But Victor, it turns out, didn't. He tells the professor.

Well, I write them as a 10-dimensional equation, and that's not true. It's four dimensions. I said, Well, that doesn't make sense. I said, Well, that's the way I write my Maxwell equations. It was at that point that I knew, Okay, this guy is a little bit more of a bullshitter than I realized.

Yeah, Victor was no physics prodigy. Surprise, surprise. The professor has been duped. But Victor wasn't done yet. And because Professor Scully is such a nice guy, he still wanted to help. Victor needed more permanent logic, so the professor made a few calls. Enter another professor, Graham Flint, his wife, Diane, and their three kids. Diane's got a chunk of family money.

They had a beautiful big home up in the foothills of the Sandias, outside of Albuquerque.

You probably know enough about Victor by now to realize that the role they gave him was a role for which he was uniquely ill-suited. Wait for it.

Victor became the babysitter for the kids.

Say again.

The babysitter for the kids.

Oh, yeah, yay, big mistake.

Victor was not a good house guest.

Huh, that's an understatement. Here comes the punchline.

He set the kids all right. Babysat Diane as well.

Diane, mother of three and almost twice Victor's age. Now, how to put this? Things moved pretty darn quickly. One minute, he was babysitting the kids. The next?

Victor and Diane showed up in my office and announced that they were getting married.

Yep. But this wasn't exactly a moment for champagne and speeches.

I asked Victor if he would step out into the hall. I wanted to talk to Diane privately. I tried to talk her into not doing this, but she said, No, we're going to do it. She obviously was under her spell.

She was bedazzled.

They were gone by that summer.

The two lovers headed for Boston and were married the following year in 1983.

The next I heard, somehow rather she got Victor into Harvard.

Peter, did Diane really get Victor into Harvard?

Well, it sounds cute, but the truth is, we do not know.

But he did get into Harvard, which is no small thing, right? Absolutely. How did he pull it off?

As everything with Victor, it involves a lot of ingenuity. To begin with, Victor enrolls in summer classes at the Harvard Extension School.

Okay, Extension School, that sounds like a night school.

It bears the Harvard name, but you don't get the classic Harvard degree or the Harvard status.

But Victor, of course, that's exactly what he wants, the Harvard degree and the Harvard status.

Exactly right. He sure does. He's got a plan to get there.

Why am I not surprised? Okay, go on.

Victor embellishes his CV a lot. He claims to have won a bunch of academic prizes back home in Czechoslovakia, including the Math and Physics Olympians ad.

That all sounds actually pretty impressive, but you're saying he just made it all up.

In a word, yes, because Victor's old school report cards from Czechoslovakia really aren't very impressive. He got lousy grades in nearly every subject. Every subject except for one, PE. He was pretty good.

At that. Which, of course, explains how he got on the handball team.

Yes. But the key thing is, Harvard, it seems, swallow Victor's story. He's in as a full-fledged undergrad with all of.

The status. Amazing. Somehow or other, Victor's done it. He's joined the elite. But it's not long before he gets himself into trouble. It's rumored that his wife, Diane, is writing his essays for him, but she soon gets tired of that. No problem. Victor just copies someone else's. Before long, the college accuses him of plagiarism. The Harvard authorities, just like Professor Scully, realized something.

This guy is a little bit more of a bullshiter than I realized.

First time, they let it go. Second time, suspension. But somehow, Victor manages to sweet talk Harvard. He explains that back home in Czechoslovakia, things were done a little differently. Victor racks up the longest disciplinary record Harvard has ever seen. But somehow, amazingly, he clings on and he vows to turn over a new leaf. And if you believe that, despite his somewhat blemished reputation, things are going Victor's way. He's not short of cash either, although it's not his cash, it's Diane's. Victor may have been wearing the sweaters, but Diane was wearing the trousers. Anyway, he sure knows how to spend her dough. A brand new car, expensive meals. Diane says Victor burns through.

Money- Like a drunken sailor.

She later told one publication.

He was an emotional terrorist. He would throw tantrums. He'd have affairs, and he'd take drugs.

It all got too much for her.

And I kicked him out.

She divorced him in 1986. Smart woman. But the Czech charmer had come a long way. From jumping out of that train, or did he tunnel his way out, or did he fly over in an air balloon? Whatever, whatever. The guy had escaped his roots. He had escaped communism. Truly. He was making it in America at Harvard. He was part of the elite. And what could be more elite than Harvard's Spee Club?

That's S-P-W-E, Gentlemen's Club.

Established 1850. A mere farm and pharma was elected into the club the same year as Victor. It wasn't the only Harvard Gentlemen's Club, but...

The Spee was more international and cosmopolitan and more fun.

And can you believe this one?

We actually allowed women onto our premises for our parties and things.

In the mid-'80s, believe it or not, that really was cosmopolitan. It was all pretty exclusive. And Victor was the latest in an exalted line.

John F. Kennedy was a member of the Spee. An oil painting of him hung above the fireplace in our library.

At first glance, Victor and Amir seemed like an odd couple.

I was captain of the polo team at Harvard, so you can imagine all the unfair advantages I had as a polo player.

Well, I can't, but go on.

You have to spend so much money on horses and grooms and trucks and trailers and places in the country that you rule out all the competition. Very few people can afford to play polo.

Victor, of course, had none of that. His sport was rather more modest.

Victor was a handball player, so he'd go into the field with his bare hands, and he had his stamina, his skill, his perseverance to count on.

Victor was certainly singular. There was no one else at Harvard quite like him.

He was someone that we talked about and laughed about, and he spoke with great facial expressions and gestures, simple English, highly accented.

Victor was soon notorious.

There was another member of the Spie who's entire popularity was based on his imitations of Victor Kojani, and he was asked often at lunch to do his Victor imitations.

Sounds like a gas. And here's another. With his main backer, aka, his ex-wife, now out of the picture, Victor needs to start thinking about how to make his own cash. He begins hatching some pretty crazy schemes.

He would say, Amir, shall I show you the rotating egg?

The rotating egg was a sex toy. Victor showed Amir his design.

It says it would rotate and vibrate at the same time. Then he'd say, You know who is the biggest seller of sex toys in America? I'd say, No. He said, Johnson & Johnson, billion dollar company. I'm here. Let's go buy a billion dollar company. He was thinking big.

Trust me on this. Johnson & Johnson has never made a sex toy. But put that aside, Victor was thinking big. That's the point. Although Victor was a long way from turning his dreams into reality. In fact, he couldn't even pay his rent. And so he started living, or should we say, squatting at the speed club.

Camping in the club ruffled some feathers.

I am sure it did.

I remember opening the drinks cabinet in the library and some of Victor's why fronts were stuffed behind the Cool Fazia bottle.

Why did he tie these in the liquor cabinet. Oh, my goodness. One time when everyone else was on vacation, Victor was on campus.

And he'd made a copy of the steward's key, and with that, he had keys to people's liquor cabinets. So hes opened up the liquor cabinets and invited various random people, some townies, and they drank people's liquor and trashed the club.

To the August members of the spie, could there be anything worse than allowing the townies to crash the club and raid the booze?

The breach of trust with the copying of the keys, this was a bit of a shock, and they decided to expel Victor from the club.

It was a record, the first expulsion in the history of the Ski. But don't be fooled by all the parties and all the liquor, because Victor was way more than just a frat boy.

He was very curious, intellectually. I don't know if he took his homework seriously or if he wrote good essays. I just know that he was super bright.

Super bright, but doing his own thing.

He was in no rush to leave Harvard, having come from where he did. And he wanted to suck at drive for all the intellectual capital he could get.

He had moved on from sex toys, but not from the idea of creating a billion-dollar company. That was still very much the game plan.

Victor was always very driven in a worldly sense for knowledge and for power and money.

Especially for money. Now it's the late '80s. Victor's in his final year. Enter a new woman, Kemdell Callahan. She's in her early 20s. At the time, she was working two jobs in and around the Harvard campus.

One night, I had a night off. There was a bar and you'd get burgers and whatever, and I ordered poached salmon and I sat next to somebody who asked me how my poached salmon was, and that was Victor.

Ah, the meet cute.

We talked and he walked me home that night and I walked upstairs and I called my roommate and I said to her, I just met the man I'm going to marry.

I.

Had no intention of ever getting married until I was 40, and so that certainly was not something I was looking for, but I knew, I knew that night.

Now, we know Victor likes the finer things in life, posh dinners and fast cars and the like. Was that how he wooed Kindel? Not exactly.

I think a lot of the time was walking, just walking. I remember walking.

You're saying you and Victor went walking?

Yes, walking. You know, life was never boring with him. Going on a good walk was just never boring.

All right, enough, enough, enough, enough, enough. But when they did get bored of walking.

Spending time at the Harvard Law Library and the Harvard Business Library, I loved. I was just hanging out with him like you do. And he said, Why do you go do something useful? He proceeded to get me books on organizational management.

Oh, boy.

Now that I think of it, he would give me homework assignment, chapters in organizational management to read.

Whatever floats your boat. Anyhow, Candel was smitten. But she had competition from the other woman in Victor's life, his mother.

They would talk all the time. I mean, all the time. And it was in German, so I couldn't understand it.

Love me, love my mother.

He was charming. He was brilliant. He was funny.

He was a young man in a hurry. And Candel was in a slipstream.

And all of a sudden, he was moving to London.

Wait, to London?

He was moving to London. I was like, I'm not going to miss life with this man. And so I went.

And so she went. Welcome to London, London. Please follow us on the way. Good evening. Here's where we are. It's now 1989. Victor, by some miracle, has graduated from Harvard. Okay, so it took him six years instead of four, but lots of people do that, and who's counting anyway? And even more miraculous, he has references like good ones, a whole bunch of them. And these references, they're not just glowing, they are on fire. Victor must have mounted the ultimate charm offensive to get this lot. Mr. Kaujany struck me as one of the most outstanding members of the class.

They're the most promising students I have had the good fortune to teach.

Victor's studies and creativity have no limits.

It is very rare to find scientists of such abilities as Victor.

Victor is an extremely diligent scholar.

He possesses an unparalleled breadth and depth of scientific knowledge. Victor represents one of the few renaissance men of universal knowledge and abilities.

Victor possesses a charismatic personality. He's very social, polite, and self-confident, popular, and highly respected among fellow students.

I recommend him highly.

I recommend him with enthusiasm.

I recommend him to you with no reservations whatsoever.

And.

Then? Victor Kajne has asked me to write a recommendation for a possible future.

Application to-There's.

This one. I came to know Mr. Kajne quite well as he participated actively in the class. His comments reflected a keen intelligence, a good analytic ability, and a knowledge of business and economics as well as law.

Peter, that's a nice recommendation, but it's not gushing or super-special or anything.

Nice words, but maybe a little vanilla.

I am happy to recommend him.

But that's not what mattered so much.

Yours.

Sincerely. Because that guy-.

Stephen Byer.

Stephen Brier? At the time, he may have been just a Harvard law professor, but later he became a justice on the US Supreme Court.

Holy Moly. That Harvard degree really did pay off.

It was super important. Not so much the degree, but the doors that opened and the big shots he met there.

Not only that, but it turns out that the Harvard name would prove especially useful to Victor later on, as we shall soon discover. Anyhow, Victor has his Harvard degree. He's now 26. He's out in the world. He's in love, or at least Kendel's in love with him. But unlike his former wife, Diane, Kemdal doesn't have money. In this relationship, Victor will need to pay for his own Angora sweaters. In short, Victor needs a job.

1989, I was in New York and a call came in from a chat called Victor Kajani. Uh-oh. Could he come for an interview?

Michael Laudenberg. He was a big shot at a London investment bank, Flemings, and he was in town for the meetings big shots have.

Are you ready to.

Order, gentlemen? I took him to breakfast at the Plaza Hotel. It's one of the best breakfasts you can possibly get. There are scrambled eggs and bacon and their eggs, Benedict, are superb.

The eggs, Benedict? Certainly excellent choice, sir.

He was very presentable. He was good looking and well-built. I mean, he's a big man with a presence that goes with it. Considerable charm, enthusiasm, energy, and a level of self-confidence you really wouldn't believe.

Oh, I can believe it all right. I really can.

He presented himself as a very clever, in fact, a positive genius. I mean, he had no hesitation describing himself as a genius, the best student that Harvard had ever had.

Harvard University founded 1636, producer of Nobel Laureates, US presidents, captains of industry, and Victor Kaujany.

I should have known better, I suppose, but he certainly had a spiel which impressed us enormously. He was pretty convincing. I suppose it's fair to say that we were bowled over by him, and we offered him a job on the spot.

And.

We brought him to London.

To Fleming's Investment Bank.

Good afternoon, Robert Fleming.

It was an open-plan office.

I'm afraid you've just missed me.

We sat him in a corner with a desk.

Michael, those of course, you aligned you.

I suppose it's fair to say that we took him on purely opportunistically and the thought that he was a money maker. The assumption was that he was a decent chap who would put the firm's interest before his own.

I'm laughing too, pal.

Whatever it was that we asked him to do, he simply never did it. Somebody else had to do it, or he got somebody else to do it, or he said, I haven't got time to do this. I'm working on something else. Will you do it for me? And was getting on with we then realized we knew not what.

Decent chap, you say?

I mean, Byers' remorse set in very quickly, I can tell you that. I'm so sorry.

But then what was Victor really up to?

We realized after a while that actually what he was doing was he was taking himself off to one of the many meeting rooms and having secret telephone conversations. Whatever he was doing, he was attaching Fleming's name to it. One became very nervous. Under those circumstances, one would.

One would indeed. With Victor, there always comes that moment when the other shoe drops.

Okay, this guy is a little bit more of a bullshiter than I realized.

After a few months, we got rid of him.

Around this time, Kemal Kallahan became Kemdell Cauchony. It's Victor's second time around the block. And where else does a guy like Victor get remarried? Vegas, baby. And after that...

Victor and I took a day and drove through the Grand Canyon.

Now, Victor wasn't wearing his Angorae sweater that day. No, even worse.

He had this tan-swayed blazer and asset and a buttoned-down shirt in the middle of the Grand Canyon.

A shirt and jacket in the desert?

With jeans. Only Victor would dress like that in the middle of the Grand Canyon.

That's for sure. But despite his awful fashion sense, Kemdell was convinced that Victor was for keeps.

He told me he wanted nine children, and I looked at him like, I don't think so. But a couple, of course. The fact that he said nine just got me to think, Oh, wow. And he's really into this. I really thought I'm in it for the long haul, right?

To Kemdell, it all felt good.

I was mesmerized and I was young and married and in love.

And?

I was pregnant.

Ah. So Victor is still living in London. But now with no job and no money. But he's convinced that something will turn up because, after all, he's Victor, and something does turn up. Di ma is vexed, they't. The wall has gone. For almost three decades, it's been the stark dividing line between East and West. Soon it'll be little more than a pile of rubble.

Tonight, men and women were dancing. Fate would have it that the wall came down. This whole downfall of communism, even he couldn't have planned that.

Peter, 1989 is like a big, big year.

It's a massive year, Joe, really momentous. There was wave upon wave of revolutions all across the Soviet Empire. Then, of course, there's the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then just a week after that, Victor's homeland, Czechoslovakia, tosses out the communists.

Right. And, of course, in all of these former Soviet countries that are getting rid of communism, this is like hitting the reset button. That's right.

Everything is now up for grabs. And that is something that Victor immediately understands.

Victor senses. No, he knows his luck is about to change. Home is calling. It starts with just a short trip back, but-.

Ten days later, we had actually moved from London and were living in Prague. Communism was opening into privatization. Anybody who was brilliant, there was your oyster of an opportunity.

Jobless and practically penniless, Victor moves back to Prague a nobody. But he's about to pull off a truly audacious trick, a trick that will make him a somebody, a very, very rich somebody. There, in the city of his birth, Victor Kaujany is about to be reborn. You've been listening to The Pirate of Prague, an Apple original podcast, produced by Blanchard House, and hosted by me, Joe Nosira. The producer is Ben Cryton. The associate producer is Peter Elkind. The writers are Lawrence Grisele, Ben Cryton, and me, Joe Nosira. Music is by Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis Nankmanell, and Toby Matamong. Sound design and engineering by Vulkin Kizeltug. Our managing producer is Amika Shortino-Nolen. The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pai. The executive producer and head of content at Blanchard House is Lawrence Grisele. Picney, buddy. Bajet. Yeah.