J.C.

"Jones found himself spending as much time managing Craig Dobbin—or attempting to manage him—as he spent handling the company’s business affairs. “Over and over again, I would say, ‘Craig, if we do this idea of yours we will be rolling the dice, and we stand to lose the whole kit and caboodle. If it fails, we close up’ Craig would just grin at me and say, J.C., we're fuckin’ doin’ it!’”"

"That weekend, Jones was working in his garden when he looked up at the sound of a cuc helicopter passing overhead. Recalling no scheduled flight that day, he checked the log on Monday morning to see that the craft had been flown by Sealand’s chief pilot. Jones encountered the pilot and asked, out of curiosity, the purpose of the flight. An emergency call from a client? A post-maintenance test? “The pilot, who I knew adored Craig, started pawing the ground with his foot and looking around, trying not to answer me,” Jones says. “All he said was, ‘I had to go somewhere, and I kept asking him where, what was he doing? Finally, he admitted Dobbin had called, telling the pilot he wanted to go flying and swearing the pilot to secrecy, saying, ‘For God’s sake, don’t let J.C. hear about this!’ So there was the Chairman in conspiracy with his own people to keep me in the dark because I was trying to save the company money.”"

"more sanguine. “Look,” he said to J.C. when they were settled in their hotel, a glass of Jameson in his hand, “we can’t pay them now and we won't be able to pay them for a while. Someday, sure. But not right away. So let’s not try to hand them some bullshit story about giving us another break or promising to be good little boys and go back home and work on our cash flow. Because it ain’t gonna work. Not with that crew.”"