Chapter 29: The Quiet Before the Storm
By early 1929, the signs were clear to Victor Delcroix.
Across New York and London, stock prices reached heights untethered from reality. Railroad stocks doubled without corresponding traffic. Bank loans flooded into speculative ventures. Agricultural surpluses pushed prices down, even as real estate values spiked. Victor had lived through this once—and he would not repeat history.
It was time to act.
Liquidation and Leverage
Over the first quarter of 1929, Delcroix Holdings quietly began liquidating its stock positions across American and European markets. Profits were converted into gold-backed reserves and moved into secure Belgian and Swiss banks.
Simultaneously, Victor leveraged the explosive valuations of his companies—especially the pharmaceutical and logistics branches—to secure aggressive lines of credit.
Loans raised (secured by company collateral): 2.4 billion BEF
Additional margin accounts opened with London, Amsterdam, and New York brokerages
All active assets were moved to cash or short-term Belgian bonds
Internally, a financial arm was launched: Delcroix Global Reserve, a private intelligence and strategy unit dedicated to forecasting global macroeconomic shifts.
The People's Fund
In April, Victor announced the creation of Fonds Horizon, a public investment fund open to Belgians and Congolese alike.
Minimum investment: 50 BEF
Management strategy: hedge positions, global shorts, and crash-resistant assets
Projected annual return: 12–25% in stable years, unlimited in crisis
But what caught the public's attention was his promise:
"No citizen who invests in Fonds Horizon shall lose money. Should the markets fall, I will personally reimburse all principal investments."
It was audacious. Irresponsible, some said.
But it worked.
By summer, over 620,000 individuals had invested—teachers, miners, widows, nurses, factory workers. The average investment was modest. But the total volume exceeded 310 million BEF, and Victor legally secured it against his own holding company.
He kept 30% of the fund's profit—ensuring alignment with every investor's success.
The War Chest
As summer gave way to autumn, Victor stood ready.
Total liquid cash and reserves (personal + institutional): 3.1 billion BEF (~89 million USD)
Margin access across markets: an additional ~7.5 billion BEF (~215 million USD)
With these weapons, he would do more than survive the coming crash.
He would thrive.
The Belgian papers wrote cautiously about market bubbles. American newspapers were still euphoric.
Victor read them all—and waited.
The world marched toward October.
And Victor Delcroix stood at the edge of the precipice, eyes unblinking, prepared to leap into chaos with open arms.
Chapter 30: Crash and Conquest
October 1929 began with a whisper—and ended in a scream.
Victor Delcroix sat in his Ghent office, a steaming cup of tea beside him and four telegraph lines running hot with updates from New York, London, and Paris. The first tremors came on October 24th—Black Thursday. Panic selling hit the New York Stock Exchange, pushing prices into a tailspin. By Tuesday the 29th, the Dow had lost over 25% of its value in two days.
Victor didn't flinch.
He gave the order: unleash the shorts.
The Fall
Through a spiderweb of brokerages and blind accounts, Delcroix Holdings and Fonds Horizon placed massive short positions against overleveraged sectors—banking, construction, utilities, and shipping.
By the end of November:
Bank of Manhattan had collapsed
Union Construction Trust was delisted
The German industrial index fell by 42%
The London Stock Exchange had lost £8 billion in value
Delcroix profited from all of it.
Every fall was a windfall. Every default, a payday.
Fonds Horizon Results
The public fund Victor had created turned into one of the most profitable civilian investment initiatives in modern history.
Out of 310 million BEF invested by citizens:
Gross return by end of Q1 1930: 2.8 billion BEF
Net return to investors: 1.96 billion BEF (an average 531% return)
Victor's share (30%): ~840 million BEF (~24.5 million USD)
True to his word, not a single investor lost a cent. He covered minor timing losses himself and was repaid manyfold by strategic currency and bond positions.
The fund's public success made headlines across Europe:
"The Man Who Promised Safety—and Delivered Fortune" – La Libre Belgique, March 1930
Personal Holdings
Victor had made far more than just his cut of Fonds Horizon.
Through Delcroix Holdings' aggressive, leveraged shorting:
Total direct profit: 6.4 billion BEF (~187 million USD)
Additional gains through currency plays and gold reserves: 1.2 billion BEF (~35 million USD)
Post-crash asset purchases (factories, patents, land): acquired at 20–40% of pre-crash value
He acquired:
A controlling interest in a Dutch shipping line for 12 million BEF
38% of a German chemical firm for 21 million BEF
22 idle American tool and machine plants, purchased via proxy firms for 39 million USD total
He began funneling this industrial capacity directly into his African and Belgian infrastructure projects.
Cash Reserves and Net Worth
By April 1930, Victor Delcroix's total net worth—counting all holdings, liquid assets, real estate, and shares—stood at:
Personal valuation: ~15.6 billion BEF (~460 million USD)
Delcroix Holdings corporate valuation: ~49 billion BEF (~1.45 billion USD)
Combined, he now controlled more liquid wealth than the Belgian government's entire discretionary budget.
The Global Response
World governments scrambled to contain the damage. But Victor was already building.
He began importing machinery and engineering personnel from the collapsing U.S. Midwest. He offered lifetime employment contracts to thousands of displaced German and Austrian engineers. He purchased patents that corporations were too cash-poor to defend.
Where others saw chaos, he saw clearance.
Legacy and Loyalty
His public popularity in Belgium and the Congo soared. Investors bought homes, started businesses, educated children. In village markets, people held notes that read "Backed by Fonds Horizon"—a phrase now synonymous with trust.
By mid-1930, Victor established the Delcroix Stability Reserve, a secondary fund designed not for profit but for insulation—ensuring that the next downturn would meet an even more unbreakable wall of protection.
In Léopoldville, people took to calling him "Papa Victor."
In Brussels, they called him something else: unmanageable.
But whether respected or feared, one fact was now inescapable:
Victor Delcroix had not merely survived the Great Depression.
He had conquered it.
And now, with capital in hand, industry expanding, and reputation unmatched, he would shape the next age—not with caution.
But with force.
Chapter 31: Hidden Empire
The world reeled.
Across Europe and the Americas, factories closed, banks collapsed, and governments scrambled to stem unemployment and unrest. But in the heart of Africa, the opposite happened.
The Congo boomed.
Victor Delcroix's fortune, forged in the fire of the crash, was not hoarded. It was unleashed. In early 1931, a flood of capital surged into the Congo—not from foreign loans or colonial relief, but from within.
From Victor.
The Great Congolese Expansion
By mid-1931, over 6.3 billion BEF had been invested across every major sector:
Agriculture: Large-scale irrigation systems and hybrid seed trials
Energy: Hydroelectric expansion at Inga Falls and new grid nodes in Kasai and Katanga
Housing: 38,000 new housing units constructed within 18 months
Transport: 2,200 km of new railway and 860 km of paved road
Education: Three new technical universities and over 240 new primary schools
Unemployment in Delcroix-controlled territories dropped to near zero. Wages rose. Local markets flourished.
And behind it all: a web of companies that appeared autonomous, innovative, and Congolese.
They weren't.
The Technology Surge
Each month, Victor used his ability—quietly, deliberately—to touch a single object or prototype and unlock its future. Using these visions, he began filing patents in the names of shell companies and trusted proxies. The inventions were decades ahead.
Deltech Instruments: Advanced measuring and calibration tools
Solarchem Labs: Durable, lightweight solar panels for rural energy
Kivu Motors: Fuel-efficient truck engines based on 1940s designs
Synex Pharma: Semi-synthetic compounds for insulin, antibiotics, and antivirals
Aether Wireless: Long-range radio towers using frequency modulation (FM)
Each company appeared to have emerged organically—led by brilliant new minds, financed by Fonds Horizon and other Delcroix-linked funds.
In truth, they were all his.
Power Through Obscurity
Victor had no desire to plaster his name across every success. He wanted freedom, not fame.
The organizational structure was a latticework of holding companies, nominee boards, and investment vehicles headquartered in Luxembourg, Zürich, and Léopoldville. Each fund received dividends. Each company grew on its own merits.
But all were strategically interconnected—forming a self-reinforcing industrial ecosystem.
If Delcroix Logistics built a railway, Kivu Motors shipped materials. If a Delcroix health office prescribed a drug, Synex Pharma supplied it. Every sector supported the next.
And Brussels could barely follow the paper trail.
Belgium Falters, Congo Rises
While Belgium faced deflation, riots, and political instability, the Congo's GDP grew by 16.4% in 1931 alone.
Taxes paid by Delcroix companies now constituted 22% of total colonial revenue.
A frustrated report by a colonial commissioner warned:
"The economy of the Congo is increasingly centered not on Brussels, but on the Delcroix system. Its internal cohesion, capital depth, and labor capacity far exceed that of any other colonial holding."
Even so, few dared intervene.
Delcroix companies were paying more taxes, building more schools, and improving local infrastructure faster than the state ever had.
Invisible Control
In a small meeting room in Léopoldville, Victor reviewed a classified ledger. Each page listed a company, its leadership, its patents, and its investors. At the bottom of each sheet, in neat shorthand, was a simple mark: owned.
Owned not directly. Not visibly.
But fully.
He closed the book and handed it to Gérard.
"No one must ever see the full version of this," he said.
Gérard, now managing internal security and public affairs, nodded.
"They won't. It's not in their language."
Victor turned to the window. Outside, children walked past streetlamps that hadn't existed five years ago. Behind them, a university tower rose higher than the mission steeple.
The Congo had once been a resource colony.
Now, it was becoming an engine.
And behind its roar, behind the pulleys and the patents, stood a man the world still underestimated.
But not for long.