Empire of the Ring

Chapter 59: Charles Company’s Choice (1)

Youngho contacted Margos who had been worried about the militants’ safety and let him know that no militants were hurt during the rescue mission. He thanked Youngho for completing the mission quietly without hurting anyone.

After gaining back his strength, Philip left Baku thanking his rescuers again. Park Jongil bragged that he would not have to receive any training from the CIA again due to his outstanding skills, he even thought that he should be a training instructor at the CIA. A few days later, Youngho and Jongil were rewarded with 100,000 dollars for their successful rescue mission for agent Philip. Jongil wanted to use the money to buy a luxury Benz but he soon became quiet by Youngho who insisted that he should not use the money earned from life a threatening mission in vain.

At the battlefront of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the two sides were still exchanging fires without any improvements. Azerbaijan was fiercely defending for their retrieved land. Because they were not giving disadvantages to the Armenians remained in their land, the international opinion was leaning toward Azerbaijan’s advantage.

Finally, Azerbaijani government stated that they would grant autonomy to Nagorno-Karabakh under the condition that Armenians leaving in their land should evacuate and move to Nagorno-Karabakh within a year. Although this could be another beginning of a territorial dispute, Azerbaijan could not give up their recaptured land. They wanted to send back 800,000 Azerbaijani people who had been forcefully driven outside of their hometown by Armenians. There were lots of Armenians who lived in Azerbaijan’s retrieved land, which occupied 14% of the total territory of Azerbaijan. Many people had been living off farming or ranching but now they were at the position to be expelled from their land of work of decades. It seemed that there would be wild resistance from those Armenians.

On January 20th of 2013, the truce was called by UN’s initiation. Because of the UN’s declaration that they would deploy Peacekeeping Forces if the fighting did not stop, the fires from both countries could be ceased. Although it was not the end of the war, they were at peace now. However, the 7 millions of Armenians scattered in different countries strongly objected the truce. Wanting Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence, they protested in front of their governmental buildings.

Korean New Year’s Day was on February 10th. At Youngho’s suggestion, Jongil and Insoo planned to visit Korea. Karajan was also going with Jongil to meet his family members before their wedding. Karajan was full of pride before leaving to Korea. In any country, women would fall for a good-looking guy like Jongil. Moreover, he was smart, successful, and he had a great sociable personality. The only flaw was that Jongil used to be a terrible womanizer, if Karajan could stop him from womanizing any more, she would be one happy bride. Youngho wished that she would not come to his house to complain about Jongil’s womanizing in the future.

When he came back from the airport, Fatima and the siblings’ faces looked different. Their faces were burning red. Even little Zeynep’s face looked like a carrot. To Youngho’s surprise, Andrey the winemaker explained what happened with a smile on his face. It was a tasting day for the wines that had been aging in the facility and the siblings had been sipping the wines, attracted to their sweet taste. Andrey, who was near sixty, chuckled and said that Youngho grew amazing grapes since the kids liked the wine’s taste. Youngho picked up Zeynep who was acting silly being drunk and laid her on her bed. He also helped on sitting Fatima on the couch.

The next morning, Youngho made some ramen to sooth the siblings’ hung-over stomachs. After the meal, he was calculating the estimated amount of profit from selling the wine to Sergey. Expecting 4.2 million dollars, he was smirking to himself. Fatima, who had just finished washing dish, asked why.

“I just found out that we’d make 4.2 million dollars from this year’s wine sale.”

Not understanding the value of the money, she took a while to figure out what the number mean.

“Wow! It’s the amount that can buy more than 400 of the car I’m driving. That’s incredible.”

She compared the amount to how many cars she could buy. It was her way of getting the concept of money.

“The money will be made under the name of Zeynep Farm. From now on, I will deposit a million in your account every year, since I am borrowing your sister’s name.”

“…”

“It’s for the family just in case. You should manage the money.”

Fatima smiled because she was thankful for Youngho trusting her with a large amount of money.

“Okay, oppa. I’ll keep the money safe since it’s the valuable money to protect my family.”

Youngho also told her about the gold bars hidden in a safe in the farm’s safe room and the combination for the safe. Because Youngho always had a risk of losing his life for his job as an agent, he wanted to prepare a way to live for the Fatima siblings in case he was gone. She could not hide her touched face when Youngho told her about the secret.

It was in the early February when Margos called Youngho for help.

He worried that the flour supplies were short in Nagorno-Karabakh and the price of flours was skyrocketing. Youngho asked where all the emergency supplies that Edward had stored for the residents were. Margos answered that the official Armenian army had taken them away for their military supply. It was an obvious crime of the Armenian army since they had stolen American properties that were stored for the residents. It seemed that they did not care about the residents who were isolated in the region.

Nagorno-Karabakh was highlands and most of the people lived off planting and farming. However, their produces were not enough to feed all residents. Their prices were naturally high, which was one of the reasons that the residents lived a hard life. It was difficult for the residents who protected the highlands without any underground resources risking their own lives but they would not leave their ancestors’ land. Now the grain prices were rising even more, all there was left was agonizing life.

Youngho was also guilty for Nagorno-Karabakh’s residents, who were driven to unwilling situations. He looked to find a way to provide grains to the residents. There were around 150,000 residents in the state and if they die out of poverty and hunger, the state would not last to exist soon. Azerbaijani government did not seem like they would care about Armenians’ poverty, they might even welcome this situation.

Youngho reported about the Nagorno-Karabakh’s situation. Now that his job as a CIA agent was done, he planned to approach the problem personally. Even though the border was closed and outside supplies were blocked, people would find a way to get in there if they could make money. He planned to spread a rumor that said; people could make a large amount of money if they bring grains or daily necessaries to Nagorno-Karabakh.

It was a plan using Azerbaijani businessmen’s mentality. Because the concept of business ethics had not settled in Azerbaijan yet, they did not care about any business rules if they could make money. Youngho experienced this since he was almost terrorized multiple times in the past. It was certain that many of Azerbaijan’s businessmen would bribe frontier guards to get into the state.

The Charles Wine Company’s owner, Araz, used to be an official of the former Soviet Union. With the help from the relations to the current government’s officials, his company controlled the small-scale grape farms around Baku. To the small farm owners, Araz was someone to crawl to, since he had the power to ruin their businesses. Nevertheless, Youngho did not care about Araz and rather, Araz suffered a setback when he tried to control the prices of grape extracts from Youngho’s farm.

To Araz, Youngho’s farm was supposed to be a farm that only provided grape extracts, not wines. However, he was producing wines under name of Zeynep Farm. He was annoyed to hear this, especially because the extracts had the best quality level of sweetness. If Youngho would sell all of the extracts to Araz, he could produce more wines at high prices for their great taste and high quality. Because Youngho was a foreign investor to whom the president was paying attention, he could not treat him carelessly. Araz searched for ways to disrupt Zeynep Farm’s wine producing and to have all of the extracts from Youngho’s farm.