Empire of the Ring

Chapter 61: Charles Company’s Choice (3)

Park Jongil and Karajan who were on their New Year’s Day break came back first, a few days later, Cha Insoo brought his fiancé and parents. Karajan looked bright as she told the story of meeting Jongil’s brothers and relatives. Since Jongil visited them with a tall glamor beauty, his family must have thought that he was successful in Baku. Karajan who also spent a lot of time with the Yunsuh couple finishing some company affairs handed Youngho some Korean side dishes that Yunsuh made for Youngho and friends. He solaced his mind looking at Karajan’s pictures of her and his nephew together.

Cha Insoo’s parents and his fiancé Kim Sunghee were surprised by the overwhelming size of the farm and the wine factory. They were also thrilled to see their house on the farm, the exterior of the house looked great, now the workers were finishing up its interiors soon. It was a nice and roomy two-story house. The parents looked satisfied with the secluded environment since they had lived in a rural area in Korea as farmers for their whole life.

Hearing the rumor that Nagorno-Karabakh’s prices of daily necessaries and grains were skyrocketing, Baku’s greedy tradespeople moved fast. Another word was spread that Armenians had overflowing funds sent by Armenians overseas. Newspapers also reported that Nagorno-Karabakh was a gold mine for all merchants. The tradespeople complained to the government that the government was taking away the opportunity to make money. The government that could not keep the state isolated forever opened the market to the state with limitations to the trading items.

Now Nagorno-Karabakh was able to breathe again. Merchants would want to sell other items when selling, they would expand the kinds of items and their quantities. As they provide more supplies, the prices would eventually be lowered due to the price competition. The Azerbaijani government did not allow the merchants to get in the state but they could open their market at the borderline.

On the day of spring rain, the automated facility for bottling the wine was completed on Youngho’s farm. Youngho had great expectations on Zeynep Farm’s wine since he invested all of him money in it. Sergey from Volgograd came to the farm and took a few boxes of the firstly made wine bottles.

Even though his boss promised to buy all of the wine, he wanted to check the quality before making a deal. Many people came for wine sample tasting and gave Youngho satisfying reviews. Youngho sent some boxes to the presidential palace as a gift.

Sergey contacted Youngho saying that Zeynep Farm wine was well-received in Volgograd. He agreed to buy all of the produced wine at the price of five dollars for each bottle. The automated facility could produce 4,000 bottles in eight hours. It was 330 boxes of a dozen bottles. Excluding the holidays and weekends, the farm could produce 100,000 bottles a month. Considering the fact that Youngho had 110,000 gallons left to bottle aside the 30,000 gallons in the aging tanks, he would have to produce 550,000 bottles, which meant the factory would be operating until the next cultivation in the fall.

Now that Youngho had bought the Charles Wine Company’s factory and farm, he needed more specialized workers, so he hired 20 former workers of the Charles company for Zeynep Farm as Gerhardt suggested. He also bought more oak caskets since he knew that naturally the longer aging period the better wine tasted.

The farm got busy now that the distribution had begun. A semi-trailer truck came to the farm every week to load wine boxes. Sergey paid Youngho in time by wire transfer when the payment was due. He was selling Zeynep Farm’s wine at the price of ten dollars a bottle to Russian people who liked drinking. Because the Charles company’s cheap wines were not distributed anymore, the wines from local companies started to be sold at right prices.

On the contract of the farm site, it was written that Youngho would not be charged for taxes for five years. The exemption of taxes only included the production of the farm and not the wines which were processed and distributed. He had to pay the alcohol taxes.

Wines that contained less than 13% of alcohol was treated as non-alcoholic drinks, so it was not charged alcohol taxes. However, the wines aged in oak caskets were taxed since they exceeded 13% of alcohol containment.

Youngho bought 30 more stainless aging tanks with the funds he earned from the wine sales to age all of his extracts to turn them into wine, now that Charles Wine Company was no longer buying his extracts.

He planned to plant new grape plants from Turkey on the former Charles company’s farm and start cultivating next year. All of the wines would be produced through oak casket- aging system.

Because Karajan was in charge of all of the work of the clothing stores and porcelain store and Park Jongil was helping her, Youngho could focus wholly on the farm work and collecting information as an agent.

After saving agent Philip, Youngho’s team gained a high status in the CIA. Youngho felt insecure about more difficult and dangerous tasks.

People saw Youngho as a successful foreign investor in Baku, who had been continuously donating money for police families and who had met the president twice already.

As if heavens wanted to put a break on Youngho’s success, he received a disturbing call from Yerevan in the middle of the night. It was Cho Chulhwan. He told that Um Sangtaek who was working in the clothing store was dragged to the police department. The reason for his arrest was engaging in espionage. Cho Chulhwan had luckily escaped the arrest because he was at the airport to receive clothes sent from Korea at the time. It was nonsense that the Armenian government arrested Sangtaek who had worked for their country as militia drill instructor.

Youngho called Edward in Panama and asked him to mobilize any officials he knew in the Armenian government who were related to the police department to help his friend out. When he called the European chapter, the only response he got was to wait until things clear up. The US did not want to cause any problems by involving in Armenian business. Youngho felt bitter but he decided to do what he could do. He also called Sergey in Volgograd for help. Because the Russian army resided in Armenia, he thought that Sergey could easily collect information of Armenia. In fact, mafia and the Russian army were close business partners since they traded weapons in secret. For the mafia, requesting the commanding officer to be a reference for Sangtaek was not a big favor to ask.

Youngho did not worry too much for Sangtaek since he did not have any suspicious records. The police doubted the two Korean friends because they did return to their home country after their duty as militia instructors was finished.

Armenian police released Um Sangtaek after three days due to many pressures from different people. They regarded the arrest as a misunderstanding and gave an evasive reason for the incident. Instead of apologizing, they acted if they had done a favor to Sangtaek.

Youngho could not stand their attitude toward his friends. Yerevan was where his friends would put down roots for their entire life. If he just let this pass, they would keep accusing his friends as spies whenever something happens. Youngho had to do something to knock off the Armenian police’s perch.