Empire of the Ring

The names of the two daughters of the billionaire Kerkorian were Linda and Tracy, and from their names, he made the Lincy Foundation. At the foundation's office in Yerevan, fifty employees were working on various charity in different locations of Armenia.

The two lost track of time while talking, and so they skipped lunch. They filled their empty stomachs with some snacks at the employee cafeteria in the basement of the foundation's office building.

Youngho spotted some of the employees' rude behaviors toward Tracy. They called her name informally and some tapped her shoulder as they passed by her. It was so natural that it even looked very foreign to him.

Although they looked friendly, he still hated it when seeing young people calling older people's name freely. Tracy, as well, was treating him as if she was talking to an old friend but it seemed strange too.

Having lived in a foreign country for years, Youngho should have gotten comfortable with Western people's customs but he still did not understand their culture.

Tracy showed too many unnecessary big gestures and seeing her kindled face, he thought that she would be a hot-blooded person.

First, he needed to lower Tracy's absurd expectation about him. Eating a sandwich, Youngho made up absurd lies.

"Madame Kerkorian, Korea is a country with thousands of years of history. Throughout history, countless masters have appeared and they left secret arts. People gathered those secret arts and they are now called oriental martial arts. I am only one of those people who have been training those martial arts from young ages. That's how I acquire strength distinctive from others."

He confidently lied in front of her face because he could show the evidence of his lie to her since he had been training to learn the Serbian knight's special breathing techniques lately.

"Is it like flying in the sky as shown in the oriental movies?"

"Well, It's similar. Swiffer movements and higher take-offs would better describe such abilities."

As he kept on, his lies seemed to get more believable.

"Then, does the person who came alongside you have the same level of skills as you?"

"He's not up to my level but he is better than most people, he's still in the middle of training."

"Do you think you can teach my guards those martial arts skills?"

'What the heck is she trying to make out of her guards? Is she trying to overthrow Azerbaijan with her force?'

At this point, Youngho thought that he needed to draw the line.

"It's an unwritten law that the secret martial arts should not be passed on to outsiders. Also, the training method only works when a person had begun the training before age ten and had been training for more than ten years, so it's not really efficient."

"What a waste. As soon as I saw you, I thought you could pass on mysterious oriental martial arts. Well, that's alright, but how about this? Can you lend us your strength?"

Her request had a sudden unexpected turn. Youngho was not sure if she was seriously thinking that a CIA agent could be used for her private matter or if she was just being mischievous.

"You're asking too much to a CIA agent."

"I'm just asking a personal favor to help suffering Armenians. You know we can easily have power over the CIA if I or Armenian-American politicians wanted to. But if we did, it's going to be another debt to them. I've come to realize how pointless it was to receive help from powerful nations. They're ready to turn their backs on us at any time."

From her remark, Youngho could feel the pain of a powerless people. Unlike Azerbaijan, Armenia did not have many natural resources like oil and minerals to attract powerful nations' interests. The country was only surviving with the money sent by Armenian overseas. On top of that, its government had established equidistance diplomatic relations with Russia and America, that it was unwelcomed by both nations and their allies. Many foreign opinions criticized the people since they only cared about their own people's well-being.

Youngho was not sure how to react to her request. If he turned her down, she could be a major obstacle to his people and business. Especially, when she seems to be one of the extreme nationalists who had pride in her foundation and its charitable work.

He decided to look as if he was in favor of helping her work for now. A businessman should be able to use his enemy as his resource too.

It seemed that Edward only thought of her as a capable business person but Youngho's intuition was telling him that she was a far-right nationalist.

***

Tracy was a woman more paranoid than Youngho had thought.

She is disgusted with marriage and she surrounded herself mostly with celibates. Also, she could only be satisfied when things revolved around her. On a bright side, she had a simple personality that it was easy to play along with her. She seemed to be satisfied when Youngho just nodded to whatever she said. Since he had helped Armenians before she must have thought that he would agree to help Armenians from then on as well.

The Lincy Foundation's endowment was three billion dollars. It made Youngho's jaw drop since it was the amount that would be used for helping Armenians only.

Tracy had a bold plan to provide weapons to the Armenian government. Her goal was to retrieve Nagorno-Karabakh by sending an armed force of people equipped with oriental martial arts skills to fight against Azerbaijan. Since the Azerbaijani government did not allow the state's own military force, Nagorno-Karabakh was not restored fully, and she intended to win full independence of the state.

Finding out the mysterious martial arts could not be passed on to her guards, she asked Youngho to find a way to provide cutting-edge weapons. The reason that she wanted to see him in the first place was to get acquainted to a trustworthy agent, so she could get weapons from him.

Since the commission from a weapon deal was great and it was not a big deal for him, he decided to shake on to her request. It was not an impossible deal if he asked Eriksson from the Information Agency. The people of the agency would do anything if that was profitable. They would even get Youngho a nuclear weapon if it could make money.

The problem with this deal was when the arms were sent to the Armenian government, they might make a misjudgment. If Armenia attacks Azerbaijan, the aftermath of the attacks would affect Youngho.

He did not worry about conventional weapons but if she asks him to get weapons of mass destruction, he would have no excuse to refuse her request at the moment.

He had to find a way to agree with her but stop the weapons going into Armenia. Thinking for a while, Youngho came up with a shameless plan.

After the deal was closed, the weapons would only be transferred through one of the ports in Georgia or through flights. The only way to stop the weapons would be exploding them midway.

***

Youngho stayed there for several days and met her frequently to talk about the deal. The conclusion he made in the end was to comply with her since he did not know what kind of disadvantages he would get from not playing along with her.

Although his plan seemed a little bit reckless, he thought that it would be a great opportunity to get weapons to arm Serbian Village.

He did not feel sorry for Tracy.

She was only obsessed with a biased view to help her people but it was obviously wrong to take other people's lives to help her own. Her father, who made the foundation in the beginning, would not like the idea from underground as well.

Three billion dollars was an enormous amount of money but when it was used for weapons, it was not that much since the latest fighters cost a hundred to two hundred million dollars each. There must be more funds from other Armenian Americans other than three billion from the Lincy Foundation. Knowing how the weapons would be used, no one would officially sell weapons to Armenia. That was why Tracy planned to buy those in secret through Youngho. She was smart but she had no idea what he had in mind.

Upon returning to Baku, Youngho called all of his security crew who knew about weapons well. Although they were no experts, they were better than others who had no knowledge of weapons. Jongil was upset since Youngho had been grilling him to study cutting-edge weapons.

"Dude, what are you up to now? What's all the fuss about? Ilkwon, did anything happen in Armenia?"

"No, Boss only said that we'd be getting great weapons. I'm as curious as you to find out what it's all about."

"We've been only treating light firearms here. Even if we have high-tech cutting-edge weapons, we won't be able to use them."

"You don't think he'll get fighters or missiles here, do you?"

"Man, Youngho had spoiled you already. You're thinking in big-scale now. Stop hanging out with him!"

It would be great if Youngho could really bring missiles in Jongil's hand but there was no way to deliver those to the ranch.

***

Youngho talked enough about the buying method of weapons already. The commission was twenty percent of the weapon cost, so Youngho and the Information Agency agreed on each taking half of the total commission. He wondered on which standard each weapon was priced.

The arms producers would give that much of commission and still make money out of that. Usually, they sold complete products but the prices went even higher when technology was transferred. By 'technology transfer,' it would merely mean that buyers would buy weapons in parts and learn how to assemble them into complete arms.

From this deal, Youngho learned that the arms producers would unofficially sell their weapons to any buyers if the transaction amount was satisfactory.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, weapons, even strategic nuclear weapons, that had been distributed in different republics had been sold underground. It made Youngho wonder in which hands those weapons were now. Also, it was scary to think that one day, those weapons would be used and bring disaster in parts of the world.

When Youngho spent days thinking about the kinds of weapons he would get, there was a groundbreaking ceremony of a solar panel factory that was established by the collaboration of the Azerbaijani government and K Electronics of Korea.

President Aliyev was supportive of the business since there would be a green energy technology transfer in Azerbaijan. The staffs from K Electronics were also swelled by opening one of their factory in the country since they would be making their foray in the regions of the Caucasus from now on.

After the tape-cutting ceremony, Youngho talked with President Aliyev while drinking Zeynep Farm's wine, which was now the official wine of Azerbaijan's national events.

"Mr. Lee, It's a historic day of Azerbaijan. We've secured another energy resource today. Our future generations would praise us that we made a great decision."

Aliyev only cared about reputation. He seemed to be thinking about making a statue already. As he said, he would be praised one day if he kept boldly instituting new policies like this.

"Mr. President. Congratulations on securing new energy resource. Everything's looking great but I'm concerned about Armenia's movement."

"Why, did you hear something?"

"Among business people in Frankfurt, there's a rumor that Armenia is buying in weapons with big funds."

"Don't worry about it. Any arms companies in the Western world won't sell weapons to Armenia."

'Don't be ridiculous. I'm the one who's involved in that.'

Since he slipped the words already, there would be an excuse even if he was caught delivering the weapons he took from Tracy at the Azerbaijani border. If he was caught, he could give away the weapons and if he was not, those weapons would be possessions of Serbian Village.