Empire of the Ring

"Oppa. Do you wish me to stay in Baku forever?"

Glad that Zeynep had brought it up herself, Youngho answered her quickly.

"Of course. To think that you'll not be here anymore, I can't even eat and sleep well."

"I've seen you eat two bowls at the dinner table. Also, you slept so well last night when Leon was bawling."

Knowing Youngho's tactic, Zeynep drove in a wedge. Youngho had no words to say anymore. He turned around the subject since he could not be pushed by her.

"I'm just too busy these days that my time is wacked. So, have you realized that you didn't want to leave anymore?"

"Hahaha…"

She smiled again, which gave him goosebumps.

"If you leave Baku, Leon's going to be lovesick. He's going to stop eating and your sister will be lonely too."

"I know both you and Leon can't get hands off food. Besides, more than one year is left until I leave. Why are you making this a big deal now?"

Youngho could not make any more excuses.

"Okay, you're right but I wish my little Zeynep could live with me as long as possible. This is my conclusion."

"Alright. I'll take your word into consideration and think about it for the next year. Well, since I've been flying the airplane several times, I want to go to an aviation school too."

'Yes! My plan's finally working!'

"But, I still want to study design. Should I study both?'

She had rewound everything back to the starting point.

'Is she determined to kill me by draining me until the end? She wants to study more things now.'

Being a stubborn child, Zeynep was a difficult person to convince. It seemed that he was not going to be able to concentrate on working if she flew away from the nest alone. He had to think of something to make her stay.

'Should I find a husband to stay here with her?'

Youngho slapped his knee thinking that it was a great solution. It had to be someone that Zeynep would fall in love with and someone who is capable of helping with businesses and the Serbian descendants.

Youngho decided to look for someone who could be a perfect spouse for her. If she gets married as soon as she graduated from high school, she would not go abroad to study design or aviation.

***

"That's a great idea. There's an old saying, 'you dig the reservoir deeper when there is a drought.' When other people had given up, a great businessman would take a further step. Investing in a more aggressive manner during the most difficult time would bring you a ton more back in time."

As Park Youngsun complimented Youngho's idea, Youngho was flattered. He had thought that Park Youngsun would oppose his idea that it was a wasteful investment. Choi Sunkil also was playing alongside him.

"Mr. Lee, I only failed my business because I didn't have enough money but it was not investment failure. I spent too much because I thought it was great timing, just like you."

Wishing that Youngho could learn from his previous failure, Choi Sunkil mentioned his bitter past.

"I have enough money to back up my investment, so you won't need to be worried. Since you're the expert, why don't you look for great ships to invest in? And please let people know that Arirang Shipping only travels through the Atlantic. The shippers would be more attracted to that."

"Of course! If you want to target a niche market, you should make the industry specialized in something. It would only be a drag if you cover even longer sea routes."

Having Choi Sunkil on his side, he felt like he had a great ally force. Now, Arirang Shipping would be stepping into a new era.

Youngho's plan was to buy smaller ships with great speed about thirty knots, which big ships could not have, and to specialize in quick shipping services in short distances and dominate the niche market. The regular cargo ships were not as fast as airplanes but they had the advantage that they were faster than any large ships.

"You don't think there would be a lot of pirates in the Atlantic as in the Gulf of Aden and the Strait of Malacca, do you?"

Recently, many slow ships had been targeted by pirates who followed them with fast-sailing ships.

"Well, some pirates still show up around the Central and South America occasionally but those regions are irrelevant to our sea route, so you shouldn't be concerned. They can't possibly show up around Northern American and Europe. They'll be eliminated as soon as they do."

"What do you think about assigning security guards on cargo ships?"

"Oh! The crewmen will love to have guards on board. Many shippers also want that but they can't really afford hiring guards."

"I've already picked safety guards for ships, so just know that two will be assigned for each ship."

Youngho wanted to assign the job to Hong Sungki, the Red Pepper who had done an excellent job when the Armenian force had invaded the ranch, and his team. It was because Hong Sungki was complaining that his job was too easy now ever since he was assigned as a ship security guard in the Caspian Sea, sure enough, there was not much to do in the Caspian Sea. If the team was assigned for ships traveling around the Atlantic, they would be excited since they would be traveling to the states and famous European ports.

"It's quite convenient since you have a security company under Zeynep Corporation."

"Yep. The security crews consist of people who served in Korean Navy Special Forces. If pirates targeted them, they would rather try to take their ships."

"Hahaha…"

Choi Sunkil's laughing was loud and clear since everything he did was going well. Youngho also promised special commissions to every crewman, that Choi Sunkil's reputation was now even backed up by it. It was because the crewmen were trying their best to accept more orders from shippers. Any efforts should be rewarded and that was the best way to encourage the crewmen.

***

Two men were standing before Youngho. They were eagle-eyed and their postures were stable. If he ordered them, they looked like they would immediately go break someone's neck.

"You can be at ease and listen carefully to what I'm about to say."

The Serbian descendant young men, Slavica and Jeremic, both aged twenty-six, were ultimately picked as the CIA's field agents. They thought that they were picked as the Archduchess' personal guard and took it as an honor of their families.

As they listened to Youngho's long explanation, their eyes were even sharper. When Youngho asked if they could sacrifice themselves for the US CIA, for the glory of the Kingdom of Serbia, their eyes were even reddened. They were impressed that the prince consort, Youngho, had abandoned a convenient life to take advantage of the power of the states. With an exaggerated story, Youngho managed to lure them.

Now he was their hero.

For the prince consort who had thrown away his pride for the restoration of the kingdom, the two young Serbian lads could be loyal to death.

"There are only three people who know that we're CIA agents, the Archduchess Fatima, Kim Ilkwon the secretary, and Dr. Park here. Now it's five, including you two."

At Youngho's speech which could only be heard in a stage act, Jongil was about to laugh but was stopped by Cha Insoo's glare. It was such a solemn moment.

"We will never be any harm to you or the Archduchess. We've made up our mind when you spoke to us."

"When you call Park Jongil outside, you should refer him as your director, and please call me boss."

"How can we do that? You're the prince consort. That's ludicrous…"

Full of the pride of being the citizens of the Kingdom of Serbia and the dignity of being the descendants of the kingdom's knights, it was not easy for them to change the way they called Youngho since he was the Archduchess' husband.

It was something that Michael would tease about repeatedly from now on since he already knew that Fatima was being worshipped by the kingdom's descendants.

When Michael heard about it first, he smirked and said that all of the people of Europe would be related to royal blood in some way. However, when Youngho reported that he would be recruiting the Serbian lads, he complimented him for his decision since the team would have some diversity to it rather than having only Korean members.

Park Jongil now became the director of Kazakhstan's operative team. Now that he had two underlings, his self-esteem was higher than ever.

"At least we should go to Kazakhstan at this moment since the new recruits would be receiving intelligence training."

Because the two were not trained in Special Forces as Youngho or his friends, they would be receiving a training course at the European chapter before they could be assigned to the field. It was fortunate that they did not have the language barrier since they could speak English.

***

The assignment on Kazakhstan was not a short-term period job but was a long-term task which required collecting information continuously and finding out the future measures. Once the investigation of the current economic and political situations of Kazakhstan was done, there would be a negotiation between the U.S. government and the Kazakh government, and then, agents would be deployed for further operations.

The CIA had already collected some information since there were secret agents in the U.S. embassy based in Kazakhstan and they had been sending information. Youngho's job was to contact them first and cooperate with them. He was nervous since he did not know if those agents would take his team since they were assigned by the headquarters directly from the Asian Department but Youngho was from the European chapter, which would be strange to them.

Youngho and Jongil arrived at the U.S. embassy in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan. The agents who received Youngho and Jongil looked startled. They had heard that the European chapter was sending veteran agents and they had not thought that Youngho and Jongil would be Asians. Youngho could see what they were thinking just by reading their faces.

'Man, they must've forgotten that Kazakhstan is in Central Asia."

Asian agents were actually better suited to work in Kazakhstan but they were rather surprised that there were veteran Asian agents in the European chapter.

"Welcome. I'm Agent Smith from the headquarters."

Youngho already knew it but Agent Smith was emphasizing that he was from the headquarters.

"I'm the regional head of the Caucasus region, Lee Youngho, and this is the vice head, Park Jongil."

Youngho made up a title for Park Jongil since he did not want to be underestimated by agent Smith. Referring to Park Jongil as the vice head implied that there were many agents under them.

As he introduced himself and Jongil with great titles, Agent Smith's attitude toward them was changed slightly.

They had some tea at a table and began to talk about their job.

"As you already know, China is advancing into the country at a tremendous pace. It had overtaken the economy bloc at the Eastern border. At this rate, soon Kazakhstan's economy would be divided by the two dominating countries, Russia and China."

"I'd like to ask, what is the stance of the headquarters in all this? The CIA has been neglecting Kazakhstan but why is it bothering now to get involved in the country's economy?"

"It was not negligence. It was rather that Kazakhstan was not in the CIA's focus. However, the CIA is startled by China's quantum leap in the country. I've been continuously sending reports but the headquarters did not really care."

"Well, we're operative agents and our operations are not bound by political situations. If you need to use force, please let us know."

"…"

Agent Smith was startled by Youngho's direct mention of using force.