Empire of the Ring

Youngho asked a question to the rebel leader in the hope of finding out about the gold bars.

"Do you need anything else other than these supplies?"

"We do have one but I doubt that you could do this as an agent. I'd like to exchange gold bars with cash, we seldom get to exchange these living deep in the mountains. Lately, we haven't been daring to do that because the Russian secret policemen are searching us with avidity."

"I can take care of that, but only up to five million dollars at a time."

His face brightened at Young's remark.

"Are you sure? If we could do that, we won't have to deliver the supplies through dangerous routes. If we have enough cash, we can get the supplies on our own. We have plenty of gold bars."

Youngho uttered yells of delight in his mind. Exchanging gold bars was a great opportunity to make money.

"We can exchange them at the village of Shatili later. I can exchange more amounts if you let me know in advance."

"There's no need for that, you can transfer money directly into our foreign bank account. You can take the gold bars now."

The leader was trusting Youngho immensely ever since he heard that his team annihilated a base on Russian border securities.

"You can trust me, I've had deals with the Black Widows as well."

At the mention of the Black Widows, the atmosphere suddenly turned sober.

"Foolish people. They should've waited until they regained strength…"

The leader who pondered for a while continued with the unfinished business talk.

"So, like I said. If we have cash, the CIA doesn't need to deliver us the supplies risking your own lives. If we paid, we could even pocket the supplies of the Russian army."

Youngho could see how corrupted the Russian army was. It did not matter whether the buyer was a rebel, Russian soldiers would sell their supplies to anyone in secret.

Gold bars would be sold at two-thirds of the original price in the black market. Even if Youngho bought them at the original price, he could still make money by selling them back if he sold it at the right time.

"You should still receive the supplies from the CIA. It's a gift and you could save your money."

It would be suspicious if Youngho reported that the rebels suddenly did not need any supplies.

"Okay, then please give us whatever that's easy to deliver. We can get weapons and ammunition from Chechnya, that way it's easier to deliver."

The rebels wanted to utilize their gold bars since they needed cash, Youngho accepted the deal gladly. He did not know how many gold bars the rebels stole from the Chechen central bank but he guessed that they neared a thousand in number.

They had begun climbing in the morning so they could reach the rebel's foothold in the evening. Indeed it was an impregnable fort.

It was hidden in a rocky area where giant rocks were intertwined together like a maze, that it was undetectable from the sky. There were about twenty platoon-sized bases.

The gate was connected to a cave, so they could easily guard the whole place against strangers. In the middle of the foothold, there was a quite big lot where 200 rebels were practicing bayonet skills. Their training program seemed to be as systematic as a regular army.

The rebels only focused on learning bayonet skills, and they were not interested in learning special combat skills and deep cover skills.

When facing an enemy, deep cover or hiding was used to lessen damage but many people considered it as being coward. Maybe it was embedded in the European combat culture, in which two people traditionally stood at a distant to fire at each other fairly in a combat. However, a war was a different story. It was better for even a single comrade to survived in a battle in order to prepare for the future. Being a fair gentleman would not bring a victory.

***

At the morning training the next day, Jongil and Insoo demonstrated some of their lethal moves as the rebels watched them in surprise. When three rebels who each held a bayonet fell before Jongil's bare hands, they were all in a shock. They exclaimed as he jumped borrowing a little bit of power of the leather shoes and kicked the rebels. As leaving the training lot after teaching some basic hand-to-hand fight moves, the rebels clapped to the three friends.

Since they could not stay there too long, they left the foothold after having lunch. In each of their backpacks were 40 gold bars, in total, they carried 120 of them. Not knowing the leather shoes reduced half of the weight it carried, the rebels worried that the gold bars were too heavy to carry but as they picked up their backpacks with ease, the rebels could not close their mouths.

Youngho promised that he would transfer money right away as soon as he reached Georgia and ran down the mountain at a face pace. With the rebel leader, he agreed on exchanging 30,000 dollars for each gold bar. Although it was a negotiated price according to the recent international gold price drop, the leader was still fond of the price since he received more money than selling the gold bars at the black market.

They returned to the village of Shatili in two hours only. They even had breaks in-between.

This trip was a good experience for Insoo. Overjoyed by having trained the rebels for a short period, he said that his old combat senses were coming back. Looking at him Youngho only wished that there would not be a situation where Insoo would have to use his combat senses.

Youngho sent the supply items list to Philip and the location of delivery, which was a shepherd's cabin in the mountains. Youngho's part as the CIA agent was done now.

In Tbilisi, he transferred 3.6 million dollars to the rebel leader's foreign account. Since the Black Eagle had more than a thousand gold bars left, Youngho planned on frequently exchanging money with them from now on. His fondness of gold bars was not only because they were a good investment but also because he could sell it to a particular businessman at a large sum of money when he wanted.

They had to travel by train on the way back to Baku because of the gold bars. If they flew to Baku, the gold bars would have been exposed to airport security. It was an exhausting 14-hour long trip but because the three of them were together, they felt like high school students on a field trip. Because of Jongil and Insoo who frequently brought snacks and liquors from the dining section, they were all drunk when they got off at Baku Station.

Although it was a short trip, it was beneficial for the three friends because they got to work together as a team. They learned about each other's habits, facial expressions, and gestures to read each other. Although they were already close as they had trained together in Navy Special Forces back in Korea, it was their first time together in a real field, using the power of the leather shoes. It was an essential element for field agents on a mission. Knowing about each other and reading their teammates even without having a conversation, was a huge plus during an operation. When a team moved quickly in a flowing manner, it would take longer for the enemy to apprehend their tactics.

***

Youngho was satisfied that he could attain more gold bars. The national bank of each nation tried to acquire more gold because they could print as much money according to the amount of gold they had. Youngho now had in total of 250 gold bars, they could worth 15 billion won if sold to a good buyer. He wanted to exchange more gold bars if possible.

The gang went to a Turkish sauna to sober up. After having a nap, they went back to the farm. They wanted to be polished since the two friends were now married. If they showed up at the farm scruffy, their family would have been worried about them, which would be an obstacle for the next trip.

As they showed up polished at the farm, the farm family greeted them. Since the three guys who protected the farm were gone at the same time, the vacancy must have been big for them. Fatima who cooked ramen for Youngho chatted that the farm felt empty for the past few days. Since she stared at him eating ramen, Youngho could not eat well. Zeynep woke up from the afterschool nap and greeted Youngho with a hug. Looking at ramen, she took his bowl and started eating it as if it was hers despite Fatima's scolding. Youngho looked at Zeynep as she was eating the ramen. Although it was not a desirable action, she could only behave naturally like that since they were a family. Eating ramen, Zeynep was still chatty but it was like a chirping sound of a bird to Youngho.

Szechenyi, who had been helping workers loading wine boxes, entered the living room and greeted Youngho.

"Hyung, you are here. Can you make it to school tomorrow? We have a parent-teacher conference."

"Of course, I can come."

Youngho had heard from Fatima that the school was looking for a sponsor for a school concert. It seemed that the school wanted to ask for him to be the sponsor to buy some tickets. Of course, he wanted to support the concert since the little siblings were in the concert. Szechenyi would be playing a big drum and Zeynep would be playing the xylophone.

Even though young kids had been practicing hard for the concert, parents' support rate was low. If Youngho could only bring the farm family, it could fill up one side of the school auditorium.

***

"Youngho, is that you? Is everything alright in Baku?"

Sangchun's question gave the impression that something was going wrong in Korea.

"Are you still getting inspected by taxman?"

"No, it's been over for long. You know, we have nothing to be inspected, really."

"Did you find out why they inspected a tiny company? "

"They said they usually do inspections every three years. We made huge sales in the past three years, you know."

Sangchun sounded naive, regular inspections by taxman were only for large corporations not a small company like Chunho Merchant.

"I might know why, can you look into that more?"

"Man, it's already over. Let this go."

It seemed that it would be faster for Youngho to figure out by himself.

"How's my nephew?"

"He's talking now."

"You should visit Baku in the summer, you can bring your parents too."

"I heard it's extremely hot in there in the summer."

"If you come, I was going to go on a trip to Northern Europe with you."

"Oh now that you've got money and time, you want to go everywhere. Okay, we'll think about it."

After hanging up the phone, Youngho thought about how to give Korean officials a little warning. Since the timid-minded officials' spite could last long, he needed to make them stop bothering him and the people around him.

He wanted to find a safe way that would not give away his identity. In order to expose Korean officials' fault for not buying oil before the price went up to the public, he needed to reveal the reason why Korean oil companies' had bought large amounts of oil ahead of time.

Since it was his information that made the oil companies buy oil in advance, Korean people would resent for their government's way of handling an important issue.

To attain the information, Youngho needed to go to the Korean embassy and ask the councilor and ambassador K. If he was the same guy who just came to Baku from Korea a few years ago, he would not have thought about giving a payback especially to government officials. However, one thing he learned from living in Baku was to fight back if he was ill-treated. All the business people of Baku lived that way.

He was not sure if he would end up just giving them a message or making them fired. No matter what, the curtain was rising for his return game.