Chapter 20

“You want to build a shopping mall? Here?”

“That’s right,” Mr. Ess answered.

“Right here,” Mr. Cee added while gesturing to the surroundings.

Hamid Damra looked around. There was nothing here. There was anything even near here. The nearest town was more than an hour’s drive away.

“There’s nothing here.”

Nodding his head quite vigorously, Mr. Cee said, “We know.”

“We had a dream, and it said that we were to build it here,” Mr. Ess said.

“There aren’t any customers within an hour from here,” Hamid said.

Mr. Ess said, “They will come.”

“We had a dream,” Mr. Cee said.

“Do you have any blueprints for this shopping mall?”

“Yes.”

“Here they are,” Mr. Cee said while handing over a large tube.

Hamid Damra pulled the end off of the tube. It took a second to get the plans out of it. He spread the plans across the hood of their car. He glanced down at the signature block. The plans were from a well known architectural firm in Amra. He knew it must have cost them a fortune to have the plans drawn up.

There was a long road from the two lane on which they were currently parked that led up to a huge parking lot. Surrounding the parking lot were a dozen buildings. He flipped through the plans. There were blueprints for all of the buildings.

He went back and studied the road. He said, “You’ve got an eight lane road that is two miles long, and goes to the parking lot from here.”

“Yes. Our dream was quite specific.”

“The mall had a long wide concrete road leading up to it.”

“Don’t you think that eight lanes is a little excessive?”

“No. It’s just perfect,” Mr. Cee answered.

“It’s better than perfect. It’s exactly what we want,” Mr. Ess said.

Hamid said, “There’s enough parking space here for ten thousand cars.”

“Yes.”

“That’s a little excessive, don’t you think?”

Mr. Ess answered, “Not at all.”

“We don’t want our customers spending all of their time looking for a parking spot when they can be inside the mall shopping.”

“All of these buildings are pretty large.”

“That’s right. We want it to be big,” Mr. Cee said.

“You are building a huge mall with a humongous parking and a ridiculously wide road in a location in which your nearest customer is an hour away. Is that about right?”

“Yes.”

Hamid asked, “Are you crazy?”

“Like a fox.”

“Hey, that’s a good name for our mall. Like a fox.”

“I like it.”

“Will you build it?”

“I’ll have to work up an estimate,” Hamid answered. He wasn’t going to do anything without getting paid for it up front. “I’ll need a retainer.”

“We’ve got one right here,” Mr. Cee said holding up a check.

Hamid looked at the check. It was for two million dollars.

“May Jarjan have mercy on my soul for taking advantage of two fools,” Hamid muttered. To the two men, he said, “I’ll get to work on it right now.”

“Great.”

“Excellent.”

“We want it all done in a year.”

“We would like the road and a couple of buildings much sooner than that.”

Hamid said, “Of course you do.”

The two men watched Hamid drive away. They were smiling broadly and waving. Once he was well down the road the two men turned to each other and burst out laughing.

Hamid glanced in his rear mirror and said, “Fools.”

“Well, Mr. Cee. Do you think he suspects anything?”

“I think he thinks we’re fools, Mr. Ess.”

“That’s rather foolish of him, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I do.”

Something was tickling the tip of his nose. Still asleep, he twitched his nose trying to drive off whatever it was. It didn’t help. He opened his eyes and groaned when he saw the cause of his discomfort.

“Good morning, Mr. President.”

It didn’t take much mental power to identify his visitor. He said, “You’re a Jade Warrior.”

“I’m Sword Anahila.”

“I’ll bet I can guess why you’re here. You want me to surrender the country to you.”

“Exactly.”

“I thought you were going after Venu.”

“That’s what everyone thought,” Sword Anahila said. “That’s why we came here first. We don’t like to do what everyone is expecting us to do. If you do what they expect, then they know what you’re going to do, and the doing gets tougher.”

“That makes sense, even this early in the morning.”

“You should get out of bed, now. We have lots to do today.”

“Would you mind turning your back? I’m not dressed for entertaining visitors.”

“You’ll be good, won’t you?” she said.

The man looked at her like she had said something incredibly stupid and answered, “I’m seventy-three years old. I don’t think I’m in much of a position to overpower you. The last time I hit anyone I was in fifth grade and I got a bloody nose out of the deal. If you’re in here, then calling the guards won’t do much good since you’ve probably got them tied up.”

“That’s true. I’ll wait outside your door.”

“Thank you.”

Once the door closed behind Sword Anahila, President Reis of Grete sat on the edge of his bed and sighed. He had known this day was coming. For that matter, everyone had known this day was coming. They were at war with the Jade Empire, and the Empire was eating up countries one at a time. After seeing the Jade Empire take over the continent of Surprise, there was little doubt of the outcome.

Not that they were defeatist or anything, but the congress had already met, and had accepted that Grete was going to be surrendering if the Jade Empire came knocking on their door. The biggest question had been how much resistance should they show. After debating the matter, they realized that all they would accomplish by resisting would be the death of some soldiers or, even worse, a couple of congressmen.

He got out of bed and dressed in his finest suit. If he was going to give up total sovereignty of his country, he might was well dress up for it. He wondered what it would be like having a Red Lord watching over the government. He’d talked to the President of Ulamb about it and it didn’t sound like having a Red Lord around was all that intrusive.

He stepped out of his bedroom. “What’s on the agenda?”

“I figure you’ll want breakfast. Then we’ll go to your office where you can look over the contract. Once congress gets around to meeting, you can go there and present the contract. I figure we’ll have everything wrapped up by noon.”

“I expect you’re right.”

They headed towards the dining room. On the way, they passed a sitting room. He looked in at the security guards. They were sitting on the floor in rows with two Jade Warriors watching them. None of them looked very happy at being there.

“Can they go back to work?”

“In a little while. We don’t want any heroics.”

“I guess I can understand that. I could order them not to do anything heroic.”

“Would they obey your orders?”

“Probably not.”

They reached the dining room. Lord Manela was seated in a chair reading the paper that was normally waiting for President Reis to read while eating.

Lowering the paper, Lord Manela said, “I’m Lord Manela. I guess we’ll be working together for a while.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” President Reis said. He looked at the paper and asked, “Is there anything interesting in the paper?”

“Sorry about taking your paper. I thought I’d get a little idea about what’s going on. It looks like your Secretary of Housing is in a little trouble,” Lord Manela said while folding the paper.

“I was getting ready to ask for her resignation. I suppose I won’t have to do that, now.”

“You might want to get her to resign before signing the treaty. It might save her life.”

“I’ll let her know when we get to the office.”

“You might let anyone else who has issues, know that now would be a good time to retire.”

“I doubt I’ll need to do that. There are enough ways to get rich as a cabinet member without having to break the law. To tell the truth, I’m very disappointed in Madam Secretary. If you’re too stupid to get rich legitimately, you’re too stupid to hold the office.”

“I did notice that there were no prohibitions against insider trading for cabinet members and congressmen. That’s a rather novel approach to getting rid of corruption.”

“Why take a bribe when you can buy stock? Why not vote in the interests of the country when you can rich regardless of how you vote?”

“The jury is still out on that one,” Lord Manela said.

“I normally have a morning briefing. Will I be having one today?”

Lord Manela said, “I suppose your cabinet will come to work at their regular hours. You might as well address them before we head off to the congressional building.”

“That would be appreciated.”

“You seem to be taking this pretty well.”

“It’s not like it’s a surprise. All in all, I’d say we’re a pragmatic group.”

“Is that true for the countryside?”

“Even more so. We weren’t conquered by Khung, but we did see what happened to Palarma. Lessons were learned. Leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone. That’s how we run our country, at least. We collect taxes, provide some services, and leave people alone.”

Lord Manela smiled and said, “I think we’ll get along just fine.”

The idea of having an ultra-light infantry captured the imagination of the tribes. Young men joined the tribal units, serving under the leadership of one of the middle-aged men who had experience with war. At the moment, the leaders of twenty of the units were standing around at the target range listening to Sword Jin talking about the need for precision shooting.

Abdul, the first in line for instruction, was insulted. He couldn’t believe the nerve of the Jade Warrior telling him and the others that they needed to learn how to shoot. He’d been shooting since he was twelve. He had fought in raids and killed with his rifle.

“I don’t need you to teach me how to shoot.”

“I beg to disagree.”

“I’m a good fighter. That’s why I was selected to lead my unit.”

“I think a demonstration is in order.” Having learned that a lot of the members of tribes believed that the only way to empty a rifle was to fire off every round, Sword Jin said, “Empty your rifle of ammunition without firing it.”

Abdul did as he was told by removing the clip from his rifle. He waved it around for Sword Jin to see that he had followed directions.

“Remove the one in the chamber.”

Looking a little sheepish, Abdul removed the round in the chamber.

“Remove all of the rounds from your clip.”

Abdul did as he was asked, complaining the entire time that there was a better and faster way to empty clip. The others in his group were standing back thinking Sword Jin was being a jerk. There were boxes and boxes of ammunition there. Surely letting off a load was reasonable.

The rounds ended up in a small pile on the shooting bench. Sword Jin counted out ten rounds of ammunition. He set them out in a nice little row on the shooting bench. He held the rest of the rounds from the clip in his hand. He picked up the box of ammunition and dropped the rounds in it.