The Arsenal of Democracy, Part V
After delivering what was less of an advice and more of a command in disguise to Princess Tokugawa Chiyoko, I had arrived at the final destination of my East Asian business trip.
"I cannot help but wonder," Pavel remarked. "Just how far that princess—who is little more than a hothouse flower—can actually go."
"Is that a dig at me? Technically speaking, back when the Syndicate was still in Kaliningrad, wasn't I a hothouse flower myself?"
"..."
"Aha, I'm joking, I'm joking. But I'm curious too. I certainly hope the Acting Secretary-General grows up fast and stirs up a magnificent storm of chaos."
Though I laughed it off as a joke, the words lingered in my mind. After all, the hothouse flower who once hid behind her father's coattails had grown this much.
But I couldn't afford to get complacent and satisfied with the status quo. The more the Red Princess and her party expanded their influence in Japan, the deeper the Far East would plunge into chaos in more ways than one. It would reach a point where sword-wielding yakuza would make a mockery of the sword-ban edict that had been in place since the Meiji era.
Under my instigation—publicly attributed to Tokugawa Chiyoko—the yakuza would target key government officials, while the establishment would retaliate in kind against the Communist Party leadership. In this endless cycle of blood, as the Communist Party's rapid advance persisted, international attention would inevitably be drawn to them.
First, neighboring Korea would be shaken. Ezo would extend a hand to the 'former' comrades of the Japan Communist Party. China and North Korea would do the same.
Among all these, the one that demanded my utmost attention was, of course, the Soviet approach. The moment a meeting was arranged between a high-ranking official of the Soviet Communist Party and the princess would be my golden opportunity to secure a high-profile hostage.
I could use them as leverage in future negotiations, or simply extract information through torture. Either way, there would be plenty of room to maneuver depending on how the situation unfolded.
For the sake of that inevitable future, I had to focus on the present. I redirected my attention to the perception-inhibiting magic I kept constantly active.
"Well? Does it look like it's being fooled?"
"Hmm... it's quite ambiguous. It's flickering like a snake's tongue, but the situation here seems different from Pyongyang."
I was currently out on the Pacific Ocean. More specifically, about ten kilometers east of the border between Ezo and South Japan. Leaving Tokyo briefly, I had used my Charm magic to commandeer a fishing boat at a port in Iwate Prefecture. Now, I was lingering along the edge of the maritime border, probing the inner workings of the barrier.
Of course, as demonstrated by Pavel piloting the river cruise during our escape from Kaliningrad, he was more than capable of handling a small fishing boat himself. However, for the sake of our disguise, we had to refrain from such direct actions. That was why we had gone to the trouble of playing the part of fishermen out in these deep waters.
It wasn't that I hadn't considered analyzing it from land, as I had in Pyongyang. But there were two main reasons why I chose a maritime survey instead.
First, I wanted to see if the barrier was as cleanly severed at sea as it was on land. The answer was a resounding yes. The barrier, which rejected my very existence, stretched across the sea just as it did on land, tracing the border—or more precisely, the territorial waters. It was likely the same beneath the surface. Perhaps because the owner of the boat I had enthralled with Charm was a fisherman from Iwate, which bordered Ezo, he kept detailed coastal maps on hand, allowing me to pinpoint our location with extreme precision.
The second reason was of a more practical, albeit minor, nature.
Blegh—
The shadow I conjured began to regurgitate finely minced chunks of flesh. Well, judging by the smell, vomiting is definitely the right word for it...
"...You are finally disposing of them, milady."
"Ugh, I feel like throwing up myself. Seriously, how has Schattenmaiden been holding onto this all this time?"
The reason was that I had to dispose of the blended human remains of the ten people I had swallowed back at the Yokohama docks. While I could store things inside the fanged shadow palms of my magical beast, time didn't stop in there. Fortunately, because it was winter, the decomposition had been slow, but it hadn't stopped entirely. The nauseating stench of rotting corpses originated from right here.
Had this been in the UK, I would have mobilized the Syndicate to use other methods. For instance, dissolving them in a vat of sodium hydroxide and flushing them down the sewer. Disposing of the bones would be slightly tedious, but there was no easier way to melt protein into a slippery liquid. The Syndicate could easily procure pure sodium hydroxide under the guise of Szczecin-Oder Logistics, since sodium hydroxide was as widely used in the chemical industry as hydrochloric acid. And thanks to the Iron Lady's obsession with privatization, a highly concentrated human solution flowing into the River Thames wouldn't have caused so much as a ripple.
Plan B, which I considered immediately after, was cremation. I could have just stuffed the bodies into a drum, doused them in kerosene, and set them ablaze. But doing that kind of crazy stunt in Tokyo, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, was bound to invite unwanted trouble. The time required for cremation—about two hours per person—was also a problem. I couldn't exactly sit there and watch the burning process for an entire day. If I burned them in some rural countryside, it might have been easy to mask the scent with the smell of manure. However, since the cost wasn't much different from taking a boat out and dumping them in the ocean, I decided to simply dump the corpses illegally into the Pacific.
Splash—
The concentration of human solution in the world's oceans had just slightly increased. Now that the body disposal was complete, I turned my attention back to the barrier.
After casting the perception-inhibiting spell and scattering my presence to observe the reaction, it seemed the magic did have some effect on the barrier. But as I had told Pavel, it was far from a perfect solution. Even though I had flawlessly replicated the spell of the Juche-ideology mage who had evaded all the plainclothes officers of the anti-communist investigation unit in the alleys of Namyeong-dong, it only did so much.
Then again, with thousands of mages maintaining thousands of pivots, there's no way a single localized perception-inhibiting spell could completely bypass it.
It was a result I had half-expected. Still, since it wasn't entirely useless, there was no need to completely scrap my plan to condition the barrier like Pavlov's dog.
"So, should we consider it a half-success and a half-failure?"
"Yes, that seems about right. Neither side has gained the upper hand yet."
"Then the role of a third party, the kingmaker, will be crucial."
"Indeed. And the prime candidate for that... would be the Americans, wouldn't it?"
I chuckled, playing along with Pavel's words. If I grew the Syndicate to be even stronger than it was now, our clash with the Soviet of Materialists would inevitably become a collision of titans. It would transcend the magical world and escalate into a conflict that would draw the eyes of the entire globe.
In that case, starting now, I had to either bring as many factions as possible under my wing or, at the very least, sway them into a neutral position that leaned in my favor. The ideal scenario would be to make them all my subordinates, but that was easier said than done.
In that regard, the United States was a third party well worth winning over. The Yankees had more than enough reason and justification to harbor hostility toward the Soviet Union. If I took the lead and offered to wipe out the Materialists, wouldn't they welcome it with open arms?
If they could be guaranteed the status of an undisputed global superpower on the world stage after the final battle, they would be even more eager to align with me. Of course, the United States possessed enough latent power to eventually ascend to the rank of a sole superpower on its own. But just as they hadn't realized their own potential prior to World War II, the America of today had no idea how far ahead of the Soviet Union they actually were.
It would take more than a decade after the end of the Cold War for proper research on the actual power disparity between the US and the USSR to emerge. In other words, I was the only witch in the world who truly understood the giant's potential.
If so, couldn't I rouse the sluggish body of this oblivious giant and guide it to throw a couple of devastating punches exactly where I wanted? If I could strike a deal using an inevitable future as leverage, there could be no more profitable venture. We have nothing to lose but our chains, and everything to gain.
The key was to make the Americans realize that I was no Hitler. If they ever caught wind of my true plan—to bring the Soviet Union to its knees, dissect its corpse, and stand taller than anyone else in the world—it might trigger an unprecedented alliance between the Materialists of Moscow and the American Eagle.
An 'Unholy Alliance' must never rise again.
As I let my thoughts drift away on the rolling waves, I saw the sun rising in the far east. One by one, bright red scales of light began to ripple across the freezing, dark winter sea.
"The sun is rising," Pavel murmured.
"Does this remind you of somewhere? You sound rather nostalgic."
"It was before I joined the Syndicate. I saw this sight more times than I could count in Odessa. Though, of course, I wasn't in the middle of the ocean like this."
True, Odessa, facing the Black Sea, was a city famous for its scenic views. There was a reason why a young Yerina and her father had vacationed in Odessa instead of Sochi. But if there was one thing that bothered me, it was that Pavel's circumstances back when he watched those sunrises must have been far from comfortable. He had probably watched the sun rise while clad in tattered rags, with blood and pus dripping from his wounds.
"Ah, it seems I've dragged up your past."
"I don't mind, milady. Now that I am fully settled in the Syndicate, it is merely a past I can look back on and smile."
"Well, I'm glad to hear that."
Now, the world was completely dyed in crimson. The sky. The sea.
At least I'm not dyed red too...
As I indulged in these idle thoughts, Pavel suddenly called out to me.
"Lady Bronska."
"Yes?"
"I ask only out of concern... but do you ever feel that the path you are walking now is empty?"
Ah, he's asking if nothing but emptiness awaits at the end of revenge. I chuckled again and replied.
"Not at all. Unlike before, my days are incredibly fulfilling now. I don't feel the emptiness you're worried about."
The number of people I had personally killed already numbered in the dozens. This figure would only grow in the future; it would never decrease or stagnate. Believing that every soul I reaped and shattered was not the end goal, but merely a means to an end, was an extremely convenient form of self-defense.
"I know. In that sense, I'm well aware that I'm a little crazy."
And what I was trying to do was something that could never be accomplished unless one was mad.
I glanced back to see Pavel staring at me, his lips pressed into a tight line. I stretched my arms out toward the vast expanse of the sky and the sea.
"Ngh—my father once told me, 'Conscience is nothing but a luxury.'"
It was a memory that lingered faintly in Yerina's mind. I didn't know when he had said it. All I knew was that it was a maxim perfectly suited to serve as the motto for Willo Bronsky, the founder and first leader of the Northern Covenant Syndicate. And it was because my father had stubbornly adhered to this iron rule that I was able to salvage the Syndicate from the ruins of a crumbling pile of corpses.
Pavel nodded slowly.
"Looking back, I suppose I lived the same way. When I was barely scraping by, stealing bread from the marketplace, I had no room for a conscience."
"It's not much different now, is it? Stealing bread from a market, or stealing countries and corporations from a globe. It's all the same."
A smirk played on his lips.
"I am glad."
"What? Why are you smiling?"
"When I first joined the Syndicate, you were a little kid barely a meter tall, milady. But seeing how wonderfully you have grown, I smiled because I feel I can face Master Bronsky without shame."
"Indeed. The hothouse flower is now ruling the back alleys."
"Master Bronsky would be proud of you as well."
Well, I suppose I had grown up quite wonderfully. Both in body and mind. I let out a smug hum.
"Let's go back, Pavel."
Home.