Declaring War on Crime in South America
"This is truly... beyond anything I imagined!"
I was in the middle of my usual work when Isabella came bursting in, making no attempt to hide her excitement. And frankly, she had every right to be.
"In just one month, Tortilla Seafood's revenue has already surpassed four million dollars! Net profit is sitting at a staggering three million."
Tortilla Seafood's numbers were insane. How does a company pull four million dollars in monthly revenue? Simple: they were catching a lot of fish.
The Tortilla Seafood fleet was hauling in an average of seventy-five tons of skate a day. After sorting out what was actually fit for sale, about forty-five tons remained. Twenty-four working days a month meant 1,080 tons of marketable skate — 1,080,000 kilograms. Skate was averaging a little over five dollars a kilo, but they'd slashed the price to $3.30 to seize the market as fast as possible, which alone generated well over $3.5 million. Add another $500,000 from reprocessing the unsellable catch into fertilizer and animal feed for export, and the total came to four million even.
Of course, every business has expenses. But Tortilla Seafood's costs were unbelievably low.
The labor costs alone were ridiculous.
Even paying double the Libertad average wage, the mean monthly salary was only four hundred dollars a head, bringing total payroll to a mere sixty thousand. Subtract $470,000 in fuel for the boats and the assorted other costs, and you were still left with roughly three million in net profit.
Three million dollars. In a single month. About 4.5 billion won. For a venture that had only taken twenty million dollars in capital, the return was almost unbelievable. But it was too early to celebrate.
"It's still too soon to relax. Once you factor in the wage increases coming down the pipeline, we won't be clearing this kind of margin. On top of that, exports to Korea are going to drop sharply for a while."
We'd already used rock-bottom prices to dump more than half of Korea's entire annual import volume. Orders were not going to keep coming in at this clip. Isabella seemed to have figured as much; she nodded.
"Carlos has already begun converting the target catch to Humboldt squid, which has far stronger demand."
"...Already?"
"Yes. The request came directly from the Korean side, so the sales channels are already secured."
"Hmm. Better than I expected. And he seems overflowing with drive, too."
We'd definitely hired the right man. He had the charisma, and the crew and staff seemed to follow him readily.
"How did you even scout someone like Carlos? From what I hear, the man already has a fair bit of money."
"I went to him personally. He was retired and taking it easy. I persuaded him."
"What did you say to convince him?"
"I asked him to put his abilities and experience to use for the country."
"And he just said yes?"
"He refused at first. He said he'd already worked twenty years in a foreign country and wanted to spend his remaining years in peace."
"Oh? And then?"
"I persuaded him to the very best of my ability."
"...That's it?"
"Yes."
"......"
"Don't worry. Nothing illegal occurred during the persuasion process."
"R-right. Of course."
Whatever the process, Carlos himself seemed to be finding the work rewarding in his own way, so it had probably worked out for the best.
Anyway, here was the bottom line.
"So there's nothing left for us to worry about, then."
Tortilla Corporation's first subsidiary had successfully found its footing.
"I was worried it might not take hold properly. This takes a real load off."
"It's a good thing. We didn't have the bandwidth as it was."
That went for me, for Isabella, and even for the SIA operatives who'd helped — there wasn't a single person who wasn't buried. Isabella in particular had taken on both Chief of Staff and Director of the SIA, shouldering a near-murderous workload. And on top of that, she had worked day and night to make Seafood a success. Of course she was exhausted.
The Korean export channels were a result of Isabella and the SIA agents grinding themselves down, too.
A good boss looks after his people's fatigue.
"Hey... Isabella. This is a lot, isn't it?"
"It's manageable."
"Manageable? Your dark circles have dropped all the way down to your cheekbones."
"What? I-I thought I covered them...?!"
"Aigoo. Looking at you up close, even that once-smooth skin of yours has gone dry and rough. If it's too much, just say so. I can't give you a long break, but I can spare you two or three days."
Whether she was moved by the sincerity of the consolation, Isabella looked thoroughly flustered.
So sweet.
It had already been nearly two months since I'd become Acting President. In the crush of putting out fires and keeping the government running with as little disruption as possible, a certain fact had slipped my mind — and then, suddenly, it hadn't.
"Isabella?"
"Yes. Isabella of the dark circles down to her cheekbones and the dry, flaky skin, reporting for duty."
"Oh, come on. How long are you going to hold on to that? You haven't even been bringing me coffee lately..."
"If it were up to me, I don't believe I would forget this even when I'm old enough for my hair to go white."
"......"
"So. Why did you call for me?"
"Ah — I was just wondering whether we actually need to hold an election."
"An election? All of a sudden?"
"It's not sudden. The constitution says that in the event of a presidential vacancy, the Acting President performs the duties of head of the executive for sixty days, and that once that period expires, an election must be held to choose a new president. That's written in the constitution, isn't it?"
"Hmm."
Isabella nodded and answered.
"I forgot to mention it. That clause was revised last week."
"I'm sorry?"
"More precisely, the sixty-day limit was replaced with 'until the nation's turmoil has subsided,' thereby removing any constraint of time."
"Who... changed it?"
"I took the lead in revising it."
"Hold on."
You can't just rewrite the constitution like that.
"Don't worry. I didn't do it alone — I amended it after consulting with the cabinet ministers. We also stamped it with the Vice Minister of Justice's official seal, so if a problem should arise, we can pin it on him."
"......"
"Ah, and we are currently discussing a bill to install you as President without an election, on the grounds of a national state of emergency. The Ministry of Justice will take the lead on that as well. It will still take some time to pass, but I wanted to mention it now in case it slipped anyone's mind."
I decided not to say anything.
"Right. Fine. Putting that aside... how's the investigation into the people behind the terrorist attack?"
"We've confirmed that Javier's younger sister, Ana Mitchell, has disappeared. The circumstances point to a kidnapping."
"Hmm... so Javier was coerced into doing it?"
"That does seem the most likely possibility."
"Then we need to find whoever took Ana first. You're tracking them, I assume?"
"We are, but it's going to take some time."
"Why?"
"We confirmed a report that a fishing boat went missing from Port Cordos the day before the attack. It appears they left San Marcos by sea..."
"Hmm. Then they won't be easy to find."
Thanks to embezzlement by the previous Director and bureau chief, the SIA had lost every last one of its foreign HUMINT assets. And it wasn't as if SIGINT — hacking, wiretaps, the rest — was any better.
Every piece of equipment we have is junk built in the nineties.
We'd recovered the stolen money after the fact and were plugging the gaps, but we still needed more time before we could properly look overseas.
"I'm sorry. This is entirely because I am inadequate."
"How is any of that your fault? The people who had the job before you ran it into the ground. We've got time. We'll take it slow."
"Yes."
I offered what comfort I could to a woman who looked thoroughly dejected.
"On that note — are you free this evening? There's a new steakhouse just up the way. Want to go together?"
"I'm sorry, but so much work has piled up that I don't believe I can make time for anything personal."
"Ah, come to think of it, I had something this evening too. Let's do dinner next time. Hahahaha."
Whew. That was almost mortifying.
Time moved fast. A new crane went up at Port Libertad, and the patrol ship that had been wrecked for Tortilla Seafood's fishing operations was sent to a shipyard in Peru and fully repaired. After that, urgent matters kept pouring in, and the still-incompetent bureaucrats left me feeling as stuffed and stifled as if I'd swallowed a sweet potato whole — but it no longer hurt the way it used to.
They say a person needs hope to keep going, don't they?
"Agriculture is the urgent one. We need to convert the large-scale coffee plantations over to corn and wheat."
"I agree. That said, pushing the policy too radically could produce side effects, so I believe we should prepare it step by step."
"We have to keep an eye on Tortilla, too. We need to keep generating capital while we push the plan, or we'll never see it through."
"In that sense, perhaps the second venture should be in the secondary sector?"
"Then we'd have to fix the roads first..."
"Roads, yes — but if we're talking infrastructure, we need to start with the power supply..."
That was why. Isabella and I had been staying up through the night, drawing up the San Marcos Five-Year Reform Plan.
When the national coffers were empty, we were too busy putting out fires to even think about planning. Not anymore. With serious money behind us, laying plans one by one, I could finally see a light.
If I keep this up for just fifteen years, I might actually be able to retire...!
Of course, we'd only just taken the first step. We were keeping the peace by force, stationing the army, and the frontline generals still refused to follow central control — a civil war breaking out at any moment wouldn't have been surprising. Frontline civil servants and senior officials were still corrupt and incompetent.
But having the hope that I might someday escape San Marcos, and not having it, were worlds apart. The difference between a life sentence with no end and a prison term with a release date is obvious.
And it was while I was working with that hope in my chest that it happened.
"What?"
A report I had never seen coming landed in front of me.