Let Me Tell You About Moving Into the Presidential Palace
North of Libertad, there is a hill.
It isn't particularly high, but it isn't low, either — just tall enough that the whole of Libertad unfurls beneath you in a single glance. A little stream runs behind it, the kind of spot that would have made a perfect café. Instead, a vast building of white and blue stands there now.
That building is the San Marcos Presidential Palace. The original had been obliterated in a bombing. After roughly nine months of construction, it was finished.
And today was the completion ceremony. Hundreds of public officials had begun to arrive.
The first thing they saw was the wall: four meters of massive, overwhelming masonry wrapped around the grounds like a fortress rampart. Painted a pure, speckless white, it might at a glance have passed for the exterior of an art museum — but the sheer height, and the sharp iron spikes crowning every inch of it, made a blunt argument. This was a seat of power. Not just anyone was meant to approach.
Beyond the enormous iron gates, a gasp came easily. An immense lawn spread out like an emerald carpet. At the far edge of that green sea, where the landscaped trees stood ranked like an honor guard, the Presidential Palace itself rose in a white so fierce it made the eyes ache.
Marble columns glittered like jewels under the hard South American sun. An old-world dome crowned the roof, and from its peak the flag of San Marcos snapped in the wind. Anyone looking at it would have said: yes. This is the heart of a nation — grand, and beautiful. The hardware and the people inside, however, were another matter entirely.
On the rooftop, three 20mm Vulcan cannons tracked the sky. In one corner, a military helicopter hung with missiles sat on display. In another, an armored vehicle kept its guns on the main gate.
Eugene had objected. Isabella had refused to yield. Thanks to the security system she had rammed through, the Presidential Palace looked like a country at war.
"......"
Cold sweat slid down the backs of the attendees. It felt, uncomfortably, as if the building itself were making a point about where power now resided.
Then it came.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The heavy front doors opened, and the sound of military boots striking the floor carried across the grounds.
Hundreds of eyes swung toward the entrance at once. The first figures to appear were men in black suits and black sunglasses. Agents of the newly established Presidential Security Service scanned the crowd with expressionless eyes and filed out to either side. The submachine guns they made no effort to conceal sent a chill through every official present.
Then the real powers of San Marcos walked out.
Pedro, the commander who held the military in one fist. Lucio, recently promoted to Director of the SIA for his service in the civil war. And Isabella, Chief of Staff, who now controlled every personnel appointment in the executive branch.
Behind those three — the apex of the army, of intelligence, of the administration — San Marcos's true ruler stepped into view.
Eugene Choi. The iron-blooded dictator who, on the very day martial law was declared, had snapped the neck of his strongest rival, Major General Tiago, with his own hands and taken the throne.
Since he seized power, San Marcos had begun to spin at a terrifying speed.
He had declared war on crime, rounded up the gangs to the last man, and shipped them to the Tortilla Farm — a modern-day Gulag. Then he sent the corrupt bureaucrats to sit beside them, on the charge of simple incompetence.
And that was not all. The moment the country seemed to stabilize, he had gone to war with the regional warlords and, in the end, won.
With the interior of San Marcos locked down completely, his next move had been to take control of food prices. He brought in enormous quantities of American grain and dumped it on the market at half the going rate. For the poorest households, he gave it away for free. Grain importers and wholesalers were annihilated. Not one of them made a sound. Instead, he won the overwhelming support of the people.
And now the man who held both power and public sentiment had appeared. Everyone swallowed.
"Attention, all!"
"Salute to His Excellency!"
Snap.
Hundreds of attendees — no, bureaucrats — threw up a salute in unison.
Eugene's brow furrowed.
Had someone's salute come out crooked?
Cold sweat ran down every back in the crowd as he stepped up to the microphone.
"I know you're all busy. Thank you for coming."
The voice was quiet, and it carried.
"Over these past months, our San Marcos has crossed a great wave of trials."
He rested a hand on the podium and went on.
"Terror paralyzed the government. Greedy men tried to tear this country apart."
He paused, and let his gaze travel over the assembly. Wherever it landed, people flinched and bowed their heads.
"But we did not fall. We grew stronger. We cut away the rotten flesh, and in its place, we made new flesh grow."
Only then did the audience grasp the intent of the speech. He was warning them. Challenge him, and you would be dragged to the Gulag.
A nation of steel. It landed like a declaration that Eugene's iron-fisted rule would last forever.
"Every condition is now in place. What remains is to work for the people. Forget the old habits. The laziness of taking a week to stamp a single document. The sloppiness of treating the national budget like found money. Those things were buried in this ground, forever, with the explosion that came before."
"I will not promise you a comfortable life. I will promise you this: you will be rewarded in proportion to the sweat you put in. But remember. There are no free rides in this country. The incompetent, the idle, and the corrupt have no place to stand — not anywhere in San Marcos."
When the speech ended, a silence fell over the plaza so complete that even breathing seemed to have stopped.
Eugene finished with a look of quiet satisfaction.
"Now then. This is where it begins. Let us write the new history of San Marcos — together."
The instant the last word left him —
Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap.
Applause erupted. Pedro nodded, well pleased. Isabella clapped with something close to rapture. Lucio swept the crowd with a hawk's eye, checking whether anyone had failed to join in.
Up on the dais, Eugene raised a hand and waved, and for a moment he looked like a king out of the Middle Ages, surveying a realm that belonged to him alone.
Look at them. Bursting with motivation. I like that.
He came down from the podium in a thoroughly good mood.
The moment we left the Ministry of National Defense and moved into the Presidential Palace, Isabella launched a full-scale reorganization.
First up: expanding the secretariat, which until then had been run by a handful of people. She pulled in sharp civil servants and assigned two to each Senior Presidential Secretary. Apparently the workload had been crushing.
Well. The Senior Presidential Secretaries had been covering the ministers' jobs on top of their own, so that tracked.
And it wasn't an exaggeration. The woman I had taken for some kind of iron human being resigned as Director of the SIA, handed the post to Lucio — and her face changed overnight. Before, she had that exhausted, faintly decadent beauty of a career woman run into the ground. Now she was an ice-cold career woman.
Not that it mattered. She was gorgeous either way.
Second: she established a Presidential Security Service. She pulled a hundred people from the special operations battalion that had distinguished itself in the civil war and stood up the PSS. She issued them submachine guns, then went ahead and parked anti-aircraft guns, attack helicopters, and armored vehicles on the grounds, and turned the Presidential Palace into an impregnable fortress.
Honestly, what I had pictured was something open, in the spirit of the American White House — not a menacing fortress that looked like a frontline guard post inflated to palace scale. But she had stayed up nights putting it together. I could hardly tell her to her face that I hated it.
"How does it strike you, Your Excellency? Can you not feel the spirit of San Marcos in it?"
"...It certainly is something."
I decided to live with it.
The last reorganization, though, was the one I liked best.
"Your Excellency. Dinner is served."
Get this — the Presidential Palace now had its own dedicated kitchen. And a chef.
And not just any chef.
"What's on the menu tonight?"
"Jeyuk bokkeum, Your Excellency."
He could do Korean food.
Was he a Korean chef?
No. He was the same man who had run the kitchen under President Juan.
How that happened: on the day of the bombing, I had pulled the chef out myself. Paulo sent me a letter of thanks afterward, asking how he could possibly repay the debt. I wrote back without thinking much of it — if the chance ever came up, maybe he could try making Korean food sometime.
Paulo spent everything after that studying Korean recipes. And now he was back as the palace chef, turning out three Korean meals a day.
"Your Excellency, I set the gochugaru-to-gochujang ratio at two to one. I also mixed in a little peperoncino, to get closer to a proper Korean heat."
Paulo watched me with a look of bright, nervous hope.
I took a bite. Spicy, a little of sweet — better than anything you'd get at a Kimbap Heaven.
"Mmm...! Perfect, Paulo. You're cooking at the level of a Korean kitchen auntie now."
"Thank you! Next, I thought I would attempt hongeo-tang. I understand Koreans are very fond of it."
"Let's... maybe not that one."
Anyway. Paulo was serious about Korean food.
I mean — a South American man, making galbijjim? Simmering beef radish soup?
A little more study and he'd be burying kimchi jars in the garden.
The palace reorganization was done. I had eaten well. Time to get to work.
"Your Excellency. The Korean business delegation has arrived."
"Let's go."
The doors of the newly built conference hall opened, and the Korean delegation came into view. President Moon, and three middle-aged men with him.
"Thank you for making the long trip. Eugene Choi, Acting President of San Marcos."
"We're grateful for the invitation, Your Excellency."
President Moon rose from his seat and introduced his party.
"This is Choi Il-ju, president of Taeyang Apparel. They supply footwear and apparel to Nike and Adidas."
"Thank you for having me. Choi Il-ju."
President Choi bent at a full ninety degrees. I shook his hand lightly and moved on.
"And this is Park Chan-joon, CEO of Joseon Zinc — Korea's leading non-ferrous metals company, and a global one."
"Park Chan-joon."
"A pleasure."
The problem was the last man.
"This gentleman, I expect you already know. He's been in the papers quite a bit."
The last person I ever expected walked in.
"Jung Soo-man. Of Hyeonhwa."
Minsik's grand-uncle. Chairman of Hyeonhwa Group — one of the most formidable conglomerates in Korea.