Chapter 218: Money, Money, Money (2)
“This is… no ordinary commotion.”
“Heh heh, well, it makes sense, sir.”
“…Does it?”
The man who had been muttering as he gazed out the window turned his head and asked the driver in front.
“Why, of course it does, sir. It’s the first time in their lives they’ve gotten to choose politicians with their own hands. Wouldn’t everyone be excited? At the very least, it’ll stay like this for the next month.”
Just as the driver said with a hearty laugh, the streets of Paris rolling past outside the window were so packed with people there was hardly room to set a foot down.
There was one cluster of youths waving tricolors and red flags while singing La Marseillaise, another cluster of people who had simply come out into the streets with their families, swept up in the festive atmosphere, and yet another cluster of gentlemen in coffeehouses dressed in suits, reading newspapers and occasionally debating with people at the next table.
It was quite a sight.
By the time he had stared blankly at the scenery long enough, the carriage had reached its destination, and the man took a wallet from inside his coat.
They had ridden for about an hour, so the fare should be about one livre.
“Thank you for bringing me here safely. Here is the fare.”
“Much obliged, sir.”
Instead of handing over a one-livre banknote, the man placed four silver coins he carried for change into the driver’s hand and lightly stepped down from the carriage.
Perhaps it was because of his memory of having once lived in such straits, but he disliked giving away high-denomination bills.
As he crossed the street and approached the building whose entrance was decorated with marble, the guards standing watch came forward and spoke.
“What is your business?”
“A pleasure. I have an appointment with the commander at three today. …Would you kindly confirm it, gentlemen?”
“Yes, sir. We will confirm it at once, General.”
One of the guards, having noticed the golden epaulets, briefly flipped through a notebook, then gave a slight bow and said,
“Brigadier General Bonaparte. We will escort you directly to the commander.”
“Many thanks.”
The fortress-like entrance opened, and as he followed the guard up the stairs, he was greeted by a familiar face.
“Ah, Brigadier General Bonaparte. You’ve arrived at just the right time.”
Commander Lafayette smiled brightly and waved his hand as if telling Napoleon to take a seat.
As soon as the two men sat down side by side, the servants attending them set out a table full of refreshments in the blink of an eye.
Lafayette took up a glass, moistened his throat, and began to speak.
“First, thank you for coming all this way from Toulon to Paris.”
“It was nothing. If the Commander summons me, of course I should come.”
“…General, your accent has softened considerably since I last saw you.”
“Haha, has it?”
Mm. So practicing ah-eh-ee-oh-oo in front of the mirror every morning really had paid off.
Napoleon asked back, inwardly pleased,
“But what is it you have summoned me for, Commander?”
“I wish to offer you a new opportunity.”
A new opportunity? Hadn’t Napoleon already received opportunities overflowing enough to fill a cart? And now another new opportunity?
“I’m sorry, but I do not quite understand what you mean.”
“The position of Deputy Commander of the National Counterintelligence Corps is vacant, General Bonaparte.”
The National Counterintelligence Corps? So, the Paris Security Command?
“You look bewildered.”
“I am.”
Lafayette smiled faintly, then tapped the table and said,
“In my view, your field experience is now sufficient. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“…I’m not sure.”
“You may speak with confidence. There is no one your age who has accumulated field experience as steadily as you have.”
Amiens, then Corsica. How many commanders had experienced two full-scale battles like that?
“A commander must know what is happening to his soldiers on the battlefield. What the soldiers’ morale is, and how our situation compares to the enemy’s. It is very important.”
However, that alone does not make a fine commander. Lafayette added that himself.
“In the last two battles, Controller-General Guillaume followed you around, didn’t he?”
“That’s true.”
“I heard from a fairly reliable source that Brigadier General Bonaparte left all sorts of miscellaneous tasks, such as supplies, to Controller-General Guillaume. Is that correct?”
Where in the world had that gotten out from?
Thinking it over, there was only one person in Paris who would go around saying all sorts of things beside Lafayette. Ah. Brother Grouchy, was it you again?
“…Th-that is…”
“I am not reproaching you. On a battlefield where lives are at stake, it is natural to entrust work to the person who can handle it better. However.”
Lafayette leaned toward Napoleon.
“A fine commander must know not only how to command troops at the front, but also how to draw the entire picture. How much food our soldiers consume, how many weapons are lost or broken, how supply lines should be arranged, and what methods should be used against enemies stirring in the rear. Only when one can do all of that does one become a truly fine commander.”
“…”
“I am forty now, General Bonaparte. President Mirabeau was only about fifty when he was laid to rest in the Panthéon, so in a sense, I may have only ten more years of vigor left.”
In other words, he intended to pour a sweet potion of experience into a young and capable rising star. Lafayette’s meaning was simple.
“The office of Deputy Commander of the National Counterintelligence Corps is a very fine post. Governor Dumouriez also passed through it in his younger days as part of the elite course. It is an excellent opportunity to learn in detail what happens in the rear rather than at the front, and what abilities are needed there.
Well then, are you interested?”
My God. At first I had thought I might have to submit a discharge request, but that wasn’t it at all.
This was a premium lifeline. A rope lowered directly by the highest-ranking commander in active service? Ah, how could I possibly refuse it?
“Of course, Commander!”
“Excellent, General Bonaparte. Then let us rise. To help you get acquainted, I will introduce you to the Counterintelligence Commander with whom you will be working from now on.”
“Yes, Commander!”
After walking for a moment behind Commander Lafayette, they reached a room before which a neat-looking elderly gentleman was waiting to greet them.
The old man looked from Lafayette to Napoleon and back again, then said to Lafayette,
“Nephew. Is this the one?”
“Yes, uncle. This is Brigadier General Napoleon Bonaparte, whom I mentioned.”
“Hm. I see.”
The old gentleman stroked his chin for a moment, then held out his hand to Napoleon.
“A pleasure. I am Major General François Claude Amour de Bouillé, Commander of Counterintelligence. My nephew has spared no praise in speaking of you, so I hope we shall become good partners from here on.”
“I am Brigadier General Napoleon Bonaparte. I look forward to working with you, General!”
February 1797.
French Minnesota.
One very nice thing about Minnesota was this: ice was absooooolutely everywhere.
In this era, before even the yellow dust of the twenty-first century existed, if you just went outside, broke up a little ice with a shovel, and tossed it into your coffee or tea, you got iced coffee and iced tea cooler than anything at Starbucks.
Other people looked at me as if I were insane for putting ice into drinks in weather this cold, but what could I do? I was a Korean whose spirit had been forged by the winters of Cheorwon and Seoul. Minus ten degrees was nothing.
It wasn’t that I was strange. You people were simply weak, you fragile Westerners.
…Ah, am I a Westerner too?
Anyway, as always, after throwing a ladleful of ice into my tea, I began reading the newspaper delivered that morning.
Just as had been said before, Father Sieyès and Robespierre were both not running. As a result, the Plain faction was now being led chiefly in the Assembly by a man named Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, while the Mountain faction was led by two men, Georges Auguste Couthon and Fabre d’Églantine.
Well, that was only on the surface. In truth, both Father Sieyès and Robespierre would still retain considerable influence over the Assembly from behind the scenes as party leaders, so it wasn’t as though the entire political situation had changed overnight.
Besides them, deputies such as François Guizot and Joseph Fouché had also been elected.
Who were they? I had no idea.
They hadn’t been members during the Legislative Assembly period, so I had never run into them in the Assembly, had I?
Ah, but I did know Jérôme Pétion. He was Director Condorcet’s friend, and I had even eaten with him once before, and he was the man who recommended Assistant Manager Alexandre Pétion, who was now working himself to the bone for our company in Paris.
In fact, he was so concerned with the rights of Black people, and so appreciated by them, that Pétion’s very name had been used to make our Alexandre Pétion’s name. Looking at it that way, a good man had been elected. Good, very good.
Once I turned past the section listing elected deputies, it moved on to the executive government.
Mm. Well. They had divided it up fairly evenly.
The left wing of the Mountain faction had taken the Ministry of the Interior, the police, the Ministry of Justice, and the like, while the right wing of the Plain faction had taken the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Finance, and so on.
Among them, the office of Controller-General of Finance remained vacant right up until the end without any competing candidate, and then a man named Dominique Vincent of the Plain faction, who had served as Chief Judge of the Carcassonne Court and as a bank president, was elected.
Which meant, quite simply, that the two parties had planned all along to gang up and stick me into that seat.
Those bastards had really been planning to kidnap me and install me on the golden administrative throne the instant I so much as set foot in France.
A chill ran down my spine, and my mouth went dry, so I had no choice but to take another sip of my special iced tea. Ahhh, this was the stuff.
Still, compared to how much I had worried, it was a relief that the situation in Paris and Versailles was not too bad.
The problem was that my own situation was bad.
I pushed the newspaper aside and slowly brought the accounting reports from Ears of the Nation, which had arrived one after another, back onto the table.
The accounting team in Paris had worked day and night to prepare these reports for me, but I was convinced the thing called <Projected Net Profit for Q2 1797> at the head of the report was carrying a curse as dreadful as Frostmourne.
Otherwise, there was no way my head should start pounding every time I opened it.
The moment I turned past the table of contents beginning with Projected Net Profit for Q2 1797, I saw that even at a glance the credit side of profit and the debit side of losses were crossing each other dangerously. It was technically in the black, but at this point it was no different from breaking even.
Then I opened the projected report for Q3, and I immediately felt as though my hair was falling out in clumps. It was all red lights. Losses had begun to overtake profits little by little.
For now, it was all right. I still had an absurd amount of cash assets piled up.
The British Royal Navy faithfully swept away daily necessities from the PX I had created, and the foundation of Ears of the Nation—which now had branches in France, Britain, and the United States—namely, convenience meal sales, remained solid.
In London, Britain, copycats were springing up like mushrooms after rain, but those people all just ended up dying in a chicken game with me. Who did they think they were trying to imitate?
On top of that, the motion-sickness medicine kept selling as well, so every stream of incoming revenue was sound and healthy.
The problem was that this steel business was sucking down all that cash as if using some kind of vacuum.
Even when we produced steel now, every bit of it was being poured directly into building railroads on bare ground, so there was no opportunity to take it to market and sell it. We had to finish construction first before we could sell anything.
“There’s only one year left until completion. Can we hold out?”
We could… probably hold out. But after holding out, there would be several holes in my belly and my guts would be spilling out.
We needed cash. A vast amount of it.
I took out that board game which had arrived from Paris that morning and placed it on the table.
How was I supposed to make this, and in what way was I supposed to sell it?