Sahara Gold Company's First Sale
I finished what remained to be done in Rome and boarded a plane for Cairo.
The airport exit. I walked out and found the lawyer already waiting to meet me — the Egyptian attorney who had helped me incorporate the company in Cairo.
"Good to see you."
Before I crossed over, I had commissioned him to buy property in Cairo. The place I wanted lay on the coast near Alexandria, where the city met the Mediterranean. A short way south of it sat the underground dungeon where I had first arrived, and the shoreline put the countries of the Mediterranean within easy reach. The Suez Canal, right beside it, opened straight onto the Red Sea, a convenient road onward to India and China.
The operation was already no small thing. If I meant to grow it further, access to the sea was essential. Whatever anyone claimed, the crown jewel of logistics was shipping.
So I bought a villa standing apart on the eastern shore of Alexandria. What pleased me was how lonely it sat — more than ten kilometers from the nearest house or village.
I left the remaining paperwork with the lawyer and drove south. I couldn't yet say how the ground would look, but about an hour in that direction lay Portal Point One. I pulled into the container warehouse, opened the gate, and arrived at the goblin cave near the commercial city of Lorenzo.
We came out through the goblin cave and headed north. The country around Lorenzo belonged to the Kingdom of Burgos. Unlike Earth, Burgos was clothed in dense forest, and its people were few for the size of its territory. Undeveloped land was plentiful, and I wanted one such place: the north of Burgos, the region that on Earth held Alexandria.
To buy a fief there, I first made for Trimalia, capital of Burgos, and arrived in a Humvee. Burgos was said to be the strongest of the three southern kingdoms, and its capital was no small city — yet after the great cities of Zahed and Gerona, it stirred nothing in me.
A banner marking the rank of baron let me pass the city gate without trouble. Inside the walls I asked a guard where the House of Nobles stood. To the right of the royal castle rising at the center, a massive building served as the gathering place of the nobility.
Before I called on them, I changed clothes. I had already learned on Earth that what wins people's favor is not beauty of character, but a glossy exterior. I went to the busiest quarter inside the walls and first had a robe of the highest grade fitted. Officially I was known as a noble of baronial rank and, at the same time, a mage — all of it, of course, by way of magic items.
This world certainly had mages who specialized in crafting items. They were treated more shabbily than formally recognized mages, and yet, considering what magic items sold for, it was by no means a trade anyone could afford to scorn.
Wrapped in the costly cloth, I found a barbershop nearby and had my hair put in order. With every preparation finished, I presented myself at last at the House of Nobles of Burgos.
The inner hall of the House of Nobles.
Viscount Baran looked from the certificate of nobility I held out to my face, and back again.
"Hmm. The certificate, at least, appears to be in order."
"Thank you. Then might I be accepted as a subject of the Kingdom of Burgos?"
"That will require a separate review by the House."
"Purchasing a fief within Burgos territory ought to help that review along."
"Quite so. Buy land, and one may fairly say you are prepared to join us."
The southern kingdoms, not so many years from their founding, still held a fair number of lordless fiefs, and selling territory to replenish the treasury was not unheard of. Nor was there any reason to refuse a man who paid dearly for a fief and asked to be counted among one's own.
"Have you a region in mind?"
"Yes. I was told the coastal tract of Transilia, up in the north, has no lord."
"Hm? The Transilia coast?"
It was the region that held the mage's dungeon — the same stretch of land that, on Earth, contained Alexandria. Strange things were often witnessed there because of that dungeon, and higher monsters, orcs and trolls among them, appeared in numbers, so the nobility had little love for the place. Deep forest and a jumble of high and low hills made it poorly suited to farming as well. There were hardly enough people to call serfs, and most of those who remained lived scattered, scratching out a living on slash-and-burn plots.
It could hardly be called a good fief, and Viscount Baran gave it no particular thought. If anything, he was glad someone had appeared to look after land with no owner. The proceeds of a sale went to the royal treasury, but a portion also fell to the House of Nobles, and the moment a man became a lord he became a member of the House — which was to say the House gained another member who would pay his dues.
"I see."
"Though I do wonder what the price would come to."
"Yes. What sort of sum did you have in mind?"
"The money I have gathered comes to a little over eight thousand gold."
No need to lay out everything I actually held.
"Eight thousand? Remote as Transilia may be, eight thousand will fall short..."
"If I take a loan, I can raise a little more. How much would be required?"
"Nine thousand three hundred, at the very least."
"I will find the money somehow. I only ask that you look kindly on the matter. I will give the Kingdom of Burgos my full loyalty."
"As you ought. Very well. I shall look into it."
"Thank you, Viscount."
With the purchase of the fief entrusted to the House of Nobles, I left Trimalia and returned to Cairo, on Earth.
Once I was back in Cairo, I set the work on Earth in motion. While I had been passing between Earth and the other world, the business registration had been completed.
Sahara Gold Company.SGC.
Thinking of what lay ahead, I needed at least some share of the books to show legitimate results. I drove south.
All the firm I had acquired actually owned was a placer-gold claim and a decrepit refinery on the middle reaches of the Nile. The plant itself had no proper facilities left. By a stroke of luck amid the misfortune, even after most of the refining equipment had been sold off, the last machine — the one that stamped the gold bars — remained. I had no use for the earlier stages anyway, so it suited me perfectly.
I hauled a newly purchased diesel generator inside and ran power out to the molding equipment. Switched on, the old plant shuddered once, then began to move. It creaked and clattered, but it would serve.
I dropped the gold coins I had brought into the melting furnace and set it running. Before long a bath of molten gold heaved, glowing a fierce red. I poured the melt into the casting mold. The die came down and pressed. Time passed. I waited for the mold to cool, and at last a one-kilogram gold bar slid free.
Finally I stamped the bar with a serial number, its purity, its weight, and the trade name SGC. The bar was finished.
In a couple of hours I had forty kilograms of gold. Forty thousand grams. At the price gold had climbed to, that came to roughly five billion won.
I dragged over a case made for gold bars, opened the lid, and seated each bar in its place. Then I carried the finished gold into the city of Cairo. The appointment was already set. Through the former executives of the company I had bought, I had a line to a firm they used to deal with — Cairo Gold Invest.
The conference room at Cairo Gold headquarters.
Their in-house appraiser examined each bar I handed over, one by one. He checked the faces first, measured the luster, then weighed them to confirm the mass. At the last he brought in a heavy cutter and, without a moment's hesitation, sheared a bar in half. He studied the cross-section just as carefully, then nodded.
"Pure gold."
I had known what the result would be, but the breath of relief came anyway. This was the moment a historic first deal was struck.
Seeing the pleasure on my face, the director across from me offered his hand.
"That settles it, then. Sahara Gold, was it?"
"Yes."
"I'd heard your side wasn't producing placer gold anymore. Remarkable, finding a vein."
"We were lucky."
"Luck is a skill of its own. What sort of volume do you think you can manage?"
"Not a great deal. This is two months' worth. We'll have to see how it goes, but I believe we can match at least this much each quarter."
"A quarter..."
Forty kilograms every three months was no small quantity. Over a year, that was two hundred kilograms. Twenty-four billion won a year — seventeen million dollars, even converted. A considerable sum for a small mine.
"I hope this is the start of a long run of good business."
"As do I."
"Then our Miss Vanya will explain the settlement of the payment in detail."
And so the first transaction was done. Sahara Gold Company's first sale.
Once we had adjusted the terms between us, half the payment would come in dollars and the other half in Egyptian pounds. Two and a half million dollars and one hundred twenty million Egyptian pounds landed in the corporate account. The pounds were paid out at once for the villa in Alexandria.
I would have preferred the whole sum in dollars, but in business I could not fill only my own pocket. I opened an official account and had a corporate card issued against it. A wallet thick with bills, and a company card with a balance to match — once those were in my hands, I felt like a real owner at last.
Reinstatement, the old job, all of it — should I just throw the whole thing over, hand in my resignation, and walk away?
A text chimed in the middle of the thought. Word from Korea. My younger cousin, the one I had trusted with buying the villa.
Counting the days, Marco still had a long while before he could cross the continent and reach the Kingdom of Burgos. There was time enough, in between, for a short trip back to Korea.