The Anointed Ones (2)
I flipped through the report page by page while eating.
In Korea, they'd convened an emergency session of the National Assembly to pass a supplementary budget of 900 billion won to encourage high-risk hunting operations. Meanwhile, pirates across the five oceans and warlords entrenched in remote regions were growing more vicious by the day. The rising transportation costs and marine insurance premiums from increased pirate attacks and maritime disasters were steadily pushing up price graphs worldwide.
Japan, one of the countries—along with Norway—suffering the most from unexplained shipwrecks, was on high alert nationally. The damage had hit their fishermen hardest. Over 400 fishing boats had sunk or gone missing so far, forcing operations to a complete halt even in coastal waters. Iceland and Norway were in similar straits.
And the Russian Federation had put a 500 million ruble bounty on a single tiger.
A tiger?
500 million rubles came out to about 7.5 billion won at current exchange rates. Russia was still reeling economically from the pneumonia outbreak originating in China, mired in a groggy state. For such a country to offer that much for just one tiger was clearly abnormal.
Checking the links attached to the report, I finally understood the bounty amount.
A Russian article headline posted just four hours ago. Prizrak meant ghost, evil spirit, or vengeful spirit.
This Awakened tiger, which had begun building its infamous reputation by turning the village of Arsenyevo in the northwestern Sikhote-Alin Mountains into a living hell earlier this month, had capped off 23 days of intermittent bloody rampages by razing a port city of over 30,000 people that very dawn.
Confirmed deaths alone number 980...
With that many dead, calling it a national disaster wasn't an overstatement.
I pondered the motives of this ferocious carnivore. It couldn't have killed nearly a thousand humans just to eat them. And it surely wasn't hunting for sport. While felines sometimes killed other animals for fun, humans were far too dangerous a prey for that.
That left only grudge as the reason.
Endangered animal pelts were among the most coveted items for poachers and collectors. Even tiger cubs fetched baseline eight-figure sums if they were Siberian tigers, and Chinese traditional medicine prized Siberian tiger bones above all. In particular, tiger wine—made by steeping the meat and bones whole in liquor—was a supposed elixir that modern Chinese would pay a fortune for. They believed it regulated qi.
In short, primitive magic Awakened on the Chinese mainland craved Siberian tigers for health tonics. For ability enhancement and Immortal Cancer prevention.
At this point, it wouldn't be strange if the tiger harbored resentment toward humans, just like that wild boar I'd encountered in Utah. Prizrak—vengeful spirit—was the most fitting term.
A soul seared with grudge to the marrow. No doubt Russian hunters, lured by Chinese money, had created this man-killing monster.
The report on this vengeful spirit ended with this prediction:
It remains confined to Khabarovsk Krai for now, but considering the continuity of forests and mountains, it may soon descend into Primorsky Krai to the south, southeastern Jilin Province in China, or even the North Korean border region. In the long term, the entire Korean Peninsula falls within the risk zone.
Indeed, a report worth passing on to me. We might soon see multiple countries pooling bounties on a single tiger.
Handing the report over to operational matters, there was an update on the theoretical construction of the submersible process. Progress wasn't zero, but slower than I'd hoped.
The Sinaloa Cartel's design—the flagship of Mexican drug lords—used no metal in the hull to evade magnetic detection. Glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP). Fine so far, but the cartel design had plenty of room for improvement. Crew comfort was discarded, no external observation beyond the periscope for submerged travel, and excessive cargo capacity threw off fore-aft balance.
Worked fine when it was all cocaine.
Uniform cargo meant uniform center of gravity. They'd optimized it to the extreme for their needs.
But I planned to ship diverse weapons and ammo of varying weights and densities. Design changes were inevitable for that.
The engine needed swapping too. Their commercial choice was mechanically reliable but underpowered—thanks again to cargo greed shrinking the engine room and thus output. Same reason the battery total was too low, limiting submerged speed and duration.
Sacrificing some capacity to upgrade the engine and expand batteries would yield a superior craft accelerating to 20 knots even submerged.
But the report concluded that design changes would require significant extra budget and trial-and-error.
An approval form for the additional budget was attached.
I added my electronic signature and called for Suyeon.
"Suyeon."
"Yes."
"About the submersible—there's no line item for securing more manpower in the extra budget. No matter the cost, hiring more people would speed things up."
Our current engineers were those laid off in Korea's shipbuilding industry hope retirements this past half-year. When Chinese yards went shopping for talent, we'd dipped in too. With a shell company in Macau, our engineers reviewing the sub design back home believed they worked for a Chinese firm. Few countries besides China had reason or means to poach Korean ship techs. A shell elsewhere would've raised suspicions immediately.
Suyeon replied, "The engineers are shying away from Chinese companies, making recruitment difficult. With China's instability, even good terms feel unreliable."
"'Some no-name outfit—how long can it last?' Like that? 'Even the next month or two looks iffy'?"
"Yes. And we can't just throw money at it. Overpaying risks suspicion about our tasks. For now, reassuring the current team and maintaining security is best."
Chinese firms were infamous for discarding talent like used rags. The engineers' caution made sense.
"Fine. If that's your take."
I sighed lightly and asked about something else. "Progress aside, how's the site acquisition? No mention in the report."
"International Ops Manager Kang Sang-seop is negotiating with Sultana Chandra Kirana in Indonesia. No report to you yet due to their unique style, but good news soon."
"Hm..."
Sultana Chandra Kirana Fakhruddin was the last princess of the Jambi Sultanate on southeastern Sumatra. Her formal noble rights had been erased in imperial chaos, but she'd clung to local magnate influence like few other native lords.
Under her protection, we could secure a safe base along the Betang Hari River basin.
Too leisurely a counterpart—that's the problem.
She despised Western ways. Once, chiding me, she'd said:
"I tell you truly: the invaders and their descendants value profit above all else."
"Our ancient virtue yields profit only after friendship is built first, but they seek gain without bonds, impose timed contracts like commanding servants even in equals' dealings, then turn away once enriched. Relations revolving solely around profit."
"They call it business; I call it insult. Their civilization blinds them to harmony with others, subordinating it to gain—a vulgar world indeed."
"And profit through friendship?"
"Friends make no promises. Needs become requests, not stamped deadlines—that's rudeness ignoring their circumstances for mine. Fulfillment depends on fortunes and friendship's depth; timing flows from priority."
"I have many ties, some closer than yours. If one asks my friendship, their affairs take precedence—even at my loss. Human worth mustn't be profit-defined."
"Remember this in dealing with me. Followers of invaders' ways never gain my friendship."
This rhetoric mirrored Indonesia-wide sentiment, often baffling foreigners who bribed yet faced glacial progress.
Yet this self-proclaimed sultana, a crime world titan, processed business faster than most Indonesians. Hence Suyeon's optimistic timeline.
Just didn't suit my temperament.
And eventually needing to meet face-to-face is a hassle.
Per her clan's—precisely Chandra Kirana's—negotiation style, deals closed only with leaders meeting personally to affirm proposals. Subordinates prepped details for final stamps. Only then was sincerity proven.
Preliminaries fell to underlings, who mimicked the sultana—no pinning concrete dates.
Still, this cultural barrier deterred outsiders, bolstering security for covert ops. Pros and cons.
One reason we'd targeted Indonesia for the construction site.