Empire of the Ring

Youngho entered the gate of the Baku’s shipyard with Zeynep again.

Zeynep found a new interest in ships, so when Youngho said he was visiting the shipyard, she had come alongside him.

As they parked the car, Steve Janssen, the vice president of the shipyard came out to greet Youngho. Then he courteously received Zeynep in a way that someone would do to high royalty. She was startled by the situation but soon she greeted him back calmly.

“Excuse my ignorance from the last time, I had not recognized that you’re a royal princess.”

The word had spread so quickly.

The cause was Chief Niksic of Serbian Village. Youngho had picked and sent some of the talented Serbian children to the international school where Zeynep was attending, so Chief Niksic visited the school as a guardian representative of those children. He was guided by Zeynep at school and what happened next was obvious. He would have followed her around calling her ‘princess’ all day long and the whole school and the families of the students would have found out that Zeynep was not a common girl by now.

***

Janssen dropped his jaw.

“Mr. Janssen, does your face mean that this is impossible?”

“No, no. I was surprised that you’ve come up with such an innovative idea. People usually don’t wish to pay more money since the ice would melt in four months.”

“I’m going to open a regular water route. If one or two sturdy vessels go at the front, other ships would be able to follow along with the route easily. I believe someone needs to invest more for this. If that’s too much of a waste, I guess the following shipowners can pay to follow through the water route.”

“Although I’m in sales, I’ve never flattered anyone in vain but I think someone like you deserves to be called a true businessman.”

“I am flattered by your words, I always enjoy such compliments.”

Youngho chuckled loudly at Janssen’s compliments.

“But the only problem is that the bulk carriers that you put an order are already in production. If you’d like to make additional features, there’s going to be an extra cost.”

“You can leave the bulk carriers as originally planned. I’d like to add those features to a multipurpose freighter and another ship that would cross the canal at the Volga River. Do you think it’d be possible?”

Realizing that Youngho came to make additional orders, Janssen got even more excited.

“You’re going to place additional orders?”

“The 3,000 ton-class freighter should be only sturdy enough to break some ice, and can you make the one that would be crossing the canal as a 1,000-ton class icebreaker? I’m planning to go to the Black Sea with that.”

Although it would be impossible to pass through if the canal’s lock gate gets frozen, Youngho had made an order to make a ship that could be sturdy enough to be an icebreaker because he had another intention.

Jassen who was sipping on his tea was choked at the unexpected order since Youngho just requested to make two special vessels.

“Mr. Lee, you know that I’m a Dutch. When I worked at a shipyard in the Netherlands, I specialized in icebreakers.”

“That is great. I also wanted to add some more special features to the icebreaker. Of course, I’ll pay for the additional costs.”

“Fair enough. How about we talk about the costs first and sign on the agreements? I’m in a rush for these. You can postpone the production of the bulk carriers but could you please make these vessels as your priority?”

Janssen thought that it was his lucky day. Because of Youngho, the shipyard could get rid of a freighter that had been a problem and receive four orders of middle and large vessel productions.

***

“Oppa, why would you make hurry the production of the icebreaker?”

On the way back to the farm, Zeynep asked numerous questions.

“Do you remember I’m building a hotel in Batumi in the coast of the Black Sea? When the construction is completed, I’m going to store some things in there.”

Youngho’s intention was to store gold bars in Batumi, which was a relatively safe place for him.

If he carried gold bars using the land route, there was a risk to get caught by border inspections but if he used his own vessel, there would be no such problem. Also, ships could carry more gold bars at once than cars.

The reason that Youngho wanted special features added to the ship that would be traveling through the canal was to install defensive arms on it since he heard that there were a lot of robbers near the canal.

The Volga River, referred as ‘Mother Volga’ by Russians, was like the main artery of the regions of Western Russia. The length of the river about 3,600 kilometers and its volume was enormous.

Russia had been putting a lot of efforts into establishing a canal that connected the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea and the result of their efforts was Volga-Don Canal.

The length of the man-made canal that connected the Volga River and the Don River was about a hundred kilometers and large vessels up to 5,000-ton class could pass through the canal. One could go to the Black Sea after passing through thirteen lock gates along the canal and the Sea of Azov.

Youngho was excited that he had found a new sea route since a vessel could go anywhere freely on the water. On land, he would be under the law of any government or authorities of the territory he was in but on the international waters, no one could touch him.

***

The delivery company that Yaniv made to deliver wines to Volgograd did not have so much work to do now since Youngho carried all of the wines on his freighter, because it cost less for him to deliver the wines on the sea route, he did not use the company anymore. Since the company was run by Yaniv’s man, he had been paying high delivery costs. The company only lived on wine deliveries and now that there were no more wine delivery orders, it could not survive anymore.

Youngho always thought that the company was run on such an inefficient system especially because the returning trucks from Volgograd were empty. There were many quantities of goods being transported between the two countries but the delivery company did not try to make money on the returning trip. It was a terrible way to run a company. Thus, it was a great chance for Youngho to start out a new delivery business using the sea route.

After returning to the farm, Youngho called Jongil and Insoo to his study.

Since they all had served in the Navy U.D.T. Unit, he wanted to brainstorm the effective weapons on the sea.

“Hey. You’ve been on battleships, right? I was assigned to transport ships, so I haven’t seen decent weapons.”

Back in Navy years, Youngho and Insoo were sailors of transport ship called LST and Jongil was on a destroyer called DD. That was why Jongil became boastful when they talked about vessels.

“You fools. You know that you are assigned to different ships according to your test results from training school. You guys flunked at the school, that’s why you were assigned to transport ships.

“Stop trying to manipulate us. The assigning had nothing to do with your test results! It went by your registration number.”

“Whatever. Anyway, I can’t tell you about this since it is highly classified.”

Jongil was feeling ten feet tall and refused to share what he knew to his friends.

“Okay, I don’t need your opinion. If you’re going to give me more sh*t, I’m just going to decide it for myself.”

“Oh, yeah? What do you know about the weapons on battleships? I should be the one to decide.”

“This is only a freighter. We don’t need grandiose weapons.”

“Just wait. Let me see. You should install a mount for a heavy machine gun over here and it will look great to have Vulcan automatic cannon at the front or at the end of the vessel. Also, you should top that with an elevator under the deck and put a helicopter there. See? Perfect!”

Then Youngho slapped Jongil’s back so hard that it made a clear sound.

“Dude, why don’t you make a warship then?”

“Man! We seriously need a helicopter. Not a big one, we can have a tiny one. If you’re in a rush, you can travel on that.”

It was not an absurd idea but it sounded terrible just because Jongil said it. The three discussed for a long time and agreed on making a car-ferry-type of a ship. It would be a multipurpose vessel that could carry many people and cars at the same time. The side of the bow would be enforced to function as an icebreaker, so the stem would be cargo area.

***

The grapes were growing under the warm sunshine of June. Looking at those fruits getting bigger, Youngho felt full already.

If there is not a problem, the number of oak casks would increase at his farm. Since he had plenty of spaces to store oak casks, he did not worry about it. It was because any wine that had been aged for more than two years were transferred into small-sized oak casks and then went into the mine cellars. For that reason, the low-temperature aging room on the farm did not have much large-sized oak casks in store.

The oak cask orders had been increasing at the oak factory, so the factory employees had been working even on the weekends.

Although the factory was operated by an automated system, many detailings needed handwork, so mass production was not possible at any oak cask factories. Especially the factory was producing a lot of small and middle-sized casks, which needed a lot of handworks, and the rate of production was pretty low.

The quality of the oak casks made at Zeynep Farm was quite great, so the order request had been increasing continuously.

Youngho smelled the scent of oak trees at the factory that he visited in a long time.

Leon, who was in his arms, was screaming in an effort to mimic the noise coming from the factory. After he started crawling, he did not sit still even for a minute. He was a curious and mischievous little devil that exhausted everyone around him.

Since it was the weekend, Youngho was now taking care of Leon, instead of Fatima. Hearing Leon’s scream, the factory manager noticed the two hanging around the factory. He greeted Youngho and escorted him to the shade under a shade umbrella.

“Boss, why’d you come down to this noisy place? You could just go to rest.”

“My Leon was curious about the sound of cutting lumbers.”

“The prince had grown so much already. He’s going to walk around soon.”

“He already makes trouble when he crawls. If he walks, I don’t think there’ll be anything left untouched in the house.”

“Hahaha…”

The easy-going factory manager laughed nicely even though he was working under pressure.

“You should take some rest during the weekends even if we had to delay the delivery dates.”

“Since they get a commission for every cask they finish, they’re eager to make as many products as possible. They don’t get tired of making money.”

“I can’t even give you more work since everyone’s so busy.”

“You’re the boss, who’d let you down? What do you wish to ask, Boss?”

Holding Leon, who was struggling to get out, tight, Youngho explained everything the manager while drawing pictures of the vessel on the ground.

“That is a wonderful idea. So, all of the walls in each cabin would be covered by oaks? That sounds amazing but I’m afraid that it won’t be easy to get such a large amount of the trees. We won’t have enough with the ones left from oak cask productions.”

Since the scent of oak trees refreshed the atmosphere, Youngho wanted to apply that to the ship that was being newly made.

“Is there any way that we can use the sawdust and the left-over pieces?”

“Well, there is a way. You could compress the sawdust and cover its surface with a thin coating but it’s a complicated process.”

“If there is a slight possibility, please don’t incinerate the leftovers but store them in somewhere.”

“I sure will. I’ll talk to a lumber dealer that I know well and ask him about it.”

In order to pass the Volga-Don Canal with the car-ferry ship, one would have to spend a few days inside the ship, so he wanted to make the environment more pleasant. That was why he thought of the subtle oak scent. He did not wish to install luxury facilities like a high-quality cruise ship but it would be nice to have refreshing interiors of the ship. Besides, his gut feeling was telling him that the car-ferry ship would be used more than he expected.