Empire of the Ring

“Katya, it doesn’t look like you’ve called only because of Rena. What’s up?”

“Phew. Are you really going to act cold this way?”

“…”

“I’m not going to say anymore because you sound like you’re done here since you’ve seen Rena.”

‘What’s up with her that she’s acting all charming?’

“No, it’s not that. I was just wondering since you called me in this season where the roads were rough.”

Katya laughed hard as Youngho did not know what to do. Her smile could melt any man’s heart. Youngho took a deep breath to not to be charmed by her smile. It seemed that Katya was enjoying Youngho’s changing reactions.

“Boss, you said that you want to buy the hotel in the city.”

“I did. I just want to fix it up because it won’t be weird if maggots came out now from that hotel. It’s hard to sleep well in there every time I visit.”

“It’s now out in the market, do you want to buy the property? Although, I’m not sure if it’s within the price range that you can afford.”

Katya had no idea who Youngho really was.

“People here must not be interested in buying the hotel.”

“They think it’ll cost more for them to fix up the hotel but in my perspective, the hotel is such a historic building in the city. The exterior also looks like quality antique. If you tidy it up a little bit, it would be a landmark.”

“The inside is just awful. Everything should be done all over, including the piping work.”

“That’s why they’re selling the property. They can’t afford it.”

Youngho was not sure if he would make money out of the hotel business. Who would visit here where there were neglected burnt thanks to the streets?

“I’m not sure if they’ll be enough guests…”

“You also go there because you have no place to stay. I’ve been watching the hotel and the floors above the second floor were always lightened.”

It looked like she had been watching it for a long time.

“And I think I can invest some too because someone contacted me to sell the business rights for the retailer store.”

“That person is not afraid of mafias who provide supplies?”

“When I told him about mafias of Volgograd, he said he could trust them. Mr. Sergey also told me he would provide supplies for him if his boss agreed.”

Youngho had not been talking to Sergey lately because he was busy preparing for his wedding. He saw him at the wedding but he did not have time to speak about businesses.

As he found out previously, Katya had great analytical skills. She did not miss Youngho’s passing word about buying the hotel property and she called him when the property was out in the market, so he could see it for himself.

The inside of the hotel was terrible but the exterior was great. If auxiliary facilities and individual rooms were remodeled, the place seemed that it could be a mid-level hotel.

The building had six stories and a hundred rooms. The first floor had a lobby, café, reception hall, cafeteria, bar, souvenir shop, fitness center, and a sauna facility. The only things that were operating now were the café and the cafeteria and the rest of the facilities were just nominal. The rooms were designed in an old-fashioned way that it was huge that it could even be a suite room but it was divided into a bedroom and a living room. The exterior was made out of rocks magnificently but because of its age, it was stained and wrecked.

Although there were so many things to be fixed, as Katya said, it would be a great landmark and a quality hotel once it was remodeled.

The owner had decided to sell the property since the guests were decreasing and he could not afford to fix it.

What Katya said about investing was that in case Youngho did not have enough money, she would sell the business rights for the retailer shop and pay some part for the property. She had also studied the hotel’s profit system, the average occupancy of the rooms was 40-50% and she was confident that Youngho would make profits once the subsidiary facilities operated well. She also said that if remodeled, he could even raise the price of each room.

The hotel was like a symbol for Tskhinvali that even Georgia excluded the hotel when they bombarded the city of Tskhinvali. There were other small hotels in Tskhinvali but their conditions were even worse than this hotel. It did not take long before Youngho decided to buy the hotel property.

***

The acquisition of the hotel was a smooth sailing. Youngho and Katya agreed not to sell the retailer shop because if the new owner was only after money, it was highly likely that he would not provide the daily necessities to remote Georgian towns. The prior reason for opening the retailer shop was to supply daily necessities to poor Georgians in remote towns in South Ossetia and this was the reason that Youngho could open a warehouse retailer store in Tbilisi, Georgia since Georgians favored Youngho who had been helping Georgians in South Ossetia. Not to mention, selling the business rights was not a lot of money for Youngho, so he hired a sales agent and let Katya take the management role.

The major factor that made Youngho move was that the property included 710,000 sq. ft. of the land and 4,270,000 sq. ft. of the hilly site behind the hotel. He was interested in the huge land and 350,000 dollars seemed like a plausible price for the entire property, although it was an astronomical amount of money based on South Ossetia’s economic barometer. He was thinking that he could expand the hotel if South Ossetia develops more in the future.

There were more reasons to buying the hotel property, Youngho wanted to manage the hotel in Tskhinvali as an experiment and if he has success with it, he planned on buying out old hotels around Swiss and Austria. He had seen old hotels when he traveled around Europe. He also trusted Katya’s analytic judgment, if she was hopeful of the hotel’s future success, she was probably right. The last reason for his decision was that he wanted to provide a secure living environment, he would be building a beautiful guest house next to the remodeled hotel for Katya’s family.

Although he was inexperienced managing a hotel, he did not worry too much since the hotel was already well-known in Tskhinvali. Most of the people who traveled to South Ossetia from overseas stayed in this hotel. There were no attractions around the city, so if he made a great facility for people to enjoy, it seemed like it would attract a lot of people. He assigned Katya as the manager of the hotel and promised her 10% of the company’s share, although the hotel’s profit would not be a lot in here, it was more of a symbolic gesture. Knowing what Youngho had in mind, Katya was grateful. She understood that he had invested for this business trusting her and out of love for Rena. Rather trying to make money out of the business, he thought it would be okay if he did not lose money and if he had somewhere to stay whenever he visited the town.

Because of the process of buying out hotel property, he stayed two more days than he had expected before leaving Tskhinvali. The gang had stayed at Katya’s house after meeting her since she insisted. The Russian he learned from Kim Ilkwon was very helpful when he talked to Rena, so he went to sledding with Rena and spent more time with her.

Rena did not know how to call Jongil, so she started calling him ‘papa’ too, which stunned Jongil. He unexpectedly had become a partner in crime with Youngho. Although it was poor of Jongil, Youngho thought that it was better since he would have excuses even when Fatima finds out about Rena.

***

Instead of going straight to Baku from Moscow, he flew to Frankfurt to visit the European chapter. It was because he wanted to let Cha Insoo off the hook from the CIA. Insoo’s did not have a huge role as a field agent and he recently he had been busy with the security company. Youngho thought that it would not be a matter even if he resigned. However, he knew that the European chapter would not want to let go of an agent that was trained as a human weapon. Another reason was that the CIA had thought that Cha Insoo could guard an influential figure and that could make him a resource for high-level information. Youngho had no more reasons to reject Michael anymore since he offered to accommodate all of his needs.

“Chief, if Cha Insoo gets paid without having any role, I might get punished after you leave here. I’m just worried about that.”

“Your team consists of special and unique people. Easily said, since your team is a special case, you can have one or two field agents at my discretion.”

“…”

“It won’t matter who gets my seat after I’m gone, he’ll only focus on accumulating achievements. What team would cover the entire Caucasus regions and gather such quality information like yours?”

“It sounds like when my team doesn’t perform well enough, it won’t matter if I leave the organization.”

“If your team doesn’t perform well, that would fall under my responsibility since I’m the one who did not encourage your team. The achievements you’ve had won’t go anywhere.”

“I was lucky too. Not everything was achieved because of my abilities.”

“It was your ability that made a chance into an achievement.”

“I don’t wish to work for the chapter without you. I’m not a social person either.”

“You’re thinking about leaving soon, aren’t you? Look, I don’t wish to go back to my home country before I retire.”

“…”

“I wanted to, but I don’t think I can handle the political pressure and I’m also looking forward to doing more information businesses with you in the future.”

He meant that he wanted to make more money using Youngho’s outstanding information strength.

“Alright then. So the chapter wouldn’t mind if I assign Cha Insoo agent anywhere I wanted.”

“Of course. I don’t even have that much free time to care about every move of the field agents under you.”

This was an advantage of a field agent that did not work at the chapter. Since Youngho was allowed flexibility for agents under him, he could put Cha Insoo anywhere he wanted. In fact, Cha Insoo needed to stay in Vladivostok regardless of the work of the CIA, and that was why Youngho had come to get permission to release him from the agency.

The security service work of the storage warehouse in Vladivostok was huge pressure for him because high-end electronics would be stored in there. Since the electronics could not be neglected at the container harbor in the cold, most of the imported goods would be sent to storage units after a certain period. Although each electronic would be stored only for a month or two, robbers would be targeting the complex once they found out what was being stored. Especially in Russia, robbers would gather in groups and often use firearms, and there would be frequent life-threatening accidents. Also, they drove trucks to stores and raided them, so if not cautious, all of the stored goods would be lost and employees would get injured as well. The complex would make a good spot for the robbers.

He only wished that everything would be fine but in order to prevent the robberies, he needed to show that the security was tight. That was why at least for the beginning of the business, he would be assigning a large group of security guards more than needed.