Chapter 1.3. Let's go to work

Mike went up to the third floor of his Internal Investigations department. Along the way, he had to use his pass several times to open doors. No one was fooling around with security here.

The head of the department was Colonel Tirel de Graaf, from the same clan as Mike. It was a small department that dealt with crimes related to ministry personnel. Mike had just returned from one such assignment.

In the Colonel's reception room, Mike greeted his friend, Aireen de Graaf. They had known each other for many years. For the last few years, she had been the Colonel's secretary. He was her father, by the way. And he was the one who transferred her here from the personnel department where she had worked before.

"Mike, you're back," she exclaimed when she saw him.

"Hello, Aireen. You're looking well."

In the past, the relationship between them develops quite well. But for some reason, they both remained within the bounds of friendship.

"Thanks, Mike. You look better, too. Tanned, you look more like us now. Not so light," she replied, smiling.

"You're right. I'll miss the forty-degree heat and the scorching sun," and to change the uncomfortable subject, he asked: "Aireen, is the colonel in his cabinet?"

"Yes, at his place," she said. "But he is not alone. I'll report about you in a moment."

Aireen got up from her desk. She went to the colonel's cabinet, knocked, and then entered.

Mike had been waiting for several minutes and wondered if he should sit down in a chair rather than stand on his feet. But then the door opened, and Aireen came out. Then another one came out after her. Mike knew him well. They'd worked together a few times. Captain Eric Shtof was also from the Internal Investigations Department, just like Mike.

"Eric," Mike greeted him with a half bow.

"Michael," he returned his greeting. "You weren't in a hurry to return," he added and then walked out of the reception room.

Mike has a rather strained relationship with Eric. It occurred because of an unpleasant story between them. It happened a long time ago when Mike started working at the ministry. Since then, their relationship has remained at the same level.

"Mike, you can come in now. The Colonel will receive you," Irene said.

"Thank you," said Mike and then went into the cabinet.

The Colonel's cabinet was quite large and spacious. On the left side of it, on the wall, hung a huge map of the continent and a slightly smaller map of the empire. On the right side were three south-facing windows, and the afternoon sun provided good illumination. In the center of the cabinet was a long meeting table for 12 people, with the colonel's desk at its end. Behind the desk stood bookcases.

Colonel Tirel de Graaf himself was tall, thin, middle-aged, with dark hair with a short haircut, wearing glasses and a military uniform. The colonel sat at his desk. Mike stopped and made a bow.

"Captain Michael de Graaf is back from his mission, sir," Mike reported. The colonel looked up from the papers on the desk.

"Have a seat," he said.

Mike sat down not far from the colonel's desk and placed a leather briefcase on a nearby chair.

"Don't you want to say anything?" The colonel asked him.

"Everything that needed to say, sir, I wrote in the last report. I sent it in the dispatch. I have a more detailed report and pictures of the events on my tablet."

The colonel opened his desk drawer and pulled out a handful of papers.

"I have here," he said, tapping his finger on the stack of papers, "seven reports on you and eleven complaints, as well as a petition from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for your suspension and punishment. You violated orders three times. And one of them was my direct order to you."

Mike grimaced at the sight of the impressive stack of papers. His calculations were off by a couple of reports and complaints. He knew his actions would backfire. But he wasn't going to stop.

"I justified my reasons for disregarding orders in my report, sir. And I do not consider myself guilty. As for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I have nothing but foul language to say to them. It was their non-intervention and incompetence that was largely responsible for the events that occurred, sir."

There was a long and tense opposition between their ministries.

"That's not our job. Not our departments. Do you understand that? You needed to identify a group of traitors in our ministry there on the ground and arrest them. Along the way, collect data on their ties to the local leadership and pass that information back to us."

"I have done exactly that, sir," Mike replied. "But we got intelligence about the ties between the Marine Brotherhood and several nomadic tribes in the northern prairie. We also received information about an alliance in preparation between them. The time to make a decision was tight."

On his last mission, Mike exceeded his authority a bit. He also cut corners several times, bypassing local officials to speed up decisions.

"But you don't have proof of that even now. No witnesses, no documents."

"That's not exactly true, sir," Mike replied. "But..."

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"Was it hard for you to wait a month? Wait for help?" He raised his voice. "That's not your job. You're not a field agent. And the more reason for you to stay out of politics..."

Mike sighed. He had expected such a reaction. And he didn't try to soften it because he didn't think he was guilty.

"Colonel," Mike addressed him when he calmed down a bit. " If we did not take the actions, there would probably be an armed conflict of great intensity at our borders by now. There would be a hostile organization at our borders. It would threaten our river communication with the center of the continent."

"Still, you shouldn't have gone into the wilderness with the nomads. And you shouldn't have interfered in their matters. Once again, you could have waited for the Foreign Ministry and us to form a plan of action. Then the army gets involved. You only had to supervise the actions of our ministry. That's it..."

There was a long silence. Mike had nothing to add to what he wrote in the report, and the colonel, for his part, pondered his next steps. The whole question was about the punishment that awaited him.

"So, here's the situation," said the colonel, after thinking for a few minutes. "I won't suspend you, but you'll take a long vacation, two or three months. Maybe take a trip somewhere, and get some rest. And you'll have to apologize to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And that's unnegotiable."

He stared at the colonel in surprise. He was expecting a suspension, not a vacation.

"Take Aireen's letter form and write it on the spot. And be thankful that I don't make you go in person to apologize."

"Well, thank you very much, good sir," Mike answered him with a bow.

"Don't be rude," the colonel raised his voice at him again.

"Now show me what kind of documents you brought," he added calmly.

Mike sighed and opened his briefcase. First, he pulled out the papers and then a single crystal tablet.

"These papers are relevant to the case. There is all the correspondence, the reports, and the witness statements. There's also a copy of them on the tablet, sir," Mike said and handed them to the colonel.

"Okay," the colonel said. He put the documents in a drawer and left the tablet on the table. "Okay, now let's get back to our personal business. And before you go on vacation. I hope you haven't forgotten that you owe me a large sum of money. And the remaining amount has increased by twenty percent during your absence from the capital."

"I remember," sighed Mike.

The debt came from Mike's parents. More than fifteen years ago, they borrowed the sum of 100,000 gold from Colonel Tirel. They were going to expand their crystal-growing business. But the very next day, they disappeared along with the gold. The investigation concluded that Mike's parents had fled the country with the gold. And after a while, the investigation ended. No one has been charged. Mike was out of town at the time. And when he returned a month later, he couldn't find any trace of them anymore. And they are still missing nowadays. That's one of the reasons Mike joined the Ministry of Foreign Intelligence. All this time, he intended to find any trace of his parents.

"I have two clear crystal tablets and two hundred crystals," Mike patted his leather briefcase. "I'm giving them to you as payment on my debt."

The colonel jumped up from his seat and stared at Mike.

"You didn't have to carry all this with you. I would have sent my men to you to pick them up. I think it would have been safest that way."

"It's a friendly gesture to show I'm serious about paying the full amount of the debt," Mike assured him.

"And yet," said the colonel, sitting down. "You shouldn't have brought that kind of money to work here."

"That's not all," Mike said with a chuckle.

"What?" The colonel asked him again.

"I have ten more tablets and about a thousand crystals. I think that's enough to pay off the whole debt."

How much money are they talking about? Ordinary money use coins - bronze, silver, and gold. The ratio is 100 to 1. So, one gold coin cost 100 silver coins and 10,000 bronze coins. The coin denominations themselves are 1, 2, and 5 units. A 2-silver coin is two times heavier than a 1-silver coin, and a 5-silver coin is five times heavier. It is the same for bronze and gold. For example, Mike's monthly salary is 120 gold coins, and the value of the two-story Mike's house is 45 thousand gold.

Mike's monthly salary is 120 gold coins, weighing just under a kilogram. Paying off large amounts of gold daily is inconvenient. So, there are two ways out of this situation. The first is a bank card of varying denominations from 50 to 100 thousand gold. The card itself is small and made of metal. It fits in the palm, weighs little, and has a complex internal structure with anti-theft and anti-counterfeiting protection. The card has a binding to the bank. The second method is crystals. A pea-sized crystal is valued at 10-50 gold, depending on the type of crystal. A blank tablet has a more fixed value of about 3,000 gold. So, if you do the math, Mike is giving away the equivalent of 10-15 thousand gold now, plus 65-75 thousand gold later.

"Oh," marveled the colonel. He stared at Mike. "That's unexpected. That's pretty quick, the amount you've collected. I thought you'd be paying it off for another ten years. Good. Looks like your mission was more successful than I thought. Tonight, I'll send my men to pick up the rest of the debt. Say, half-past seven o'clock."

"Good. Are we even then, sir?" Mike asked.

The colonel thought for a while, calculating the total amount in his mind. By all accounts, it came out to be a little more than he was going to ask for, taking into account the interest during Mike's absence.

"Yeah, yeah. As soon as I get the rest, I'll forgive your debt."

"Good. Then I can be free," Mike asked.

"Yes, you may go," the colonel answered him. But then, after a couple of seconds, he added. "Catherine de Graaf, our clan matriarch, wanted to see you, by the way."

What the colonel said surprised Mike. He couldn't understand why the clan matriarch needed him. And how did she know of his arrival?

"Have you an idea why she needs me, sir?" Mike asked.

"How should I know? She doesn't report to me," the colonel brushed him off.

Mike bowed and left the office.

"Well? How bad was it for you?" Asked Aireen when she saw Mike.

"Nah, it could have been worse," he answered her. "Aireen, I need a letter form to send to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

"He made you write a letter to the MFA?" She asked. Aireen pulled out the form and handed it to him.

It didn't take Mike more than ten minutes to write the letter. He gave the finished letter to Aireen.

"Can you send it to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?"

"Yes, of course. I handle letters all the time," she replied. Then she took and read it carefully. "You don't have to worry; it'll be at the MFA in a couple of days."

"Thank you. You're my savior," he bowed to her and walked out.

A small smile bloomed on Aireen's face as she followed him with a glance.

Mike quickly dropped into his department. His workplace was in a large, spacious room with many desks. It was almost empty, as most of the people were on missions. He tidied up his desk for a while. Then Mike decided to go to the buffet for lunch.

The buffet has been just below them on the second floor, with dozens of tables for four people. When he went down there, he saw a half-filled room. After standing in a small line, Mike ordered himself a light lunch. After paying, he grabbed a plate of food and headed for the nearest empty seat.

"It's occupied," he heard the reply.

Mike then headed to another table. People were suspicious of him. After all, he didn't look like a member of the dark race but more like a human. The fact that he worked for Internal Affairs made it all the more piquant. Not many people liked them.

"Is this seat free?" He asked those sitting at the table.

"It's occupied."

Sighing, Mike went to the back of the room. It was a good thing there were a couple of empty tables. Sitting down at one of them, Mike began wondering why the matriarch needed him. Catherine de Graaf was the oldest in the clan and had ruled it for over 300 years, and she was also the head of Foreign Intelligence. She was, not unreasonably, considered the most powerful woman in the country. Only the heads of the three largest clans of the Dark Empire could compete with her. She even has the nickname Hecate de Graaf.

Mike occasionally met her for work or at clan events. Before the disappearance of his parents, Mike did not attract her attention. However, after their disappearance, Mike sensed noticeable attention from her.

It was Catherine de Graaf who asked him: if he wanted to join the Foreign Intelligence Service. And Mike agreed.