Well, this certainly isn"t going to be how I tell the story.I can"t say I didn"t expect some form of rejection at my offer. I did, even in my past lives my position as President did nothing to help the fact that I still had to work for requited emotions and I"d only found it effortlessly once; when I wasn"t even worth as much as I am now. It made me come to understand that women, at least the women I"ve met, generally like being chased around like the roadrunner the moment a man, powerful or not, expresses interest. It was exhausting.
But I certainly wasn"t expecting her to burst out laughing in my face. I kept an unsteady smile on my face, it wasn"t the most pleasant thing to be laughed at after giving such a proposal.
I let her get it out of her system, still holding my smile in place. "Are you done yet?"
Her lips still quivered as she held a finger up at me, taking in deep breaths and wiping away…tears.
"Ahhh. That was great. Okay, I"m done." She says with an unremorseful look on her.
"Mind letting me in on what was so funny about my offer? You see, I like retelling my best jokes." She shakes her head, still fighting the will to laugh some more it seems.
"Oh please don"t be offended, Mister Fatah." She pulls out a bottle of water and takes a sip. Bold. "Your offer is very exciting, in more ways than one."
"But…?"
"But, I can"t exactly see myself going for "dinner" with a barely legal teenager, even if he is the President." She says frankly, "You"re closer to my younger brother"s age than mine."
She shrugs as I stare on at her, "Doesn"t that feel weird for you? Wouldn"t you prefer someone…younger?"
I sigh and ma.s.sage my temples. I could feel a headache coming on, it seemed this good day was taking a turn for the worse.
"Miss Leriva, how old are you?" I ask, unable to keep up my smile as my head started throbbing.
She hesitated, her eyebrows raised at me, trying to discern my motive, "I am turning twenty-nine soon, why?"
I let on a weak smirk and snort, "Twenty-nine, well you aren"t as old as you"ve made yourself out to be. But even then, as a twenty-nine-year-old, do you not find it odd that your first inkling, when asked for dinner by a man nine years younger than you are, is that he wants to have s.e.x with you?"
Her eyes widen as she makes the connections. It"s my turn to laugh.
"I certainly hope you haven"t thought the same of men younger than I am I would be a shame of you end up being seduced by a child." I ignore the splitting headache in favour of rubbing this in.
"Fine," she resigns to her loss, "I"ll go with you to dinner. But I want something else."
I raise an eyebrow at this, "What could be better than handling my stories?"
"I don"t want to be the President"s favourite anything. That ruins my integrity as a reporter. If I handle everything that"s about you it slowly starts to be seen as propaganda." She explains.
I pout, holding my head on the back of my fingers as I make puppy-dog eyes at her, "But you"re already my favourite. Favourite cougar." She growls at me and I chuckle, "So what do you want instead?"
She smiles slyly, and I know it isn"t something petty, "Well, I"m out of a job and you need good press and journalism, especially for the beginning of your regime. You"re still quite young and I wouldn"t be wrong to a.s.sume there will be power plays in the near future."
I nod, "Yes, you wouldn"t be wrong to a.s.sume such. So what are you implying? That I hire you as press secretary? You realize that position is merely ceremonial."
She shakes her head quite violently, "Let me finish. I don"t want the press secretary job. I want to run my own media house."
I blink, slowly realizing her meaning, "So, you want me to privatize one of Schelar"s federal owned media houses, hand it off to you, a reporter who is notoriously known for her unrelenting pursuit for truth so you can add a sense of legitimacy to my administration"s propaganda."
"Yes! Yes! You"re getting it." She grinned happily at me, almost clapping in her excitement, "So what do you think?"
"I think putting you in charge of a company would cost a lot more than a few dinners, perhaps I"ll cash in on that s.e.x after all." She loses her smile entirely, looking very disappointed in me as I cackle at her face. I wanted my fun day back.
"Okay, well then I"ll make it happen. But I don"t only need you to make me look better. I need you to look into the people around me, I need blackmail, cause to arrest, cause to jail and I need them all to be viable. I"m sure you know that when most governments like mine attempt to develop and enrich the nation…it usually doesn"t end well" I shiver recounting the many times I"d been betrayed for being benevolent.
She smiles and stands to her feet, whipping out a card from her bag, "Here"s my card. Call me when you want dinner and when you"re ready to get me back to work." She smiles softly at me, "I hope you become the leader you say you want to be. I"m sorry for your loss, I"ll be on my way out now."
As I watch her leave the room, I close my eyes and appreciate the silence. For some reason, her genuine remorse for my loss made me feel something.
Let"s fall asleep crying I guess.
***
Among many of the things I had to do as president preparing for a possible war was the most tasking.
As part of my schedule, I"d gotten down to the military base in the capital to inspect…my soldiers.
"Sir, our men are strong and ready for a battle any day," Luciano boasted to me, "My only concern is that their equipment will perform subpar to them."
This was a legitimate concern. The moment father annexed Seych.e.l.les and defeated Madagascar, the boycott was instantaneous. Strangely, world leaders had little to no reaction at this with the exception of boycotting Schelar in trade and general diplomatic relations.
Since the formation of Schelar, no foreign dignitary has stepped foot in the region. This affected the economy badly. With little to no exports being made economic growth was stagnant for a country with very few precious resources.
This lack of trade also affected the arms industry. Most weapons manufacturers belonged to countries that paid no mind to Schelar, contact with them was futile. Father, in a desperate attempt to rejuvenate the declining arms supply of the new nation used prisoners and rebels as labour workers, enlisting them to work in the weapon factories they"d built.
As far as I can remember, it was the most brutal thing he"d done during his regime. But it was effective. So what was the problem now?
"The equipment is outdated, according to our spies in at least forty countries, our weaponry from 2009 is completely outcla.s.sed and outmatched by more modern weaponry."
Nizar Razafy, the head of national intelligence spoke, I look to him not entirely pleased with his report, "So why haven"t any of them sent back the information regarding this powerful weaponry? Do they not have phones? Do they not have access to parts of the internet we don"t over there?"
The man nods, setting his spectacles straight, "Yes, sir, they do. But according to a majority of them, Schelarians have been blacklisted as liable threats. Even if they very well abandon their lives to send the information. It could all very well be intercepted by the countries intelligence agencies."
I sigh and take a seat under the shade, watching the men meticulously and uniformly perform what looked like painful drills. "And what about a manual extraction?"
"You mean authorizing the agents to steal the information and await extraction?" Nizar asks. I nod, "Well, that"s very plausible sire, even with our outdated military technology, we"d be able to carry that out."
"So what"s the problem?" Luciano and I ask in unison. We share a look before turning to listen to Nizar.
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"Well, sir, we have forty agents spread across the world, not only is it going to be impossible to extract all agents, if we perform and operation like this, chances are the victim nation will become aware. We"d be making more enemies as well as compromising the safety of the agents we cannot carry out the operation for."
So I had a decision to make. If I gave the go-ahead, most likely our abandoned agents would be hunted down and imprisoned.
"We could withdraw the agents who cannot bring back information then. When we do that we perform the extraction op on those that can." I offer, but Nizar shook his head disagreeing.
"This too will alert the countries. Some may not even let them go and arrest them for espionage anyway." I let out a sigh hearing this.
"Let"s just sacrifice them. They would be serving their great nation in the end." Luciano says. "Nizar, go ahead with the extraction."
Nizar gives him a funny look like he didn"t comprehend anything he"d said. "Nizar, Wait for my order. We might as well have to sacrifice a few. But only if we exhaust all options."
I look over my shoulder and call over a corporate dress woman to my side, she was my a.s.sistant, "Set the inauguration earlier. Perhaps a day after tomorrow. And set me a call with Moscow. Let"s see if I can"t get these weapons myself."