"Ashinik, do you understand what you need to do?"
Ashinik raised his head bewildered. Bemish was telling him something, but he missed it all. Ashinik nodded and only then he noticed the company director's swollen cheeks and dark circles under his eyes — he had probably had a lot of fun yesterday.
Yikes, bordellos — demons' pastime where corrupted officials put Weian girls in the demons' beds…
"Yes, I got it."
"Ashinik, what's wrong with you? Are you sick?"
"I am all right. I'll go…"
"You will go and lie still in my bedroom. Do you understand?"
Bemish embraced the lad with one hand and flung the door to the inner living room with the other. Out of the wide open office door, Inis caught embarrassed Ashinik's glance and smiled at him slightly.
Of course, when in two hours, Bemish walked upstairs to the bedroom, he found Ashinik not lying in bed but, to the contrary, sitting hunched on the floor and reading a book. Bemish approached him and looked over his shoulder. The lad shuddered. The book was a Lassal's demolition manual.
"It's an old manual," Bemish said. "Let's go — I'll try to find a better book."
They walked to Bemish's office and the construction director having rummaged around in the books, dug out a fundamental and intelligible Feinstein's textbook.
"Here it is," Bemish said.
Ashinik held the book tightly like a shepherd would hold a sick lamb, hunched and walked to the door. Bemish watched him carefully. It seemed that Ashinik was expecting a question — why would he need a demolition manual, though why would a manager at the construction that uses up three kilos of TNT equivalent a week — not read this manual."
Ashinik pushed the door open.
"Hold on," Bemish said, "I need to talk to you."
Ashinik returned and sat down obediently. "Giles spied on me and Inis," a thought glanced in his mind. "Or he spied on Yadan. Great gods, let this conversation be about Yadan!"
"Is it very difficult for you?" Bemish asked.
"Why should it be difficult for me?" Ashinik responded in a dull voice.
"Because you became my deputy to establish order in the company but you could do it only as the head of the sect that considers the construction to be demons' business. So, you could be my deputy only being the sect's head and you can be the sect's head only not being my deputy."'
"I will manage, Ashinik said.
He was still looking down hunching.
"You almost fainted two hours ago."
"What do you want?"
"You could leave," Bemish said. "They send many people to study overseas. It's not right that you work fourteen hours and then sit reading books."
"He is throwing me out!" a thought lit in Ashinik's mind. "He used me to establish order at the construction and now he is throwing me out at Shavash's order!"
"May I go to Inissa for a week?" Ashinik asked.
"You don't have folks in Inissa, do you? Are you going to a sect's meeting?"
Ashinik was silent.
"Of course, you can go, Ashinik," Bemish said.
Ashinik had barely stepped out of the office, when Giles took his place. Strangely, Bemish and spy became good friends. The reason was that Giles demonstrated good businessman qualities — he scurried around all the country, looked for the best agreements, contrived, plotted, gave bribes and pushed himself to the limit for the company. He, also, appeared to be an amiable companion. He often slept over at the villa where he, like most Earthmen employees, had his own room; he was a charming talker and got along well with Inis. He never talked to Bemish about the good of the Federation, having figured out that a businessman and a spy had absolutely opposite views to what was the good of the Federation.
"What happened," Bemish inquired.
Giles threw a picture on the table.
"Do you know this guy?"
Bemish looked at the picture for a while. The guy on the photo sat near a fire in ragged local clothing with his feet under him cramming gruel.
"Beats me… Maybe I've seen him somewhere at the construction…"
"You haven't seen him at the construction. You have seen him at your villa with Kissur's brother, Ashidan." Bemish shuddered. Of course!
""Damn it! Does he work at the construction?"
"He worked here till yesterday."
"And what happened yesterday?"
"Yesterday, one of my people found out that somebody was trying to crack the security software at five in the morning and at five in the morning this guy was cleaning his room."
"And…"
"Somebody was able to warn the guy. He took off."
"I will ask Ashinik…"
"Nobody besides Ashinik's people could've warned him. It's a funny combination — Following the Way sect and an anarcho-syndicalist demon, isn't
it?"
"It's totally unbelievable."
"There is something even more unbelievable — the guy came here from one of Kissur's manors. And his reference letter was signed by Kissur. You know — that he was a diligent worker and gathered hay just great…By the way, he is an old acquaintance of Kissur's."
Bemish paused.
"What exactly was he ferreting out?"
"Oh, his interests were all-inclusive. Mostly, however, he was interested in certain trading operations of Weian New Age fund. For instance, he was interested in the situation when several hours before an announcement about transnational Metal Uranium buying a totally non-liquid uranium mine came out, you had bought two hundred thirty million worth of this mine's shares. And you sold them in two days at three billion. Oh, there is another strikingly interesting accident — Shavash's friend Igon who was in charge of the country's international loans, claimed that Weia was considering postponing paying off the interest on the international loan known as Iron Bonds. Since, say, some bearer's bonds had been stolen at
Lamass bank robbery and they needed to find out how the current bonds' owners had acquired them. The securities' rating collapsed almost by a factor of two and in a day Shavash threw Igon out with a scandal, published a denouncement and paid the interest off right on time so that practically in a week the rating was back to normal. Remarkably, you bought forty million worth of these securities right after Igon's announcement and sold them in a week at, correspondingly, eighty million. You were also reckless enough to transfer, at the same time, quite a significant amount of money to Shavash's and Igon's accounts."
"Has the anarchist dug it out or has it been your work?" Bemish inquired.
"It was the anarchist. He spent a month in your computer and then he tried hacking into our systems and he was uncovered. He was also likely to find out a lot of interesting stuff about the spaceport."
Bemish was silent. The guy could surely learn a lot of interesting stuff about the spaceport. Bemish clenched his teeth sometimes realizing what was happening at the spaceport. The "fan" approach to the formation of export-import companies that existed for two months only, till the deadline for the first tax declaration, was the most innocent trick out of what was happening.
But there was nothing else to do — so many gifts were required, so many unofficial expenses were needed on the top of official ones, and Bemish sadly realized that the larger was the embezzlement scale, the safer the embezzlement was.