'It's a company located on Gera,' Bemish replied gloating.
'A company located on Gera? Why not a company located in a devil's arse? When did it come to being, yesterday?'
Bemish looked at his watch.
'To be precise, it came to being today, three hours ago.'
Meanwhile, Shavash finished his enlightened interview and led Kissur aside.
'Did you,' he asked, 'loan Bemish money?'
'Am I a usurer?' Kissur was offended, 'to loan money? It was a gift.'
'You were born of a Barsharg goat!' Shavash swore. 'This is the last you'll see of it.'
'Let's see,' Kissur said, 'who wins the auction.'
Here, another Earth journalist approached Shavash and the company director started repeating how only a scrupulous foreign investor could save Weian economics.
By the evening, the bored journalists, hanging out at the cafe, could record in their notebooks that three companies were interested in the state's offer — Bemish's ADO, IC Corporation, and Rusby and C — were offering to buy the shares out first and to finance the construction out of the galactic company resources afterwards. Five or six large investment banks were also interested. They were not going to buy Assalah shares themselves. They mostly offered to the government various alternatives of convertible bonds that these banks would distribute to the Galactic investors — the bonds would be converted, at some date, to Assalah shares now belonging to the state. Such a large number of investment bank aspirants had surprised Bemish at first but he was told later that actually his modest person was the source. The players on the fund market ferreted out that Terence Bemish was going to buy some blip-blop limited in some banana republic, decided that it had to be a swell deal and followed him like the honey gatherers follow a bee.
A phone call from Kissur woke Bemish up at 3am.
'Hello, Terence. The investment auction is cancelled. Two hours, after the applications had been submitted, Shavash sold 51 % of state-owned Assalah shares to IC Company at five and a half dinars per share.'
'What do you mean sold?' Bemish choked.
The line went off.
Fifteen minutes later, a car stopped under the hotel windows and Kissur jumped out of it.
'Dress,' Kissur said. 'We are going to the sovereign.'
'Why?'
At this point, the phone rang again. Bemish picked up the receiver.
'Terence, this is Shavash. Call your complaint off.'
'What complaint?'
'Don't pretend. Call off the complaint that you wrote to the sovereign requesting to arrest me for bribery.'
'Have you lost your mind? I've never written this crap!'
'Terence, if you go to the sovereign you will be squashed flat. You can forget about working in a bank — they won't hire you as a cashier in a supermarket. Got it?'
'I haven't…'
Shavash slammed the receiver.
'I signed the complaint for you, Bemish,' Kissur said. 'The sovereign will examine it at this morning audience.'
Bemish grabbed his head.
'Oh, my God, Kissur are you nuts? If you don't have mercy for me, have mercy for your own country!'
'I have mercy for my country,' Kissur said. 'You explained to me, what IC is yourself. They will just rob us and that's it. Or, were you bulling me?'
'I didn't bull you, Kissur. Just get it — the contract has been signed. That's it. Finita la comedia. These stocks are IC's property. If they find out that an international company can have its property taken away from it on your planet just because some authorities think that some bribes were involved, you will not need any spaceports anymore! No financier will ever come here! It's worse than tank trips over a joint company. '
Kissur stuck out his lip stubbornly. Clearly, the threat that no more dinar and dollar fans appear in the Empire, didn't frighten him much.
'Get it, you stupid idiot, that any losses resulting from Assalah sold off incorrectly won't even come close with the losses resulting from the cancellation of a completed contract. I will not even mention that nobody will let me back to LSV. I will not even mention that IC is totally in its right to sue me in arbitration court even if I get your complaint thrown back at my face!'
'But I will say that it's my complaint.'
'And they will, of course, believe you on the spot,' Bemish waved his hand. 'Well, leave me alone for these three hours.'
'What are you gonna do?'
'Think,' Bemish said.
Exactly four hours later, Bemish, accompanied by Kissur walked down the sovereign garden's paths to a small six room pavilion. Above the pavilion entrance, a flag with an inscription Fairness and Concentration Hall was swaying. Two golden peacocks of wondrous craftsmanship guarded the inner hall entrance. The sovereign Varnazd sat in a down armchair next to a window. He wore a long white dress, with wide sleeves fastened at the wrists by pearl clasps and, uncovered, his face, thin as onion undergarment peels, looked somewhat lost and naeve. Shavash followed Bemish into the hall and first minister Yanik also came in. Shavash and Yanik were draped in the ceremonial kaftans with all their rank insignias — Bemish had never seen them before. A red fiery dragon, with rubies sewn in his claws, on the first minister's dress dazed him unexpectedly and Bemish suddenly felt something he had never suspected before — a certain meagerness of his impeccably made cashmere wool suite compared to the red dragon with the ruby decorated claws. As for Kissur, he was dressed the same way as he had been earlier, visiting Bemish, — in ragged leather pants.
'You filed a complaint, Mr. Bemish,' the sovereign said, 'could you describe how you were mistreated.'
'I didn't file this complaint,' Bemish said. 'And, having certain business ethics views, I consider it impossible to request a re-consideration of a completed contract. However, I have a question to Mr. Shavash — what was your decision to cancel the investment auction based on and what was your decision to sell the company for a three times less money, than I offered, based on?'
The sovereign turned to the vice-minister of finance.
'I would like to hear your answer, Mr. Shavash.'
'We didn't cancel the auction,' Shavash stated. 'We just ran it on a shorter time scale. Considering Mr. Bemish's application, we judged it to be incomplete since LSV investment bank, which had been expected to underwrite the bonds, and several other large commercial banks, which had been expected to advance credit to Mr. Bemish, pulled out having realized that the offer had been overpriced.
'After some investors pulled out, I found others!' Bemish cried out.
'The company from Gera, that loaned money to you, doesn't have any credit history and is very suspicious. SC Trading that promised to distribute your bonds is a tiny investment boutique with absolutely no authority on the capital market. We doubt that the bonds distributed by it will be worth more than fifty cents for a dinar. Therefore, your application is comparable with that of IC.'
Shavash paused and continued.
'Meanwhile, Mr. Bemish's actions clearly demonstrated that he was not going to acquire Assalah. Long before his arrival, he had been buying Assalah stocks through several companies. Violating the law, he didn't register the fact that he owned in reality more than 13 % of Assalah stocks. The only goal of his actions was to put pressure at the future company management so that they would acquire the stocks at a higher price. To achieve this purpose Terence Bemish didn't shrink from anything. A foreigner ignoring the ways and customs of our country, thinking only about his rake-off, — he abused his position as a manor owner forcing the peasants present him with their shares. Using his highly placed connections, he browbeat a local official into giving him the Assalah
