Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...

When General Carls had been fighting to seize his realm, he had received financial backing from Li Zhicheng. Though his present station was a far cry from what it had been, General Carls was a man who remembered old ties; when he heard that Li Zhicheng was on the line, he greeted him warmly and made a great deal of pleasant conversation.

But when Li Zhicheng brought up the gold mine the Huang family had invested in, Carls grew rather put out. By rights he ought to grant Li Zhicheng the favor; but if he granted it, the money would be gone. He hesitated a moment, then said, "Mr. Li, you know I've only just come to power—I need money for everything. If..."

"I understand what you mean. But I'll be taking a share in this gold mine and running it in partnership, so I hope the rent can be reduced somewhat," Li Zhicheng said.

"Let me think it over, and we'll be in touch." In the end General Carls could not refuse Li Zhicheng's face outright, and so agreed to consider it.

To be continued

1050. About the Loss of Memory

The Huang family, of course, understood what the Li family meant by all this. In circumstances like these, no one was willing to get mixed up in it—the gold mine in Africa was a treasure, and also a bottomless pit.

Huang Rongtian rather regretted having believed a friend's boasts back then, about those adventurers who had made a sum beyond anyone's wildest dreams overnight in Africa.

And it was not altogether false, either. Many people had indeed become super-rich overnight—but many others had been reduced to utter poverty overnight as well.

Everything is relative; where there are gains, there are losses. No wonder Huang Rongtian and his father Huang Xiaofei had lost their heads the way they did—faced with such enormous profits, few people can stay absolutely cool-headed.

Marx said long ago that when a suitable profit is in prospect, capital grows bold. At fifty percent profit it will risk anything; at a hundred percent it will trample every human law underfoot; at three hundred percent it will commit any crime, even at the risk of the gallows.

That is not a word too many—and besides, three hundred percent was nothing compared with the profits to be had in Africa's present situation. That was why Huang Rongtian had thrown himself in at any price.

But not everyone could play the game in such a small country. Huang Rongtian had clearly charged in without even understanding the rules of the game—which was unwise in the extreme.

He had made inquiries beforehand, of course. The government of Country X changed hands quickly, one provisional regime falling and another rising, but the capitalists in the country were as a rule well looked after; so long as they paid their taxes according to the rules, nothing was done to them. He had never heard of anyone having a contract torn up—and he, Huang Rongtian, was the first.

Why was he the first? He had overlooked one important point: the Huang family had no powerful private armed force in Country X, so the newly installed Carls regime had no fear at all that the Huang family could pull any tricks. As for the local mine owners, General Carls did not dare offend them.

He had only just taken power and had not yet had time to consolidate. What was more, these men together constituted no small armed force of their own. If it came to a fight to the death, Carls would gain little—and other hostile forces might well seize the chance to slip in and drive him from power.

So stupid a thing General Carls would never do. But the Huang family was another matter—and so the knife fell on the Huang family.

By the time Huang Rongtian realized this, it was all too late. Africa was a land of adventure, and not one in which merchants like them could play the game.

As a great commercial house, the Huang family still had many loyal business partners, and the five billion dollars was not beyond their ability to raise. The key question was: even if they did raise it, what if the Carls regime should fall and the new regime, once in power, played the same trick again?

It was not a question of whether it was possible—it was very possible. From this business Huang Rongtian had also come to know his own measure: to gain a foothold in Country X without a formidable private armed force of one's own was impossible.

But he was only a merchant; cobbling together a few gangsters was one thing, but getting himself an armed force was simply absurd.

To ask him to give up the six billion dollars already sunk into it—Huang Rongtian would not take that lying down, and neither would Huang Xiaofei agree to it. Yet to go on investing—that Huang Rongtian dared not do.

This was a matter concerning the Huang family's whole future; mishandle it, and the Huang family would go bankrupt. After discussing it at length, Huang Rongtian and Huang Xiaofei finally hit on a plan.

The plan was to drag someone else into the water—to find another partner and have him put up additional investment. True, their own share would be diluted and they would make less profit than before, but without putting in another cent of their own, they could regain part of the mine's property rights. That was about the best outcome they could hope for.

With that decided, the Huang father and son fixed their eyes on Li Zhicheng. They chose Li Zhicheng because he too had a mine in Africa—an iron mine, not a large one, but he had a small security force there. Most important of all, Li Zhicheng had had dealings with General Carls: his iron mine was located in what had been General Carls's original base area, and he had supplied Carls with military funds. With him in on it, things ought to go relatively smoothly.

Li Zhicheng had two sons. The elder, Li Tianjia, was about Huang Rongtian's age—twenty-six, unmarried. The younger, Li Tianyu, was only in middle school this year, and so was not to be considered.

To bring Li Zhicheng truly into the affair, Huang Rongtian and Huang Xiaofei had put their heads together and come up with the device of a marriage alliance. Huang Yan was a few years younger than Li Tianjia, but that hardly mattered.

Huang Yan had been spoiled since childhood and liked to have her own way in everything. But this time it was different: the very life and death of the Huang family was at stake, and so Huang Xiaofei had no choice but to sacrifice his daughter's interests in exchange for the family's greater good. It sounded rather ridiculous, perhaps, but the facts were the facts.

To gain something, one must lose something. When Huang Yan came home, she learned what had happened. Hearing that her father meant to marry her into the Li family, she quarrelled furiously with him on the spot—and then her father confined her to the house and would not let her go out.

Huang Yan did have the forty billion patacas Yang Ce had given her—sixty billion dollars in US currency. But she knew in her heart that the family's troubles could not be settled so simply with money.

What her father needed was the Li family's connections, not merely their money. Without solid connections in Country X, no matter how much money one poured in, one could be bankrupted in a single stroke.

So after much hesitation, Huang Yan did not bring the money forward. She might be rather naive, but she was not stupid—she knew that even if she produced the money, it would not change her father's mind; better to keep it in her own hands, as her last card.

When Huang Lin came home and learned that his sister had been put under house arrest, he flew into a rage and went to quarrel with his father—but when his father laid out the situation in Africa, Huang Lin fell silent too.