Chapter Thirty-Two The Pieces Gather on the Board
Thirty-Two
The Pieces Gather on the Board
Among the servants, clerks, secretaries, and emissaries who helped Mustafa Bey control his multifarious enterprises was a young woman called Tamar Sharadze.
She was a graduate of the University of Tblisi, a statistician and expert on complex systems, and Mustafa Bey had admired and profited by her clarity of thought and singleness of purpose.
Her daemon was a small butterfly of intense blue, who spoke little.
In the turmoil that followed the assassination, she was the best-placed person to make sense of the confusion, and showed a determination and authority no one had seen in her before.
She made decisions and gave orders as if the great man himself were speaking through her.
She saw without having to think about it where the most urgent matters were occurring, and how to deal with them; and before a week had passed, she might as well have been Mustafa Bey himself, reincarnated and purposeful.
Securing the safety of the roads was what preoccupied her most to begin with.
She had traveled herself, as far as Tangier to the west and Kyoto to the east, and her powerful memory as well as her efficient manner had ensured that the assassination had provoked less disturbance and anxiety than anyone expected among the agents, the dealers, the brokers, and the carriers who together made up the Mustafa Bey trading empire.
A week’s alarm, and then calm descended again.
She made sure that the assassin’s background was thoroughly investigated, and any associates found and arrested.
She contacted the representatives of the Magisterium, including some who had refused all dealings with Mustafa Bey, and let them know that new management was in charge now; and found out all that could be known about the progress of the army under Marcel Delamare.
She had been closely watching some changes that had failed to attract the attention of Mustafa Bey, in particular the road and railway building and the other transport developments in the western provinces of the Golden Empire.
Her late chief had taken a strong interest in his own new bus routes west of the Caspian Sea, but had overlooked, she thought, the great prizes to be won in Central Asia for whoever found the best solution to the problems of desert travel in the modern age.
She also gave considerable thought to the question of what sort of organization she was in charge of.
Under Mustafa Bey it had a thousand different faces and ten thousand different interests in a hundred thousand different towns and villages and caravansaries, with a thousand thousand small deals being made every day.
It was beyond the capacity of a single human memory to take in, even that of Dr. Sharadze, and it had only worked because Mustafa Bey, by some perhaps supernatural means, transfused through every branch of this complex tree the life-giving sap of trust associated with his name.
Dr. Sharadze realized that she could not supply that precious liquid herself, so she would have to act very quickly to replace it with something else: a structure that was not only immensely robust, but above all, with a line of authority that was easy to understand at any point, and with the means to enforce it.
And that would involve a profound reformation of the medium of exchange.
So the Mustafa Bey Company came into legally attested being, with as its brandmark a picture of the late chief, drawn 457 times before the artist got the proper balance of wisdom, kindness, shrewdness, decisiveness, and visionary optimism into the image, which was to be reproduced on every document and piece of packaging the company generated.
Dr. Sharadze also set about modernizing the communications inside the company.
Marletto’s Café was all very well in an age of camel-paced transport and personal interaction, but times were changing.
Soon a splendid new building was being planned, one that would unfortunately require the construction of a wide new circulatory traffic system and the demolition of the block containing Marletto’s.
Dr. Sharadze became intensely interested in this scheme, in its size and scope, and she made arrangements to visit other urban centers on both sides of the Caspian Sea, where she wanted to speak to architects, engineers, and geologists about their plans for developing what she was already calling the Mustafa Bey Freeway.
It was while she was examining some drawings for this and other projects, in the new office in Samarkand, that Dr. Sharadze was interrupted by a visitor.
“Thank you,” she said to the architect. “I shall be in touch very soon.”
The man gathered his papers and left.
Tamar Sharadze turned to the visitor. “Pervani? Leila Pervani? How do you do. You’ll realize that our dear late chairman had an immense capacity for detail; you’ll forgive me for not yet being on top of it all. Your business concerns what, in fact?”
“I was Mustafa Bey’s agent in Sinkiang,” said Leila.
“I sent him regular reports about the progress of different enterprises between Urumqi and the Aral Sea. I heard, of course, about the awful murder, and I wanted to express my condolences as well as make sure that his successors were fully informed about conditions west of the Golden Empire…I was so sorry to hear about his death.”
Tamar Sharadze had seldom been in the presence of someone quite so much more beautiful than she was. She watched impassively as Leila Pervani artlessly dabbed her eyes, she noticed how Leila glanced at the royal-blue butterfly daemon on her lapel, and she waited for the visitor to compose herself.
“I’m extremely busy,” she said finally, without any tone of regret. “Thank you for your sympathy. I’m sure you understand. Did you have a particular message for Mustafa Bey?”
“I thought it would interest him to know that the army of the Magisterium, under the command of President Marcel Delamare, has advanced to the eastern end of the Tien Shan range.”
“So far, already?”
“It seems as if they intend to cross Lop Nor on their progress to the south.”
Tamar Sharadze narrowed her eyes and nodded. She said nothing.
Leila Pervani went on, “The way is clear now, you understand, for the Karamakan project to go ahead.”
“You spoke to Mustafa Bey about this?”
“Oh, yes. It was something he was particularly keen on promoting.”
“He discussed it with you?”
“At length. You’ll understand, I don’t know who you are, exactly, and how much I need to explain…”
“Of course. I was Mustafa Bey’s chief of staff in Aleppo and further west. Now I am acting Chief Executive Officer. Whatever you have been used to saying to him, you may safely say to me.”
All Tamar Sharadze in fact knew about Karamakan was that Mustafa Bey had some small dealings with suppliers in that region.
She knew nothing about a “project.” But she had studied with experts the art of extracting information, and this Pervani was clearly emotionally affected by the events of the past days.
“The Thuringia Potash Company is deeply involved,” the visitor began. “As you know, they’re no longer exclusively concerned with mining…”
Tamar Sharadze reached for a pencil. The office they were sitting in was rented, and she didn’t know where everything was, but she could find a pencil and paper.
She wrote as Leila Pervani continued to explain, and a long, complicated, intriguing story began to unfold: rich with possibility, laced through and through with the implication of inexhaustible profit, studded with gemlike particles of recognizable likelihood, and fictitious in every sentence.
Soon Tamar Sharadze sent for some more paper.
“Oh, and one more thing,” said Leila Pervani as she got up to leave.
“Yes?”
“I wondered where these came from.” She laid a freshly printed banknote on the desk.
“Where did you get that?” said Tamar Sharadze, as if interested. She turned it over. It was for a small denomination, and the picture of Mustafa Bey, as recently approved for use throughout his business, was prominent amid the decorative and calligraphic flourishes.
“I was given it among the change when I bought some shoes. It’s new, isn’t it? I hadn’t seen one like it before.”
Tamar Sharadze nodded and pushed the note back across the desk.
She said, “We felt that the system of exchange used across Mustafa Bey’s wide range of businesses could be simplified and standardized, as it were.
A thousand different transactions made by barter every day—increasingly difficult to keep track, no standard rate of exchange—it simply doesn’t work these days.
When Mustafa Bey himself was in charge, things were different, of course.
But now the world is moving in a modern direction, and money must move with it. ”
“And all so swiftly done.”
“It had been felt for some time that a project of this kind would be necessary. Preparations were in place already before Mustafa Bey’s unfortunate death.”
“I understand,” said Leila Pervani, folding the note into her purse. “So I expect I’ll see many more of these.”
“I hope you will.”
Tamar Sharadze’s smile was final and dismissive. During the whole of their interview, Leila Pervani’s serpent daemon had been watching the small sapphire-colored butterfly on the lapel of Sharadze’s midnight-blue jacket, and was interested to see that he did not move a millimeter.
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