xymnovel Chapter 135 The Declaration of Alexandria
Chapter 135 The Declaration of Alexandria
Professor Andreas hung up the phone, the faint, excited breathing of Antonio Petaras still lingering in the receiver.
"Mr. Petalas, His Highness has new instructions."
This message traveled across the Mediterranean Sea via an undersea cable and reached Alexandria, Egypt.
Andreas turned and looked at the huge world map on the wall. Constantine's gaze remained fixed on the map, stretching from Athens across the Aegean Sea, and landing precisely on a point in the Nile Delta.
"Sir Sterett and Sir Harding think that by blockading Athens, they have our throats in their hands." Constantine drew a circle on the map, encompassing Athens and the port of Piraeus. "They've made this their only chessboard."
Andreas looked at Constantine's profile; the firelight from the fireplace cast a resolute silhouette on his young face.
“They’ve forgotten,” Constantine’s voice echoed in the quiet chamber, “that Greece has never been just this small piece of land on the Balkan Peninsula. Our blood flows throughout the Mediterranean. Wherever there are Greeks, that is our territory.”
Andreas understood.
Salaries are drawn from the bottom of the pot.
Since the settlement channel in Athens is blocked, we should bypass it completely.
Since the old banking system doesn't accept them, let's create a completely new cycle outside of it.
Alexandria.
This city, named after another great emperor, boasts the largest and wealthiest Greek diaspora community in the entire eastern Mediterranean. They are merchants, ship owners, and bankers, whose wealth even exceeds the combined wealth of all the oligarchs in Athens.
Petalas was the king of this unseen empire.
three days later.
A message, transmitted through Petalas Shipping Company’s telegraph network spanning the Mediterranean, reached every corner from Marseille to Smyrna, from London to Odessa.
Led by Greek shipping magnate Antonio Petalas, ten of the most powerful Greek diaspora banks in Alexandria, Smyrna, and Marseille jointly established the "Pan-Hellenic Business Settlement Union".
The league announced:
1. All banks within the union will fully accept and freely exchange any banknotes issued by the National Development Bank of Greece.
II. Payments for all goods exported to Greece, including but not limited to machinery, coal, and raw materials, can be settled through this alliance. The alliance will offer more favorable exchange rates and faster service than London or Paris.
3. All merchant ships flying the Greek flag will enjoy a 20% reduction in port fees when docking at Union ports.
These three announcements were like three heavy blows, striking the Achilles' heel of Athens' old financial system.
The news reached Athens.
In the office of the Governor of the National Bank of Greece, Stretter crushed his beloved cigar.
"Madmen! A bunch of madmen blinded by nationalism!" he growled in a low voice.
The blockade he had built was torn open from the outside by Constantine in a way he had never expected. The German equipment and Austrian coal needed by the Phoenix Hill steelworks no longer needed to go through the Athens banking system.
The German supplier shipped the goods to the port of Piraeus and, based on the bill of lading, received payment directly from Petalas' bank in Alexandria via telegram. The entire process had absolutely no connection to the National Bank of Greece.
Not only did they fail to kill the Phoenix Mountain project, they also lost the largest foreign exchange transaction fee.
What sent chills down his spine was Constantine's next move.
The day after the establishment of the Panhellenic Business Settlement Union, Constantine formally submitted a bill entitled "National Financial Security and Modernization Act" to Parliament.
The core content of the bill is only one point: In view of the outstanding ability of the National Development Bank to attract foreign funds and support national industrial construction, in order to ensure the safe and efficient use of national tax revenue, it is proposed that, starting from the next fiscal year, all national tax revenue of the Kingdom of Greece, including customs duties, agricultural taxes, and tobacco taxes, be gradually transferred to the National Development Bank.
The proposal caused an uproar in the entire parliament.
This is no longer a radical solution.
This involves directly demolishing the load-bearing wall of the National Bank of Greece building!
A bank without national tax revenue, its largest and most stable source of savings, is like a person drained of blood. All that's left is an empty shell.
Stretter could no longer maintain his banker's elegance and composure. Like a wild beast driven to the brink, he stormed out of his office, boarded a carriage, and raced all the way to the British Embassy.
"Sir! You must stop him!" Stretter's hair was disheveled, and his face was covered in sweat. "He's going to destroy us! He's going to completely destroy Britain's financial foundation in Greece!"
For the first time, Sir Charles Harding's face was devoid of that all-encompassing smile.
He looked out the window; the Athenian sun was shining brightly, but he felt a chill.
He realized that he had underestimated this young crown prince. The other party wasn't playing any palace intrigue games with him; he was reshaping the country's power structure in a modern, systematic, and ruthless way.
From workers' associations to steel mills, and now to the financial system.
Step by step, each link is interconnected.
"We can't wait any longer." Sir Harding turned around, his voice turning unusually cold. "Since he's going to overturn the chessboard, then we'll burn the entire casino down."
A wicked plan took shape in his mind.
He looked at the dejected Stret and said in an unyielding tone, "Mr. Stret, haven't you always controlled the distribution rights to drachma?"
Strett looked up abruptly.
"I need you to use all the bank's foreign exchange reserves to contact our most reliable friends in London. We must short the drachma in the market, no matter the cost!"
"Sir, this..." Stretter was stunned. Shorting his own country's currency? This was an unprecedented and insane move in financial history.
“No,” Harding interrupted him. “This is a war. War requires the deadliest weapons. We will create an unprecedented financial panic, so that all Greeks will see that their crown prince is leading them into bankruptcy!”
"We want to turn the drachma into a worthless piece of paper! We want the National Development Bank to collapse under the run on it by those 'patriotic' idiots!"
"By then, Parliament will be begging us to come back and clean up the mess. And Constantine will become the greatest sinner in Greek history!"
Harding's eyes burned with a mad flame. He was going to use the financial butcher's knife, the weapon the British Empire was best at, to teach this arrogant young prince the bloodiest lesson.
That night.
Alexius Mavrokodatos reappeared in the airtight study of the palace.
His face was even paler than before, and his eyes held a genuine fear.
"Your Highness," he didn't even bow, his voice trembling, "Hardin has gone mad! Stretter has gone mad too! They're going to..."
He recounted the entire plan he had heard at the British Embassy that evening, word for word. This included the amount of money they were prepared for the first round of attacks—five hundred thousand pounds; their chosen time for the attack—next Monday, when the market opened; and the names of the three most greedy speculative funds in London they had contacted.
This intelligence report is essentially a complete map of the enemy's operations.
Constantine listened quietly, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the table.
In the study, only Mavrokodatos's rapid breathing and the "tap, tap, tap" of his knocking could be heard.
When Mavrokodatos finished speaking the last word, Constantine's knocking stopped.
He was neither panicked nor angry.
A strange expression even appeared on his face. It was the expression a hunter would have when watching a plump prey walk step by step into his carefully laid trap.
"Five hundred thousand pounds... that's too little," Constantine said softly.
Mavrokodatos was stunned.
"Alexius," Constantine stood up, walked over to him, and patted him on the shoulder, "I want you to go back and tell Sir Harding that you 'risked great danger' to uncover the financial loopholes in our National Development Bank."
He handed Mavrokodatos a document.
It was a forged financial statement. The statement showed that, in order to support the "Panhellenic Commercial Settlement Union," the National Development Bank had lent out most of the remittances from expatriates at extremely low interest rates. The remaining reserves of pounds and gold in the vault were less than £100,000.
"You have to make him believe that our bank is just an empty shell. It will collapse with the slightest push." Constantine's voice was low and had a seductive power. "I want him to think that a bet of 500,000 pounds isn't big enough. I want him to put all his chips, and all the chips he can borrow, on this table."
Mavrokodatos held the scalding hot, fake account book in his hand, which was trembling.
He looked into Constantine's eyes, and there was no madness in them, only absolute rationality, a rationality that made him tremble from the bottom of his heart.
He understood. The Crown Prince didn't just want to win this battle; he wanted to devour the enemy whole, skin and bones!
"Yes, Your Highness," he managed to utter.
After seeing Mavrokodatos off, Constantine did not rest.
He walked through the corridor and arrived at the Crown Princess's bedroom.
Sofia was still awake, sitting under the lamp reading a book. She was wearing a light purple silk nightgown, and her long golden hair was casually draped over her shoulders, gleaming softly in the lamplight.
"Connie?" She smiled gently when she saw Constantine enter.
Constantine walked over to her, sat down, and took her hand.
His hands were a little cold.
Sofia sensed it and gripped his hand tightly in return.
"Something happened?" she asked.
Constantine didn't hide anything. He told Sophia everything about Hardin's plan and his own countermeasures.
Sofia's fingers tightened when she heard that Constantine was prepared to gamble with the entire financial future of Greece.
"This is too dangerous, Connie," she said, her voice filled with worry.
"War is never without danger." Constantine looked into her eyes. "Sophia, I need your help."
He paused, then said, word by word, "I need money. A sum of money from London that is absolutely impossible to trace, a sum large enough to turn the tide of the war."
Sophia understood immediately.
"I need you to return to Germany immediately, under the pretext of visiting your mother and brother," Constantine said solemnly. "Not through any official channels. I want you to see Wilhelm in person. Tell him that his brother-in-law, his ally, is facing a life-or-death battle. I need Deutsche Bank to provide me with an urgent, secret, short-term credit loan."
This is a task that is almost impossible to complete.
This is not just about borrowing money; it's about demanding that the German Empire, in its financial game with the British Empire, place a heavy bet on the small country of Greece.
Sofia looked into her husband's eyes; there was weariness, determination, but even more so, trust in him.
She didn't ask how likely it was to succeed, nor did she ask what would happen if it failed.
She simply stood up, walked to the wardrobe, and began packing her things.
"I'll be leaving first thing tomorrow morning." Her voice was calm and firm.
Professor Andreas's office was brightly lit.
He directed a highly capable team to quietly convert the astronomical sums of remittances from overseas Chinese absorbed by the National Development Bank into gold and British pounds in batches through dozens of different secret accounts.
These funds did not enter the Athens treasury, but were instead deposited directly into the bank vaults of Petalas in Alexandria and Smyrna.
On paper, the National Development Bank of Athens was indeed as "weak and insecure" as the falsified accounts suggested.
But no one knew that overseas, a massive financial monster had quietly taken shape, revealing its sharp fangs.
The whole of Athens, like a sophisticated war machine, began to operate silently in the darkness.
Everyone was on high alert.
At dawn.
A carriage quietly drove out of the palace and headed towards the port of Piraeus.
Sofia sat in the car, looking at the familiar street scene outside the window.
She knew that when she returned, the fate of this country might be completely different.
She was not going there to visit relatives.
It was for her husband, for her kingdom, to bring the final piece of the bargaining chip that would decide the outcome.