xymnovel Chapter 42 They laugh at me for using madness, I laugh at them for not seeing through it!
Chapter 42 They laugh at me for using madness, I laugh at them for not seeing through it!
Andreas held the brand-new fountain pen, the metallic luster of the nib reflecting in his burning pupils.
"List of those targeted in the anti-revolutionary purges"
He repeatedly chewed on this cold word, but instead of feeling fear, he felt a surge of molten lava that had been suppressed for five years, ready to burst forth from the depths of his chest.
The rotten flesh must be removed!
Constantine said no more. He turned and left, entrusting the newly reborn office, along with the hope for Greece's future, to the scholar who had just crawled back from hell.
Only after the tall figure disappeared through the doorway did Andreas slowly straighten up.
He looked around at the young people he had gathered, whose eyes also shone with the fire of revenge and hope.
"Gentlemen."
His voice was hoarse, yet it carried a resolute strength.
"Work has begun."
The establishment of the "Royal Economic Advisor's Office" was like a stone thrown into the stagnant pool of Athenian high society, initially only creating ripples of ridicule.
In salons hosted by major bankers, shipping magnates, and politicians, this became a whole new joke.
"Have you heard? His Highness the Crown Prince has hired that madman Andreas as his economic advisor!" A banker with a beer belly swirled the French brandy in his glass.
"Which Andreas? Oh... the guy who got kicked out of the University of Athens five years ago and has been drinking all day? I thought he was long dead in some ditch." The senator next to him curled his lip in contempt.
"Who can argue with that! A prince and a madman, a perfect match!"
"Hahaha!"
The entire salon was filled with a cheerful atmosphere.
To these oligarchs who control the fate of the nation, Constantine's behavior is childish and laughable. What can a crown prince, marginalized by power struggles, accomplish with a madman rejected by society?
They were too lazy to even use their own power to suppress it.
Let them make a scene, just like watching a bad comedy.
However, three days later.
They couldn't laugh anymore.
A letter issued by the "Royal Economic Advisor's Office," accompanied by the signature of a representative of the British advisory group, was delivered to the desks of all private banks, customs authorities, tax authorities, and major chambers of commerce in Athens.
The content of the official letter was simple and direct:
In the name of the Crown Prince, in order to formulate the "Greek National Economic Recovery Plan," he demanded that all departments immediately submit the most complete, unaltered original financial data, customs records, and lists of major commodity transactions from the past five years.
At the end of the official letter, there was a note marked in red ink:
"The completeness and authenticity of the submitted data will be the primary criteria for the National Industrial Investment Bank to assess the creditworthiness of enterprises and individuals. The UK advisory team will cross-check the data."
This official letter was like a thunderclap, exploding in the power center of Athens!
The oligarchs immediately understood Constantine's intention.
This isn't some kind of bullshit revival plan!
This is an audit!
We must expose their dirtiest and most shameful secrets!
"He's gone mad! He's really gone mad!"
The banker who had been mocking the Crown Prince in the salon was now roaring like an enraged bull in his private office.
Standing in front of him were several trusted officials he had placed in government departments.
"What right does he have! What right does he have to ask for our raw data! This is a trade secret! This is personal privacy!"
A deputy director of customs, wiping away cold sweat, said in a trembling voice, "Boss, that letter... has the signature of a British person. They said it's to guarantee the 'security' of the £7.5 million loan."
"It's the British again!" The banker slammed his fist on the table, making the ink bottle jump.
He knew, of course, that the British were merely a figurehead used by Constantine as a shield. But precisely because of this, they dared not easily tear down this banner.
"No! Not a single number!"
Another oligarch who controlled the grain trade had a sinister look in his eyes.
"Get those people in parliament moving! Impeach! Accuse the Crown Prince of abusing his power and interfering with market freedom! Let the newspapers portray Andreas as a madman who steals state secrets!"
"Yes! Delay! Resist! Pay lip service while acting against us! I want to see what he can do to us with just an empty office!"
A silent war over "data sovereignty" has begun.
The young men Andreas sent out encountered insurmountable obstacles in every department.
When you go to the bank, the ledgers they present are always "under preparation" or are simply public accounts riddled with errors.
When I went to customs, the answer I received was that "some of the key files were destroyed in the last warehouse fire."
When they went to the tax authorities, officials refused to provide any core information, citing "the law protects taxpayers' privacy."
The entire bureaucratic system, like a huge, slippery monster, resisted orders from the royal palace in the softest yet most tenacious way.
The atmosphere in the office grew more and more oppressive each day.
"Director! They're just messing with us!" A young statistics lecturer exclaimed, his face flushed with anger.
"These bastards! They think we're idiots!"
Andreas, however, remained unusually calm.
He stood before the enormous map of Athens, watching his men return empty-handed time and time again, without a trace of frustration in his eyes.
"They won't give it to you, is that right?"
He turned around, his lips pressed into a cold line.
"very good."
He walked to a huge blackboard and picked up the chalk.
"Since they want to close the door, then we'll make our own key."
Over the next few days, everyone in the office witnessed what a true "genius" was.
Andreas completely abandoned his futile attempts to obtain data from those departments.
He issued a series of orders that baffled everyone.
"Go! Copy down all the shipping schedules, arrival and departure information published in every newspaper in Athens, Piraeus, and Thessaloniki over the past five years!"
"Go! Compile the price fluctuation curves of wheat, olive oil, cotton, coal, and steel on all open markets! Accurately, down to each day!"
"And the land! Go to the land registry and compile all the publicly available records of land transactions, regardless of size!"
Although the young people in the office didn't understand, they still carried it out immediately.
A massive amount of scattered, publicly available, and seemingly worthless information flooded into this small office like a tide.
Andreas locked himself in his office.
For three whole days and three nights.
He didn't close his eyes; the blackboard in front of him was filled with complex mathematical formulas and models that ordinary people couldn't understand at all.
He compared the port's throughput with publicly available shipping schedules to estimate the approximate number of "ghost ships".
He conducted correlation analysis between abnormal fluctuations in commodity prices in the market and the arrival times of fleets belonging to certain specific families.
He drew an extremely complex network on a huge blueprint.
It was a network of money flow, a network of smuggled goods transportation, a network of power and interests intertwined.
On the morning of the fourth day, as the first rays of sunlight shone through the glass window, illuminating the smoke and dust filling the room.
Andreas finally put down the chalk in his hand.
His bloodshot eyes were fixed on the name in the center of the blackboard, the name that countless data clues ultimately pointed to.
He picked up a blank report that had been prepared beforehand and began to write furiously.
That evening, a 100-page report was delivered to Constantine's study.
The report is clearly structured and logically rigorous. Using irrefutable data models, it reverse-engineers the scale of smuggling involving millions of pounds each year and the astronomical amount of tax evasion.
Constantine turned the pages one by one, his face calm, but his eyes grew colder and colder.
He turned to the last page.
At the end of the report, Andreas circled a family's name heavily with a striking red pen.
—The Skopelos family.
Below his name were Andreas's strong and powerful handwriting:
"Your Highness, according to the model analysis, the Skopelos family is the most dependent on the tobacco and silk smuggling network from the Ottoman Empire among all the oligarchs, but its family foundation is the shallowest, with only two generations of accumulation, and it has the most grudges with several old shipping magnates because of the emerging steam shipping industry."
"They are our ideals..."
"The first breakthrough."
Constantine closed the report, his fingers tapping lightly on the name "Scopelos".
The silent war is over.
Now, it's time for Athens to hear the first real thunder.
A real storm is about to gather over the Mediterranean.