Chapter 298 Just Another Tuesday
Vladimir was inside an office in the Kremlin with a few documents on his desk and one on his hand. He had become a team leader and was responsible for leading a team that reports directly to the president of Russia, a team that was a result of the president not trusting everything from the FSB, since no powerful leader that's afraid of being overthrown would. Thus, he had separated the powers of the different agencies and was the only one maintaining overall control over everything in the country.
After looking at the file for a few seconds, he closed the folder and moved to the next one. That process repeated until all the folders on his table had been read through, even if only for a few seconds.
He adjusted his glasses, then leaned back in his chair and settled into a comfortable position before closing his eyes.
"Here to report and ask for support, ma'am," he said the moment he opened his eyes in a less decorated, but still dignified room where a stunning woman was waiting for him.
[Go on,] she said and materialized a chair beside him, then gestured for him to have a seat. She hadn't raised her gaze from the pile of papers on her desk from the moment Vladimir appeared in the room until then.
"I've completed my move to the Kremlin, and at the moment I'm leading a team that's responsible for fact checking the intel coming out of Ukraine and through the FSB. If anything looks tampered with or doesn't fit the reports from other agencies, my team and I are the ones tasked with investigating it," He explained. His position was still in the lower ranks, and his task wasn't very critical, so he knew it was nothing but a test. Only if he passed it would he really be put into the organization.
"I need some help in order to prove myself and rise in the government ranks faster. Is it possible to receive support from you?" he respectfully asked. His current actions were the opposite of his previous personality.
[Yes.] The woman was still focused on the documents in front of her as she had been throughout the entire report.
Vladimir smiled and left the room without even stating what kind of help he required; he was sure she would know what to do and would be assisting him to the best of her abilities. Those were the orders she had been given as she was brought into the fold.
Once the woman was alone in the room, she immediately disintegrated it as she was only visualizing it for Vladimir's benefit. Now that she had no reason to provide anyone with an environment, realistic or not, she had no reason to sustain the simulation.
...
Back on Aron's side, he spent the next few days touring different places in the Rothschilds' compound. He had grown quite fond of Virginia Rothschild, and the feeling was mutual. The two spent as much time together as they could.
During the second meeting between Aron and Herschel, the older man had already come to the conclusion that Aron had already been inside their private network without being discovered and could monitor everything through that. That must have been the tool that he had used to help Rina regain her position, and with that connection in mind, he finally found the reason the board members hadn't voted for Arieh. He now knew that Rina had known everyone's weaknesses—including his—and had used the knowledge to control everyone except her father, which warmed his heart.
But that didn't remove the dissatisfaction he felt when he realized that his daughter had sold their family's secrets to an outsider just to regain her position in the competition. Still, she had already won and he hadn't discovered it during the competition all the way until the winner had been announced. So he chose to do nothing about it now other than politely request that Aron not spread the information any further than himself. Coupled with that was the implied threat that, if he did, not only would Herschel not support the relationship between his daughter and the man, but he would also face the full wrath of the Rothschild family.
"You don't have to worry about anything. I don't have a use for your secrets at all," Aron had replied, and didn't try to convince the elder at all.
The awkward relationship between the two men continued for a few days, but not much longer. On the fifth day of Aron and Rina's visit, and the third meeting between father and son-in-law, he finally felt comfortable enough to ask Aron's opinion on the upcoming general election. It resulted in a very interesting communication between the two of them at the dinner table.
"I don't think your candidate is going to win," Aron said with confidence when the topic of the election was brought up.
"Why do you say that?" Rina's father asked.
"I don't think you have a chance of getting a woman elected. After all, there's nothing more divisive than a woman in power, and her party is famous for being fractured to begin with. Plus, the Morgans already leaked her private email server and she's already been getting hammered over the attack in Benghazi," Aron explained.
"But I thought the email server was just a trivial thing. Besides, it's already been in the news for about six months and nothing bad's happened yet. And Benghazi wasn't even her doing at all—it was a failure on every level, not just the top," Rina's mother interjected. She didn't understand why Aron had even bothered mentioning the email server rumor, or something that had happened years ago, like Benghazi.
"I'm sure you know more details about it, but why do you think it's still circulating even after so many months? Although she's campaigning for president, someone's driving the narrative and keeping it in the public consciousness. I suspect the server will come into play in the future, and Benghazi is just being used to hammer her in the meantime. She's too clean, so there's nothing else to use against her right now." Nova had already generated a report on what could possibly happen during the election, which gave Aron plenty of things to talk about regarding it.
"So what could they possibly do with an email server?" Virginia asked once again, acting as the mouth of her husband who she was sure wanted to know more.
"Let's say an FBI investigation," Aron said. It was one of the scenarios Nova had given him.
"They won't be doing that, since we can argue against it and even use it to our advantage. It'll be nothing but a political witch hunt." Although Rina's mother didn't really care about politics, she still had conversations with her husband about it, so she at least had a bit of knowledge.
"That depends on who's doing the investigating. If an Obama-appointed FBI director, like James Comey, is the one heading up the investigation, you can't really use it against Trump or the Morgans. After all, Obama's already announced his support for Clinton. And even then, let's say that Comey announces there were no laws broken—will that really change people's minds?
"Just the accusation alone will be enough to destroy her. Whether or not it's criminal doesn't really matter. After all, she's also still got Benghazi hanging over her head, and since she's a political animal that knows how to deal with scandals, people are going to assume that there has to be more.
"She's nothing like Trump, who has so many scandals that people believe there can't possibly be anything else, let alone anything that's worse than what they already know. A good person only has to do one bad deed for everyone to believe that person is a demon in human skin. But a bad person doing bad things? That's just what they expect from them on any given Tuesday," Aron joked, but the joke caused Herschel to fall into deep thought and ultimately agree with Aron's point of view.
"Then what do you think we should do?" he finally asked. He wanted to know if Aron had an idea or if he was just parroting things that he'd heard from somewhere.
"Why not just let Trump win? In fact, help him win. Push him up—he's a rabid dog and he'll be sure to bite the hand behind him," Aron said. His tone was the same as when he had earlier suggested brainwashing his new companies' presidents a few weeks before.
