Chapter 34

Wednesday

Faizah finally experienced the real use for my desk this morning. When we finished, she almost floated back to the bedroom with as serene a look as any of the women has ever had. Afterwards, Juwanna and her four assistants performed their synchronized knowing grin and eye roll when I got to the kitchen. I wondered if we could make the synchronized knowing grin and eye roll an Olympic event. I just waggled my eyebrows at them and headed outside.

Rather than jump in and help muck out stalls, thereby getting dirty, I wandered down to the creek and watched the water flowing serenely. King followed me partway, and then bounded off after a rabbit. Yup, after a day at the farm yesterday, I could face the work the government had me doing again. I felt like a farmer again, even if it was mainly in name only. As long as I could occasionally “wallow in the dirt,” as Jacqueline had so eloquently put it, I was a happy camper.

I realized that it was harder than I thought it would be to step back from managing the farm. Yesterday, I wanted to start making calls and issuing orders to get things done, but had to leave things for Dad to do or to assign. The splash of a fish catching a bug on the surface of the water broke me from my reverie. Hey! I had a creek that was the size of a small river beside my property and still hadn’t fished in it. Okay, so it was a creek and not a river. I still thought of it as a small river. I wondered what type of fish were in the creek beside catfish. I’d have to get a fishing license and ask.

When I checked the time, it was almost time for breakfast, so I headed back to the house. After breakfast, Dad was poring over plat maps of the area. I had gotten the maps when I originally bought land here. One was a map of the entire county. Another was a more detailed map of the area right around the farm.

“How big do you want to expand?” he asked.

“Nothing bigger than we can handle without getting ulcers. Otherwise, I’m game. The more people we can put to work, the better,” I replied.

“If we buy that wooded area,” he said, pausing while tracing the outline of the current farm boundaries, adding the boundary of the wooded area. He had plexiglass covering the map, so he wasn’t drawing on the map.

“Our property line will run up against three farms that aren’t doing well. Bill Winters, the county agricultural agent stopped by last week before we left. He’s impressed with what you’ve accomplished in such a short time. He didn’t expect to see anything harvested until next fall. I don’t know if he was hinting that we should buy the properties, or just gossiping like agricultural agents like to do, but he looked at this map and showed me these three properties, owned by three Nolan brothers who work together, and then two more properties across the creek from us.

“I guess the two across the creek were city folks who leased most of the land to someone to farm. Whoever was leasing the land stopped leasing it after the two disastrous years. The families are in trouble because they don’t get the extra income to help pay off the mortgage. Bill says the land was just being used for pasture, so nothing has been applied to it for several years except the natural fertilizer the cattle left behind,” he chuckled.

“I don’t really want to lease land and then build greenhouses, but we can probably buy most of the property, letting the family keep the house, yard, and driveway,” he commented.

“Or we could buy the entire property and rent them the house, yard, and driveway for a low enough rent that they jump at the chance,” I suggested.

“If we buy the three Nolan brothers’ farms, see if you can get a read on the three farmers. If they enjoy farming, maybe we can dovetail them into our management team and put them to work helping Carlos and Ramón. I don’t know if Carlos has replaced Wekesa yet. Maybe one of those three brothers could do it.”

I got a page from the security station letting me know that we had a jet arriving, so I left Dad to deal with the potential new properties.

“Wow, this place is huge,” Sergei commented as he stepped off his jet.

“There were a lot of abandoned farms in the area that I was able to buy cheaply,” I explained. I had already called the security office and they had someone bring out the fuel truck to refuel the jet.

“Come on inside,” I offered, motioning to the house, and then to the nearby electric ATV.

“I saw more than a hundred people in the greenhouses already this morning,” he commented.

“We’ve been picking tomatoes and strawberries for a couple of weeks now. It takes at least two hundred fifty people a day to pick and pack everything so it’s ready to ship. We have many of our own employees, and numerous seasonal workers staying here who work for us every day. In addition, we have buses that arrive about now from town bringing people who want to work all or part of the day. A lot are mothers who work while their kids are in school. Others only have part-time jobs in town and work for us on their days off to supplement their income. We even get retired folks who come out and pick strawberries to supplement their Social Security,” I explained.

“I didn’t realize that you were such a successful farmer,” he commented. “I thought your work for your government was your primary job.”

“Everything I do for them is part-time, and only when I have time to do it, but I just recently turned over daily management of the farm to my dad and several senior employees so I can help the government more,” I explained.

Sergei looked at the other people working in my study and motioned towards them questioningly. “Unless you’re telling me something classified, they’re fine. Each one had passed a rigorous security check and knows how to keep their mouth shut,” I assured him.

Having been gone for a week, I had missed several news stories. One was about an unknown force attacking and destroying the home of the leader of the drug cartel that attacked the Pickup Truck. The leader and his top Lieutenants were all killed, and the buildings were all destroyed.

Cocaine and marijuana worth nearly a billion dollars had been burned or ruined in a magnesium and phosphorous enhanced fire that burned for three days. Occasional explosions from ammunition in the burning drugs kept people from trying to salvage any of it by putting the fire out. The families of the slain leaders were found tied up, but safe, inside vans parked in front of the local police station the next morning.

Nobody knew who staged the raid. Mexican officials claimed no knowledge of the raid, as did the DEA. Eventually, the Mexican government suspected me of being involved in retaliation for the attack on Pickup Truck, but they were informed that I was in the Mideast, and had been for two days before the attack.

“The raid was our way of thanking you for disposing of Zhora,” Sergei said quietly enough that only I could hear it. My eyes widened in surprise. “It was also a good training exercise for those troops who participated,” he added, enjoying my surprise.

“Anyway, we currently find ourselves in possession of information about several bank accounts in the Caymans. We are hoping you might be able to use some or all that information to transfer the contents of the accounts to us,” he explained.

“I can try. Are you joining us for the trip?” I asked.

“If you don’t mind me coming with you. I thought we’d take my plane. That way, we don’t have to fly around Cuba,” he added.

Sergei cracked us up when the women came out to board the plane. We had all packed yesterday, and everyone had a single carry-on case. As the women climbed up the foldout stairs, his finger made a motion like it was doing a tally. He stopped in surprise when Faizah got to the stairs. “Princess,” he greeted her, bowing slightly. She smiled at the recognition and continued up the stairs.

“Your harem seems to have grown,” he commented.

“I was there for the terrorist attacks in Riyadh last week,” I explained. “My warning gave the Palace Guard ten minutes to prepare.”

“I heard that one of the Palace Guards warned them,” he replied.

“So did everyone else. I didn’t want to be identified as having warned them. The King decided that I needed another wife and offered his granddaughter. My wives accepted,” I chuckled.

He was still laughing about it when he and I boarded the plane. I’d already shown him my Glock and he nodded his acceptance. I also had my permanent permit to carry it in the Caymans. It had been waiting on my desk when we got back from the Mideast trip.

The flight to the Caymans was interesting as we were afforded a view few Americans got to see, Cuba from 40,000 feet. “This is a nice plane,” I commented, noting the roominess and the VIP feel of the cabin. It looked like a small airliner made into a corporate jet.

“It’s the AN-148, a Ukrainian jet,” he replied. “Perhaps you should buy one to accommodate your growing family,” he suggested.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” I mused, surprising him. “The C-20 holds the most passengers, and it’s pretty crowded. We have twenty-one people right now, and when the girls start having babies, we’ll need even more room. We’d need to convert a bigger passenger jet, but this looks a little smaller than a passenger jet,” I explained.

“It’s a small passenger jet and can hold eighty-five passengers. The next larger one, the AN-158 can hold ninety-nine passengers. You could even have them install a small nursery for the babies if you wanted,” he suggested.

Two and a half hours after takeoff, the plane taxied to a stop at the commuter terminal where a Caymans customs agent met us. He was surprised to see the U.S. Department of State ID that I had inadvertently left in my passport. I apologized, explaining that I had recently been on an assignment for the U.S. Department of State and forgot that I put the ID there. I assured him that my visit had nothing to do with the U.S. Department of State aside from having their approval to help the Russian ambassador with a banking issue here.

Once he saw the diplomatic passport of the Russian ambassador, he called someone higher up to let them know. By the time he finished his call, all the ladies had deplaned, each carefully hanging on to her passport. We finally finished with customs, telling them that we would be here for a day or two to conduct banking business and for the women to try spending as much as they could before we finished at the bank.

We headed for a restaurant the second customs agent had suggested. On the way, I called the president of my bank and explained why I was there. He said to come on over, especially if I had any more of the whiskey with me. I did, although the customs agent didn’t believe that they were intended as gifts, including one for the governor.

We were surprised when the governor’s wife showed up at the restaurant. “I heard you were here again, and I love shopping with your wives. You don’t mind, do you?” she asked. They didn’t mind so I didn’t mind. I paid the bill for lunch and left a good tip for the harried wait staff. Then, Sergei and I escaped while the women talked about the five additions to the harem since our last visit.

The bank president greeted us personally and took us into his office with the manager. Once Sergei explained that the accounts used to belong to a drug cartel that no longer existed, they agreed to close out the accounts and to open a new one. I was surprised at how easy it had been, and left gift packs for the two bankers to show my gratitude.

I declined my customary fee since it cost me next to nothing. Of course, I had no idea how much my wives spent while we were at the bank. I finally agreed to accept $100,000 as a fee for helping, even though the accounts held almost as much as Zhora’s had.

We found my wives and suffered through another hour of their shopping spree. Teasingly, I reminded my wives that we were flying back, and the jet had a weight limit. They laughed and Janie smacked me on the arm, but they wrapped up their shopping spree and we headed back to the airport. It took two more taxis to get back to the airport than it had taken to get to town. I gave the governor’s wife the gift pack I brought for her husband.

Two and a half hours later, we landed at the Lucky J. I’d been surprised when Dieter told me that we didn’t need to stop at another airport to go through customs before we landed at home; they had now classified us as a military airport, an extension of NAS Meridian. There might be times when we didn’t want the cargo inspected by customs, and some of the people who came here to make deals wouldn’t want their passports stamped. Giving Sergei two more gift packs, we waved at him as he raised the stairs and closed the hatch. A couple minutes later, the jet roared down the runway and headed back to Washington.

Dinner had already been served by the time we got inside. “I hope you made lots of money today,” Dad commented. “I bought the farm with the pecan orchard, the wooded lot, and the two farms across the river, or creek, or whatever it is,” he said.

“We’ll install chain link fencing around the two houses across the creek marking the edge of the property they’re renting from us. Both wives were excited when they learned who we were. They both love our tomatoes.

“Wekesa had twenty-five people in the pecan orchard raking beneath the trees. Tomorrow, he’ll cut down six trees that died. He has someone coming out to do that because they want to buy the pecan wood. Then he’ll try to transplant the saplings that have grown beneath the mature trees. He’ll use some of the saplings to replace the dead trees and wants to transplant others to add more rows to the orchard. Right now, it’s twenty-five rows of forty trees. He thinks he can add five more rows, but those trees won’t be profitable for about ten more years. They’ll start producing nuts in a couple more years, just not a full crop.

“Once he gets the trees transplanted, he intends to install drip irrigation, making a loop at the drip line of each tree. After that, he has to wait for spring to do anything else.

“Tomorrow, I’m meeting with the three farmers on the other side of the woodlot. They want to sell, and we’ll hammer out an agreement. I had one appraiser do their three places while the first was appraising the other properties.

“All three Nolan brothers are interested in working for us. They came over today to see why we had so many people over here. We almost had to wire their jaws shut to keep them from hitting the ground. They couldn’t believe that we shipped so many tomatoes and strawberries today.

“I think one of them should replace Wekesa, and another should replace Tim or Jason. They’ve both worked for you long enough to know how you do everything. If you’re serious about all your salaried people taking at least two weeks of vacation each year, you’ll need someone for nearly half the year just to cover vacation weeks. The rest of the time we’ll have an extra to help where we need it the most,” he said, finally running out of steam.

“Sounds like a good plan,” I agreed. “Have Ramón and Carlos decide which of the two to use as a floater. With all this new land, we’re going to need a lot of new employees, which means we’ll need more houses. I think most of the manufactured homes are full of temporary workers already. We should probably double the number of manufactured homes. We can use them while the houses are being built, and then use them for the additional temporary workers when the new land starts producing. All that new land should add at least half again what we’ll have once the greenhouses currently under construction are ready.”

“We need to increase what we grow for us to eat with so many new employees,” Juwanna warned.

I asked Ramón, Carlos, and Dad to write out a list of what crops we needed to increase the production of for our own use, and their suggestions for how to use the new land most profitably.

I was glad that I had so many people helping now. I was up later than usual just writing out random thoughts about what to grow and how much. I’d forgotten that we would need corn for Keegan. I decided that it would be more cost effective for us to buy the other grains that he used to make the whiskey.

I realized that I’d substituted year-round strawberries instead of sweet corn as our second crop. I hope Kroger wasn’t upset that we wouldn’t have corn this year.