Location: Management office, Volta S.A. factory (Ivry-sur-Seine)
Date: July 1985
Point of view: Omniscient (Main focus on Karim Belkacem)
The month of July 1985 hit the Île-de-France region with a scorching heaviness. In Ivry-sur-Seine, the heat seemed to be trapped between the corrugated iron roofs and the red brick facades of the former industrial workshops. The air vibrated above the molten tar in the courtyard of the Volta S.A. factory, carrying the smell of exhaust fumes and urban dust.
Inside the large hangar, the powerful industrial fans were running at full speed, stirring up warm air saturated by the chemical smells of epoxy resin and solder paste.
In the glass-fronted office overlooking the assembly line, Karim Belkacem stared at the bottom of his coffee cup with the daze of a survivor.
It had been exactly three weeks since the door of this same office had been pulverized by the battering rams of the Research and Intervention Brigade. Three weeks since the icy barrel of an assault rifle had crashed against his temple. The bruises left by the DST's tightening handcuffs on his wrists had turned from purplish to yellow, but the psychological stigma refused to fade.
At night, the scholarship student woke up with a start, short of breath, convinced that he could hear the boots of the police echoing on the stairs of his maid's room. His mind had come close to the abyss. He had seen the maximum security prison open under his feet.
And yet, a meter away from him, sitting behind his metal desk with a chilling rectitude, Lazare Bonaparte seemed to have experienced nothing.
The young eighteen-year-old CEO wore a white shirt whose sleeves were meticulously rolled up over his forearms. Not a drop of sweat beaded on his forehead despite the stifling temperature. Lazarus had not blinked at the guns, he had not trembled before the General, and he had not relished the triumph of their liberation either. For the sixty-year-old engineer reincarnated, the confrontation with the state had been a simple asymmetrical transaction. A must. The emotion was a loss of bandwidth, and Lazare needed it for what was resting on his black leather desk pad.
A thick cardboard file of two hundred pages.
The cover was crossed out with two diagonal red stripes, and stamped, at the top right, with the words SECRET DEFENSE – CLEARANCE REQUIRED.
It was the official draft of the framework contract, drafted by the battalions of lawyers of the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA), sent the same morning by special mail escorted by two motorcyclists from the gendarmerie. The Ministry of Defence had capitulated. The Elysée Palace had given its approval. The document on Lazare's desk was the act of surrender of the French state, written in the impenetrable jargon of the public administration.
"They have included ridiculous late payment penalty clauses," whispered Lazarus, his golden pen crossing out an entire paragraph on page forty-two with a black and definitive line. "Five thousand francs penalty per day of late delivery. This is unacceptable. I strike out the article. If they want to be safe, they will wait until our ovens have cured the resin at their own pace. We don't rush chemistry. »
Karim raised his head. His eyes, red from lack of sleep, stared at his boss.
"Lazare, are you really going to correct a Ministry of Defense contract with a red pen? They must have put ten lawyers on it. If you miss everything, they'll get angry. »
"They are not lawyers, Karim. They are terrified officials," Lazare corrected placidly, turning a new page. "They have spent the last three weeks praying that I don't go back to the sewers to cut off their communications. They will sign everything I send back to them. The only thing that matters to them is Article 3: volume. »
Lazarus put down his pen, closed the file and pushed it towards the center of the desk. He folded his hands.
"The volume is set," he announced, his dark gaze locking that of his technical director. "Fifty thousand modules. Total deployment over three years. Thirty-six months. This covers all the sensitive terminals of the sovereign ministries, the command posts of the General Staff, the Paris police prefecture, and the Quai d'Orsay. »
Karim let out a low whistle.
"Fifty thousand... He whispered, trying to visualize the mountain of black resin it represented. "It's gigantic. The first fifty were sold at Courcelles for a hundred thousand francs each, but it was extortion. We can't invoice the State at that rate, otherwise we will blow up the ministry's budget. How much do you estimate the cost of a module, Lazarus? Out of the factory? »
Lazarus bowed his head slightly.
"The printed circuit board costs forty francs. The EPROM processor and electronic components cost us two hundred and twenty francs if we buy in bulk. Military-grade epoxy resin and alumina powder cost us sixty francs per module. Adds direct labor, vacuum bell electricity, and welder damping. Leaving the factory, a V-1 module costs us exactly four hundred and seventeen francs. »
Karim's mathematical mind did the math instantly.
"Okay," the student said, adrenaline slowly replacing his lethargy. "If we apply a classic industrial margin for a public contract, say three or four hundred percent because it's very advanced equipment, we could charge around two thousand francs per unit. Two thousand francs multiplied by fifty thousand units... Damn, Lazarus. One hundred million francs in turnover. It is... It's crazy. We are rich. »
An icy silence fell on the desk.
Lazarus stared at Karim with the clinical pity of a master observing a student who has just missed a basic subtraction from the blackboard. The Builder stood up slowly, walked around his desk, and walked over to the large whiteboard on the wall. He erased the old electronic routing schemes with the back of his sleeve, grabbed a black marker, and turned to his associate.
"A hundred million," Lazarus repeated in a monotone voice, weighing the figure with assumed disgust. "You think like a shopkeeper, Karim. You reason like my uncle Henri selling spools of thread. You take the cost of the material, you add a small margin to pay for a nice car, and you're satisfied. »
Lazarus wrote the number "417 FRF" in the center of the painting. He crossed it out with a brutal black cross.
"We don't sell plastic, Karim. We don't sell tin, and we don't sell copper. Do you know what we sell to the French state? »
"Safety?" Karim tried, suddenly insecure.
"We are selling the preservation of national sovereignty," Lazarus said. "We are selling the fact that the President of the Republic can talk to his nuclear submarines without the Pentagon listening to him. We sell state secrets. Silence. Paranoia appeased. What is the value of French nuclear deterrence, Karim? How much is the state willing to pay not to be ridiculed in front of the world press? »
Lazare slammed the cap of his felt-tip pen.
"The answer is: whatever is asked of him. The cost price of four hundred and seventeen francs is an internal figure that concerns only our accountant. This contract is not a sale of equipment. It is a transfer of a technological weapons licence. »
He turned to the whiteboard and began to write in a wide, aggressive calligraphy that took up all the space.
"The unit price of a Volta-1 module, for the State civil service, is set at twenty thousand francs."
Lazarus traced the number "20,000 FRF" and surrounded it with a black circle.
Karim almost choked on his saliva. He stood to his feet, nearly knocking over his chair.
"Twenty thousand bullets?! For a twelve-centimetre brick that costs us four hundred? Lazarus is a margin of nearly five thousand percent! The Court of Auditors is going to send us directly to a commercial court for over-invoicing! The Ministry of Finance will never approve such a budget line! It's robbery! »
"Calm down," the CEO ordered, his voice cracking like a whip, instantly bringing the technical director back to silence. "It's not overbilling. It's financial engineering. Look. »
Lazarus detailed the number on the board, breaking it down into sub-parts with diabolical precision.
"I will justify every cent of these twenty thousand francs in the budget annex. Five thousand francs corresponds to the physical acquisition of the hardware module and the resin shielding. This is the prize for thermal and anti-intrusion innovation. »
He drew another line.
"Ten thousand francs corresponds to the perpetual license to use your VoltaOS kernel, billed per network node. It's your code, Karim. This is the 1024-bit RSA asymmetric algorithm. IBM charges millions for software that runs on supercomputers. We run it on a motherboard the size of a cigarette packet. Your software is worth these ten thousand francs. »
He drew one last line.
"The remaining five thousand francs cover the "Secret Defense" guarantee and the maintenance in operational conditions (MCO) over three years. We guarantee the immediate replacement of any failed module without them having to explain how or why it was damaged. Silence is charged. Total opacity is a luxury service. »
Karim looked at the painting, hypnotized. Lazarus' mathematics was terrifyingly arrogant, but it formed an unstoppable logic. The Builder did not sell a motherboard; he was selling a doctrine of global defense. He had fragmented the product to justify an institutional robbery.
"Twenty thousand francs a brick... Karim whispered, his brain reluctantly performing the final multiplication.
Lazarus anticipated his calculations. He wrote the following line.
50,000 units x 20,000 FRF = 1,000,000,000 FRF.
The number was spread out on the whiteboard with its nine insolent zeros. A figure that made no sense for a young man who grew up in a modest suburb, counting the metro tickets to go to prep school.
"A billion francs," Lazare said softly, letting the amount soak into the walls of the office.
Karim grabbed onto the edge of the desk. His knees threatened to give way. Vertigo seized him, more powerful, more physical than the terror that the DST had inspired in him. One billion. It was an astronomical amount. In 1985, it was the budget for the development of a national infrastructure. It was the turnover of a multinational company listed on the stock exchange.
"But that's not all," added Lazarus, without any pity for his partner's beating heart.
The engineer erased a small area of the board to add a final line.
"A V-1 module doesn't plug in like a toaster. The State will not let simple prefectural secretaries plug our technology into their central servers. They require secure deployment. An uninterrupted chain of custody. The modules will have to leave our factory in armoured vans, and be physically installed on each site, anywhere in France, by technicians authorised "Secret Défense". »
Lazarus turned to Karim.
"So I added a line to the contract. The "Costs of installation, logistical security and staff training". Billed at a fixed rate for the entire national territory. »
The inscription: + 250 000 000 FRF.
Then, with a heavy and definitive stroke, he drew the line of addition.
TOTAL FRAMEWORK CONTRACT: FRF 1,250,000,000.
One billion two hundred and fifty million francs.
The black marker slammed against the painting, pricking the masterpiece.
Lazarus plugged the marker and threw it on the desk. He folded his arms and let Karim absorb the billion equation.
The stifling heat of the office suddenly seemed to disappear, replaced by the icy breath of high finance and heavy industry. Karim stepped back to his chair and let himself fall into it. He ran both hands over his face, rubbing his eyes as if to awaken a dream, or rather, to accept that he was not sleeping.
"A billion and a quarter... The code genius stammered, his voice choked. "Lazarus, you just wrote Uganda's budget on a velleda board. If you send this contract, the Minister of Finance will have a heart attack. »
"He will sign," Lazarus said with granite certainty. "Mitterrand himself gave the order. Public money is only an abstraction when it comes to the survival of the state. This contract will be validated tomorrow morning in the restricted Council of Ministers, budgeted on special funds beyond the control of the National Assembly, and the first advance payment of twenty percent — i.e. two hundred and fifty million francs — will be transferred to the company's account at the Bank of France by Friday. »
Lazarus let the information infuse. The young CEO took his place behind the desk. He leaned back in his chair, placed his elbows on the armrests, and clasped the tips of his fingers in a thoughtful steeple. The accounting triumph was complete. It was a time for implacable material reality.
"Dry your tears of joy, Karim," the Shadow Patriarch suddenly ordered, in a tone that nipped in the bud the beginning of a smile that was born on the student's lips. "Money is not an end in itself. It is a debt. »
Karim frowned, confusion replacing euphoria.
"A debt? The State has just been robbed for a billion bullets, Bonaparte. We are the kings of the world! »
"We are the kings of a logistical hell," Lazarus mercilessly corrected.
He leaned forward, his black eyes twisting the consciousness of his technical director.
"Look at the volume figure, Karim. Fifty thousand modules. Deployed over thirty-six months. »
Lazarus grabbed a desk calculator and hit the keys with mechanical rapidity. The built-in thermal printer spat out a small white paper ticket. He tore it off and handed it to Karim.
"Fifty thousand divided by thirty-six. That's about one thousand three hundred and eighty-eight modules per month. Forty-six modules per day. Thirty-two days a month, seven days a week, including public holidays and Sundays. And this for three years, without the slightest interruption. »
Lazare got up and walked towards the large bay window that overlooked the factory. He pushed aside the Venetian blinds with a sharp gesture. The pale light of the neon lights of the workshop poured into the office.
Below, the small "U" assembly line was idling. The dozen or so workers in white coats were busy around the only wave welding machine they had. The curing vacuum bells purred softly.
"That's our current capacity," Lazarus said, his eyes dark. "By pushing people to exhaustion, with luck and no material failure, we produce sixty modules per week. That's two hundred and forty per month. We are at one-sixth of the pace required by the State contract. »
Karim got up in turn and came to stand next to Lazarus in front of the window. Looking at the workshop with the new figures in mind, the student understood the magnitude of the looming industrial disaster.
The Ivry factory, which seemed so huge to him a month earlier, had just shrunk to the size of a children's model.
"We can't keep up," Karim admitted, gasping for breath at the absolute urgency of the situation. "If we deliver late, the penalties will ruin us, or worse, the state will cancel the contract for incapacity to produce."
"The state gave us the billion so that we could do it," Lazare said.
The eighteen-year-old swept the space with his arm, kissing not only their studio, but also the blind brick walls that bordered it.
"As soon as we received the advance payment on Friday, we triggered hyper-growth. The financial equation must turn to steel. I have already taken an option on the two huge warehouses adjacent to ours, which belonged to a former Renault spare parts factory. On Friday at noon, we will sign the leases. On Friday afternoon, we will have the party walls knocked down with a sledgehammer to triple the floor area. »
Karim was looking at Lazare's profile. The boy's delusions of grandeur had no limits.
"Les machines?" demands Karim.
"I have made contact with the manufacturer Seho in Germany," the CEO replied, reciting his war plans. "I ordered five new industrial-class wave welding machines, equipped with fifteen-meter-long automated conveyors. I pay them double the list price so that they divert production intended for Siemens and deliver them to us next week in exceptional convoys. »
"Five welders?" the student swallows. "Lazarus, we only have ten workers!"
"We won't have ten anymore. We are going to hire two hundred and fifty. »
The figure fell like a cleaver. Two hundred and fifty employees. The small clandestine start-up of the maid's room had just mutated into a real factory of the industrial age.
"Two hundred and fifty operators, cleaners, handlers and security guards," Lazare continued implacably. "Single-day production is abolished. The ogre of Ivry will switch to a "3x8" system. Three eight-hour shifts that will take turns without ever stopping the channels. Twenty-four hours a day. Epoxy curing ovens will never cool down again. We will order the military-grade resin in two-thousand-litre drums, and no longer in buckets. I want semi-trailers that back up on our loading docks every morning. »
Karim leaned against the glass, overwhelmed by the demonic energy emanating from his boss. Lazarus was not building a business. He raised an army.
"Silicon doesn't sleep, Karim. And the state doesn't wait," Lazarus said, turning to the inside of the office.
The sixty-year-old engineer returned to the contract, put his hand on the file, and sealed the conversation.
"Your work stops at the code, Karim. You're going to isolate yourself in your software lab, you're going to compile fifty thousand perfect licenses of the VoltaOS kernel, and you're going to design programmers capable of flashing EPROM chips in clusters of a hundred, in less than two minutes. You are the master of the immaterial. »
"And for the material?" asked Karim. "Lazarus, you can't manage an army of two hundred and fifty workers in 3x8, order the resin trucks, manage the maintenance of the five production lines and run the company at the same time. You're only eighteen, damn it. Even if you don't sleep, it's physically impossible. You're going to die of exhaustion. The unions will eat you alive at the first problem of pace. »
Lazarus smiled. A real smile, cold, heavy with absolute lucidity. The experience of his former life had taught him the first rule of command: one does not fight a war alone.
"You're right, Karim. A factory of this size is a wild beast. If I go down to the floor of the workshop, I will be a theoretical boss. I need a man on the ground. Of a marshal. »
Lazare went to his desk and opened the drawer on the left. He took out a brown cardboard folder, much less luxurious than the ministry's file. He threw it on the table. Inside, there was only one sheet of paper. A typewritten curriculum vitae, the edges of which were slightly dog-eared.
"For the past week, posh recruitment agencies in the sixteenth arrondissement have been sending me profiles of production managers," Lazare explained with a touch of contempt, tapping the CV with his index finger. "Dynamic young executives from HEC or Polytechnique. Kids in suits and ties who talk about "just-in-time flow management" and "managerial optimization". Theoreticians who would faint at the first smell of burnt resin, and who would be lynched by a night shift demanding a cigarette break. »
"And you found him, your marshal?"
Lazarus nodded.
"I didn't look in business schools. I searched in the blood and fat of French deindustrialization. I placed an ad in the specialized metallurgy press. »
Lazare pushed the CV towards Karim.
"René Castella. Fifty-five years. Thirty years of career on the court. Former production director of a steel plant in Lorraine, made redundant six months ago following the closure of the blast furnaces. The man is a broken face of heavy industry. He doesn't have a university degree, but he knows how to make steel scream, he knows how to keep up a pace, and he knows how to talk to two hundred exhausted workers at three o'clock in the morning. »
Karim looked at the name on the paper, then at Lazarus' dark, determined eyes. The young CEO had just found his armed wing for the physical world. The software belonged to Karim, the strategy belonged to Lazare, but the sweat, the epoxy and the infernal rhythms were going to belong to this old wolf of the steel industry.
"He's been in the waiting room downstairs for ten minutes," Lazarus announced, looking at his watch. "Get ready to make room. Volta has finished playing in the court of miracles. We enter the giants' court, and the Ogre of Ivry will start screaming. »
Location: Management office, Volta S.A. factory (Ivry-sur-Seine) Date: August 1985 Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte)
The steps of the metal staircase that led to the glass office creaked under a massive weight. It wasn't Karim's quick, nervous step, nor Lazare's silent, feline advance. It was a heavy, anchored step, that of a man accustomed to treading concrete floors vibrating under the blows of hammers.
The door opened.
René Castella had to lower his head slightly to pass the coaching. At fifty-five, the former production manager of the Lorraine steelworks looked like a badly roughed block of granite. He had the bear-like build of the men of the East, broad shoulders that would break through the seams of his corduroy jacket, and a weathered face, ravished by decades spent near the heat of the blast furnaces. His hands, as large as beaters, were spotted with scars from old burns. It smelled of brown tobacco, formalin and dried sweat.
He stood on the threshold, his small, bright gray eyes sweeping the room. He saw Karim, the scholarship student with messy hair, leaning against the wall. Then he saw Lazarus.
A beardless boy, in a white shirt, sitting behind the large metal desk.
Castella's face closed instantly. A hard jaw, accustomed to screaming to drown out the noise of the machines, clenched. The former steelworker had the expression of someone who has just been told a very bad joke.
"I was told at the reception desk to go upstairs to see the CEO of Volta," Castella says in a gravelly voice, deep as a diesel engine. "I don't have time to waste with interns. Go get your father, boy. »
Karim tensed, ready to intervene, but Lazarus raised a calm hand. The young CEO did not stand up. He kept his back glued to his chair, both his hands resting flat on the leather desk pad.
"My father is at Val-de-Grâce, rehabilitating from a prolonged coma, Mr. Castella," replied Lazare, his voice absolutely polar, with a depth that instantly chilled the stifling atmosphere of the office. "The signatory of the job offer to which you responded, the holder of the lease of this plant, and the Chairman and CEO of this company, that's me. Lazare Bonaparte. Take a seat. »
Castella stepped forward with a heavy step, but did not sit down. He placed his two huge hands on the back of the chair facing the desk, studying Lazarus as one studies an anomaly in nature. He had met daddy's sons in his career, arrogant heirs parachuted into the management, but never a teenager who looked at him with the eyes of a ruthless old man.
"Is it a joke?" growled the man from Lorraine. "I went four hundred miles for a job interview. I read your ad. You are looking for a production manager to set up a line in three shifts with two hundred guys. That's not a job for a kid who has just graduated from high school. It's heavy industry. What do you make here? Electronic toys? »
"Look out the window behind you," Lazarus simply ordered.
Castella turned his head. His professional gaze instantly scanned the workshop below. He saw the vacuum bell, the welder with the German wave, the rudimentary but strict safety protocols, the industrial resins.
"It's an encapsulated component. Military potting ," Castella whispered, his tone changing slightly, surprise piercing beneath the roughness. "It's clean. But you are running blank. A single line? You produce nothing but slab with that. Sixty pieces a week, to break everything. You don't need a production manager. You need a team leader and three strong coffees. »
"This line is a prototype, Mr. Castella," Lazare said, finally getting up.
The sixty-year-old engineer walked towards his interlocutor. Despite his size and physical age, Lazarus imposed an authority that crushed the worker's build.
"This morning, my company signed an exclusive contract with the French state. We are going to secure the entire telecommunications network of the National Defence and the Quai d'Orsay. »
Lazarus put a finger on the ledger.
"Fifty thousand units to be delivered over thirty-six months. One billion francs in public procurement. »
René Castella stopped breathing for a fraction of a second. His bushy eyebrows furrowed. One billion. The age of Lazarus had just dissolved in the acid of this figure. There were no kids left in the room. There was only one boss.
"In three days," replied Lazarus implacably, "we will tear down the party walls to annex the two neighboring warehouses. In a week's time, five new automated welding lines will be delivered from Germany. I want to go from ten workers to two hundred and fifty in the space of a month. I want this plant to run twenty-four hours a day. Sundays, holidays, summer and winter. The state wants its equipment, and I refuse to pay a single cent of late penalties. »
Lazare bypassed the office and planted himself in front of the steel giant.
"Recruitment agencies send me young leaders from the Parisian bourgeoisie. Business school graduates who explain to me with graphs how to optimize the staff fatigue curve. I kick them out. A graph does not keep a factory running at three in the morning when a machine breaks down and the night shift threatens to walk out. I need a wolf. A man of matter. »
Castella felt an old flame, which he thought had been extinguished by his dismissal from the steel industry, rekindle in his bowels. The smell of hot metal, the rumble of assembly lines, the adrenaline of quotas. This crazy kid offered him a kingdom.
But the former worker was not going to sell his soul so easily.
"Two hundred and fifty men in three shifts to recruit, train and spit out within a month?" Castella let out a short laugh, rasping like sandpaper. "It's a slaughterhouse that you want to set up, boss. You know what it feels like, two hundred and fifty workers who work with toxic solvents, under pressure, paid with a slingshot? It unionizes. It's grumbling. It sabotages. Do you think I'm a magician? »
"I think you know that the machine obeys the laws of physics, but that man obeys respect and pay," Lazarus retorted, his dark eyes twisting Castella's conscience. "I don't pay with a slingshot. I will pay twenty percent above the collective agreement for the metallurgy. I want the best adjusters, the best welders, the best handlers in the Val-de-Marne. And in exchange for this salary, I demand military obedience and perfect rhythms. »
Lazarus paused for a moment, letting the silence weigh on him to drive the point home.
"You were managing blast furnaces that spewed out thousands of tons of pig iron, Mr. Castella. The steel industry is dead. It is silicon that now rules. The war is the same, only the temperature has dropped. Do you have the stature to make my factory scream, or do you prefer to go back and weep at the grave of Lorraine industry? »
Karim, in his corner, held his breath. Lazarus had just slapped the giant with unheard-of verbal brutality.
Castella's jaws gnashed. His fists clenched. For three interminable seconds, it seemed that he was going to grab Lazarus by the throat and throw him over the bay window.
Then the old wolf smiled. A ferocious, carnivorous smile. The smile of a man who had just found a master at the height of his own industrial cynicism.
"You're a damn bastard, Bonaparte," Castella growled, his voice laden with sudden, unwavering respect. "You give me full powers over recruitment and discipline? On the floor, I'm the ironmaster. No white-collar kids who come to explain to me how to manage my teams. If a guy doesn't make his quota, I fire him, unionized or not. »
"On the factory floor, you are God the father," Lazarus confirmed definitively. "I'll only look at one thing: the packing slips at the end of the month. The minimum quota is set at one thousand four hundred perfect modules. The quality controls will be carried out by Karim, who is here today. If he finds an encapsulation flaw, the series goes back to the trash and you explain to your night shift why their bounty is skipped. »
Castella looked at Karim, then returned to Lazarus. He held out his hand, as wide as a construction shovel.
"Twenty-five thousand francs a month for me, net. A quarterly performance bonus. And a glass office downstairs, on the line, with the management's phone. »
It was a minister's salary. A social robbery. But Lazarus did not even blink. Money was just a lubricant for the war machine.
Lazarus grabs the hand of the steelworker. The grip was firm, dry, a pact of blood and resin sealed between an immortal teenager and a steel veteran.
"Granted," said the Builder. "Welcome to Volta, Mr. Castella. You take up your position immediately. I want the job offers at the ANPE in Ivry this afternoon, and the excavators for the party walls tomorrow at dawn. »
Castella let go of his new boss's hand. He buttoned up his jacket and turned back to the bay window, observing the workshop with the eyes of a conqueror. The boredom of forced retirement evaporated.
"I'll make you spit it out, your state order," the production manager promised in a low, almost tender voice towards the machines downstairs.
When he left the office, Castella's step seemed to make the metal staircase tremble with a new energy. The Ogre of Ivry had just found its conductor.
Lazarus stood still, his gaze fixed on the assembly line.
"Damn, Lazarus..." Karim whispered, wiping his forehead. "This guy almost scares me more than the DST. If he tells his workers to break our faces, they will do it. »
"They won't, because I'm paying him handsomely so they don't," Lazarus replied, returning to his desk. He pulled a new blank file towards him. "The equipment has found its master. Now we must protect the arcana of Volta. Next week, the money from the state arrives. Homemade warfare is dead, Karim. The industrial empire was born. »