Saint Petersburg.
Having accepted the job, Sergei gathered his accomplices and explained the situation to them.
"Look, as long as we can persuade the Empire to sell the Alaska Colony to the Hohenzollern Conglomerate, we'll get a sum of money. The less they pay, the more we take. Here are the initial twenty-thousand-ruble deposit. Once we complete the task, we'll receive one hundred thousand rubles. For every million less we calculate, we earn another ten thousand."
Holding the twenty-thousand-ruble check previously sent by the Hohenzollern Conglomerate, Sergei spoke.
"Count, isn't this Hohenzollern Conglomerate being too stingy? Such a vast stretch of land, and they only want to pay this little?" a minister said.
"What do you know? That godforsaken place, Alaska—you should know it well enough. It's a place where birds don't even shit, with no real value to speak of. Did you expect some fool with more money than sense to take it off our hands? Only because the owner of this Hohenzollern Conglomerate has peculiar tastes would he be willing to spend money taking it over," Sergei said.
"Count, isn't the Empire currently contacting the Americans about purchasing the Alaska Colony? Surely the Americans can offer a higher price?" someone asked.
Sergei said viciously, "Even if the Americans want to buy that land, they won't be doing it willingly. If we hadn't supported them during the American War of Independence, they wouldn't even want to give us the time of day."
"So even if the Americans take over the Alaska Colony out of consideration for past ties, what does that have to do with us? The Americans won't pay us separately."
"Now, if we persuade the Empire to sell the Alaska Colony to the Hohenzollern Conglomerate, not only can the Empire cast off Alaska as a burden, but