Empire of Shadows

A person who has not worked in the federal government system will never understand how difficult it is here.

And not all who work for the federal government are politicians.

They separate the “law enforcers” and the “rulers” very clearly. The former are just ordinary people, no different from ordinary people who work in factories. They are not politicians; they are just workers, workers of power.

The gentlemen grant them some of the authority generated by power, to be used to maintain the status and authority of the gentlemen.

But this does not mean that they are politicians, that they are the ruling class. At most, they can be considered a part of the privileged class, and not the highest part.

The real politicians, the rulers, are those who can decide the fate of many people, because of their an unconventional idea, or the consequences of a moment of passion.

Mayors, governors, presidents, multi-level congressmen, government officials—these are all proper politicians, or quasi-politicians. Their status is clearly higher than that of the law enforcers.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Hazardous Materials is a typical law enforcement department. They are assigned by the gentlemen to escort the gentlemen’s policies.

They are the typical “working class,” but this job, compared to the work in the factories, is a little more decent.

But it still doesn’t change their insignificance in politics.Director Dale dreamed of becoming a ruler, not a worker.

If there were no accidents, in this life, he would only have a chance to get a taste of it when he was about to retire, if he had done a good job. And all the efforts of his life would become the stepping stone for his child to start.

But… he didn’t want this. He also wanted to taste the taste of power, real power!

He was like a farmer who had spent his whole life planting the seeds of power, but he himself could not taste the fruits of power.

His life would have been a regret!

Even at death’s door, he might not be able to close his eyes, because he had been giving his whole life, while his child, who had done nothing, could inherit his fruits.

Of course, this was still under the condition that he had done a good job. With his current actions, the original plan was just to become an ordinary committee member.

The “system” of the Federation is very interesting. Starting from Congress, the politicians, by establishing one committee after another, have divided the power into many pieces.

They say this is to avoid excessive concentration of power in the hands of certain people.

So the committees are the core ruling body of federal politics.

A committee has a chairman, but in Congress, the chairmen are mostly nominal positions. The ones who really play a role are the executive committee members.

These executive committee members are not rotating. They will be in charge of this committee throughout their term. If a member of Congress can be re-elected continuously, then he will continue to serve as an executive committee member of these committees, and may even serve as an executive committee member of other committees.

So for those senators who can occupy the seats in Congress for a long time, the political resources they have in their hands are unimaginable to those “youngsters.”

As for the committee members, they are often members of the House of Representatives. They do not hold specific authority, but are responsible for specific work.

The executive committee members list the things to be done, and then they assign the work and implement it.

Of course, this refers to Congress, the highest ruling body of the Federation.

At the state level, it is not yet the committee of the state legislature, but just the Likalai State Prohibition Committee under the Congressional Prohibition Committee. Its authority is much smaller.

Being a committee member may not be of much use. You are still a marginal person. Only when you become an executive committee member, responsible for presiding over the prohibition work of the entire Likalai State, is it that you have truly come into contact with the “power level.”

From a worker of power to a lower-level ruler with a portion of authority in his hands, but still a long way from the upper-level rulers!

However, for an “ordinary person,” this was already the biggest promotion in his life!

Unexpectedly, never in a million years, when he had already given up, Lance had actually told him that he had “won.”

How could he not be excited?

“I… I am very excited now. I’m sorry, I can’t control myself a little!” He rolled down the window and quickly lit a cigarette. The nicotine allowed him to calm down a little.

Being a dog for the gentlemen did not bring hope, but working for Lance has changed my life. Perhaps, this is the reason why God sent me to Golden Port City!

Lance didn’t have many thoughts about these changes of his, or emotions or the like. He had seen more exaggerated ones, and there were even some who had directly knelt down and acknowledged him as their father.

This scene could only be said to be very ordinary.

“After you go to the State Prohibition Committee, it’s not that you have no tasks. You are going with a work task.”

After about twenty or thirty seconds, Director Dale’s mood finally stabilized a little. Only then did Lance continue, “So don’t think this matter is too simple.”

Director Dale, who had calmed down a lot, nodded vigorously. “Whatever the task is, Lance, watch my performance!”

He was now like a child who had been promised to be the class president, eager to show his ability in front of the teacher.

Lance smiled and raised his hand to press down. “Listen to me first.”

Director Dale quickly stubbed out the cigarette in his hand, threw it out of the window, and then turned around and sat up straight. “You speak.”

“A while ago, the people of the Holy Bell Party were causing trouble for me with Charles.”

“You know, I am not a stingy person, but I am not a generous person either!”

“I will not be stingy in letting every one of my friends live a good life, but I will not be generous to those who have tried to harm me and my friends.”

“They provoked me first, so I’m going to find trouble with them, understand?”

Director Dale nodded vigorously. “I understand, revenge!”

Lance pointed at him. “A good choice of words, revenge.”

“Some of the practices of the Holy Bell Party have allowed them to gain the support of the people on their turf. In fact, I am more willing to call it an evil religious organization. If I directly send people to have a firefight with them, it will be more troublesome.”

“The local people will stand on their side to deal with me. This will make me spend more energy, manpower, and material resources, but I will not get the result I want.”

“So I thought about it and plan to first solve the matter of them being popular with the local people. I need your help.”

Director Dale listened very seriously. “What should I do?”

“Those conservative believers are very repulsed by drinking, so we have to start with checking on the wine, and expose all the criminal acts of the Holy Bell Party that they disapprove of.”

“This time our opponents are a group of… people whose thinking may still be in the state of the end of the last century.”

“They are used to kidnapping, human trafficking, but they are very disgusted with the destruction of religion and faith.”

“Your task is a bit heavy. Of course, it’s not completely without a clue.”

Lance recounted the story of the priest he had captured. In fact, the more at this time, when he had chosen to betray the Holy Bell Party, he also hoped that the Holy Bell Party could be crushed.

He even hoped more than Lance himself that Lance could win. Only in this way would he not be crazily hunted down by the madmen of Joshua!

Only by sending them all to hell could he live a good life!

So he was extremely cooperative with Lance. The rest of the matter was to catch as many people as possible, and then pry open their mouths.

“I believe that as a front-line director, your experience will be richer than mine, so I won’t give you any pointers on work matters.”

“But be careful, be careful of those people from the Prohibition Bureau in the north. Be careful if they might also have been bought by the people of the Holy Bell Party. So after you take office, you have to push a plan.”

“Let a portion of the agents rotate. You can’t let them stay there all the time. Transfer the local agents out, and transfer the agents from other places in.”

“As for what reason to use, I believe you know better than me.”

Director Dale nodded in agreement and said, “This is not a problem, but I have a question.”

“I have just started working at the State Prohibition Committee. Will my ideas be supported by the other executive committee members?”

Lance’s brow, which had been slightly furrowed, immediately relaxed when he heard him ask this question. “I will have the congressional side give you a call. This will be equivalent to a… special work, a special crackdown.”

Director Dale closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The wrists and skills he had mastered over the years flashed through his mind one by one.

When he opened them again, a gleam flashed in his eyes. “I can, I can handle these jobs.”

Lance’s hand patted the armrest. “Go back.”

The convoy began to turn around. “This is an opportunity, Dale. Don’t let me down, okay?”

Dale had a smile on his face. “Watch my performance, Lance!”

He paused for a moment. “My work here…”

“Just leave it to Ponda. I’ll have a chat with him in a few days. You get ready first.”

The convoy soon returned to the community. Director Dale bent down and got out of the car, then turned to watch Lance’s convoy leave.

He looked at the end of the road, which was already out of sight, and breathed a sigh of relief. He crossed the road with a relaxed smile on his face.

His wife and child were already waiting for him behind the door. There was still some worry on their faces.

“Are you worried about me?” He knew what they were thinking when he saw the expressions on their faces.

He laughed “aha.” “So touching, but I have to say, you don’t have to worry at all. It’s a good thing.”

“A good thing?” His wife welcomed him in, took off his coat, and hung it on the coat rack on the side.

He nodded while taking off his hat. “Yes, a good thing. I’m going to be an executive committee member of the State Prohibition Committee soon.”

His wife didn’t quite understand this, but his child was very sensitive. “My God, how did you do it?”

Director Dale looked at his family and decided to tell the truth, because in the future, he would definitely have more contact with Lance.

He took his family into the room, had them sit down, and then thought for a moment and found an entry point.

“Actually, I am accepting Mr. Lance’s help.”

His wife asked, “Is it that Mr. Lance White from the Lance Family?”

Director Dale nodded. “Originally, I thought I could quickly make a career for myself, and then leave here and return to Golden State, so at the beginning I didn’t bring you all over.”

They all nodded. “But then I encountered many problems. The complexity of the struggle at the bottom is no less than the degree of purges in Congress. I failed.”

“So much so that at this moment, I don’t have much hope of leaving this place, which is why I brought you over.”

“Although I may have failed in my career, in terms of family, we are still complete.”

“Just when I was at my most disheartened, Lance found me and talked to me about some things.”

He paid attention to the expressions of his two children, because these things… were not a good thing for a child who had grown up in an “upright” family.

Their own father, as a law enforcer, had accepted the assistance of a criminal. No matter which kind, it might have an impact on their three views.

But what he hadn’t expected was that his younger son had said, “That’s cool, isn’t it?”

For a moment, he didn’t know how to respond to this situation!

“You think it’s cool?”

“Why?”

His younger son shrugged. “That’s the Lance Family!”

“Did you know?”

“All the young people in the entire Golden Port City want to join the Lance Family, but their recruitment conditions are getting stricter and stricter, and it’s almost impossible to get in.”

Looking at the expectant look on his younger son’s face, Director Dale raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “Stop!”

“Stop it. Don’t say what I don’t want to hear. Your task now is to study, so that you can inherit these things of mine in the future, not to join a gang!”

A look of regret appeared on his younger son’s face. “If I could join Lance, I would be the coolest one in school!”

“Shut your mouth. Don’t even think about it!”

Director Dale’s expression was a little stern. Was a gang so easy to get into?

Out of a hundred who join a gang, how many can make it?

They only saw Lance’s success, and ignored the tombstones of the dead on both sides of the road that Lance had walked!

He stared into his son’s eyes. “If I find out that you still have this idea, I guarantee you won’t get a penny from me!”

“And I will send you to a military academy and send you to the front line.”

“If you die on the front line, people will call us the parents of a hero, but if you die in a gang firefight, they will only say that we raised a…”

The younger son sighed. In fact, he also knew that this was unlikely. “I see.”

Director Dale looked at his other child and his wife again. “In short, I am working for Lance now. Lance has connections in Congress and has transferred me to the State Prohibition Committee to serve as an executive committee member. That’s basically the situation.”

“I’ve been promoted!”

His wife was a little worried. “Is our recent spending also him…”

Director Dale did not deny or admit it. He changed the subject. “At the end of this month, I’m going to Manteno. You can choose to go with me, or stay here.”

“But I would rather suggest that you stay here, because Lance is also here. This is his base camp, and it will be very safe.”

“I will come back when I have time. Everything will be fine. Don’t worry.”

For a moment, the news that Director Dale had brought was too much. Besides the child, his wife found it a little hard to accept.

Her own husband had suddenly gone from working for the federal government to working for a gang leader, and even taking black money. This change was indeed a bit too big!

But it has to be said that this kind of life was actually pretty good.

For the next two days, he began to prepare to handle the work here, what work needed to be handed over, what work did not need to be handled, all had to be sorted out.

Lance soon also talked to Ponda about this matter. Ponda was also full of confidence, and also excitement, about being the director.

For him, to become “stronger” was to be able to give Lisa more of a sense of security.

And now it wasn’t just Lisa, but also his child. He needed to create a comfortable and safe environment for his family. The director of the Prohibition Bureau, plus Lance behind him, he felt that he was terrifyingly strong now!

Lance also instructed him on some work, for example, to continue to preside over the Prohibition Bureau’s stance on the prohibition of alcohol.

The designated bars in Golden Port City were all monopolized by Lance, but there were still some private bars that were selling smuggled liquor, or liquor they had brewed themselves.

For the very small-scale ones, Lance did not intend to stop them. After all, this was also a way of life.

But for the large-scale ones, the underground bars that transported liquor in through smuggling, Lance demanded that the Prohibition Bureau resolutely crack down!

Many people, in order to get the liquor into Golden Port City without being skinned by Lance, would first send the liquor to the area between Golden Port City and Gold Star City, and then have people find a way to get it over.

Some were directly carried over, some were transported in by car at night. In short, there were many ways.

These people had disrupted the rules of the city and must be severely punished.

Besides these matters, Lance had also been paying close attention to the war on the front lines recently. After all, this determined the future of the Federation, and the future of them.

During this period, the newspapers had been mentioning the war situation that the Federation was involved in. They had used headlines like “The Unbreakable Defensive Line,” “An Iron Will,” “The Invincible Federation People,” to publish the latest content.

Lance was also reading the newspaper every day. Of course, he could actually also make a phone call to find out, but he didn’t do that.

The newspapers were all saying some very beautiful things, like how the federal people had repeatedly repelled the rapid divisions and mechanized divisions of the Dantra Republic, ensuring the advantage of the main battlefield.

This gave the domestic public of the Federation a kind of inexplicable confidence in the war.

But Lance was not so optimistic, because through some details, it could be seen that even if they were not lying, they had also paid a great price.

Because the Federation was still continuously conscripting, and there was a possibility of expanding the conscription. What did this mean?

This meant that the casualty ratio had exceeded the expectations of the Department of Defense and the military before the outbreak of the war. They had originally thought that four million troops would be enough to handle this war, but now, it might be a little insufficient!

This practice could not be said to be very good, but it could not be said to be very bad either. At least… now the people of the Federation had a lot of confidence in the war, didn’t they?

(End of a Chapter)