Nikolaus was sitting in his office when the phone rang.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHello Nikolaus, Abel here. I just wanted to let you know that the credit limit has been raised to $2 million for that distributor. Just got the word a little while ago. I checked, and they have already paid us for their first shipment. A few more transactions like that and their limit will automatically go up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood to hear. Has anybody informed them?\u201d \u201cI asked one of my staff to do it now. I see they are on the phone so I imagine it is being taken care of as we speak.\u201d \u201cExcellent. I have a feeling they are going to bring your subsidiary a lot of new profit.\u201d \u201cI can only hope. We don\u2019t get the bonuses or the margins you guys get. We need massive volume to make any kind of money at all. We shall see what their next order looks like.\u201d \u201cAgreed.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was shaping up to be quite a day. The board had signed off on the second secured site almost before Nikolaus had presented the idea. The Lutton bombings had them worried about keeping all of their eggs in one basket as well. The designers had already finished the specifications for the site and they were sent off to the construction companies who would be handling the construction. Just this morning the liaison provided by the Chinese government had called to inform him the necessary monies had been received and the first crew was out prepping the site. The major utility connections should be out to the site inside of a week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if you are the one to talk with about this,\u201d Nikolaus began, \u201cbut I was wondering if there was any way we could speed up the construction process?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDepends on the weather. We have regulations about how many hours the workers can report on their time cards, but some of the crews have been willing to work extra hours when they are paid in cash without reporting the time. Usually they end up working an evening shift under the lights. Of course, you would need an on-site concrete mixer for that to be feasible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCould one be obtained?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEasily, for the correct price.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you willing to handle obtaining it and paying the crew members willing to work the extra time at night?<\/p>\n
\u201cNot for free.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, of course not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow would you get the money to me? It would be a lot of cash.\u201d \u201cWill the crew accept euros?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be converted easily enough.\u201d \u201cHow about South African currency?\u201d \u201cI could find someone from the South African embassy to exchange it for me.\u201d \u201cGood. Do you have a shipping address? I will pack the funds in medical supply containers and ship it to you.\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t even know how much I need.\u201d \u201cI assume we could revisit that topic after you see how much I send you.\u201d The man gave him an address. Nikolaus used a disposable cell phone and called a contact at the secured location. He told him to pull all of the containers containing South African currency and two of the containers containing euros, and to cover the bar codes on the containers with some other label. Then he gave him the address of where to ship everything. He also told the man to adjust the inventory for those two currencies accordingly.<\/p>\n
Even if this only speeds us up three days,<\/i> he thought, it was worth it to finally be rid of that South African currency. <\/i> He had been sitting on that stuff almost a year now and could find no takers for it.<\/p>\n
With that done, Nikolaus decided to amuse himself and see if the distributor had already placed another order. When he ran the report he was stunned to see they had placed two orders. One apparently as soon as they had wired the money to pay the first invoice, and another as soon as they had been called about the credit limit increase.<\/p>\n
A few mouse clicks showed they were taking only two and three containers at a time of the currency, but nearly emptying the warehouses of the generic products. The second order had moved up to generic prescription drugs for cholesterol and some other common heart conditions. A few more orders like this and the brand name division was going to demand they get access to their catalog. They had ordered almost their entire credit limit.<\/p>\n
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You are reading a special promotional version of \u201cInfinite Exposure\u201d containing only the first 18 chapters. This is the first book of the “Earth That Was” trilogy. You can obtain the entire trilogy in EPUB form from here:<\/p>\n