Conan: Rice Flower Spring

Chapter 351, Section 345: Misfortune Shines Brightly
Just as Ran Mouri was waiting for the fingerprint comparison results from Ryoma Hayashi's company's partner organization, Akita arrived at Ryoma Hayashi's office with a file.

"Brother, I think you should take a look at this."

"This is a file? Whose file?" Lin Longma asked, taking the file from Akita's hand.

"These are 'old files' that the guys below pulled out from the intelligence support department's archives."

"Old files?"

Since the Risk Investigation Team was transformed into the Security Countermeasures Division, Isshin's authority within the organization has been enhanced to an epic degree.

The security countermeasures department can not only investigate current members of the organization, but also open the doors to the archives of other departments.

The terrifying aspect of the entire security countermeasures section does not actually lie in the extent of its authority.

In fact, both the Intelligence Support Department and the Execution Department, as large support departments of the organization, have far greater authority than the Security Countermeasures Section.

However, due to their different focuses, the Security Countermeasures Section, which is specifically responsible for organizing security, has authority that is above that of other units at the same level.

Furthermore, since the Isshinkai and the Safety Countermeasures Division are closely connected and inseparable, in principle, the Isshinkai is the Isshinkai and the Safety Countermeasures Division is the Safety Countermeasures Division.

In practice, however, who can really distinguish between the entire "One Heart Association" and the "Safety Countermeasures Section"?

A department directly under the head at the "section" level possesses the resources and mobilization power to organize large-scale strongholds.

The safety countermeasures department currently has a very strong presence in the organization.

After gaining authority to handle traitors, the Security Countermeasures Division launched raids across the country. Every traitor or mole outside of official institutions that was captured was a significant achievement to be recorded in their honor roll.

According to the organization's unique performance evaluation system, all the undercover agents and traitors are like walking versions of Fukuzawa Yukichi; who wouldn't love them?
There are obviously no way to catch all the undercover agents.

While the actions of the security countermeasures department didn't exactly cause widespread panic within the organization, those members with guilty consciences certainly had to keep a low profile at this juncture.

This has led to a rare improvement in the organization's atmosphere recently.

An improved organizational atmosphere is good for the boss, but not for the security countermeasures department.

If the traitors and undercover agents stop moving, who are they going to arrest?

Since we can't catch the current ones, we can at least catch some from the past, right?

So some people set their sights on the archives of other departments.

With their current authority, the Security Countermeasures Division was indeed able to access some internal files from other departments, and this investigation uncovered quite a few problems.

The members of the Safety Countermeasures Division could handle all other situations, but they found this particular file that Akita brought to be somewhat difficult to deal with.

"Let me see what's going on here?"

Since the file folder had already been opened by members of the Security Countermeasures Division, Ryoma Hayashi didn't need to open it again.

He opened the file folder, took out the files inside, and began to peruse them.

What he found inside was quite unexpected for Lin Longma.

"If I'm not mistaken, this is a file belonging to a member of the research department? If it's a file belonging to a member of the research department, why is it in the archives of the intelligence support department?"

The Executive Department, Intelligence Support Department, Scientific Research Department, and Logistics Department are not exactly clearly separate entities, and they do not share important information with each other.

Personal information about members and cadres is the most important information among important information.

Lin Longma wouldn't be surprised if the files of these research department cadres appeared in the research department's archives. It would be perfectly normal.

But now this thing is in the archives of the Intelligence Support Department. Has that bastard Rum infiltrated the Research Department again?
If Rum's infiltration of the Executive Department might at most displease or annoy the boss, then infiltrating the Research Department would be suicidal.

Everyone in the organization knows that the research department is the boss's lifeline.

Putting aside everything else, if someone suddenly comes and messes with your private parts when you're bored and have nothing to do, do you think you'd turn on them?
Acquaintances? No matter how good the relationship, it won't work.

Lin Longma patiently continued reading, only to find that things weren't quite as he had imagined.

This cadre from the research department actually had no connection with the intelligence support department. This file was retrieved from the research department by the intelligence support department four years ago.

As for why this member's file was retrieved...
The cadres in the research department can be roughly divided into two categories. The first category is the key personnel, represented by Shirley.

Managers like Shirley are entrusted with important responsibilities by their bosses because of their outstanding professional abilities.

They have gained status and power. But their power essentially stems from their professional competence.

So whether it's to maintain their own power or because they're not good at management, in short, these key business-oriented cadres will focus most of their time on their research projects.

They don't concern themselves with the mundane tasks of "management." These "trivial matters" are usually handled by their deputies.

Since the research department has key personnel, it naturally also has management personnel.

The owner of this file right now is such a person.

This research department cadre was skilled in management and even passionate about it. This led him to participate in the research and development of many projects within the organization.

For example, the research and experimentation of the precursor drug for drug A, and the research and experimentation of the Dark Baron virus.
As a manager of multiple projects, it is reasonable for him to carry some project content with him.

Unfortunately, four years ago, this research staff member went to a friend's house for an appointment, only to be caught in a fire.

This person was trapped inside the building with others and had no way to escape. He was eventually burned alive inside.

Such misfortunes are actually quite common within organizations. It doesn't necessarily have to be a fire, but all sorts of natural and man-made disasters happen frequently.

Especially in Beika Town, man-made disasters are the most frequent.

According to the organization's usual practice, in such cases, all that is needed is to send someone to conduct a follow-up investigation to see if any important information has been leaked from the scene.

The intelligence support department retrieved this research officer's file for this very reason.

As a result, the intelligence support department sent out five groups of members, but they all either died in traffic accidents or drowned, and two innocent people were involved in a murder case and lost their lives.

The last one encountered a bank robbery, but the robbers were so nervous that they accidentally killed him.

It's fair to say that the Intelligence Support Department has never suffered such a huge loss in all these years.

At first, they thought someone was targeting them, but after further investigation, they found that it was not someone targeting them, but rather that these were all genuine accidents.

These people are really unlucky.

So where did this misfortune originate? It's clearly this equally unlucky research staff member.

Therefore, the file was kept secret and shelved.

(End of this chapter)