You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

Chapter 239 The East Prepares for the First Formal Contact (15k)

That afternoon, sunlight streamed in obliquely through the large south-facing window, casting a bright, shimmering streak across the white sheets.

Christopher leaned against the headboard, his back supported by a pillow. The gauze on his legs had been changed once. Director Zhou had cleaned the wound very thoroughly, and the redness and swelling around the sutures had subsided by about half compared to this morning.

But he couldn't sit still.

He picked up the Chinese newspaper that Xiao Sun had left behind, flipped through it, but couldn't recognize a single word, so he put it back.

Then, he lifted a corner of the blanket, looked at his left leg, and gently pressed the suture site with his finger through the gauze. It hurt, but it was better than in the morning.

He pulled the blanket back over himself.

There are several ginkgo trees outside the window, their leaves half yellow. A bird perches on a branch, shakes its wings, and flies away.

Christopher stared at the trees for about three minutes.

Then he turned back to look at the door.

The door was still the same door, but it was closed.

He had been awake for a long time; it was afternoon now.

Since he moved in around 9 a.m., apart from Xiao Sun bringing him lunch once and Director Zhou checking on him once, no one has come to see him.

To be precise, no one came to him to discuss work.

The nurse came and took his blood pressure and temperature. Director Zhou came and explained the postoperative care instructions. When Xiao Sun came, she brought a bowl of wontons and a dish of pickled vegetables. She sat by the bed and watched him finish the wontons, then cleaned up the dishes and left, saying she would come back in the afternoon.

That's all.

Christopher pulled the pillow up a little higher.

He waited for a whole day.

From last night at the consulate, to landing this morning, and now until sometime this afternoon, he has been waiting the whole way.

Because he believed what Xiao Sun said last night, he went to sleep first.

This morning he believed what Director Zhou said and decided to treat his leg first.

But now, even though his leg has been treated, he's eaten, and he's slept, he's still waiting here.

The people from the East transported him all the way from Seattle to this place, spending so much effort, so many people, and so much money, and then they put him in this ward, gave him a clean bed, a bowl of wontons, a thermos, and that was it.

Shouldn't there be a "then"? A voice in his head asked.

He waited for the door to open, for someone to come in, take out a confidentiality agreement, and tell him which city and platform his project was operating on, how many people were in the research team, how much the budget was, and how the timetable was arranged.

He had even prepared what he was going to say in his mind beforehand.

But no one came to talk to him.

The door opened again.

It was lunchtime when Xiao Sun came in, carrying a thermal lunchbox.

The lunchbox was a three-layered type, with a stainless steel inner liner and an outer plastic shell that was off-white. She placed the lunchbox on the bedside table and unscrewed the lid. The first layer contained blanched bok choy, the second layer contained stir-fried shrimp, and the third layer contained rice and a small bowl of pork rib soup.

"How do your legs feel now?"

"That's good," Christopher said.

He put his hand back on the blanket.

Xiao Sun sat down on the edge of the bed. She changed into a pair of canvas shoes, which made no sound. When she came in, there was only the sound of her clothes rubbing together.

She unscrewed the thermos, poured half a cup of water for Christopher, and pushed it within his reach.

"Miss Sun."

"Um.

""

"There's something I'd like to ask."

"Please speak."

Christopher rubbed his fingers together under the blanket again, then he put his right hand on the blanket and placed it on his knee.

"I've been here for almost a day, why hasn't anyone come to talk to me about work yet?"

Xiao Sun was stunned for a moment.

Her expression was somewhat puzzled, as if she was trying to recall if she had forgotten something. She placed the lunchbox she was holding on the bedside table and then looked up at Christopher.

"Professor, you mean—you feel like someone is pressuring you?"

Christopher nodded, then paused for a moment, and shook his head.

"No, it's that I feel I need to start working instead of continuing to lie in this bed waiting for my stitches to be removed."

Xiao Sun thought back for a moment.

"Professor, didn't I say that when I picked you up from the airport this morning?"

"What?"

"According to procedure, you will need to be hospitalized for the next few days to get your leg treated and familiarize yourself with the environment here."

"Work and such things aren't urgent, and I haven't received any instructions from above regarding the arrangement of experiments."

Christopher stared at her for several seconds.

What does "no instructions" mean?

"No instructions means no instructions. All the arrangements I've received are for you to be hospitalized and recover. We'll proceed with the next step once your leg is better. There's no rush."

Christopher's reaction was strong.

It wasn't the kind of angry outburst; he first lifted his shoulders, pressing them closer to the pillow, then tilted his head forward slightly, bounced his back against the wall, and then leaned forward, supporting himself on either side of the mattress with his hands.

"Not in a hurry?"

He repeated the word, his voice rising in pitch.

"Ms. Sun, do you know what those people in the Pfizer labs are doing right now?"

"They already have a semi-finished product in hand, which has entered the clinical stage. The data from the Phase I clinical trial will be submitted as an interim report in a few months, while my core technology is still all here."

He patted his head, tapped his temples twice with his fingers.

"If they're late, oh no, I mean if we're late."

"Even if they are only one day late, they will have to register the indications and dosage form patents first. When we try to enter the market, we will have to go around them and will be at least a year behind them."

"I know you are very patient and resourceful, but the FDA's patent office is not a place for patience; whoever files first gets the upper hand."

"The assistants who worked with me in Pfizer's lab were constantly being pushed for progress every few months."

"If we fall behind schedule, the lawyers in the patent layout team can send me more than a dozen emails a day, asking when I can add the experimental data. After asking, they will remind me that every day I am late, Pfizer's annual report will be missing a pipeline."

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he spoke, and the muscles around his eyes remained tense.

As he finished speaking, he swallowed hard, lowered his eyes, looked at his right hand on his knee, and couldn't help but rub his fingers together.

"I wasted too much time."

He spoke in a much lower voice when he said this, no longer in the tone of arguing with someone.

"So we can't waste a single day now."

He finished speaking, but his breathing hadn't completely calmed down yet.

Xiao Sun dragged the chair forward a little.

"professor."

"Um.

""

"Let's put work aside for now. I'd like to ask you a question: what were you thinking when you said those things just now?"

Christopher looked at her.

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is—"

Xiao Sun looked directly at him.

"I understand the reason you just gave me: to secure patents and prevent Pfizer from gaining the upper hand. But I feel that you mean more than just that."

Her hands rested on her knees, as if waiting for an answer that even she herself hadn't fully guessed.

"Well, you've only been in the country for less than a day, and no one from the consulate to the airport to the hospital has been urging you to hurry up."

"When Director Zhou examined you this morning, he didn't ask you when you started working."

Are you in a hurry to inflict heavy losses on Pfizer?

Christopher opened his mouth.

Then it closed its eyes.

He looked out the window; the ginkgo leaves were still swaying there.

He wanted to say something, but when the words reached his lips, he realized they weren't quite right.

He meant that, of course, he wanted to get ahead of Pfizer.

He wanted those bastards who were using his data to see in their annual reports the same experiment suddenly presented with a patent barrier from the East.

He wanted the lawyers in the legal department to email him, "Excuse me, Professor Christopher, would you mind if we purchased a license from you?"

I want to see the projects I lead become actual drugs in my lifetime.

But these don't seem to be the most important things.

He rubbed the tip of his nose with the back of his hand.

"I can't really explain it clearly either."

He spoke much slower than before, as if he was thinking as he spoke.

"Old Li told me at the logging camp that I should make Pfizer regret it."

"That sentence worked for me at the time, it worked very well, because at that time the only emotion I could grasp was hatred."

"If I don't hate Pfizer, I'll hate Coyotes."

He paused for a moment.

"It's better to hate Pfizer than coyotes. Hating Pfizer can bring me back to life, while hating coyotes will only turn me into a mentally unstable lunatic."

"So after Lao Li said that last night, I made hating Pfizer my reason for living."

"But after Director Zhou finished his rounds and left this morning, I lay on this bed alone for two hours and realized something: hating Pfizer is no longer enough."

"I won't go into details about the arrangements you made to rescue me, but I did see a lot of things myself."

"What Dr. Zhou told me was something I never would have imagined before."

He paused, then glanced at his left leg.

"He said medical insurance is universal, and I asked about medicine. He said that drug prices are negotiated with pharmaceutical companies, and some prices cannot be reduced, but at least they are trying to make treatment more affordable for more people."

"I've worked at Pfizer for so many years and I've never heard of such a practice."

He stopped and took a breath.

"I have a lot of lab formulation data, even for drugs outside of my current research, in my head. You can take a lot of that data for your own use."

"Whoever holds the pricing power for the targeted drugs made from these vectors can decide how many people can use them."

"The first thing Pfizer did after obtaining the patent was not to accelerate clinical trials, but to develop a pricing model."

"When they were developing the pricing model, they had a department called the Market Access Strategy Department. I also participated in several review meetings. What they were looking at was how much to sell a course of treatment to maximize the unit gross profit."

"Before I came here, I thought you wanted my skills and the data in my head."

"Then let me help you develop a new drug."

"Then you can do the same thing, raise prices, make money, just like other pharmaceutical companies."

"I planned to hand over the technical skills when I decided to come; I even handed over my laptop."

He paused for a moment.

"But now it seems that this is not what you intend to do."

"You haven't made me sign anything yet, and you haven't sent anyone to negotiate with me."

He looked up at Xiao Sun, and the slight confusion in his expression didn't seem feigned.

"You didn't ask me anything, you just told me to focus on healing my leg first."

"Then what is the point of you recruiting me?"

"I've figured it out this morning. What you want is to integrate the carrier technology into your own medical insurance system, and then you won't need to negotiate with Pfizer anymore."

"Lyon told me that the East was a place he would go no matter what he had to sell his possessions to get there."

"I didn't understand at the time. Wasn't he a native-born white American? Was he cooperating with you for this? I thought he was joking."

"But now that I see it, I want to start working."

"It's because—I think you should get this."

"This country deserves this patent, it deserves this technology to treat people."

"With so many people in your country, if this drug could be included in your medical insurance, many more people could benefit from it."

He paused again, then said, "I don't know how to say it. I'm not good at saying these things. I'm grateful that you saved me, that's partly true, but not the most important thing."

"I just feel like there's no time left."

"The United States doesn't deserve it. You do. You deserve it, so we have to start now."

Xiao Sun fell silent.

She pushed the insulated lunchbox back in front of him.

"Are you finished speaking?"

"That's all."

"Let's eat first."

"I've said everything, and you still want me to eat?"

"Eat first." She took the chopsticks off the lid of the lunchbox and handed them to him.

"You eat while I make the call," she said.

"I will relay your thoughts to my superiors verbatim."

"But you don't need to worry. The people above have definitely considered the time, patents, and lead time that you mentioned. They started thinking about these things much earlier than you did."

"Since they haven't consulted you yet, it means they think there's still time for you to recover."

She stood up, walked to the window, and slightly pulled back the curtains to let the sunlight shine on the foot of Christopher's bed.

"But since you're in such a hurry, I'll make a trip right now."

She tightened the lid of the thermos and put it in the canvas bag by the bedside.

I will get back to you within an hour.

She walked to the door and turned back.

"Professor, could you repeat what you just said, the last sentence?"

Which sentence?

"You should get this."

"Yes, you should get this."

"6

"Yes, we should get this."

Xiao Sun opened the door and gently closed it.

A resettlement site in a certain district of Shanghai.

It was in the afternoon, around 5 or 6 pm, and there was a faint, fresh scent of laundry detergent in the room.

The laundry detergent smells like the most ordinary kind, with the smell of soap and the dry, clean scent left after the fabric has been dried in the sun.

The curtains were half-drawn, and the afternoon sunlight was cut into a strip, falling on the wood grain of the wooden floor between the two single beds.

There were two single beds separated by a bedside table, on which sat two cups of tea, still steaming.

The bedding on the bed was light gray and neatly folded, but there were dents on the pillows from previous sleeps.

Old Bill is examining an electric kettle.

-

He sat in a chair by the window, the kettle lid off, his fingers running around the heating plate before turning the kettle over to look at the contacts on the base.

"This kind of kettle sells for twenty yuan at Walmart in our area, but it starts to leak after three months of use."

He put the kettle back on the table. "This one is different. The heating plate is made of stainless steel, and the base contacts are made of copper. It can last for more than five years."

Arthur sat on the bed at the back, leaning against the wall, with a neatly folded blanket draped over his legs. The blanket was light gray and the edges were not pilled.

"You've been looking at that pot for ten minutes now," Arthur said.

"I'm just checking their manufacturing standards." Old Bill put the lid on the kettle and turned it on.

"You also checked the toilet tank, window seals, door handles, and the grout in the floor tiles."

"The grouting is done well."

"William."

"Um.

""

We arrived less than twelve hours ago.

"You'll only see it when you get there."

Old Bill turned his chair around to face Arthur.

"They put us in this room and didn't send anyone to watch us."

"There are no guards in the outside corridor and no barbed wire downstairs. This kind of arrangement is completely different from the FBI's safe house."

He held up one finger.

"The FBI's safe house has sealed windows, security guards at the door, tapped phones, and cameras in every room."

Then he raised his second finger.

"There's nothing here. They just left us here, gave us two beds, a TV, and a kettle, and then they left."

"So you're checking if they've planted a listening device in the kettle?"

"no."

Old Bill lifted the lid of the kettle and looked at the boiling water.

"I just want to confirm how long this pot will last."

From his angle, Arthur could see a small patch of sky and a few roadside trees outside the window.

Sunlight streamed in through the window, and he moved closer to it, then smoothed out the blanket on his legs and gazed outside for a long time.

"We didn't see a single tent along the way last night."

"Um.

""

"I didn't see a single abandoned RV."

"Um."

"Do you know what I noticed first?"

"What?"

"All the streetlights are on."

Arthur's fingers hovered over the edge of the blanket as he said this.

He paused.

"Last night, every street light from the dock to this road was on; not a single one was broken."

"Anything else?"

"There is no graffiti on the roadside."

Old Bill stood up, walked to the window, and looked out alongside Arthur.

Downstairs is a street of moderate width, with gray square bricks paving the sidewalk.

"I've noticed everything you mentioned." Old Bill pulled the curtains open a little.

Arthur folded the blanket and placed it next to the pillow, then stood up and walked to the window to look down.

"I wanted to ask him last night in the car: was the young man who picked us up a soldier or not?"

Don't ask questions you shouldn't ask.

The two were silent for a moment, then both laughed.

"Do you remember what happened last night?" Arthur asked.

"I remember," old Bill said.

"What can you still remember now?"

"Last night, around 11 p.m., I was still counting logs in the warehouse."

The air in the lower compartment was stuffy.

The logs piled up in the cargo hold emitted a strange smell of wet wood mixed with diesel fuel.

Bill Gates had worked at Thor for over twenty years and was used to the purified air in the lab, so he was particularly sensitive to this smell.

Arthur, on the other hand, was used to it; he had worked in Boeing's factories and smelled things that smelled much worse.

A dozen days ago, Captain Zhao Jian took them out of the refrigerated food compartment and, under cover of darkness, stuffed them into the hold of the Panamanian-flagged ocean liner.

The hold is below the waterline and was originally used to store bulk cargo. The bulkheads are covered with rust, and the floor is covered with a thin layer of seagoing dunnage.

Captain Zhao gave each of them a blanket and a hard pillow, then pointed outside the door.

"Keep quiet, or someone will come to check if you get noticed."

Captain Zhao refers to the crew.

The cargo ship flies the Panamanian flag, and the crew comes from five or six countries, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Ukraine—all sorts of people.

Captain Zhao was an Asian, as was First Mate Sun Bin, but the rest of the crew were all foreigners.

These people, no matter where they come from, all have one thing in common: they work for money and don't care who's on board or who's off.

But Captain Zhao dared not take the risk. If one of the foreign crew members got drunk and wandered around, he might stumble upon two old white men squatting in the hold, and things would get complicated.

So for the past ten days or so, Old Bill and Arthur's activity area has been limited to this rectangular space of about twenty square meters in the warehouse.

The two meals a day were personally delivered by First Deputy Sun.

They come twice a day, at 5 a.m. and 9 p.m., to hand the lunchboxes down from the hatch and collect the empty lunchboxes from the previous meal.

Meals were delivered around the time of crew changes, when there were few people on deck.

The meals consisted of rice, stewed fish, and stir-fried cabbage, with the occasional braised pork.

Arthur almost cried when he first ate braised pork, because there was really nothing good to eat on the ship.

Old Bill didn't care what he ate; he spent most of his waking hours drawing formulas on wooden blocks with his fingers.

There was no paper, no pen, nothing to write on in the storage compartment, so old Bill used his index finger to draw on the surface of the wood, drawing the gyroscope calibration equations he remembered in his head.

Arthur asked him what the point of this thing was.

Old Bill said he was afraid he would forget.

He was afraid that if he didn't touch his profession for more than ten days, his mind would become dull when he arrived at the destination. He was afraid that his best skills would rust in the air at the bottom of the warehouse.

Arthur doesn't draw formulas, he draws maps.

He would draw a map of Seattle from his memory, showing the location of the apartment he lived in, the alley where his son died, and the two-minute walk from his front door to the convenience store, the one where his son was ambushed and beaten unconscious by a group of gangsters who were collecting debts.

When he got tired of drawing, he would lean against the wooden mat and sleep.

Old Bill snores in his sleep; the sound isn't loud, but it's very rhythmic.

Arthur's sleep was getting worse and worse, but he had gotten used to old Bill's snoring. Sometimes, when old Bill stopped snoring, he would wake up instead.

On the night of the thirteenth day, old Bill finished drawing the formula again, ran his hand over the area where he had drawn it, and then suddenly looked at the fingerprints he had left on the wood and said something.

"Do you think they'll give us a lab when we get there?"

Arthur thought he was talking in his sleep.

What specifications do you want?

"It doesn't need to be too fancy, just an iron table and a shockproof platform will suffice."

"Don't beg for those things now."

"I've been begging for a month or two now."

Shise rubbed his eyes.

"You're not thinking about the lab bench; you just feel like you need to get back to work."

"Yes, I am a beggar, I dare not hope for anything else."

Aren't you afraid of being disappointed?

"I won't be disappointed. I'll use whatever they give me. I brought my brain and my hands; as long as I can get the job done, that's fine."

Shi Se remained silent for a while.

I'm more timid than you.

Old Bill did not speak.

"It's not that I'm afraid of working, it's that I can't believe anyone would actually give people like us the opportunity to work."

Shise looked at the deck of the ship. "I'm just looking for a place where no one will drag my son into an alley."

The news came on the evening of the fourteenth.

When Captain Zhao delivered dinner, he squatted by the hatch, keeping his voice so low that only the bottom hold could hear it.

"Don't sleep too soundly tonight."

Shise's hand trembled, and he almost dropped his chopsticks.

Old Bill, however, remained calm, chewed and swallowed the cabbage in his mouth, and asked about the sugar supply time.

"In the middle of the night."

Late at night isn't a precise time, but there's no fixed schedule for doing this kind of thing anyway.

Old Bill didn't go back to sleep. He folded the blanket and put it aside, then sat on the wooden mat, staring blankly at the light bulb.

Shise leaned against the wooden cushion, his eyes closed, but his eyelids kept twitching, and he couldn't sleep soundly.

What happened next was much simpler than what happened to the beggars.

Around 1 a.m., the engine of the wheel slowed down.

You can hear footsteps on the deck from the hold, but not many, like crew members on night watch, nothing unusual.

Then the hatch cover was pulled open from the outside.

The lighting remained unchanged; the main lights on the deck were off, with only the red glow of the navigation lights faintly illuminating the edges of the hatches.

Captain Zhao squatted by the hatch, with three men in dark uniforms standing beside him.

The light bulb couldn't illuminate the details of the uniforms, but Arthur could see the reflective silver badges on their shoulders and the walkie-talkies clipped to their belts.

Coast Guard.

They didn't wait for the Yonglun to dock; they set sail directly, intending to intercept it at the anchorage outside the Yangtze River estuary and then pick up the passengers at 2 a.m.

No one notified the crew; only Captain Zhao and his first mate were on deck.

Old Bill went up first, and a coast guard reached out and pulled him up.

Shi Se followed behind. When he came out of the hatch, he bumped his knee on the log without making a sound, and rubbed his leg as he climbed up.

The coast guard patrol boat was moored to the port side of the cargo ship, with a safety rope between the two vessels.

The sea was pitch black, and the lights on the south bank of the Yangtze River estuary formed a line.

As Shi Se stepped over the gunwale, the wind whipped up the hair stuck to his forehead and filled his mouth with river wind.

He took a breath.

This was the first time in his life he had breathed air on land outside the United States.

"Let's go." Captain Zhao gently pushed his shoulder from behind.

Captain Zhao did not go with him.

He simply waved to the coast guard who was swearing an oath to them, and then patted old Bill on the shoulder.

We've arrived.

After disembarking from the coast guard patrol boat, they were taken indoors to the dock.

Three men in plain clothes led them through an iron gate and into a heated room.

There were four folding chairs and a long table in the room. A kettle on the table was bubbling with boiling water, and next to it were disposable paper towels, instant coffee, and several packets of compressed biscuits.

"Sit down and warm up."

One of them spoke in English.

Old Bill sat in his folding chair and warmed his hands on his knees for a while.

Arthur didn't sit down, but stood by the window, looking at the lights on the Yangtze River outside the dock.

The three men in plainclothes didn't rush them to leave, nor did they arrange for anyone to keep an eye on them.

About half an hour later, a young man came in. He was wearing a windbreaker and his hair was a little wet from the rain.

"The car is behind us, let's go."

A car was parked outside the back door.

The car was black, and Old Bill couldn't recognize the brand, but when the door opened, there were two clean blankets folded on the back seat.

Arthur got into the car first, then sat in the back and pulled the blanket up to his knees.

The driver was a man in his forties. He spoke Mandarin with a slight Jiangzhe accent and English with Eastern grammar, but he could speak it.

"You two have worked hard. It's cold outside, but the car is running. There will be hot soup noodles when you get to the dormitory."

Arthur looked out the window.

The warehouses, container yards, and gantry cranes in the dock area looked very similar to the Seattle port he had seen at Boeing, but for some reason, they seemed brighter.

The number of oath lanterns here may not be more than in Seattle, but the lanterns are lit, and there is not a single one that is ugly or bad.

"It'll probably take another hour on the road," the driver said. "You can take a nap if you want."

Old Bill didn't sleep. Neither did Shiser.

The car sped off the dock and quickly got onto the elevated highway.

Shise kept looking out the window the whole way without taking her eyes off the view.

The oath lanterns flew past one after another, their orange light flashing past the car window every few seconds, the beams jumping along the edge of the carpet.

The elevated bridge is flanked by rows of residential buildings.

Shih-se had seen it in a documentary before. It was a slab building made of prefabricated parts. It didn't have any modern aesthetics, but it was orderly and neat, with a green belt around each building.

In the early morning, only a few windows in the residential building were lit, but he could see electric bikes parked downstairs in every building. Occasionally, one bike would be parked outside the unit entrance, leaning against the barrier on the steps. The owner had probably rushed upstairs and forgotten to push it into the bike shed.

Shise turned her face toward the driver.

"Do you have separate areas for wealthy people around here?"

The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

"Where did you say?"

"that is----"

How do you express the word "仕瑟丐了丐" in English? It means "a gated community or upscale detached house with security guards, separated from ordinary residents, in an area with relatively better security."

The driver smiled.

"That's not called a rich neighborhood, it's just some more expensive houses."

"What about safety? Are the more expensive houses safer?"

"It doesn't matter," the driver said. "It's the same everywhere."

"Expensive houses are big, with gardens and property security, but as for security, unless you live in Zili, there are police stations everywhere in the city."

This answer was clearly not what Shi Se Gai asked.

"That's not what I meant. I meant that I understand there will be differences in housing prices, but I'm not asking about the price and the quality of the house."

"My question is, are there places where a person can't go out at night, places where you have to stay to avoid being bothered by gangsters, and places where you have to stay if you're poor? Do you have this distinction here?"

The driver turned the steering wheel half a turn to the right, changing the car to the right lane so that Shise could see the denser residential area beyond the green median strip on the side before he slowly began to speak.

"I know what you're asking. You're asking if there are any poor neighborhoods with particularly bad security around here, right?"

"right."

"Then there is none at all. People who don't have money can rent in older neighborhoods. Older neighborhoods usually don't have elevators, and you have to climb six floors yourself, but there are still patrol teams downstairs and security booths at the entrance."

"If you go out for a late-night snack at midnight, it's the same whether you go to an old neighborhood or a new one; there are always people on the streets."

"Are there still people here at midnight?"

"There are people everywhere: people eating late-night snacks, people going home from get off work, people coming back from night fishing, people delivering food. Every street is full of people."

"7

He added, "There are also many surveillance cameras, and police cars patrol 24 hours a day. There's also a police station nearby."

Shise turned her face back to the window.

Shops along the street flashed by one after another. The signs were all darkened in the early morning, but every few shops you could see a white-cased surveillance camera with a small blue light attached to it, flashing rhythmically.

He was quiet in the carriage for a few seconds, then spoke again.

"Is there a lot of security cameras because the crime rate is actually low? If no one is committing crimes, why are there so many security cameras?"

The driver didn't laugh at him.

"I can't answer that question, but I can tell you that our local police station has to report the crime rate to the subdistrict office every quarter. If the crime rate in a district rises for several consecutive months, the station chief will be transferred."

"The main reason for removing the cameras is to allow them to access the surveillance footage."

"Does everyone know about camera obstructions?"

"I know that, and so do thieves, which is why they don't steal, because they can easily find out by checking the surveillance footage."

Arthur opened his mouth, but didn't ask any more questions. He tucked the cushion behind his head and continued looking out the window.

Old Bill didn't say a word the whole time, but he kept looking out the other window.

The car passed a section near the industrial area. Next to the site was a semiconductor industrial park under construction. Even in the early morning, several searchlights were still on at the construction site. The concrete pump truck's support frame was still attached, and the steel frame was supported on the foundation, about three stories high.

As we continued driving, we began to see rows of factories along the roadside. Some were electronics factories with gray exteriors and brightly lit workshop windows, where we could see people working the night shift on the assembly lines. Others were research and development buildings with glass curtain walls and a logo in Chinese characters on the roof.

Old Bill turned his face toward the driver.

How many industrial parks does this city have?

"It's hard to count, there are probably at least several hundred in the entire region."

"Several hundred?"

"Anyway, if you drive for half an hour from here, there are many more, especially in Pudong, and there are countless more past the airport."

"Do your workers work 24 hours a day?"

The driver paused for a moment.

"That's not quite it. We assembly line workers usually work in shifts, and our wages are enough to live a normal life, but it is indeed very hard work, and it's not easy to save money. It's not a very good job."

Old Bill didn't ask any more questions.

He placed his hands on his knees, his fingers twitched slightly, and then he continued to stare out the window.

His original expectation was very simple: all he needed was an iron table, and with an iron table, he could get to work.

But what he saw was vast industrial zones still in operation, and workers still working on production lines in the early hours of the morning.

In Seattle, he saw that six out of ten factories were closed, surrounded by iron fences, and no one was repairing the broken glass windows.

The car was quiet for about ten minutes.

Then Shise said something that came out of nowhere.

"I wish my son had been born here."

Old Bill didn't respond. Neither did the driver. The car continued driving.

A dozen minutes later, the car turned into a quiet courtyard. There were only a few light gray buildings in the courtyard, not tall, only four or five stories high. The bricks on the ground floor were light brown permeable bricks. The sidewalks were swept clean, without a single fallen leaf.

They had been staying there for over ten hours, until the time it was blown away.

This room is their accommodation. Outside the window is a residential area of ​​Shanghai. Downstairs, someone is walking their dog on a leash. The dog runs a couple of steps and then stops. The dog owner takes a couple of steps to catch up.

Old Bill was still fiddling with the kettle, while Arthur took a sip of tea.

"How's Lyon doing?" Shiser asked.

"he?"

"Back when we were in Seattle, he thought we should come here."

"Leon knows what he's doing," old Bill said calmly.

"I'm asking what you think he's doing, not whether he knows what he's doing."

7

Old Bill thought for a moment.

"They might be using C4 to blow something up."

Shi Se paused for a second, then couldn't help but laugh. After laughing, he took another sip of tea and glanced out the window.

"That's good too."

"What's so good about it?"

"Let them bomb it, anyway, it's not this place that's going to be bombed."

Just as Shise finished saying, "Anyway, it's not here that's going to be blown up," there was a knock on the door.

"Knock knock."

Old Bill and Shisser exchanged a glance. Old Bill put down the kettle in his hand, walked over, and opened the door.

Two men were standing outside the door.

The man walking in front wore a light gray jacket, glasses, and had his hair neatly combed. He carried a black confidential folder under his arm and looked like a senior researcher who had spent half his life in the lab.

The man following behind him had a completely different aura.

He wore a dark black trench coat, was lean and wiry, and had eyes so sharp they looked like two blades were hidden in their sockets. His posture suggested he could strike at any moment.

"Mr. McIntyre, Mr. Pendleton."

The bespectacled man spoke in fluent English with a slight British accent, smiling and extending his hand, "Excuse me for disturbing your rest."

Old Bill shook hands with that hand.

"Can we go in?" The man in the trench coat asked, his English sounding a bit stiff, with a noticeable Eastern accent.

"Pu Ran." Shi Se stepped aside and pointed to the chair next to the bed.

The four people sat down in the small room.

The bespectacled technician didn't exchange pleasantries; he simply opened the folder and pulled out two sheets of paper.

"Gentlemen, in order to complete the final acceptance procedure, I need to verify a few basic professional questions with you. I hope you won't mind."

Old Bill nodded.

The technician looked at Bill McGinty: "Mr. McIntyre, regarding your leadership role at Raytheon—"

The three of them exchanged ideas.

The technician closed the clamp, and the smile on his face became much more genuine.

"Thank you very much, your identity has been confirmed."

Old Bill looked at him and frowned. "That's it? Don't you need me to give you a detailed explanation of the data on that hard drive?"

"There's a lot of Thor's unpublished low-level code in there. Without me—"

"Ah, about that hard drive."

The technician adjusted his glasses and interrupted him, "About ten days ago, right after you handed the hard drive to our contact person in Seattle, the data was already transmitted back to China via a dedicated line."

Old Bill was stunned.

"A few old guys in our institute worked overtime for several nights in a row and have completely analyzed the code and blueprints inside."

The technician's tone carried an undisguised pride.

"I must say, your ideas on noise reduction algorithms are very ingenious. We are currently preparing to conduct physical reblowing in the laboratory."

Old Bill's mouth was slightly open, and his eyes were wide open.

He turned his head, gave Shise a stiff look, and then turned back to look at the technicians.

"More than a decade ago? It was already thoroughly analyzed?"

Old Bill's voice trembled slightly, "That was a logical framework we spent three years figuring out! And you—you only used a few sleepless nights?"

"We need to concentrate our efforts on major tasks. Later, we might need to bring you over as an advisor to handle some minor issues."

The technician smiled and handed the clips to the man in the trench coat next to him. "My work is finished. My colleague will talk to you now."

The man in the trench coat took the clips and placed them on his lap, leaning forward slightly, his sharp eyes fixed on Old Bill and Shise.

"Gentlemen, my name is Lao Zhang."

The man in the trench coat spoke, his tone serious, "We've come here today not only to confirm your identities, but also for another very important purpose."

Old Bill and Shisser immediately sat up straight, their expressions becoming extremely solemn.

"We need to find out more about that police officer," Old Zhang said.

The room fell silent for two seconds.

Then, old Bill took a deep breath and a fanatical expression on his face that said, "I've seen it all along."

"I knew it." Old Bill's voice was deep and filled with awe. "We're finally going to get our hands on your super ace."

Old Zhang was stunned for a moment.

He originally just wanted to do a background check on the Asian Development Bank to verify Lyon's daily life in Seattle, since there were still many blind spots in the information about this suddenly emerging "American anti-terrorism hero" in China.

"Super ace?" Old Zhang frowned.

"Stop pretending, Mr. Zhang."

Shi Se chimed in from the side, tapping the bedside table with his finger.

"We all know he is a top-notch agent trained by you. His qualities and his disguise are something that an ordinary American policeman could never possess."

Old Zhang's eye twitched. He turned to look at the technician next to him, who also looked completely bewildered.

"No, you two may have misunderstood—" Old Zhang tried to explain.

"Misunderstanding? There's no misunderstanding!"

Old Bill waved his hands excitedly, "Do you know how he operated in Seattle? He was a ruthless killing machine!"

"He single-handedly slaughtered a group of fully armed professional mercenaries in the industrial zone, leaving them all dead!"

Old Bill got more and more excited as he talked, his spittle almost flying onto Old Zhang's face.

"His tactical movements, my God, I've never seen anyone so fast in my life! He changes magazines faster than I can blink!"

"And when he fired, he didn't even blink. He was definitely trained in the icy snows of Siberia!"

Old Zhang's mouth opened slightly, and his brain began to work at lightning speed.

The intelligence about the shootout in the industrial area was known domestically, but the report stated that it was a "collective operation by the Seattle Police Department's ACU Special Operations Unit."

How did it become Leon hiring mercenaries solo in Old Bill's mouth?

Was he really that impressive at the event? Or was it just hearsay with his own twisted interpretations? Surely he couldn't have gotten that information from some unknown, exaggerated report?

"Wait a minute, Mr. McIntyre."

Old Zhang raised his hand. "That comrade—uh, that police officer, he is indeed very outstanding, but aren't you exaggerating a bit?"

"Exaggerated? Do you know how he got me out of that hellhole church?"

Arthur was also somewhat excited, gesturing with his hands towards the name of the girl.

"He asked old Bill, and then, without knowing where I was, he just deduced that I was at St. Jude Church!"

"A typical white patrol officer would probably only be able to find the RV I used to live in, and then that would be it!"

"We know this is your confidentiality measure, right? You can't say he's one of your people?"

"The two of you—"

Old Zhang wiped his face, trying to make the topic more practical.

"That officer—he is indeed an American police officer; he's a full-fledged officer with the Seattle Police Department."

"A disguise! A perfect disguise!" Old Bill said decisively.

He pointed to himself: "Me! And Shise! He's the one who used police resources to dig them out of the rubble!"

Old Zhang took a deep breath and felt his blood pressure soaring.

Before his arrival, Lyon was described domestically as "a comrade with a high degree of political identity," a target for united front work that needed to be accepted but the process should be approached with caution.

But listening to those two old men's wild rant, Lyon was practically a reincarnation of Yan Shuangying, and even took on the role of political commissar.

Old Zhang and the technicians looked at each other in bewilderment.

The technician silently held the folder to his chest.

Old Zhang remained silent for a full half minute.

"I see."

Old Zhang stood up, straightened the collar of his trench coat, and his expression became more serious than ever before.

"The information you two provided is very valuable. You can rest now. We will come back to you if needed."

Old Bill and Arthur also stood up, and Old Bill stepped forward and tightly grasped Old Zhang's hand.

"Mr. Zhang, please be sure to give our regards to—uh, that officer."

Old Bill, with tears in his eyes, said, "Tell him he did a fantastic job. We're waiting for his triumphant return in the East!"

Old Zhang's lips twitched violently twice.

"I—I will pass it on."

Old Zhang flung open the door as if fleeing, and quickly led the technicians out of the room.

In the corridor.

The technician wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and looked at Old Zhang.

"Director Zhang—this—this policeman, what exactly is his oath?"

Old Zhang leaned against the wall in the corridor, took a cigarette out of his pocket, put it in his mouth, but didn't light it.

He looked at the floral pattern.

"I should have known, but I pretended not to."

Old Zhang silently complained to himself: I'm really convinced that he might actually be RayFong.

Then Old Zhang shook his head, "In any case, we should proceed according to the original plan."

Old Zhang didn't explain this to the technicians, but he was actually referring to the plan to arrange for personnel to directly connect with Lyon.

Seattle, at the intersection of 11th and 10th Streets, 3:40 AM.

A Ford Crown Victoria, so dirty that its original paint was unrecognizable, was parked on the side of the road. The engine was off, the window was rolled down halfway, and three people were sitting inside.

Dane, in the driver's seat, was chewing a toothpick, his left hand on the steering wheel, his right hand resting next to the iced Americano on the shelf, his eyes half-closed.

Marco, in the passenger seat, held a pair of binoculars, his elbow resting on the window frame, and sighed impatiently as he looked through them.

"We've been squatting here for forty minutes," said Chiara in the back row, as Shan unscrewed and screwed the lens cap off his SLR camera.

"I think it's forty-two minutes," Dane said.

"Thank you, Dane, forty-two minutes." Chiara unscrewed the lens cap again. "What exactly were we watching?"

Marco lowered the binoculars and rubbed his eyes.

"Good question, a very good question."

He adjusted his seat back a notch, reclining himself, and then handed the binoculars to the back row.

"Look for yourself, across the street, in front of the mosque, that shabby food cart with the 'Halal Lamb Soup' sign, see it?"

Kiara took the binoculars and pressed her face against the car window.

"I see, there are people in line, homeless people."

"Yes, the homeless are queuing up. Have you ever seen homeless people in any city line up to receive welfare? No pushing, no cursing, no one cutting in line?"

Kiara adjusted the comb.

"It was indeed very orderly; the queue stretched from the dining car window all the way to the fire hydrant."

"It's just too neat. That's what we need to investigate. Someone told us that there is a suspected illegal organization in this area organizing homeless people to gather suspiciously."

Marco gestured with his fingers through the precious air, then placed his hands back on his knees.

"Suspicious gathering," he repeated.

Kiara lowered the binoculars.

"Who assigned this task?"

Marco rested his head on the headrest, staring at the gray velvet hanging down from the roof.

"Do you know how powerful my intelligence network is? I think the original source of this 'bragging' job was the mayor's office."

"The mayor's office?" Kiara raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, it should be Reynolds himself. It's said that his strategist Finch, who was in charge of administration, blew up this lamb stand a while ago when he was monitoring the homeless population in the West End."

"I don't know how Ju Tang got so popular. Maybe some office worker saw a video of some streamer, or maybe satellites captured a picture of too many people queuing up."

"In short, Finch must have felt that something was off about this stall, because the homeless people in other parts of the West Side were in complete chaos, but this area was like a military base."

"Mayor, I suspect you're worried this is some kind of political ploy, like someone using homeless people to organize rallies or create publicity stunts, or worse, some rival secretly building up grassroots voter bases."

"So the mayor sent Finch to investigate?"

"right."

"and then?"

"Then Finch probably handed the job over to some department in the police headquarters, like the investigation department."

Chiara placed the camera on her lap.

"Why didn't the police headquarters dispatch officers directly?"

"I'm not sure. It could be because Finch didn't make it a formal police task, or it could be because there are fees for patrolling."

Marco gave a wry smile.

"Monitoring homeless people's stalls, at best, is a waste of police resources; at worst, if the media catches the police harassing a charity lamb stall, do you know what the headlines will say?"

"The city government used police force to suppress private charities."

"Reynolds' poll numbers are already falling, and he can't afford to lose any more."

2

Kiara nodded slowly.

"and then?"

"According to the publicly available government spending data I found online, the investigation department's budget has been slashed to almost nothing."

.

"They're bragging that they don't even have money to fix the coffee machine in their own office. I saw this on Twitter from a police officer in the investigation department. He also complained that after receiving Finch's assignment, his supervisor glanced at the budget and just dumped it on the field coordination team."

"Should the field coordination team be pushed down further?"

"correct."

Marco raised a finger.

"The field coordination team said this matter does not fall under emergency policing and can be outsourced to an external investigation company."

"They wrote an outsourcing application, attached Finch's original document, and sent it to a security consulting firm with which they had a contractual relationship."

Kiara started to laugh.

"What do you mean by 'security consulting company'?"

"The security consulting firm glanced at the task description: conduct a background check and behavioral monitoring of the operator of the lamb distribution point outside the West District Mosque," and concluded that the matter involved neither trade secrets nor insurance fraud, so it wasn't worth sending their senior investigators.

"So they re-sang on the outsourcing platform and added a label."

"Then someone answered."

"Yes, an organization calling itself the 'National Pioneer Investigation Agency' took the case."

"Then the boss of this firm glanced at the tender documents and found that the quoted price had been reduced to only eight hundred US dollars by the first few layers of commission, which was not even enough to cover the electricity bill for his office. So he posted the task on a freelance platform."

"As for how I knew about the last few floors—"

Marco paused here and looked at Dane.

Dane took the toothpick out of his mouth and flicked it into the Jane's can next to the shelf.

"Just ask the owner of that firm—because we're the ones who took this job," Dane said.

Kiara looked at Marco, then at Dane, then buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking a few times before she lifted them.

"So, you spent all your energy investigating our employer, and you actually managed to uncover the truth??"

"You mean Mayor Reynolds wanted to investigate a bowl of mutton soup, and this task went through Finch, the Police Department's Investigation Division, the Field Coordination Group, the security consulting firm, the investigation agency, and the freelance platform, and finally ended up in the hands of the three of us."

"And I also checked how many layers were removed in between."

Marco took out his phone and swiped twice.

"The original budget for the mission was $50,000."

"We only have five hundred left to go," Marco said.

"It will be divided into three installments. The first installment is only 100, and the remaining two installments are 200 each. After deducting the platform's handling fee, there will be 80 left in the first installment, which will be split among the three of us."

Kiara also sighed.

"Are you serious?"

"So now you know why I sighed." Marco Chongge picked up the binoculars.

"Okay—we're just low-level employees at a shady private detective agency whose business license is about to expire, so we can't get any work."

Kiara leaned forward. "What's wrong with that stall? We've been watching for forty minutes, and besides the queue being too orderly, what else is there?"

Marco did not answer immediately.

He positioned the binoculars on the side of the dining car, looked at them for a while, and then handed them to Chiara.

"Look at that black man maintaining order next to the food truck, wearing dark blue overalls, with a problem in his left leg, look at his gestures."

""

Kiara raised the binoculars.

The Black security guard was standing in the middle of the line, his left hand hanging naturally on his trouser seam, his right hand raised, fingers together, gesturing to a homeless man in the front of the line who was about to get too close to him to "take half a step back".

"I saw it," Kiara said.

"He moves very efficiently, unlike a security guard who was just pulled off the street."

"That's not a security guard," Marco said.

"He was giving positional instructions with hand gestures, his weight was always forward, and his body was slightly turned to the side. This posture is called tactical straddle stance, which is the standard posture used by U.S. Army infantry units when controlling crowds."

Kiara handed the binoculars to Dane, who took them, looked at them for about ten seconds, and nodded.

Marco straightened the seat a bit.

"And speaking of that team, did you notice that not a single person in the team was drunk, and not a single person looked like they were on drugs?"

"You should know about the homeless people in the West End, right? On other streets, those groups of people are either fighting or singing hymns to the oath lamps."

"But the people in this team are at least mentally alert."

"How did they do that?"

"That's the problem."

Marco tapped the dial with his fingers.

"I just saw a homeless man try to cut in line. The black security guard just walked over, said something to him, and the man immediately stepped back. There was no arguing or shoving."

"This means that either they have eliminated unqualified people through internal discipline, or they have some kind of deterrent force that prevents homeless people from causing trouble."

Kiara remained silent for a few seconds.

What kind of deterrent force could make a group of desperate homeless people line up obediently?

"I'm not sure," Marco said.

After a full ten seconds of silence, Dane spoke again.

"So this is a job that was passed on to us six layers of political task before it finally fell into our hands. The target is a mutton soup charity stall that looks suspicious and is full of signs of professional planning."

"The only equipment the three of us had was a pair of binoculars that cost four hundred yuan, a DSLR camera with an excessively loud shutter, and a beat-up car that was almost out of gas."

Marco turned to look at him.

"That's a very insightful summary. Do you have any suggestions?"

"Get out of the car." Dane pushed open the car door.

"Go directly to those homeless people and ask them what happened."

Marco and Chiara exchanged a glance.

Kiara shrugged.

Anyway, it's five hundred yuan in total.

Marco stuffed the binoculars into the glove box and opened the car door.