I started with a ship full of max-level veterans, and I'm just a complete noob.

Jiang Ming got into Director Wang's jeep, opened the pastry box he had bought in Dongdan, handed two walnut shortbreads to Comrade Song, and then looked at the interrogation records spread out under the windshield.

The paper lists the Xi'an Railway Station freight yard, the old locomotive depot, the academic materials transfer car, and three temporary rendezvous points. Several lines are circled in red pencil, and the dates all fall around the time of the important symposium of the Fifth Academy.

Director Wang lit a cigarette, opened the car window a crack, and the ash fell into a small metal box he carried with him.

"The fake maintenance worker revealed a contact person codenamed Nanfeng, who was responsible for getting the technicians' schedules into the No. 5 system. He was quite selective about where he worked, specifically targeting academic exchange meetings, foreign language archives, and expert guesthouses."

Jiang Ming flattened the pastry box along the creases, making room for his knees, and took the interrogation record to read it line by line.

The confession lacked Nanfeng's real name, only his height, accent, and items used during several handovers: old periodicals, railway freight ticket stubs, and a wooden box that had contained instrument parts.

Who were the people he interacted with?

"The list is at the bottom. It includes the Institute of Mechanics, the Institute of Materials Science, the Institute of Physics, and the Fifth Academy. Many people have only met the clerks who delivered the materials, and the meetings were brief."

Jiang Ming turned to the list page, first circling with a pencil the people who could access foreign language files, and then marking the positions that controlled the experts' schedules, vehicle dispatch, and equipment entry and exit times.

Purely technical researchers were placed on the periphery, while those responsible for data collection and transmission, translation and liaison, guesthouse registration, and railway transportation were designated as key personnel.

Director Wang looked at the circles on the paper and flicked away the cigarette ash.

"You released a few key academic staff members first?"

"They may have the technical details, but they may not be clear about the whole process. The No. 5 system needs nodes. People who only know a formula have limited value. People who can connect the formula, personnel and transportation time are suitable for liaison."

Director Wang wrote this sentence down in his notebook. The car quieted down, with only the grinding sound of gears meshing as the driver shifted gears.

Jiang Ming continued to look at the old railway dispatch records. The departure times of several freight trains had been modified. On the surface, it was a temporary delay caused by equipment maintenance, but the actual stopping points were close to three abandoned branch lines.

In his previous life, he had been involved in factory logistics transformation and knew that freight systems often reserved abandoned lines as shunting, yielding, and temporary storage areas. The official timetable only recorded the main line operation, and short-distance movements on branch lines were easy to avoid inspection.

"Check these three places."

Jiang Ming connected three lines between the old locomotive depot in Xi'an, the material warehouse in the eastern suburbs, and the small freight yard in the western part of the city.

"They may not be passengers meeting the train; they might put the documents in the equipment box, go with the freight car to the abandoned line first, and then take them away when the shunting operator changes the trailer. The official freight documents only show the origin and destination."

Director Wang looked at the two plainclothes officers in the front row seats.

"Go to the railway bureau to retrieve freight documents, focusing on checking shunting records for abandoned branch lines, empty container returns, and temporary carriage changes, instead of just looking at the passenger list."

After getting off the train, the two went their separate ways. One went to the railway bureau, and the other went to the Xi'an internal liaison office. The old network in the interrogation records began to shrink from a few vague connection points to traceable transportation routes.

At this moment, the jeep was parked near the side gate of the materials institute. Director Wang was waiting for a duty roster that had just been delivered, so the driver moved the car to the shade of a tree.

A service officer in a gray uniform approached carrying a thermos. He first asked the guard which vehicle needed water, then walked around to the back of the jeep and slowed down.

Jiang Ming was discussing the upper-level monsoon data for Jiuquan, only mentioning wind direction conversion and altitude. The person outside the car heard half a sentence through the glass, then put the water bottle on the steps and pretended to fix the cork.

Comrade Song saw his actions clearly in the rearview mirror, pressed his palm down on the notebook, wrote a line in the time column, and noted down the material number on the uniform collar.

After the officer left, Director Wang turned to look at Comrade Song.

"Have you seen him before?"

"I saw him once last month when he was transporting foreign language documents. His job was to provide drinking water. Today, this vehicle did not have a water supply sign."

Director Wang stubbed out his cigarette, added the internal duty roster of the materials institute to the interrogation report, and expanded the monitoring scope from the outer railway nodes to the inside of the technical units.

Jiang Ming only saw the number recorded by Comrade Song and could not yet determine the other party's identity, so he listed this item as unusually close and reminded the subsequent investigation to avoid alerting the other party.

Inside the materials department building, the service officer walked through two corridors and wrote down the half-sentence he had overheard on the back of the material requisition form, leaving only the words "Northwest weather" and "altitude conversion".

He stuffed the paper into the compartment of the thermos flask base, intending to deliver it to the designated contact point in the afternoon, but the contact person never showed up by the time the shift ended.

After the railway's external liaisons went unanswered, the backup communication procedures of System 5 were activated, and a group of previously dormant shortwave transmitters were switched to temporary frequency bands.

At the same moment, a military report from Aksai No. 3 direction finding station was sent into the vehicle. Lu Qinghe noted on the last page that periodic stray pulses appeared in the 22 to 24 GHz monitoring band, and some short frames were covered by broadband noise.

Jiang Ming arranged the waveform summaries by time and found that the noise appeared around the same time as the start of the backup communication frequency band in the city, but the two were separated by frequency and distance. The current evidence was only enough to confirm that the interference had intensified.

He took out a slide rule, estimated the stray pulse repetition frequency based on the paper feed speed, and calculated the narrow window that could be avoided based on the existing passband of the Aksai receiver.

"Return the signal to station number 3, move the main receiving channel up one decision window, and retain a low-gain monitoring branch in the original frequency band to see if the interference follows the movement."

Comrade Song received the instructions and, in accordance with the Class A communication format, broke them down into three items: equipment adjustment, record preservation, and reporting time limits, and sent them to the military duty room.

Half an hour later, Aksai replied to confirm that the frequency band shift was feasible. The three communication memoranda used the joint numbering of the Fifth Academy Military Line, the Institute of Physics, and the 502 equipment allocation code, respectively, and only retained the necessary interfaces between them.

Jiang Ming checked the scope of the received documents one by one to confirm that the subsequent diffusion furnace components, silicon wafer samples and direction finding data could avoid the currently exposed old railway connection nodes.

Director Wang turned to the last page of the interrogation report, his finger hovering over several dates.

"Do you think it's just a coincidence that the fake maintenance worker always seems to be involved in parameter reviews and component deliveries?"

Jiang Ming wrote down the five academy's freezing point, Aksai interference, and railway branch line activities on the same piece of paper, with the three time periods overlapping too much.

"The actions of the No. 5 system may serve the same window. They may not have mastered the technical details, but they know when to take action that is most likely to cause the progress to get out of control."

With only 48 hours left until the Fifth Academy's plenary meeting, data, personnel, transportation, and communication are all under pressure. Any loophole could drag the technical dispute into organizational chaos.

Director Wang looked at the newly delivered railway telegram. The two plainclothes officers had already found temporary passage records for three abandoned branch lines over the past two months, one of which used a material transfer number that had already been cancelled.

He arranged investigations non-stop, and the water in the teacup, which had been sitting since morning, was now reduced to a layer of cold tea leaves at the bottom.

"These days, even drinking a cup of hot tea requires planning. Arresting people takes more time than solving your equations."

Jiang Ming handed over the remaining half of the jujube paste pastry from the pastry box.

"Have something to eat first, and then you can have a proper meal at the cafeteria after the boxes on the abandoned line have been checked."

Director Wang took the pastry, took a bite, and continued reading the notes. The tense atmosphere in the car eased slightly, and Comrade Song put the last security communication memorandum into the envelope.

Outside the window, a tall, thin man in a trench coat walked past from the direction of the materials department, carrying a stack of foreign language files with worn-out edges.

He walked straight across the intersection and headed toward the office building of the Institute of Mechanics where Qian Xuesen worked. The security guard checked his ID and immediately let him through.

Through the car window, Jiang Ming saw the name tag on the case file; the three characters "Guo Yonghuai" were clearly displayed in the sunlight.