Chapter 138 Intelligence Transmission
The next morning.
An elderly white man with gray hair, wearing a gray tracksuit, is jogging in the morning.
He jogged past the university dormitory where Alex lived, looked up, and his gaze swept over a red shirt hanging on a balcony.
Then, without stopping or making any unnecessary movements, he left the dormitory area at his original pace.
He ran all the way to a public area called Volunteer Park a few blocks away.
There stood an old community bulletin board.
The white man took out a simple, slightly creased piece of paper he had prepared beforehand from his pocket—a missing cat notice—and pinned it to the bottom left corner of the notice board with a red thumbtack.
He then turned around and continued jogging away.
Time passed, and it was nine o'clock in the morning.
A Black garbage collector wearing a fluorescent yellow reflective vest, pushing a cleaning cart, and holding a broom swept up in front of the notice board.
He frowned as he glanced at the little GG, then reached out and tore it off, crumpled it into a ball, and swept it into the dustpan as if it were trash.
At noon, the Black cleaner sat on a park bench and ordered a fast food delivery using his phone.
After the food was delivered, he clicked "confirm receipt" on the app and gave it a five-star rating and a review.
The perspective shifts to the office of an import and export trading company.
A white manager, dressed in a dark blue tailored suit and tie, sat in front of a computer.
He seemed to be ordering takeout as well. He swiped the mouse and clicked on the same takeout restaurant as the black cleaner from before, and saw the five-star review for that takeout.
Then, he picked up the landline on the table and dialed a number.
Shortly afterward, a classical piece of music of a certain length was played on the hour during the GG segment of a local, obscure Seattle radio station.
The music was received in a corner of the campus.
A white homeless man, dressed in tattered cotton clothes and pushing a shopping cart full of recyclables, walked up to a bench next to the school gate and sat down.
Beside him was a bulging old backpack containing a high-sensitivity, full-band radio scanner that was in operation.
It is monitoring for any unusual encrypted radio signals within a 200-meter radius.
Meanwhile, an Asian student carrying a backpack and wearing a baseball cap began riding a mountain bike at a steady pace around the streets and buildings surrounding the school.
His gaze swept across both sides of the street, observing whether there were any unfamiliar vans with completely blacked-out windows parked nearby, or whether any muscular, strange men were lingering in inappropriate places for extended periods.
Half an hour later, the white homeless man stood up and left the bench.
As he passed a particular green trash can, he casually tossed in a half-finished pink Monster Energy drink bottle, an action that was captured by someone hidden in the shadows.
On the other side, an international student on a bicycle stopped at the intersection, took out his phone, and posted a status on Twitter: "Going for a bike ride to exercise, feels great."
The accompanying picture is an ordinary street scene.
The white manager of the import and export trading company who had apparently ordered takeout earlier saw this tweet on his phone.
A few minutes later, he posted a tweet from his account showing afternoon tea sandwiches and coffee.
After the tweet was posted, a Black janitor in a dark blue janitor's uniform, pushing a large garbage truck and sweeping the campus of the University of Washington, took out his phone.
He glanced at the screen, then pushed the garbage cart toward the grove of trees inside the wall.
He rummaged around in the mud for a moment and retrieved the package that Alex had wrapped tightly in a waterproof bag.
He stuffed the package into a compartment at the bottom of the trash can, finished sweeping up the fallen leaves nearby, and then pushed the cart away from the scene.
After finishing his shift, the Black janitor left the school and went to a nearby subway station.
He stored the package in a public locker at the subway station and locked it.
He then went into the men's restroom in the subway station, entered the innermost stall, and used a piece of transparent tape to stick a piece of paper with the locker's combination code written on it directly below the toilet tank.
Several more hours passed.
A mall cleaner wearing a gray overalls walked into the men's restroom of the subway station.
He went straight into the cubicle, took the note from under the water tank, then walked to the public locker, entered the password to open the locker, and took out the package containing the hard drive.
The next day during the day.
Alex was walking to his 8 a.m. class with his backpack on.
On the only way to the teaching building, he passed the second red fire hydrant, his gaze sweeping over it.
A piece of chewed gum was firmly stuck to the side of the metal cover of the fire hydrant.
A piece of chewed gum was firmly stuck to the side of the metal cover of the fire hydrant.
……
Seattle, an unassuming corner convenience store.
A young man dressed in plain clothes, who looked like an ordinary embassy clerk, walked out of the embassy gate as usual and came to a 24-hour convenience store on the street.
He bought a hot coffee and while he was queuing to pay, a jogger wearing a hoodie and looking down at his phone squeezed past him.
The two did not exchange any eye contact, and even physical contact was so slight as to be negligible.
But in that split second of misalignment, next to the coffee receipt in the clerk's pocket, there appeared a small bag wrapped in a transparent waterproof film.
A few minutes later, the cup of coffee was brought back to the embassy building, which was under close surveillance by American intelligence agencies.
Inside the embassy, in a reinforced office with wireless signals completely blocked and curtains tightly drawn.
The only sound in the air was the hum of the server fans.
"Got it."
The young man placed the items on the table, then left the room, closing the heavy soundproof door behind him.
There are three people in the room.
Sitting behind the desk was Shen Weiguo, whose official title was Cultural Counselor, but in reality, he was the core coordinator of intelligence work in this region.
He was in his early fifties, wearing old-fashioned black-rimmed glasses, and was holding a chipped enamel mug, staring at the sliver of light filtering through the crack in the window.
Opposite him was a woman with short, neat hair, Lin Lan, who was in charge of maintaining the field network.
There was also a young man sitting in the corner, fiddling with a computer that was completely offline. He was Qin Mo, the embassy's top technical expert.
"Was it the international student who brought in?" Qin Mo asked.
"Yes. It's coming in through the cleaning lines we installed outside."
"To deliver this, the layers of hidden sentries outside must have passed through at least six hands, so it would never be traced back to the embassy," Lin Lan replied.
"Xiao Qin, take a look at what's in here." Shen Weiguo pushed the hard drive over.
Qin Mo took the hard drive, skillfully plugged in the adapter, and a dense directory of files appeared on the screen.
"The folder structure is intact, and no known tracking backdoors or logic bombs have been detected." Qin Mo's fingers flew across the keyboard, his eyes focused.
Next, based on the verification code sent from China, he quickly ran a small program.
"File header verification passed, MD5 value matches perfectly... The data volume is large, containing a large number of low-level C++ source code fragments and complex algorithm models."
"The directory structure shows that this is indeed the core test data from Raytheon's outsourced laboratory, and many parameters are military-grade."
After listening to the report, Shen Weiguo put down his enamel mug and turned his gaze to the note in Lin Lan's hand. She had just found it in her package, which contained a hard drive and a note that Alex had slipped inside.
"What did Alex write on it?"
Lin Lan unfolded the note, which contained Alex's somewhat messy handwriting, clearly written under extreme tension.
"Alex said he has continued to maintain contact with Leon Vance as instructed."
Lin Lan read the contents of the note aloud in a straightforward manner:
"Following the clues provided by old Bill, Vance dug up an old man named Arthur Pendleton from a dilapidated church at an abandoned dock on the west side."
"According to Alex, his identity should be that of a former materials science expert in Boeing's Advanced Research Department, who worked on turbine blades and high-temperature alloys."
"When Vance found him, the old man was on the verge of death from a high fever due to pneumonia. Vance saved him with the medicine Alex had brought over, and he is now being cared for at his home."
As Lin Lan finished reading, she looked up and glanced at Shen Weiguo:
"Vance was very impatient. Alex relayed his words, saying he wanted us to get the man out as soon as possible."
"He felt that his current goals were too conspicuous, that he was surrounded by surveillance and potential threats, and that the risks were multiplying with the presence of two engineers who possessed core technologies around him."
Shen Weiguo didn't speak immediately. He stood up, walked to the map, and used a thin pencil to draw a line connecting Seattle's industrial area and downtown.
"This Leon Vance... he's much faster than we expected."
He stared at the map, his tone somewhat heavy:
"There's still no conclusion back home. If this is indeed a setup, once we initiate the transfer, it will mean blatantly taking people away right under the FBI's nose, leaving no room for maneuver."
"But the data on the hard drive doesn't lie. If it's a setup, the price is far too high."
He stood up and looked at Qin Mo:
"Send the directory index on the hard drive and the information about the new personnel mentioned by Alex back to China via a satellite encrypted channel."
"Key point: Vance has shown a strong sense of urgency and has once again provided a high-value technical expert."
"Also, inform those back home."
"My personal assessment is that Vance is using this method to force us out. He's constantly escalating the stakes, and if we don't take his side, the more people he has backed up, the more dangerous it becomes for him, and the more we lose if this line is cut off."
"We either cut off contact now, or we need to prepare for something big."
"As for the hard drive itself..."
Shen Weiguo turned to Lin Lan and solemnly gave the order:
"We don't have the facilities to do more in-depth testing here. Please put it in a top-secret, anti-magnetic and shockproof box."
He pointed to the small silver metal box on the table: "It will be sent via tomorrow's diplomatic pouch and brought back to China by hand. This kind of thing absolutely cannot be transmitted over the internet."
"The US Customs and FBI have no right to inspect our diplomatic pouches. As for more detailed identification of the underlying codes, we'll have to let the old experts at the domestic military research institutes do the digging."
"Understood, I'll take care of it right away." Lin Lan nodded and quickly put the hard drive away.
"I need to go see Old Chen."
Shen Weiguo straightened the slightly wrinkled collar of his shirt and picked up the enamel mug again.
"If that kid Leon Vance is really in a hurry to get rid of these two grown men, there's no point in us analyzing this here."
"We need to get Lao Chen's men to the port of Seattle ahead of time to scout out the routes and prepare an evacuation plan."
After saying that, Shen Weiguo pushed open the heavy soundproof door and hurriedly walked out.
The "Old Chen" that Shen Weiguo mentioned is named Chen Jianjun. His official identity is a senior military attaché at the embassy, but in reality, he is the operations director of the military intelligence system in the Seattle area.
If Shen Weiguo was in charge of the brain and nerves, then Chen Jianjun was in charge of the muscles for infiltration, evacuation, and armed support.
If this matter is to be taken seriously, it simply cannot be accomplished without Lao Chen's overall coordination.