Chapter 141 Thor Corporation Search

About ten minutes later.

In the living room, Lyon was about to pour himself another glass of water when Arthur's weak voice came from the half-open door of the guest bedroom.

"Mr. Vance...could you please come in for a moment?"

Lyon put down his water glass, pushed open the door and went inside, with old Bill following behind.

Arthur had now sat up a little straighter, leaning against the pillows. He looked at Leon, hesitated for a moment, and then spoke, seemingly having carefully considered his words for a long time.

"Mr. Vance, I'd like to ask you some questions... What exactly is that place, the East, like?"

Arthur's eyes held a hint of confusion and a desire for confirmation:

"I am a religious person. I have never left the United States in my life."

"On our television and in our newspapers, the East has always been portrayed as a very scary place."

"They said there was no faith there, and the internet was censored. They also said the factories there were sweatshops."

"And what about the credit score system? All of everyone's actions, including jaywalking and online comments, are recorded and deducted from their total score in real time."

"If the total score is too low, you will be blacklisted and restricted in all aspects. The government uses this to monitor and control the people."

Arthur listed several stereotypes that he'd heard countless times in the news or from marketing accounts, then shook his head, his tone turning bitter:

"I used to believe in these things. But now I have nothing left, and I don't care about that so-called freedom anymore."

"I only have two questions for you."

Arthur stared into Leon's eyes, his expression expectant:

"Are there gangs like those in Seattle? You know, the kind that walk around with guns, force young kids to sell drugs, and then run loan sharking schemes that drive entire families to their deaths?"

"And are there homeless people like me, or like those in the church, who are forced to sleep on the streets and wait to die because they can't afford medical care or rent?"

Lyon found Arthur's words both absurd and laughable. However, he also knew that this was the true perception of the East held by the vast majority of Americans who had never been abroad.

"Arthur, you should watch less of that kind of idiotic news."

Leon pulled out a chair and sat down, waving his hand dismissively but with a confident tone:

"Gangs? In the East, who the hell would dare to openly call themselves a gangster on the street?"

"If just two or three people dare to get together and form some kind of organized crime group, and even dare to lend money at exorbitant interest rates, driving people to their deaths, the police will come knocking on their door and take them all down before the next day."

"At most, there are some petty thugs who dare not show their faces in the light, but there are no gangs like those in your America that can dominate several blocks."

"As for the homeless people you mentioned..."

Leon paused for a moment, recalling scenes from his past life.

"To be honest, I haven't seen a real homeless person in a long time, and my memory of them is very vague."

"What impressed me most were those able-bodied people who deliberately made themselves look pitiful, kneeling on overpasses or in subway stations pretending to be homeless to scam money."

"There's nothing we can do; people over there are sometimes too kind-hearted and easily deceived."

Leon looked at Arthur and continued:

"Over there, if you really go bankrupt, have nowhere to live, and can't even afford food, you don't need to rummage through trash cans or beg any pastors."

"All you need to do is walk into the nearest police station, which is our police station, and tell the officer on duty that you are starving to death."

"The police will not only not kick you out, but will also immediately give you a bowl of instant noodles or a boxed lunch."

"Once you've eaten, they'll contact the civil affairs department to send you to a shelter, or they'll contact your family to arrange where you'll go next."

"Anyone who dares to watch you starve to death on the street is seriously derelict in their duty and will lose their job."

Arthur listened blankly to Leon's words.

"Walk into the police station...and say you're hungry?"

He repeated it to himself, his eyes initially filled with disbelief.

In the United States, if a homeless person covered in foul odor dares to walk into a police station begging for food, he will most likely be treated as mentally ill or causing trouble, and will be pinned to the ground and handcuffed by several burly police officers, and may even be beaten with batons.

But seeing Leon's matter-of-fact expression, some of Arthur's preconceived notions began to crumble.

There are no gangs. If you're hungry, the police will take care of you.

This sounds like an unrealistic paradise.

He bit his lower lip and slowly lowered his head.

If there really were a place in the world where the police could completely wipe out the gangs.

Wouldn't his son have survived? Wouldn't his family have been spared from falling apart?

Then, he raised his left hand and vigorously rubbed his cheek with his entire palm, covering his face, finally stopping at his eyes and rubbing them hard.

"well……"

Arthur lowered his hand and let out a long sigh.

He looked up at Lyon, his voice a little hoarse.

"Stop talking, Mr. Vance."

Arthur nodded, his voice trembling slightly. "I believe you."

"Stop talking, Mr. Vance."

Arthur nodded, his voice trembling slightly. "I believe you."

"I want to go to that place. I want to see what such a place is like."

……

Washington State, on the west coast of the United States.

Inside a highly confidential internal conference room at the Raytheon headquarters.

Several high-resolution photos are displayed on the huge LCD screen on the wall:

The study drawers were pulled open, clutter was scattered, and several photos, after being specially sharpened, showed eerie climbing marks on the ceiling.

This is a field exploration report sent back by Victor and Carter from Seattle via an encrypted channel.

Seven or eight men in suits sat around a large oval conference table.

At this moment, the atmosphere in the conference room presented an extremely strange sense of division, half of which was fervent excitement and the other half of deep anxiety.

Seated on the left are senior executives from the company's legal department and investment and M&A department.

A middle-aged white lawyer with slicked-back hair pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, unable to suppress a smile.

"Gentlemen, this is a textbook example of a major safety lapse."

"That outsourced lab actually allowed employees to take core data related to military inertial navigation systems home, and for three months after the employees went bankrupt, no data was recovered or destroyed."

He reached out and tapped the table, his tone filled with greed:

"That's enough. The Department of Justice can sue them today, demanding hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for breach of contract."

"Those penniless paupers absolutely cannot afford to pay. We can force them into bankruptcy and restructuring by next Friday, and then devour them along with those core patents at rock-bottom prices."

"Your legal department can handle the mergers and acquisitions. I'm concerned about something else right now."

Seated at the head of the long table was Raytheon's Global Security Director, a former senior CIA intelligence officer.

His face was ashen as he stared at the photo of the ceiling on the screen, taking a deep drag on his cigar.

"Victor's report makes it very clear. The person who took the hard drive was equipped with extremely advanced tactical climbing equipment, and was able to escape from the ceiling like a gecko right under the noses of the Seattle police."

"These aren't ordinary thieves! These are professionally trained corporate spies or special forces!"

The security director's gaze swept over everyone present, his voice icy:

"Who did this? Lockheed Martin? Boeing? Northrop Grumman? Or some shady project team under the Pentagon?"

"Losing a hard drive is a small matter, but if William McIntyre (Bill Sr.) has already been recruited by our competitors."

"They're using the algorithms in William's head to optimize their own bidding projects, which will put us at a significant disadvantage in the military's next-generation cruise missile contracts!"

"We must find McIntyre immediately! We must find out who has him in their hands!"

Upon hearing this request, a supervisor in charge of intelligence tracking, sitting at the end of the conference table, looked troubled and sighed.

"Sir, this is precisely the biggest difficulty we are currently facing."

The intelligence chief opened his laptop and pulled up several data reports:

"Our people activated all tracking methods immediately, but William McIntyre... he's like a ghost now."

He began to report the findings of the investigation one by one:

"First, there's his financial history. He went bankrupt, all his bank accounts were frozen, and his credit cards had been cancelled six months ago."

"He has not had a single transaction record in the entire U.S. financial system in the past few months."

"Secondly, there's his digital footprint. His phone had been disconnected long ago due to unpaid bills, there were no login records for social media accounts, and no emails sent or received. He didn't even have a single electronic device."

The intelligence chief clicked on a photo of old Bill at the company and shook his head helplessly:

"We used a facial recognition system, which was connected to traffic cameras and some commercial surveillance networks in downtown Seattle."

"However, Seattle's public surveillance system is terrible to begin with. Plus, he had been homeless for so long, he was emaciated and had a scruffy beard. The system directly categorized him as a homeless person with general characteristics. The similarity matching database popped up with thousands of results, making it impossible to pinpoint his location accurately."

"Finally, there's the public service system. We used grey channels to access Washington state's SNAP (food stamp) database, medical assistance records, and emergency room lists at major public hospitals."

"As a result, he hasn't used his food stamps even once in the past month, nor does he have any medical records."

After listening to the report, the safety director's brows furrowed deeply.

If they're tracking a wealthy and influential person, they have a million ways to find them through credit cards, flights, hotels, or cell phone signals.

However, when tracking a homeless person who has completely fallen to the bottom of society, high-tech methods become completely ineffective.

"If high technology doesn't work, then let's use the most primitive methods!"

The security director gritted his teeth and issued a death order:

"Notify Victor to contact his informants and private investigators in Seattle. Give him cash and throw it at him!"

"Go to the gang's territory, let them search every soup kitchen, under those overpasses and in RV parks! Donate some money to the Seattle Police Department and get the patrol officers to keep an eye out too!"

"Even if we have to search every single trash can in Seattle, we have to dig this old thing out!"

……

Seattle city center, evening.

Victor and Carter had just stepped out of Raytheon's Seattle office building, ready to end a terrible day of fieldwork and grab a drink at a bar.

However, when Victor walked up to his black Chevrolet Suburban parked on the side of the road, he suddenly stopped in his tracks.

A bright yellow parking ticket was clearly visible tucked under the windshield wipers.

"Holy crap?"

Victor strode over, ripped off the ticket, and stared at the glaring amount. His usual cool, elite agent persona crumbled instantly, and he swore profusely.

Are those Seattle cops who issue tickets blind? Or are they seriously mentally ill?

"This is a company-owned temporary parking space! There's even an access pass on the windshield! They dare to put a ticket on a Raytheon company vehicle?!"

Carter, who was following behind, came over and took a look.

Seeing his former senior FBI official, who was usually stern and always appeared to be in complete control, now jumping up and down in anger over a parking ticket, Carter completely lost his temper.

He quickly turned his head away, covering his mouth tightly with one hand, but his shoulders still twitched violently, and he made a "hissing" sound of suppressed laughter.

"What are you laughing at?"

Victor turned his head with a dark expression, staring coldly at his subordinate, and waved the ticket in his hand:

"Two hundred dollars. Since you were out on a field mission, you're also partly responsible for this ticket, so it should be split at least 50/50. You also have to pay one hundred dollars."

"Gah."

Carter's laughter was abruptly cut off as if by an invisible hand.

He turned his head abruptly, his eyes widening, the joy he had just felt watching the show instantly turning into a desperate wail:

"No! Boss! You parked this car!"

"I still have to pay my car loan and rent this month! If I suddenly have this extra $100, I'll have to live on discounted canned beans for the next week!"

"Serves you right, who told you to laugh?"

Victor ruthlessly stuffed the ticket into Carter's pocket.

Just as Carter was about to continue pleading, Victor's encrypted phone suddenly vibrated.

Victor took out his phone, glanced at it, and his expression instantly returned to its previous seriousness.

He put away his phone and sighed.

"Alright, stop wailing. Bad news: our off-get off work time is canceled. Get ready to work overtime."

"What's wrong now?" Carter asked with a pained expression.

"A death order from Washington headquarters."

Victor glanced at the Chevrolet in front of him: "Let's just leave the car here for now. It already has a ticket anyway. We can come back for it tomorrow."

"The high-tech tracking methods at headquarters have all stopped working; that old guy is now invisible in the system."

"We need to get moving immediately and contact those informants, private investigators, and money-grubbing gang leaders you know in Seattle."

Victor strode toward the street corner:

"Throw cash at him. Even if you have to turn Seattle's sewers and garbage cans upside down, you have to dig William McIntyre out!"

The article, titled "You're a beautiful police officer, why are you always thinking about going back to the East?", is full of classic quotes and invites readers to find resonance.