Chapter 449 Project Reduction

When Lao Sun pushed open the door, he was holding a telegram that had just come out of the printer, the edges of the pages still warm. He Yuzhu was spreading out the photos of the three Stinger missile launchers one by one on the table, the smell of gunpowder in Nepal still seemingly lingering in the photos.

"The Americans are in an uproar." Old Sun placed the telegram next to the photograph, his voice low. "Congress is in complete chaos. The Pentagon can't deny the Stinger serial numbers we released. Several members of Congress questioned the CIA director on the spot, asking him, 'Why are American missiles appearing in Tibetan separatist camps in Nepal?' The director stammered, saying it might have been 'mistakenly delivered by friendly forces.'"

He Yuzhu picked up the telegram, his eyes scanning the bold text: "The Senate passed an amendment by a vote of 51 to 49, cutting funding for the 'Superpower Force' project by 40%."

"Just two votes short." He put down the telegram, his finger pausing on the two numbers. "Two votes. The Americans almost killed us."

Old Sun lit a cigarette and took two puffs. Smoke billowed from his nostrils, swirling under the fluorescent light. He didn't speak immediately, but instead held the cigarette between his fingers, watching the ash slowly lengthen before flicking it away. The ash landed on the map, precisely where Washington was.

"The Soviets have also backed down." He pulled an intelligence summary from his briefcase; the paper was creased and the edges were worn. "The KGB's 'Red Transformation Battalions' have been reduced from five to two. The Afghan war is too costly. Although their Hero III is cheaper than ours, the frontline casualty rate is forty percent, and the replenishment costs are crushing the military budget. Moscow has cut its budget in half."

He Yuzhu didn't reply immediately. He stood up, walked to the window, and pulled the curtains open a crack. The wind from the Gobi Desert squeezed in through the gap, carrying the dry scent of sand. The lights of the assembly plant in the distance were still on, and through the dusty glass, one could see the figures of workers moving under the gantry crane.

"Our strategy worked." He turned around, leaning against the windowsill, hands in his pockets. "The desalination membranes we sold them through technology sharing are energy-intensive; after a year, they found the electricity bills were more expensive than the water itself. We supplied them with the core components for microwave communications, as they couldn't manufacture them themselves, and we made tens of millions of dollars from them every year. The pressure from electromagnetic weapons forced them to upgrade their armor and chips, doubling their R&D costs. Squeezed from both ends, they couldn't hold on any longer."

Yang Xiaobing walked in through the door, carrying an enamel mug. The red characters "Serve the People" on the outside of the mug were faded and worn. He placed the mug on He Yuzhu's table and pulled out a chair to sit down.

"Director He, the Americans have ostensibly cut the budget, but secretly they're just changing the name and continuing. I'm afraid they'll even move that Antarctic base."

He Yuzhu walked back to the table, picked up the Soviet intelligence report, and read it again. "It's not that we're afraid, it's that they definitely will. They can't bear to give up ten years of technological accumulation. They'll use a feint to cover their tracks while secretly advancing. What we need to do is send the Kunlun into space before they can recover."

Old Sun stubbed out his cigarette, wringing the butt out in the ashtray. "Director He, monitoring is much more difficult now. How much effort did we put into that Antarctic base? Yang Xiaobing lay on the ice for five days, and his ears almost froze off when he came back. If they move to Tierra del Fuego or the Falkland Islands, we won't even be able to touch them."

He Yuzhu didn't answer. He picked up Yang Xiaobing's enamel mug, unscrewed the lid, and glanced inside—it contained only cooled boiled water, no tea. He put the lid back on and returned it to its place.

"So we need to be faster." He walked to the world map hanging on the wall, tracing his finger from the Antarctic Peninsula to the tip of South America. "Zhou Zhiyuan has already established a foothold in South America. The next step is for him to cast his net across Tierra del Fuego and Punta Arenas. Those are the gateways to Antarctica, the only way the Americans can relocate their bases."

Yang Xiaobing stood up, walked to the map, and looked at the spot He Yuzhu was pointing to. "Zhou Zhiyuan alone isn't enough. He's good at trade, but he's still lacking in intelligence. I'll go to South America again next month to keep an eye on things personally."

"No." He Yuzhu turned around. "You've been frozen in Antarctica for three months, and your body hasn't recovered yet. Let Zhou Zhiyuan assess the situation first, and you can direct operations remotely. We'll talk about it again in the spring."

Yang Xiaobing opened his mouth, wanting to retort, but after glancing at He Yuzhu's expression, he swallowed his words. He sat back down in his chair, picked up the glass of cold water, and took a sip.

Old Sun pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and revealed a densely packed list. "Director He, we also have bio-warrior research data seized from the Antarctic base and the Nepalese camp. Gene sequences, drug formulations, neural chip blueprints—more than twenty items in total. What should we do with these?"

He Yuzhu took the list and read it through from beginning to end. The handwriting on the paper was neat, and each item was marked with its source—an underground factory in Antarctica, the corpse of a prisoner of war on the Xinjiang border, and a filing cabinet in a Nepalese camp. He remembered how those things came about: Yang Xiaobing lying on the ice sheet at minus forty degrees Celsius, using his frozen fingers to rummage through piles of garbage for scraps of paper; Wang Tiezhu risking snow blindness to drag back the still convulsing corpse from the border; and Chen Xuemei working through the night in the laboratory, those twisted cells under the microscope.

"Destroy everything." He Yuzhu's voice wasn't loud, but it was deep. "Only retain the manufacturing processes for the vaccines and antidotes."

Old Sun was stunned for a moment. "All of them? Director He, this information was obtained by the soldiers at the cost of their lives—"

"Precisely because it was obtained at the cost of lives, it cannot be kept." He Yuzhu interrupted him, his tone flat. "The longer this technology is kept, the greater the risk of it being leaked. If it falls into the wrong hands, we will be sinners."

The meeting room fell silent. The water in the radiator gurgled and churned, like something churning underground. Yang Xiaobing stared down at the thin layer of water on the bottom of the enamel mug. Old Sun's fingers tapped unconsciously on the table, a rhythmic clatter like the hands of a second hand.

He Yuzhu took out a bronze dagger from his system space—it was a US officer's saber he had captured on the Korean battlefield, with a shallow nick in the blade. He placed the dagger on the table, the tip pointing at the destruction list.

"You will personally oversee the destruction tomorrow morning. Everyone involved must sign a lifetime confidentiality agreement. The destruction process will be videotaped and archived; no one is allowed to keep a copy."

Old Sun took a deep breath, pulled another cigarette from the pack, didn't light it, and twirled it between his fingers twice. "Who's keeping the vaccines and the antidote?"

"Military Academy of Sciences. Separately archived, highly encrypted. No one may access it without both your and my signatures."

Yang Xiaobing looked up at the dagger stuck in the table. The blade gleamed coldly under the light, and the notch resembled a grinning mouth.

"Director He, may I keep something as a memento?" He pulled a small, charred piece of circuit board from his pocket, about the size of a fingernail, with carbonized edges. "This is a fragment of the neural chip from the Antarctic base. I picked it up from the junkyard."

He Yuzhu looked at him for three seconds. Then he reached out, took the circuit board, and placed it in his palm.

"I'll keep it safe for you." He put the circuit board into the system space. "This thing shouldn't be out there."

Yang Xiaobing did not argue.

The next morning, Lao Sun set up a camera in front of the research institute's incinerator. Twenty-odd documents, thirty-odd tubes of reagents, and two complete samples of neural network chips were registered, checked, and thrown into the furnace one by one. Flames licked the pages, and the gene sequences curled, blackened, and turned to ash in the high temperature. Chen Xuemei stood beside them, watching as the genetic map she had spent three months deciphering turned into a handful of fragments. Her lips were white, but she remained silent.

He Yuzhu stood before the incinerator, holding the last document in his hand—the pale blue neurotoxin formula, a refined version produced by the North China Pharmaceutical Factory. He unscrewed the cap and poured the liquid into the furnace. The flames leaped up suddenly, hissing like the screams of some living creature.