Michelle felt depressed after coming out of the CIA's Langley headquarters. She walked to the parking lot carrying a stack of documents and threw them into the back seat of her Chevrolet. It was a headache. There was bureaucracy everywhere.
The old white men who listened to the report today all said they would study the report submitted by Michelle, expressed their great gratitude to her for her recent outstanding work, and hoped that she would continue to work hard.
You may be a little moved by these words the first time you hear them, but the more you hear them, the more you feel sick to your stomach.
The little foreign girl got in the car and pinched her forehead. She was very aware of the social and political atmosphere in the United States - the Cold War was won, but the United States also paid a heavy price.
Except for a few crazy people, politicians in Washington all want to relax. The most obvious feature is that the president who won the Gulf War was not re-elected, and was replaced by someone who is good at economics but cannot control his pants.
Contrary to what many people imagined, in the early 1990s the United States had an invincible military, but its economy fell into a trough. Continuing the high-intensity Cold War was not in the interests of the conglomerates, and the country needed to change.
Under this background, Michelle could not get many resources. She sighed and opened a file, which contained a report sent by the local chicken security department to the NATO intelligence agency.
To put it simply, there was a group of bastard ordnance warehouse keepers who smuggled scrapped tank engines to Boryspil across the Black Sea, hoping to make a fortune.
As a result, he was caught red-handed.
The smuggled engine belongs to the M48 series designed and manufactured in the 1950s. By the 1990s, this old tank had been almost iterated and improved many times.
Ten years ago, Tuji successively took over a large number of old M48 models, and then improved them with German diesel engines to replace the original American gasoline engines.
The replaced gasoline engine was actually still usable, but it was thrown into the warehouse along with the gearbox. Ten years later, it was naturally classified as 'scrap'.
Since the black market in Boryspil has been particularly prosperous recently, and there are rumors that it is very safe to trade there, the local chicken administrator who keeps these 'waste' has used his brain.
If the number of smuggled units in this batch was only a few or a dozen, the matter might not have been exposed at all. But the offending Tuji administrators probably had a brain problem, and they planned to sell all the more than 2,000 "scrap" units.
"What an exaggeration." Michelle shook her head slightly. She continued to look through the files curiously, wondering... "Who would sell more than two thousand second-hand gasoline engines produced forty years ago?"
Sure enough, a familiar name appeared.
‘Holy Light’.
"Strange, why does the Holy Light buy such rags?" Michelle couldn't understand. She knew very well that the Holy Light appeared to be picking up rags everywhere, but in fact it was quite picky when it came to buying things.
After looking through the interrogation records in the file, I found that the price of each engine and gearbox was only US$3,000. This price was about the same as selling scrap metal.
"Downgraded to be used as a power source for mining trucks?" Michelle read the entire file before seeing the information that the local security department had learned from other sources.
Although it was a product forty years ago, the military power system is much more powerful than civilian products. A gasoline engine with several hundred horsepower can be used in civilian trucks after modification.
Sanmao's Minsk Vehicle Manufacturing Plant will obtain these power systems and produce two thousand heavy-duty mining trucks with a load of tens of tons for the "Holy Light". The price of the entire vehicle can be very cheap.
This large factory that produces land vehicles for intercontinental missiles has strong strength, but it has had no orders recently, and its life is quite miserable. Faced with this big business, the Minsk factory agreed very quickly.
"I see."
The mystery was revealed, but Michelle was not happy at all. She always felt that the 'holy light' would not stop there, but there was indeed no other news in the file.
When the local security department cracked the case, more than 1,800 "scrap" power systems had been transported to Boryspil like ants moving.
After making a huge profit of five million US dollars, a dozen ordnance warehouse managers got carried away. They planned to sell the remaining 500 or so units at once, but they were exposed because of the large shipping volume.
"It is necessary to go to Tuji."
Michelle felt that she could dig deeper into this clue. Turkey is a member of NATO, and the CIA can operate openly in this country, which is not as uncomfortable as being tied up with Ermao.
Taking a military plane, Michelle flew directly from Virginia to Ankara, the capital of Turkey. The dozen or so unlucky guys who were caught were imprisoned in the prison of the Turkish National Security Committee. She met her 24 hours later as a NATO security officer.
these people.
In the small, dark interrogation room, the unlucky men, both young and old, were crying and confessing their guilt for stealing and selling state property.
But what Michelle saw in the eyes of the local intelligence officers who accompanied the interrogation was envy - those 'waste products' were actually of no use, and if they could be sold for millions of dollars, they would be considered a huge profit.
"I'm from the CIA."
Michelle sat behind the interrogation table and showed her ID to the interrogators. She said coldly with a straight face: "If you can provide some useful clues, I will help you reduce your sentence."
‘American’ and ‘reduced sentence’, these two words are enough.
The unlucky ones are like drowning people who find a life-saving straw, flopping desperately and thinking desperately, hoping for a chance to reduce their sentence or even survive.
Michelle spent three days reorganizing the process of reselling the "scrap" power system. She quickly obtained a clue that was not a clue.
Most of the dozen or so unlucky guys don't speak English and are only responsible for transporting 'waste' and splitting the money afterwards. Only two of the ringleaders know English and have been to Boryspil.
One of them mentioned a detail, "There is a bar in the black market. I have been there several times. Once I heard someone speaking in native language, and I couldn't help but take a look. The person passed by me and couldn't see clearly.
Face. But I remember what he said."
Michelle immediately asked, "What did you say?"
The unlucky man who knew English did not speak. Instead, he glanced at the local intelligence officer who accompanied the interrogation. The latter immediately shouted angrily: "Don't say those unverified things, otherwise you will suffer more severe punishment for slander."
The unfortunate guy looked at Michelle helplessly, then drooped his head and closed his mouth.
Michelle was anxious and asked questions quickly. But the interrogation ended here, and the local personnel bluntly asked her to leave. The two sides faced off for a long time, and the little foreign girl was on someone else's territory and had to give in.
But after leaving the National Security Commission prison, Michelle immediately used a confidential line to report to her superiors in Virginia. As a result, her superiors said lightly: "I knew what you said last week, and I sent you there just to confirm it.
.”
"What happened?" Michelle asked.
“In the early 1980s, we gave the locals the opportunity to build an aircraft manufacturing plant in Ankara and gave them a production line for F-16C/D fighter jets, giving them the ability to assemble and overhaul, and even produce some spare parts.
You reported last time that the Holy Light could obtain American-made avionics and engines, so we began to investigate these production lines. It turned out that Tuji's aircraft manufacturing plant was poorly managed and many fighter aircraft spare parts were missing.
There are many high-level locals involved behind this, and they are likely to use our technology to trade with our enemies. But the locals will not admit it. You have to understand that we cannot control this country."
When Michelle heard this, a ball of anger spewed out of her chest. She cursed, "Damn it, why did we have such allies in the first place? If these technologies fall into the hands of the Holy Light, you know what it means.
?"
The superiors in Virginia were also helpless, "Michelle, calm down. This is politics, and you and I can't escape it. We don't have any evidence to prove the whereabouts of these technologies and spare parts."
Michelle said angrily again: "By the time the evidence is found, it will be too late. What's the use of that time? Watching our opponents use our technology to produce advanced equipment to beat us?"
The superior sighed: "Yes, this is the reality. This is not the first time. We often create our own opponents."