Chapter 114: Firing a Shot to See Him Off (4)

After successfully curbing the moral decay among officials and the public in the years leading up to the apocalypse, the internal structure was significantly strengthened. Li Fengyi often thought that had it not been for the strict enforcement of discipline in those years, he would never have dared to operate under this mandate; the survivors would have wanted him dead even more than the zombies did. It was much like how the people of Henan once disarmed Tang Enbo’s troops and handed them over to the Japanese invaders—when the people are pushed to a certain limit, they would rather perish together with their oppressors.

With hundreds of survivor bases of various sizes isolated and besieged, most were struggling to survive, unable to make ends meet as food and weapons remained critical issues. It was a rare display of proactive spirit when the Special Committee dispatched armored trains to reconnect the national railway network and rescue survivors.

After numerous internal discussions, Minister Jin Chunsheng of the Ministry of State Security finally decided to support the Special Committee as a key partner. The Committee lived up to expectations, with corresponding departments immediately stepping up to coordinate efforts, including military intelligence operations handled by the General Staff Department.

After the Battle of Tianjin, the General Staff had begun restoring its intelligence division. However, this department didn't carry the same aura of mystery to the average citizen as the Ministry of State Security; after all, most people rarely encountered the military, and the ancient wisdom of "knowing yourself and your enemy" was widely understood. The Ministry of State Security, by contrast, remained shrouded in an air of profound mystery. Upon learning of the progress made by the General Staff’s intelligence division, Minister Jin felt a touch of humility—the Special Committee, it seemed, had come prepared.

When the intelligence from both the Ministry of State Security and the General Staff was cross-referenced, the patterns became increasingly clear. In March 2015, a CIA division transferred an individual from the FBI under the guise of auditing a financial firm for investment purposes. Internal intelligence, however, indicated he was actually on a mission to Europe, where field agents confirmed his presence. This individual held the highest security clearance in the U.S. intelligence community, and his personal file was a void of question marks.

The mundane nature of his assignment seemed suspicious. Why would such a high-level asset be sent to the relatively safe environment of Europe for intelligence work? Was the CIA really so flush with talent that they had nothing better for him to do? The General Staff’s intelligence division showed that after arriving in Europe, the CIA operative visited a shipping company to inquire about an ocean-going fishing vessel—a ship that was, in reality, a covert intelligence platform being built for the U.S. military, slated for retrofitting in Guam.

Analysts from both agencies concluded that this man was indeed the same person who had been sent to inspect the financial firm. Such a high-profile figure being assigned to such pedestrian tasks was highly irregular. This was the same man who had been a key figure in the leak regarding China’s 1996 military exercises near Taiwan—a scandal that led to the execution of the traitorous General Liu Liankun and the implication of twenty-four other military officers, marking the largest military espionage case since the founding of the nation. Tracing back even further, the defection of Ministry of State Security section chief Yu Qiangsheng in the 1980s was also linked to this man, making the whole affair smell even more suspicious.

The man traveled by ship to Guam in April 2015 and remained visible throughout May. However, by the end of the month, intelligence officers discovered that the man appearing in public was merely a double; this was confirmed after they recovered his discarded beard trimmings from the hotel sewer and performed DNA analysis. Then, the apocalypse struck.

The question remained: what was the connection between this man’s sudden appearance and the end of the world? Although the Ministry of Science and Technology proved the apocalypse was a natural disaster, the intelligence agencies argued that if this man were to launch an operation, he would likely focus on sabotage against hostile nations as a final act of spite. This would only increase the danger to China in the apocalypse, so he had to be dealt with. The best solution was to capture him; after all, with the world in ruins, there was no need to worry about the Americans coming to demand his release.

All intelligence gathered at the time had been archived by the Ministry of State Security and the General Staff, and it was now being reviewed in its entirety.

"Damn, they’re too intense," Li Fengyi thought, looking at the disparate intelligence reports. "They believe the man inspecting the financial firm and the one at the shipyard are the same person simply because their appearances, while days apart, had a vague connection... How can I not see it?"

No one knew his real name; he used dozens of aliases, and for each, they could only speculate that it might be him. The oldest files dated back to 1976, the paper yellowed with age.

"I wonder if these people are just bored to death," Li Fengyi mused, trying to step back from the conspiratorial web. "Don't these idiots realize that humanity is nearly extinct? Even if this spy managed to reach China, his survival rate would be under 10%. He has to meet with contacts, and their survival rates are even lower. By the time you account for every link in the chain, the operation would be pointless. Radio reports and intelligence from the Ministry of State Security and the General Staff all say the U.S. is in total chaos. Even if they have about 30 million survivors and conditions in their bases are improving—since their civilian gun ownership is so high—their leadership has been decimated... They’re busy holding elections. Holding elections while zombies are evolving? That’s just suicide."

Li Fengyi had long held a penchant for debating political systems like a cynical netizen. He believed that democracy was only viable in the absence of overwhelming external threats. If Britain hadn't been an island, it wouldn't have developed a parliament; if the U.S. hadn't been shielded by oceans, it wouldn't have adopted a democratic system. Post-WWII history had proven this repeatedly. Aside from Japan and South Korea, which were propped up by the U.S. to counter socialist regimes—effectively becoming "half-son" states—and the small nations of Western Europe, the ancestral lands of the West, most other countries had been reduced to misery by democratic experiments. The cause was always the interference of powerful, hostile democratic states.

Still, the opinions of the Ministry of State Security and the General Staff could not be ignored. The greatest fear for an amateur leader is to blindly oppose the advice of experts.

"It seems I’ll have to allocate some rice and flour for these people to consume," Li Fengyi thought with a grim smirk. "There will be no travel budgets, no luxury hotels, no airplanes, and no new spy gear—though we might be able to retrofit some old equipment. Now that we’ve reclaimed the Zhongfa Electronics Market, electronic components shouldn't be an issue."

At the Special Committee meeting, Li Fengyi, Li Qiang, and Commander Liu reached a unanimous consensus: this matter was critical. It required a dedicated team, and they had to bring him in—dead or alive—and they had to act fast.