Chapter 385: London Operation
"I heard you sent Hobbs a partner?"
"Yes, that's right, Deckard Shaw. You should remember him well. He's the most knowledgeable person about Britain among my capable operatives. How about it? Thirty million. You won't lose out, you won't be cheated, you'll get one free, plus an elite operative. How about that? Aren't you thrilled?"
Ron spoke energetically on the phone like a used car salesman hawking lemons on the street. The call was from an anonymous contact.
"You could say I remember him well. He is indeed very capable, but I still prefer you to go there in person. You know, this concerns the fate of the whole world, the lives of all mankind are in the hands of you three."
"I know, don't worry, I'll be there soon. But before that, I believe they will put aside their differences and join forces to save the world."
London, CIA Operations Station. Hobbs finally met the partner Ron had arranged for him. Ron was right, his guess was indeed very close, but it was the answer he least wanted.
"It's you?!" Hobbs exclaimed with disgust. "I don't want to work with this asshole. I get pissed just looking at him."
"Me neither! This meathead is always barging in and all he does is smash things. He's bound to fail because he has no brains, you know? His skull is full of muscle."
...
In an instant, the two exchanged a dozen insults, from their appearances to their voices, from each other to their families. The agents assisting them watched the two of them, not daring to intervene or even say a word.
Couldn't they see the two of them, one grabbing a chair and the other grabbing a table, ready to brawl? Going in now and becoming their target would be a death sentence. Fortunately, this situation didn't last long.
"Okay, it seems like directly asking you to cooperate is a bit problematic," Ron's voice suddenly came through the office speakers. "How about this, you two act separately now, and whoever finds that rogue agent first wins, okay?"
The two glared at each other, finally calming down and agreeing to Ron's suggestion.
On the streets of London, Giuseppe asked the person next to him, "Are you sure you don't need to worry about them?"
Beside him, Ron, dressed like a street punk, closed his phone, adjusted his sunglasses, and shook his head. Less than an hour after Hobbs departed, Ron had already settled everything and boarded the plane to London with Giuseppe under false identities, arriving only slightly later than Hobbs.
"No need. It's just finding someone. I believe they'll handle it," Ron said confidently of his two old rivals. "But this matter isn't that simple."
"There are several points in the investigation report that I don't quite understand, so I wanted to come and see for myself."
Ron said. Of course, he also had another objective: keeping Hobbs and his partner in the open while he remained in the shadows would make their operation easier. This didn't need to be explicitly stated; Giuseppe, who had studied military strategy after retirement, naturally understood.
"This is it. My old friend bought us an hour. If you want to see it, hurry up." Giuseppe pulled back the crime scene tape and gestured; this was the location where the virus had been stolen.
Inside the cordon, everything remained as it was, except for the bodies. The bodies' original locations had been replaced by crime scene reports and photographs; with a little imagination, it was almost indistinguishable from the original crime scene.
Ron walked around the scene, memorizing every detail, then closed his eyes and, imitating Sherlock, mentally reconstructed the entire incident. When he opened his eyes, there was no longer any confusion:
"I had my suspicions before coming here, and now I'm finally certain that the rogue agent was framed."
"Why do you say that?" Giuseppe, who had also walked around the scene twice but found nothing, asked, puzzled.
"First, look at this place," Ron led Giuseppe to a location marked with police tape, picked up a photo of a body and the autopsy report, and handed them to Giuseppe. "Look at this person. His cause of death was being stabbed to death with a brick?"
"What's wrong with that?"
"Please—do you know how difficult that is?" Ron patted Giuseppe's shoulder in disbelief. "A brick, shoved into the chest, and the brick didn't even have any sharp edges. How did she manage to push the brick in? Was she born with superhuman strength, or was this poor guy born without a ribcage?"
Giuseppe suddenly realized. "You're concluding she's innocent based on that?"
"Of course, it's not just this, there's also this," Ron pulled Giuseppe to the back of the truck transporting the virus, holding up a photo of the accused female agent and placing it over the fist-shaped dent on the back door. "This dent clearly indicates that someone was guarding the virus sample inside the truck, while the person trying to steal the virus was outside pounding on the door.
If that woman really took the virus, tell me, can you imagine such a petite woman having fists the size of sledgehammers? Or a 5'7" woman having size 12 feet?"
Ron finally pointed to the boot print on the ground; the shoe size was exactly the same as his own, size 12.
"I can't imagine." Giuseppe thought hard for a moment, but finally shook his head in defeat. "But if it wasn't her, then who was it?"
"I don't know, but I can roughly deduce what he looked like," Ron took out a tape measure from his pocket, measured the footprint, and re-examined the scene from multiple angles before finally speaking again.
"First, the perpetrator is male, approximately 6'2" to 6'3" tall, I think around 6'2"..."
Giuseppe was stunned: "How did you deduce that?"
"A person's stride is closely related to their height. Using the formula, it's easy to calculate the approximate range. Also, when a person punches, unless they're targeting a specific object, they tend to strike a point level with their shoulder. This dent further corroborates my reasoning."
Giuseppe was amazed by Ron's deduction: "Anything else? Any other clues?"
"Also, the perpetrator was probably not alone; he had accomplices. Look at the tire marks on the ground over there; they must have been caused by at least six motorcycles. And we all know that, according to MI6, they only sent one truck, intending to secretly transport the virus. Therefore, these tire marks could only have been caused by the group that planned to steal the virus."
"Wait!" Giuseppe suddenly realized something was wrong with Ron's words: "What do you mean by 'the group that planned to steal the virus'? Didn't you just say that the female agent was framed?"
"Well, these two statements aren't contradictory," Ron shrugged, patiently explaining, "Think about it. If the guys who wanted to steal the virus had actually gotten it, why would they bother pinning all the blame on an innocent agent? If they had it, they could just use the virus to blackmail her; that would be much more effective."
"So I'm certain they didn't get the virus. It's probably still in the hands of that wrongly accused agent. That's why they framed her as a traitor, leaving her isolated and helpless without the support of her former colleagues. Only in this way could they more easily try to steal the virus again."
"Of course, these deductions are not difficult. If the gentleman hiding over there doesn't have any ulterior motives, I think with his intelligence, he must be able to figure it out, am I right, Mycroft?"
Ron spoke, glancing at the pile of debris beside him.
A few scattered claps followed, and sure enough, a British gentleman emerged from behind the debris, clapping and holding an umbrella.
"WOW, WOW, WOW~ What a brilliant deduction, Mr. Cooper!" Mycroft looked Ron up and down approvingly, as if he'd never met him before. "Sherlock's assessment of you as a simpleton was truly his biggest mistake. For a moment, I thought it was my insufferable younger brother doing the deduction.
Tell me, the impulsive American cowboy, or the meticulous detective, which is the real you?"
The flickering streetlights cast shifting shadows on Mycroft's profile. For some reason, Giuseppe suddenly thought of the copperhead he'd encountered in the Appalachian wilderness, and he instinctively reached for his pistol.
"Who is he?" Giuseppe asked in Italian.
"Just a pompous bureaucrat," Ron replied in Italian as well.
"Ahem," Mycroft coughed awkwardly, and to Ron and Giuseppe's astonishment, he spoke in Italian as well: "I don't think it's gentlemanly to speak ill of someone to their face. Besides, from your associate's perspective, you and I should both be considered foreigners here. Ron, you haven't answered my question yet? Which one is the real you?"
As he finished speaking, Mycroft's sharp gaze turned to Ron again.
"Of course it's the cowboy. I was just bored lately and read some of your brother's blog posts. Although he doesn't have many followers, we all know that what he writes is genuinely valuable information for professionals, right?"
Ron met Mycroft's gaze without flinching. "In comparison, I'm more interested in how such a simple and easily seen-through frame job could be delivered to our allies in such a convincing way by an intelligence agency like MI6."
"Or, can I now believe that there might be a hundred armed agents lying in ambush outside this alley, waiting for you to give the signal to come in and take us all out?"
Ron was genuinely surprised that Mycroft also spoke Italian, but since everyone was speaking Italian now, Ron simply used a historical reference, confident the other party would understand.
"No, you misunderstand," Mycroft shook his head. "If I really intended to kill you, I wouldn't have shown myself. Even if you don't have confidence in my integrity, you should have confidence in your skills, Mr. Cooper, 0.119 seconds."
"0.119 seconds?"
Giuseppe looked at Ron in confusion. Ron quickly said irritably before Giuseppe's gaze could drift downward, "Please add a qualifier before 0.119 seconds: the world record holder for fastest draw and shot, thank you, otherwise people will think I'm inadequate in other areas."
"Ahem..." This time, Mycroft almost choked on his own breath. "I didn't come here to discuss that. I just wanted to tell you that this matter is very complicated. Although I should theoretically offer you some assistance, due to MI6 being compromised like Swiss cheese, I can't be of any help this time.
Also, here's a piece of advice: before everything is resolved, don't trust anyone. This enemy is far more formidable than you think."
"Of course I know, Eteon, right?" Ron shrugged easily. "It's just a brainwashed cult. Why are you all acting like it's Voldemort, afraid to even mention their name?"
"Alright, looks like you know. My mission's accomplished." Mycroft glanced at Ron with a complicated expression, took an envelope from his pocket and placed it on the debris pile. "This is the greatest assistance I can offer you personally. Goodbye."
With that, Mycroft opened his umbrella, turned around, and walked into the alley without looking back, disappearing into the night.
"Why is he using an umbrella when it's not raining? This guy seems so odd. What does he mean?" Giuseppe thought to himself that he was getting old and really couldn't understand these games.
"Nothing much. He's just a politician who can't bear to see the largest genocide in human history happen, but also doesn't want to offend the power brokers who can manipulate election results."
As for using the umbrella, it was simply to obscure his presence from the cameras.
Ron spat dismissively as he opened the envelope: "But what he left behind might actually come in handy."
While Ron and Mycroft were having this unplanned meeting, Hobbs and Deckard each made different discoveries.
After discovering the defector was his sister, Deckard Shaw went straight to her residence, only to find it empty, with only a trap left by his sister and MI6 agents lying in wait. Deckard barely escaped.
Hobbs's progress was even more impressive; he had actually found the defector herself!
"Many dangerous people are looking for you," Hobbs told her, intercepting her at a street corner.
"Are you one of them?"
"That depends on what happens in the next thirty seconds." Hobbs walked up to the woman. "Let's choose a method first. Are you going to come quietly or do we do this the hard way?"
"That's a tough choice. I need to think about it carefully," the woman said thoughtfully. Just as Hobbs relaxed his guard a little, the woman suddenly grabbed a motorcycle helmet and swung it at Hobbs' head.
"CLANG~" Hobbs' head was hit squarely.
The woman had landed a blow, and before Hobbs could react, she immediately swung the helmet upward, this time targeting Hobbs' groin.
"THWACK~"
"Ahhh!" Hobbs screamed.
"Ouch~ that really hurts." On the distant rooftop, Ron, observing through binoculars, couldn't help but wince for Hobbs. "I wonder if his poor soldier will still be operational after this?"
"Boss, shouldn't we go help?" Giuseppe asked worriedly.
"No, not at all. She's just one woman. Big Guy will handle her. What we need to worry about is tomorrow. Trust me, as soon as Hobbs takes her to the CIA station, they'll be attacked immediately. That's when we'll strike."
(End of Chapter)
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