448: Chapter 448 Live Broadcast Reveals American Mole

A Tamil old man stood beside him. The old man held no sign, merely standing in the rain. Around his neck hung a plastic sleeve containing a yellowed photograph—1963, Port Klang, a Tamil dockworker being loaded onto a truck by British military police. The old man's son had written in English beside it: "He hauled containers his whole life, but the sea was never his."

On Zhang Cheng's holographic situational map, Penang was marked as a blue light point. Beside it, the real-time data stream intercepted by Vega from the Parliament Building's internal network scrolled by.

An encrypted signal was marked with red priority—Tan Teik Cheng's phone had just sent a large-capacity upload request to a server in Kuala Lumpur, with the file type labeled: Backup before full hard drive erasure.

Night Owl's channel cut in.

"Mr. President. The 'Echo' database just matched a second resume for Tan Teik Cheng—codenamed 'Thornfish,' recruited by the CIA Kuala Lumpur station in 1986. During Operation Lalang, he provided the Special Branch with seventeen lists of Chinese education activists, including Lin Wenqing, the father of the woman downstairs."

Zhang Cheng shifted his gaze away from the holographic screen and glanced at the document Night Owl had transmitted. "Where is the original file?"

"The third basement level of the Royal Malaysia Police Archives. Hard copy. Shadow Blade's third team has locked onto the safe number." Night Owl paused. "He is currently in the server room executing the hard drive erasure program—two of the three hard drives have already been destroyed."

Zhang Cheng swiped open the power control interface on the touchpad with his fingertip and pressed "Takeover."

"Black him out."

The lights on the third floor of the Parliament Building went out row by row within forty-seven seconds. The corridor emergency lights turned a ghastly green. The computer screen in front of Tan Teik Cheng flickered, and a dialog box popped up—"System has been taken over externally. Erasure terminated."

Chow Kon Yeow's phone screen lit up automatically at the same time. The push notification title was in red, bold font:

"[Emergency Notification] Penang State Executive Councilor Tan Teik Cheng—CIA codename 'Thornfish'—Provided lists of Chinese education activists to the Special Branch during the 1987 Operation Lalang—Evidence has been uploaded to seventeen global media platforms."

Chow Kon Yeow's phone slipped from his hand. The coffee cup hit the carpet; it didn't break, but the coffee seeped into the gray synthetic fiber carpet, spreading into a dark stain.

Tan Teik Cheng was still standing by the window. His hand gripped the phone; the screen had gone black. There were footsteps at the end of the corridor—two security officers were walking toward him.

Outside the Parliament Building, everyone's phones rang simultaneously.

Chen Shunfa looked down at his screen. On it was a photograph of a file—a copy of Royal Malaysia Police Special Branch arrest warrant number 87/10-03. The reason for arrest column read: Suspected of inciting racial antagonism through Chinese education. Arrestee: Lin Wenqing, Malay language teacher at Yipei Middle School. Intelligence provider: CIA Kuala Lumpur station. Intelligence transfer intermediary: Codename "Thornfish."

Below the file were two lines of notes. The first line was in English: Agent "Thornfish" identified as Tan Teik Cheng, Penang State Executive Councilor. The second line was in Chinese, in bold Song typeface—

"Lin Meihua, your father's lesson plans were not all burned. The pages from forty-three to one hundred and twenty-one, which he hid in the air-raid shelter behind Yipei Middle School, are well preserved. Do you want them? Come and get them."

Lin Meihua knelt in the rain.

The megaphone fell to the ground, rolled twice, stopped in a puddle, and emitted a piercing buzz.

Chen Shunfa walked over and bent down to help her up. Her hands were pressed against the wet asphalt, fingers digging into the cracks, her shoulders shaking—not from crying, but laughing. She raised her head, rainwater flowing down the bridge of her nose and into her mouth, and she shouted one sentence into the still-buzzing megaphone with all her might:

"Dad—someone has cleared your name!!"

The voice was torn into fragments by the megaphone, slammed against the stone walls of the Parliament Building, bounced back, and merged into the sudden eruption of shouts from the crowd.

Hundreds of people shouted the same name simultaneously—Zhang Cheng.

Hokkien accents and Malay mixed together, and the pigeons under the shophouses were startled into flight. The pigeons flapped their wings in the rain, flying over the rooftops of Penang's old town, over the former site of the Reading Club where Dr. Sun Yat-sen once delivered speeches, and over the clock tower built by overseas Chinese in 1910—the clock hands pointed to 4:47 PM.

At the same moment, at the Presidential Palace in Naypyidaw.

Zhang Cheng watched the real-time footage of Penang on the holographic screen. The image clarity was sufficient to clearly see the action of the security officers holding Tan Teik Cheng's shoulders in the third-floor corridor of the Parliament Building. The security officers did not handcuff him—they merely pulled his hands out of his pockets because his hands were shaking.

Li Lanzhi stood behind him, and on the encrypted tablet was the operation report just transmitted back by Shadow Blade's third team:

"Target Tan Teik Cheng has been locked. File copying complete. Seventeen copies of the Operation Lalang arrest warrants have been uploaded to Shuguang Cloud. Three internal informants within the Penang police have been identified. Requesting next instructions."

"Let them continue." Zhang Cheng did not turn around. "Pull up the details of all of Tan Teik Cheng's overseas accounts since 1987. Especially that 'Straits Cultural Foundation' he registered in the Cayman Islands in 1990—every year's capital flow, recipients, and purposes. Don't miss a single line."

"He won't be able to run," Li Lanzhi said.

"I don't intend to arrest him." Zhang Cheng switched the holographic screen to a satellite map of Penang Port. "I want the Malaysians to arrest him themselves. To this day, Putrajaya is still pretending not to know who wrote the script for Operation Lalang. In that case, I will project the script, the screenwriter, the director, and the continuity supervisor—one by one onto the outer wall of the Parliament Building."

He picked up the encrypted phone and dialed Night Owl's channel.

"Night Owl. How much longer is needed over in Penang?"

"Forty-eight hours." Night Owl's voice came through the encrypted line, with the sound of rain in the background. "Tan Teik Cheng's handler—CIA Penang station chief Victor Lin—is still in Kuala Lumpur. We have locked onto his license plate number and his temporary safe house in Bukit Bintang. We expect to obtain all his contact records within Malaysia for the past three years by tomorrow afternoon."

"Speed it up. Is there any movement from the Malaysian military?"

"Yes." Night Owl paused. "Minister of Defense Ismail Sabri spoke on the phone with the Army Commander for ten minutes early this morning. Vega intercepted a fragment of the call—they were discussing 'whether to initiate the emergency plan.'"

"What is the emergency plan?"

"The encryption level was too high; it couldn't be fully decrypted. But we intercepted one sentence used by Sabri—'Do not let Penang become the second Bangkok.'"