496: Chapter 496 Barrett in Handcuffs, US Denies Asylum

The agent pried open his hand and pulled out the crumpled paper that had not been stuffed in time from the shredder's intake slot.

Unfolding it revealed a printed copy of an encrypted email sent by Barrett two weeks ago.

["Burn everything. No witnesses."]

The agent smoothed out the paper ball and placed it on the desk in front of Haskins.

"Your boss said no survivors. Now it's your turn."

Haskins didn't speak.

He looked at the line of words on the desk—when he received this email two weeks ago, he still thought Barrett was being overly cautious.

Four unsealed boxes of bidding documents, twelve original employment contracts, that half-page with Barrett's signature, and the printed copy of the encrypted email were all confiscated.

At two-seventeen in the morning.

Abramovich was led out of the VIP lounge by federal agents in the Cathay Pacific lounge at JFK Airport.

The boarding pass in his hand bore flight number EK204 to Dubai.

As soon as he sat in the back seat of the police car, he was told that his lawyer could not arrive within eight hours.

His glasses slid down, and the metal frame knocked against the car door handle, leaving a gray mark.

All of the above happened before Barrett's plane entered Geneva airspace.

Every single incident was pushed globally via Shuguang Cloud.

Geneva airspace.

When the gulfstream g650 landed on the runway, the engines shut down within three seconds.

The roar of the auxiliary power unit poured in from outside the cabin.

The last message Barrett received when the plane shut down was sent by Haskins the moment before his arrest.

That message had only one letter: "Run."

Staring at the MP5 submachine guns held by the Swiss military police outside the cabin door, he threw the satellite phone into the ice bucket between the seats.

The phone sank into the mostly melted ice water, its screen flashing blue twice before going dark.

He turned his head toward the porthole—that was his last encrypted channel.

As he was escorted off the plane, the airport runway lights illuminated his silver-gray short hair, every single strand distinct.

The Swiss military police handcuffed him—made of carbon fiber, light, cold, and hard.

The click of the cuffs closing was drowned out by the roar of the auxiliary power unit and the rustle of distant snow particles hitting the asphalt runway.

But that sound, in Barrett's ears, was crisper than the gunfire of Mount Kinabalu.

Geneva Prosecutor's Office Detention Center.

The detention cell was eight square meters.

The walls were grayish-white and windowless.

The bed was made of poured concrete, topped with a four-centimeter-thick foam pad.

A stainless steel toilet was fixed in the corner.

He sat on the bed with his back against the wall.

Smudges stained the lenses of his metal-framed glasses.

He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with the corner of his prison uniform.

The fabric of the uniform was rough, and the more he wiped, the smudgier it became.

The extradition hearing took place the next morning.

The prosecutor from the Swiss Federal Office of Justice played a summary of the evidence submitted by Myanmar in court—the encrypted communication records captured at Black's command post, the white phosphorus bomb authorization, and the scanned copy of Barrett's signature in "Operation Firestorm".

The scanned copy was enlarged and projected onto the white wall of the courtroom.

Barrett looked at the upward-curling letter t at the end of his signature, the corners of his mouth drooping.

That was what he had signed after taking off his glasses in the Manhattan safe house two months ago.

At the time of signing, Haskins and Abramovich were gathered around the table, and Greenberg was eating mini sandwiches sent by the maid.

Now that signature was enlarged to two meters long, reflected on the white wall of the Hague extradition hearing.

Every pause in the strokes was clearly visible.

Barrett's legal team consisted of four defense lawyers from Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States respectively.

The lead counsel's jurisdictional objection was sixty-seven pages long, citing fifteen international law precedents.

The prosecutor opened the encrypted computer hard drive—the first was an instruction sent by Barrett to Blackwater's chief financial officer: "Payments are divided into twelve installments, each labeled as palm oil procurement. Leave no trace of weaponry."

By the time the lawyer reached the third argument, the speed of turning pages could no longer keep up with the playback of evidence.

The gallery was packed with journalists from the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, and seventeen other relevant countries around the world.

Someone recognized that the lead counsel at the defense table had previously defended multiple war criminals convicted by the International Criminal Court.

But no one recognized the pale new assistant beside him.

That person was not an assistant, but Barrett's Swiss private banking relationship manager, summoned as a witness by the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office.

The bank statements he brought showed that the trust fund under Barrett's name had split and transferred 470 million US dollars to twelve offshore accounts the day before his arrest.

The relationship manager's voice shook violently when he said these words.

But he still managed to blurt out everything he needed to say.

"Does defense counsel object to the authenticity of the evidence chain?" the presiding judge interrupted.

Barrett's lawyer stood up, then sat down.

"No, Your Honor."

The court allowed Barrett a final statement.

He stood up and straightened the collar of his prison uniform.

This prison uniform was dark blue, made of a completely different fabric from the custom suit he wore in the Manhattan safe house.

The rough synthetic fibers chafed his neck red.

"I am exercising my right," he said, "to request extradition to the United States."

The judge looked down at a fax sent by the Federal Prosecutor's Office.

When he raised his head, he paused for two seconds.

"Washington—" He placed the fax paper on the desk, pressing his fingers on the signature, "confirms that it will not provide you with diplomatic asylum or consular assistance."

An Associated Press reporter in the gallery gasped, their fingers already tapping out the lead on the keyboard—U.S. Abandons Barret.

Barrett's handcuffs clinked within the carbon fiber loops.

He sat back down in his chair.

For the first time, a certain relaxation appeared on his face.

Not giving up—it was that complete dissociation when the system he had personally built and invested in for thirty-four years turned around and crushed him.

A reporter in the gallery wrote: "The way he looked at his lawyer was like looking at a shattered mirror."

The Interpol extradition charter plane landed at Rotterdam The Hague Airport in the Netherlands.

Extradited on the same plane was former CIA senior official Haskins—who retired from the CIA ten years ago and joined Council of Elders, responsible for domestic intelligence coordination.

He was handed over to the Dutch authorities from Brussels yesterday afternoon.

The transferring Belgian military police officer asked him how he wanted to notify his family, and he said, "My family knew this day would come two years ago. They just didn't know which day."

Two days later. Afternoon.

A new type of hypersonic cruise aircraft cast an orange reflection beneath the dome of the International Court of Justice building in The Hague.

Zhang Cheng's holographic projection appeared above the presiding platform of the courtroom.

He wore a dark gray Zhongshan suit, with that silver commemorative medal pinned to his left chest—the medal was engraved with the outline of Mount Kinabalu, cast by Kadazandusun artisans from volcanic rock and recycled artillery shell casings.

Li Lanzhi stood three meters behind him.

She had flown from Naypyidaw to The Hague twelve hours ago, and MI6's backdoor program had been handed over to the technical team for duty.

The tablet glowing in her hand displayed the original text of Interpol's Red Notice for Barrett and real-time updates on the personnel list of MI6's Kuala Lumpur intelligence station.

Sitting below the presiding platform were fifteen judges of the International Court of Justice.

On the left were observers from the United Nations, the African Union, ASEAN, and the European Union; on the right were diplomatic envoys and reporters from various countries.

There were more reporters than judges and observers combined—forty-two news agencies worldwide had dispatched their chief legal reporters.