497: Chapter 497 The Locksmith's Ultimate Settlement

Zhang Cheng's speech was kept within eight minutes. He spoke in English at an even tempo, lowering his voice by half a notch only at critical points.

"Mr. Chairman, esteemed judges, esteemed observers."

He turned slightly sideways, and the gaze of the holographic projection swept across the entire courtroom.

"Barrett's criminal files have never needed us to look for them. He stored them himself—locked in a Swiss safe thirty-four years ago, added with a fingerprint lock two years ago, and uploaded to a satellite relay a year ago. He thought changing the lock meant safety."

Reporters in the back row of the courtroom conversed in low voices.

"His mistake was not knowing that the locksmith also has a backup."

Zhang Cheng tilted his head slightly, his tone dropping by half a notch.

"Today, every keystroke, every telegram, and every signature with which he issues orders leaves an indelible mark in the fiber-optic cables. He could use dum-dum bullets to shoot pregnant Kadazan women, use white phosphorus bombs to burn down stilt houses in the rainforest, and sign authorization to detonate a Mount Kinabalu landslide to frame Myanmar—but he can no longer lock these orders into a safe with only one key."

"The chain of evidence was not built by us. The chain of evidence was built by him himself. Using encryption equipment he thought was secure, he archived every single word he signed, added time stamps, and uploaded them to the cloud. Myanmar's Shuguang Cloud simply opened it up."

That reporter in the back row opened his laptop screen and typed a line of text into the document: "The age of encrypted impunity has ended."

"Does the defendant's representative have any objection to the process of forming the chain of evidence?" the presiding judge interrupted for the second time.

This time, Barrett's lawyer didn't even stand up.

"No, Your Honor."

Zhang Cheng paused for a few seconds. The light field of the holographic projection detected his gaze turning toward where Barrett was sitting below the stage—in the defendant's seat, the combination of metal-framed glasses and a dark blue prisoner uniform looked abrupt, but not disheveled. Barrett was listening expressionlessly.

"Mr. Barrett." Zhang Cheng called out his name in a speech for the first time. "You have paid thirty-four years of lawyer's fees. But no one can defend the words you signed with your own hands."

A French reporter in the back row of the courtroom cursed under his breath—and then typed "The Lockpick's Verdict" on the keyboard as the title.

Barrett did not avoid Zhang Cheng's gaze. He stared at those eyes in the holographic projection, stared through the remaining minutes of Zhang Cheng's speech, and stared at the afterglow projected onto the courtroom dome after the holographic projection went out, as well as the ceiling lights slowly turning back on from the hands of the bailiffs.

It wasn't until the judge announced an adjournment that he lowered his head, took off his glasses, and wiped the lenses with his prisoner uniform. The fabric of the uniform hem was coarse. The more he wiped, the blurrier it got.

When the plenary session of the International Court of Justice in The Hague concluded, it was nearly 2:00 AM Beijing time.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson of Longguo responded in three sentences at the regular press conference: "The Chinese side notes the relevant developments. The Chinese side has always maintained that no national sovereignty should become a sanctuary for genocide, nor should it become fuel for proxy wars. The Chinese side supports the international community in holding war crimes accountable in accordance with the law."

These three sentences were translated into forty-seven languages on Shuguang Cloud, and seven minutes later, pop-up notifications appeared on more than 600 million mobile phones worldwide. Reuters highlighted the second sentence in bold in its headline—"No national sovereignty should become a sanctuary for genocide". Al Jazeera plucked out the third sentence separately to make a subtitle bar, scrolling it at the bottom of its 24-hour news channel.

In Al Jazeera's Doha studio, senior anchor Aiman stared at the teleprompter and paused for a full three seconds while broadcasting the news. The tablet in front of him synchronously displayed Shuguang Cloud's push data—the click-through rate of this news in the Arab world was rising by twelve percentage points per minute.

In its evening news that day, BBC World News broadcasted the complete video clip of the Chinese side's statement in the form of a "quote" for the first time. The director cursed under his breath while switching screens—when the last sentence by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson of Longguo was translated into English, the subtitle system automatically matched it into bold text.

The Sabah frontline.

The coalition mountain-search troops found the ruins of a bombed-out stilt house in the peat swamps at the eastern foot of Mount Kinabalu. The original site of the ruins was a small Kadazan village named Kampung Limau.

While clearing the ruins, the combat engineers discovered an iron box buried at the bottom of the stilt house. The box was covered in rust, and its lock was deformed by a white phosphorus bomb. After prying it open, inside was a stack of Chinese-language textbooks wrapped in plastic bags—those were Chinese-language teaching materials printed in Penang thirty years ago, with yellowed paper and curled corners, printed with the words "Grade Three of Chinese Primary School". Tucked inside the textbooks was a letter, and the recipient on the envelope was "Principal Lim Boon Keng".

Lin Meihua found the date on the envelope in the ruins—October 1987, the day before Lim Boon Keng was arrested. She pressed the letter against her chest and looked up at Mount Kinabalu.

"Abba. They've been caught."

Kuching, the preliminary meeting of the National Reconciliation Conference of Malaysia.

Anwar chaired the meeting. Participants included indigenous representatives from Sarawak and Sabah, Chinese community leaders, presidents of Indian chambers of commerce, and multiple democratically elected members of parliament who had been imprisoned by the Rashid regime in the early stages of the war.

Zhang Cheng's holographic projection appeared at the opening ceremony of the meeting.

"Today we are not talking about war," he said. "We are talking about reconstruction."

Anwar signed the first executive order, the "Sabah-Sarawak Humanitarian Aid Special Fund Bill". The initial amount of the fund was 4.7 billion ringgit, of which the Federal Government of Myanmar provided 2 billion ringgit in gratuitous aid, and Longguo provided 1.5 billion ringgit in low-interest loans. This money would be used within six months to rebuild seventeen villages, eleven Chinese primary schools, three hospitals, and the fishing ports of Lahad Datu and Sandakan destroyed by the flames of war.

The second executive order was the "Chinese Education Revitalization Law". The law officially listed Chinese as one of the official languages of Malaysia, enjoying equal legal status with Malay; all forty-one pieces of Chinese teaching materials from the Penang Lim Boon Keng teaching case were restored for use, with the National Archives responsible for preserving the originals and the Ministry of Education responsible for compiling and printing new versions.

"Mr. Prime Minister." A Malay conservative member of parliament in the back row stood up. "Chinese is listed as an official language; how do we explain this to the 40 percent of Malay voters nationwide?"

Anwar put down his signature pen.

"Explain it with the 4.7 billion reconstruction fund. Eleven of the seventeen villages rebuilt with this money are Malay villages. Tell them that the funds for the revitalization of Chinese education will not affect their school budgets."

That member of parliament in the back row sat down. A Malay female parliamentarian next to her took off her headscarf, wiped the corners of her eyes, and stood up to applaud. The applause spread from the back row to the front row, and someone among the Chinese community leaders whispered in Hakka, "Forty-one years."

Lin Meihua was invited to stand behind Anwar as a witness at the signing ceremony. Her right hand was in a cast and could not move, and her left hand pressed that research textbook against her chest. When the signature pen fell, she said to the reporters present:

"Forty-one years. Not too long."

Manhattan underground secret room.

After Haskins was arrested, the keys to Council of Elders' secret room were sealed by the federal prosecutor. Abramovich awaited extradition hearings in the detention center. Barrett read The Wall Street Journal editorial on a tablet brought by his lawyer in The Hague detention cell. The editorial was titled "The Reckoning of the Wise Men". The article listed the list of proxy wars planned or funded by Council of Elders in sixteen countries over the past thirty years, and at the end quoted Zhang Cheng's speech in The Hague: "He thought changing the lock meant safety. His mistake was not knowing that the locksmith also has a backup."