204: Chapter 204 CIA Leaves a Vulnerability to Avoid Disaster

Heinlein stood up from his chair, adjusted his suit lapels, and gave Madeline a standard, restrained smile:

"Thank you for the President's trust."

"Please tell Mr. President that the CIA will do everything in its power to complete this task."

Madeline nodded slightly and turned to walk out of the office.

The door gently closed behind her.

Heinlein stood in place. The smile on his face, at the exact moment the door closed, was completely extinguished like a lamp whose switch had been turned off.

He put his hands into his pants pockets, slowly paced to the window, and looked at the Potomac River outside, shrouded in dark clouds.

The "progress" Madeline spoke of—he knew all too well what that word meant in Washington's power circles.

In the past, he might have still been interested in such things, but what time is it now?

The Grey Alien's million-ship fleet is only a few months away from the Solar System,

When the sky falls, the tall ones hold it up.

In the Shenandoah Valley, those guys sitting around the same table with the President to discuss Ten Thousand Ship Slash and the "gravity trap" are the tallest group of people.

He is currently sitting in this Director's position, neither too tall nor too short, just right.

If the sky falls, the first wave will hit those higher-ups, not him.

If he is promoted to the upper echelons at this time,

Then he will become one of those people who must stand at the front line of the falling sky,

At that time, not only will he have to take the blame, but he will also have to shield others from the knives.

He must pinch out this "progress" with his own hands.

He walked back to the desk, picked up the internal encrypted telephone, and dialed the extension numbers of the Deputy Director of the Operations Division and the Director of the Intelligence Analysis Division.

After the call went through, he said:

"Kevin, Ali Wu, come to my office for a moment."

"There's a matter that requires the two of you to discuss together."

...

More than ten minutes later,

Kevin Mosby, Deputy Director of the Operations Division of the CIA, and Ali Wu, Director of the Intelligence Analysis Division of the CIA, pushed open the door and walked into the Director's office at the same time.

Mosby sat in the old leather chair by the window, pushed aside an outdated intelligence folder someone had dropped by his feet, and looked up at Heinlein.

Ali Wu sat in the rattan chair opposite him, crossing her hands on her knees and leaning forward slightly.

Heinlein pushed the document marked "Top Secret" that he had just received from Madeline to the exact center of the desk, and recounted the contents item by item:

Washington needs a perfect heroic scientist to replace the Longevity Faction as the public source of all technological aid,

Must be flawless, and must withstand the frantic pursuit of all media and Prant's campaign team.

Then, he faithfully recounted Madeline's last sentence, "progress."

After listening, Mosby's brows knitted into a knot within a few seconds, then slowly relaxed, leaning his body back against the chair. His tone carried the thoroughness and cold mockery of someone who had seen through everything after being repeatedly calculated against:

"Progress—that word in Washington's dictionary has never meant 'you've been promoted,' but rather 'you've been pushed to the standing position closest to the fire pit.'"

"Those previously arranged to straighten out the intelligence station in Afghanistan, or to audit contractor corruption in Iraq—every single one of them sat in a chair just like yours before being promised progress."

"The Grey Alien's million-ship fleet is about to bear down on us, and they need a scapegoat, not a Director."

"This 'progress' cannot be accepted."

Ali Wu gently loosened the ten fingers crossed on her knees, her tone calm and precise:

"Completely agree."

"This task itself is a trap, and the lid of the trap hasn't closed yet."

"As long as we submit a flawed plan, you will be deemed 'incompetent' and unable to hold a higher-level position, thereby staying in your original place and continuing to comfortably be your 'doomsday bunker' Director."

"Currently, the Grey Alien's million-ship fleet is about to bear down on us. When the sky falls, the ones slapped to death first will always be the tallest group of people."

"The Shenandoah Valley—those people at the Federal Government highest command center are the tallest."

"You cannot move higher at this time."

Heinlein leaned back against the chair, crossing his hands in front of the desk. He spent nearly half a minute re-deducing the analyses from the mouths of Mosby and Ali Wu item by item in his mind,

Then pushing the paper away, he said: "Therefore, this heroic scientist's plan must have loopholes."

"It doesn't need to be big enough to make the whole thing collapse."

"But it needs to be big enough that Madeline and the higher-ups behind her who are waiting for me to stick my head into the guillotine will immediately put all thoughts of promoting me back into the refrigerator after reading the first round of evaluation reports."

Mosby and Ali Wu exchanged a glance,

And immediately the three of them began flipping through every basic material they could find in this office that could be pieced together.

The entire internal discussion lasted for several hours.

They first solved the naming problem.

Mosby suggested:

"Find a surname with the same name as a certain old scientist in the world who is already close to a myth, so that without making up any heritage story, it will naturally carry a legendary color."

Ali Wu reacted instantly, pulling out a pile of former KGB myth-fabrication cases that had been tucked away at the bottom of a drawer for decades and unused, drew out a yellowed dark blue folder from inside, and placed it on the table.

She opened it and said:

"Use the surname 'Tesla'."

"Nikola Tesla himself is a legendary figure with the most rumors and is revered by the public as a myth-level inventor."

"Coupled with the fact that the CIA deliberately adds material to his files in a mystifying direction every few years, the public is already used to attaching any impossible story behind this surname."

"It doesn't matter if there are no descendants; just say that in his later years he had a son with an undisclosed Yugoslav maid."

"This child was secretly sent to the North American continent during the war years, lived under an alias for many years, and only restored part of his family heritage after being recruited by the America Federal Government."

Finally they determined the full name: Sophus Tesla.

In terms of resume, they wrote him as an orphan who grew up in a secret genius school funded by the military, and had never appeared in any public media or commercial activities.

His entire life was classified as top secret, his files directly blocked by the Federal Government, without any colleagues, classmates, or private social circle.

When he was young, he voluntarily accepted national recruitment, and alone completed the theoretical derivation and prototype manufacturing of all advanced technologies in an underground laboratory funded by the military that was never publicly numbered.

As his long career was coming to an end and his body was rapidly failing due to late-stage cancer,

He still insisted on donating all his achievements free of charge to the Federal Government, and at the last moment of his life, was still conducting important scientific research for the country.

The news of his death will be released to the outside world by the White House with state funeral specifications,

But the effective release date will be after the plan passes review.

In terms of identity prototype, Heinlein will personally select a wandering drug addict with no relatives or friends on the streets of Los Angeles.

This person will be taken off the street in the name of the Federal Health Care Program, washed up, filed, and have ID photos taken.

He will walk through his final stages in a critical care hospital funded by the military.

All of his hospitalization records, visitation records, and death certificates will be incorporated into the empire-level confidential system simultaneously.

After the final round of item-by-item verification ended,

Mosby placed the entire draft on the table, and used the tip of his pen to point out every single trace of imperfection they deliberately left behind:

The addict's past records will not be completely cleared.

The descendant story that "Tesla does not exist in any original gene" was carefully covered up, but clues still remain within the archives.

And those administrative personnel who had too close handovers with the Washington higher-ups will find out years later that some seemingly complete position numbers were never truly activated in historical records.

Ali Wu closed her notebook, her tone as calm and precise as ever:

"In this set of plans, every loophole is in the range of 'unable to pass the higher-ups' probation period.'"

"It's enough for Biden and his gang to immediately cross the name of Heinlein off the promotion list after reading the evaluation report."

"But the loopholes themselves won't be big enough to cause the whole thing to collapse at the public level."

Heinlein stood up from his chair, walked to the window,

The Potomac River and The Pentagon quietly rested beneath the same skyline lowered by dark clouds.

Without looking back, he gently tapped the edge of the window frame.

"Let it be settled like this."

...

New York, Brooklyn, Sunset Park industrial area.

Before the news of the Zeta Star million-ship fleet bearing down was fully exposed by Prant, this neighborhood had been a blue-collar community barely maintaining a decent operation,

Dockworkers, truck drivers, and night shift operators of small food processing plants lived a mundane nine-to-five life here, saving money for their children to attend community college.

At this moment, it had turned into a massive indulgence site that was soaked in despair and completely abandoned all disguises.

The streets were everywhere strewn with emptied liquor bottles,

Broken glass paved the way all the way to the intersection, coming from smashed car windows, toppled vending machines, and convenience store shelves that had been turned completely upside down.

Groups of empty-eyed people squatted next to the pried-open rolling doors of shops,

Someone unpacked an entire box of cigarettes dug out from the depths of the warehouse and casually distributed them to the surroundings,

Someone casually handed a half-drunk bottle of whiskey to a completely unfamiliar person next to them, who took it, tilted their head back to finish it, and handed it back.

The police station doors were tightly shut,

A piece of printed paper was pasted on the glass door, written in crooked handwriting:

"Went back to accompany family, God bless us all," without even a signature.

Several police cars were abandoned at the street corner, their windows smashed, hoods flipped open, and the batteries inside long gone.

Those drug addicts remained silent in their own hallucinations.

A young woman, skinny as a skeleton, squatted on the steps at the entrance of the abandoned convenience store, hugging herself with crossed arms, her body rocking back and forwards at an extremely slow frequency.

Her lips kept moving, as if whispering with some existence only she could see.

Not far beside her, by the fire hydrant,

A middle-aged man wearing tattered overalls lay on the ground, his limbs twisting randomly in a completely uncoordinated rhythm, just like a marionette with all its bones extracted.

His pupils were dilated and scattered like two crushed pills, saliva hanging from the corner of his mouth along with some indescribable ecstatic smile, and he repeatedly muttered the same sentence in his mouth,

Probably about angels, spaceships, and some kind of aurora descending from the sky.