24: Chapter 24 A drunkard reveals a shocking conspiracy after drinking.

Walsh listened to this, silent for quite a while.

The modus operandi of Raymond Carter, that former Silicon Valley image recognition genius.

Ten years ago, when he first heard that Edward had recruited a Stanford Ph.D. to be his chief of staff, he had conducted a detailed investigation into this man's background.

If it was a cover-up personally handled by Raymond, then indeed, even the Federal Bureau of Investigation's digital forensics team would have no way to crack it.

"Since we can't get the surveillance footage..." Walsh's voice remained steady, but his speaking speed was about fifteen percent faster than usual, "Then how do you know what happened in the underground garage that day?"

Trent did not answer this question.

Trent pushed another file to the center of the table.

His movements were very slow, so slow it was like performing some kind of ritualistic handover.

On the cover of the file, a line of text was marked with a red marker—"Hoover Dam Investigation Trace".

"I couldn't get the surveillance from the garage," Trent said, "but through other channels, I obtained information on exactly which directions Edward Warren investigated after he began looking into the Hoover Dam."

Walsh raised his hand, signaling him to continue.

"The first direction, and also the most core one—the historical operating data of the Hoover Dam."

Trent pulled a hand-drawn data line graph from the file, on which three lines simultaneously showed a steep gap at the 1947 time point, "Edward and his staff team thoroughly retrieved all hydroelectric output and consumption data for the Hoover Dam since its completion in 1936."

"I also followed the path of their inquiry and dug deeper..."

"What did you find?"

"A blank."

Trent pressed his lips together; on his face, which had almost no excess expression, this action was equivalent to someone slamming the table, "Every time it reached a critical data integration point, the records would be interrupted."

"It wasn't data loss, but an interruption similar to being blocked by some pre-designed program logic."

"If you want to check data for A, A's data shows it was transferred to B, but B's records don't have A."

"If you want to check B, B's records show the data is in C's hands, but C's file tells you this part of the data belongs to the 'unauthorized access range'."

"Interlocked."

"Every inch you move forward, you are bound to hit a new wall."

Walsh leaned back in his chair, hands crossed on the desktop.

His knuckles turned slightly white from the slight exertion, but his face, that face which had experienced countless meetings and interrogations, remained as silent as a piece of iron just cast from a mold.

"What is the second direction?"

"Frank Gall," Trent said, "the chief engineer of the Hoover Dam."

"Edward's team investigated Mr. Gore's biographical data in detail."

Walsh's eyebrows lifted slightly.

He frowned very slightly; this name had a very vague, almost negligible archive tag in his memory.

Gore, Frank Gall, chief engineer of the Hoover Dam, died of a sudden heart attack in 1946.

This was what could be found in public records.

As for anything deeper, he hadn't investigated.

That note only had "Hoover Dam (Hydroelectric)" written on it, not Gore's name.

He previously had no reason to care about an old engineer who had been dead for nearly eighty years.

"Why did Edward want to investigate him?"

"Because Gore's death was not normal."

Trent pushed over a scan of an old newspaper, "In 1944, Gore had been retired for eight years. One day, after getting drunk at a bar, he was shouting at the whole street."

"What he shouted was very specific; he said that when they were building the Hoover Dam in 1931, the big shots above gave him a death order, forcing him to rush the work within five years, which led to the loss of 112 workers' lives."

"He shouted: 'It wasn't me who ordered the rush that killed those workers, it was them.'"

Walsh's pupils contracted sharply the moment the last word of this sentence fell.

He was not a man who easily lost his composure.

But this detail, after hearing "the big shots above" shouted from Gore's mouth and linked to the Hoover Dam, the nature of it was completely different.

"How did Gore curse those big shots?" he asked, his voice containing a layer of extremely subtle tension that only someone who had followed him for over a decade like Trent could hear, "Tell me the exact words."

Trent did not look at the document; he had already memorized this information.

When he spoke, his tone was very flat, but it was precisely this flatness that made what he said even more unsettling.

"According to the original record in the newspaper, what Gore said was:"

"'They didn't just kill those 112 workers; they are planning something even bigger.'"

"'Three years later, three years at most, the big event they planned will happen. By then, the entire Federal Government will be destroyed.'"

"'They know more than anyone else in the world; no one can stop them...'"

The fluorescent tube in the secret room emitted a very slight electrical hum at this moment, near the limit of human hearing.

It was as if it were making some kind of sound for these two silent men.

Walsh did not speak immediately.

He went over Gore's words from beginning to end in his mind again.

Three years later.

Three years after 1944 was 1947.

July 1947...

New Mexico, Roswell, an unidentified flying object crashed.

Then after that, Hoover Dam (Hydroelectric) appeared on that note that couldn't be investigated.

And after that, a department that didn't exist, the "Federal Urban Pipeline Maintenance Department", encountered Edward Warren's son, Link Warren, in the City Hall's underground garage.

The fragments in this intelligence veteran's mind automatically fell into place like a puzzle.

The edges of every fragment precisely embedded into the gaps of the next fragment.

From 1944 to 1947,

from 1947 to the Hoover Dam on that note,

from that note to the nonchalant sentence his old friend asked while eating on Chestnut Street, "Electricity and water are being used tightly"...

All seemingly unrelated clues were strung together in this instant by an invisible thread.

Walsh leaned back in his chair, his hands slowly withdrawing from the desktop.

He closed his eyes for quite a while.

When he opened them again, there was no fear in those eyes, at least not the kind of fear ordinary people understand.

But a kind of deeper, more thorough calmness, like finally confirming that he was standing on the edge of an abyss.

"So that's it."

He said these four words again, slower and heavier than the last time.

He finally understood why Edward had become like that.

Why Edward had flown over from Las Vegas,

why he had tested him in that way at the dinner table,

and why he had used so much strength when shaking his hand upon leaving.

He also finally understood why "Hoover Dam" had appeared on the note Geller gave him that couldn't be investigated,

understood why every name on that note meant death,

and understood why Geller's gaze was so heavy when he handed him that paper, as if he were handing over a bomb about to detonate.

He looked at Trent, signaling him to continue.

"What else? What else did you find?"

His voice had returned to calm, but Trent noticed his boss's left hand,

that hand which had held guns and pens in the intelligence system for decades, fingers slightly spreading and slowly clenching on the desktop, repeating many times.