Chapter 164 Smuggling in Personal Intentions

Governor DeWine turned his head and looked at Harrison. "You said Cohen works in the E-Ring of The Pentagon."

"If—and I mean if—his investigation into the theme park isn't just limited to the interior of The Pentagon, but extends its scope further to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission through inter-departmental coordination mechanisms."

"He hasn't taken that step yet, but I think he will sooner or later. How long can you block him?"

"Governor DeWine, you have three children. Combined, the money flowing through the three of them from Mu Xin's project exceeds a million dollars a year, even by conservative estimates."

"Add in that public policy school, and if I were Cohen, I would compile a report for the FBI regarding the financial dealings between the Ohio Governor's family and foreign investors."

After saying this, he looked at Acton. "You are the frontrunner for the next Governor of the state, and you publicly pushed for the fast-track approval process for the fifty-million-dollar investment in the Medical Center."

"If Cohen decides to drag you into this as well, the FBI's counterintelligence division won't need to investigate any criminal activity; they would only need to leak one thing to the public."

"If the next Governor's biggest political sponsor is a Chinese student holding foreign citizenship, you'll be finished."

"As for Ramaswamy, I won't say much more. There are far too many places where Cohen could strike at your business."

"I've been working on K Street for so many years; I can keep his conclusions locked inside The Pentagon before Cohen finds hard enough evidence."

"But I can only block him for a year at most. Within a year, you must turn the theme park from a proposal into reality."

Governor DeWine stood up. "Jack is right. Everyone needs to stay in their own lanes and do what they are supposed to do."

"That settles it!"

Acton also stood up. "Mr. Mu, on the first day the theme park officially opens, I hope I am the one cutting the ribbon."

Ramaswamy didn't waste any words. "I'm heading out. I'll arrange for the things you need as soon as possible."

Governor DeWine walked to the door and stopped beside Mu Xin. "People like Cohen have a sense of propriety. He has his own scope of authority, and he won't do anything that exceeds his power."

"It's not because he's a good person, but because when someone like him oversteps his authority, his opponents won't cover for him."

Mu Xin nodded without saying a word.

...

After everyone had left, Mu Xin leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a long time.

He picked up the map. It was all fucking made up on the spot.

Mu Xin crumpled the map into a ball and threw it into the trash can, then picked it back out and smoothed it out on the table again.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes... It had been half a year.

From binding to the system, to just now being in a private business club in Cincinnati, with someone from The Pentagon in front of him asking why he was buying weapons.

He had fabricated an anti-war theme park. He was facing pressure from four different directions all by himself, and his only partner, Ramaswamy, had chosen to remain silent on the most important issue.

Mu Xin stood up from his chair and walked outside. The October night wind was already very cold.

He lit a cigarette. Because he didn't know how to smoke, the first drag made him choke until tears came out.

"Fuck..." He looked down at the cigarette in his hand and crushed it out immediately.

"Half a year." He muttered to himself into the night, "It's only been half a fucking year."

If Cohen or other people from Washington came again, he wasn't sure if he could make up another anti-war theme park.

In everyone's eyes, the theme park was a fat piece of meat. Governor DeWine saw it as a political legacy, the largest cultural tourism project approved under his name in his final year before leaving office.

Acton saw it as campaign capital. The veteran mental health rehabilitation center was attached to her public health platform; there was no surer way to harvest swing voters in all of Ohio.

Ramaswamy saw it as profit. He was flying to Belgrade next week, and when he came back, he would be able to pack half the exhibition hall of that Bulgarian armor museum into shipping containers.

These people all had their own agendas, but their agendas didn't matter. What mattered was that none of them wanted this project to fail.

And as long as they didn't want it to fail, it was equivalent to his progress bar moving forward one notch every day.

Mu Xin returned to the room and stared at the circles on the map. He had a new idea.

The theme park needed to build underground facilities. He could dig basements under the exhibition halls for storage to keep generators and spare parts, leaving double the redundancy between the declared area and the actual area.

He would set up hidden surveillance points every so often along the off-road route in the experience area. The underground data transmission would run on its own fiber optic cables. This was completely consistent with the park's security, so no faults could be found during the approval process.

Military-grade cameras would be installed on street light poles, and smoke detectors would be hidden in the suspended ceiling interlayers of the exhibition halls. They would look like all other compliant security equipment, but the data would not enter the public cloud or connect to the municipal network; it would all run on the park's own independent fiber optic cables.

On the planning map, the helicopter landing pad was just a small square with an "H" drawn on it, but in reality, the foundation would be made into a double-layer structure, with an emergency fuel depot hidden underneath.

If the town's natural gas pipeline was ever cut off from the outside, the power generation modules could use helicopters to transport backup fuel from the outside.

There was an underground corridor between the hotel and the park. On the planning map, it could be a "covered walkway for tourists," and another layer could be dug underneath the walkway for emergency supply storage.

At the end of the corridor was the veteran rehabilitation demonstration center. Acton was currently seeking funding for this from the federal Department of Veterans Affairs.

The approval process followed entirely public and legal channels, but once approved, the rehabilitation center built inside the park would legally belong to a federal cooperative facility.

If the FBI wanted to enter the park to search, they would have to clear it with the Department of Veterans Affairs first.

Each system would operate independently, with partitions between them. Power, communication, surveillance, fuel, medical—if any link was cut off from the outside, the other links could continue to run.

It wouldn't be built in a day, but every zone would have interfaces left during planning and construction.

The interlayer between the declaration and the construction was enough for him to hide things.

And then there was the anti-war theme.

Mu Xin looked down at the circle on the map for the education zone. Smuggling in private agendas was never a specialty exclusive to Americans; he, Mu Xin, could do it too!

How did WWI recruitment posters trick young people into getting on ships?

For democracy, for freedom, for the war to end all wars.

How many government contracts did Hollywood take during WWII to portray the Axis powers as dehumanized monsters?

During the Cold War, the CIA covertly funded thousands of anti-communist books and magazines.

Every museum in the United States tells the same story: America is righteous, and the enemy is evil.

Then he could take this opportunity to properly educate people about the Japanese invasion of China.

Thinking of this, Mu Xin looked at the billions of dollars in his account.

"For this anti-war theme park, I can spend a little more money!"