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Almost imperceptibly, Da Shi shook his head. “There’s no good position. She’s sharp as a tack. As soon as she’s targeted by a sniper scope, she’ll know.”

Da Shi strode forward. He pushed the crowd apart and stood in the middle of the empty space.

“Stop,” the young woman warned Da Shi, staring at him intently. Her right thumb was poised over the detonator. Her face was no longer smiling in the flashlight beams.

“Calm down,” Da Shi said, standing about seven or eight meters from her. He took an envelope from his pocket. “I have some information you’ll definitely want to know. Your mother has been found.”

The young woman’s feverish eyes dimmed. At that moment her eyes were truly windows to her soul.

Da Shi took two steps forward. He was now no more than five meters from her. She raised the bomb and warned him with her eyes, but she was already distracted. One of the two ETO members who had tossed away fake bombs strode toward Da Shi to take the envelope from him. As the man blocked the woman’s view of Da Shi, he drew his gun with a lightning-fast motion. The woman only saw a flash by the ear of the man trying to take the letter from Da Shi before the bomb in her hands exploded.

After hearing the muffled explosion, Wang saw nothing before his eyes but darkness. Someone dragged him out of the cafeteria. Thick, yellow smoke poured out of the door, and a cacophony of shouting and gunshots came from inside. From time to time, people rushed through the smoke and out of the cafeteria.

Wang got up and tried to go back into the cafeteria, but the explosives expert grabbed him around the waist and stopped him.

“Careful. Radiation!”

The chaos eventually subsided. More than a dozen ETO fighters were killed in the gunfight. The rest—more than two hundred, including Ye Wenjie—were arrested. The explosion had turned the nuclear woman into a bloody mess, but she was the only casualty of the aborted bomb. The man who had tried to take the letter from Da Shi was severely injured, but since his body had shielded Da Shi, his wounds were light. However, like everyone else who remained in the cafeteria after the explosion, Shi suffered severe radiation contamination.

Through the small window of an ambulance, Wang stared at Da Shi, who was lying inside. A wound on Da Shi’s head continued to ooze blood. The nurse who was dressing the wound wore transparent protective gear. Da Shi and Wang could only talk through their mobile phones.

“Who was that young woman’s mother?” Wang asked.

Da Shi grinned. “Fucked if I know. Just a guess. A girl like that most likely has mother issues. After doing this for more than twenty years, I’m pretty good at reading people.”

“I bet you’re happy to be proven right. There really was someone behind all this.” Wang forced himself to smile, hoping Da Shi could see it.

“Buddy, you’re the one who was right!” Da Shi laughed, shaking his head. “I would never have thought that actual fucking aliens would be involved!”

25

The Deaths of Lei Zhicheng and Yang Weining

INTERROGATOR: Name?

YE WENJIE: Ye Wenjie.

INTERROGATOR: Birth date?

YE: June 1943.

INTERROGATOR: Employment?

YE: Professor of Astrophysics at Tsinghua University. Retired in 2004.

INTERROGATOR: In consideration of your health, you may stop the interrogation temporarily at any time.

YE: Thank you. I’m fine.

INTERROGATOR: We’re only conducting a regular criminal investigation now and won’t get into more sensitive matters. We would like to finish quickly. We hope you’ll cooperate.

YE: I know what you’re referring to. Yes, I’ll cooperate.

INTERROGATOR: Our investigation revealed that while you were working at Red Coast Base, you were suspected of murder.

YE: I did kill two people.

INTERROGATOR: When?

YE: The afternoon of October 21, 1979.

INTERROGATOR: Names of the victims?

YE: Base Commissar Lei Zhicheng, and my husband, Base Engineer Yang Weining.

INTERROGATOR: Explain your motive for murder.

YE: Can I … assume that you understand the relevant background?

INTERROGATOR: I know the basics. If something is unclear I’ll ask you.

YE: Good. On the day when I received the extraterrestrial communication and replied, I learned that I wasn’t the only one to get the message. Lei did as well.

*   *   *

Lei was a typical political cadre of the time, so he possessed an extremely keen sense for politics and saw everything through an ideological lens. Unbeknownst to most of the technical staff at Red Coast Base, he ran a small program in the background on the main computer. This program constantly read from the transmission and reception buffers and stored the results in a hidden encrypted file. This way, there would be a copy of everything Red Coast sent and received that only he could read. It was from this copy that he discovered the extraterrestrial message.