Chapter 195

Chapter 195

Charlotte looked at Michael, curled up beside her. His fingers were still clutching hers, his nail edges worn down and embedded with old rust-colored stains. She closed her eyes for a moment.

"Send the interrogation results to Charles through encrypted channels after they're out. Don't use any public lines."

"Got it."

Twenty minutes after hanging up, her phone vibrated. An encrypted message from Charles. Not text, but an audio file. Charlotte put on her earphones.

A recording from the interrogation room. In the background were the sounds of metal chair legs scraping against the floor and Everett's voice—Charlotte recognized it, that gentle man who came to the villa every week to deliver Charles' medicine. But the voice in the recording was completely different from the one in her memory.

"'Chessboard' isn't a person."

"It's a code name. Passed down through three generations."

"The person using this code name now—" Everett swallowed, his voice almost a whisper, "his last name is Edward."

Charlotte listened to the recording twice. The second time slower than the first. She dragged the audio progress bar back to where Everett said "passed down through three generations" and listened to it three more times. Not to confirm the content—she'd memorized the content on the first listen. She was listening to Everett's breathing rate, the length of pauses between sentences, and the number of times he swallowed. Micro-expression analysis from interrogation recordings was a basic course at Barrott. Voices contained far more information than words.

Everett's breathing was steady when he mentioned "the first generation." It quickened when he mentioned "the second generation." When he mentioned "the third generation" and said "last name is Edward," he swallowed once, his vocal cords tightened, and air leaked from his nasal cavity. Fear. Real fear. Not fear of the interrogator, but fear of "Chessboard" himself.

Charlotte took off the earphones. Michael was already asleep, but his hand was still clutching her fingers. Charlotte carefully pulled her hand out and replaced it with a corner of the blanket, giving his fingers something to hold onto.

Charlotte walked out of the hospital room. At the end of the corridor, a bodyguard nodded to her. Charlotte dialed Charles' number.

"I listened to the recording."

"We got the blueprints too." Charles' voice carried fatigue. "Marcus is doing a digital scan; he'll send you the encrypted file in ten minutes."

"What else did Everett say?"

Two seconds of silence on the other end.

"'Chessboard' is a code name passed down through three generations." Charles's speech slowed down. "The first generation was the founder of the Edward family, my great-grandfather. While establishing the Edward Group, he secretly operated an underground resource network. Arms, intelligence, human experiments. 'Chessboard' was the highest command code name for this network."

Charlotte leaned against the corridor wall, cold white light falling on her face.

"The second generation was my grandfather's brother. Demetrius Edward."

"Your grandfather's brother?"

"Right. Demetrius took over the 'Chessboard' code name in the sixties. On the surface, he moved to Southeast Asia for business, and it was announced that he died of illness in the late nineties. But according to Everett he didn't die."

Charlotte's fingers tapped twice on the wall. "A person who's been officially dead for twenty years."

"Everett says Demetrius owns three biopharmaceutical companies in Southeast Asia under his name. I had Marcus look into it." Charles paused for a beat, "The three companies are registered in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, respectively. Their funding channels overlap heavily with The Grey Wolves' arms corridor."

Charlotte closed her eyes. A few more pieces of the puzzle in her mind. The lines, the nodes, they're all connected by one code name.

"The third generation," Charlotte spoke. "Everett said the current 'Chessboard' has the last name, Edward. Is it Demetrius or someone else?"

"He doesn't know." Charles's voice lowered. "The third generation 'Chessboard' never shows its face. All orders are given through voice-altered phone calls, and payments are transferred through shell companies under the Bowers family. Everett worked at the Bowers family laboratory for six years and never saw 'Chessboard' in person."

"Is he protecting someone, or does he really not know?"

"I’m inclined to believe he really doesn’t know." There was no hesitation in Charles' tone. "I used some unconventional methods during the interrogation. His fear response was genuine. He didn't dare lie."

"How much has the scope narrowed?"

"The third generation 'Chessboard' has the last name, Edward and can control both the Bowers family's underground resources and the Edward family's internal channels." Charles' voice was cold and emotionless. "People who meet these conditions—butler Orval is ruled out, his last name isn't Edward. Thomas has no overseas background and no connections to biopharmaceuticals either."

"Who else?"

A long silence.

"Demetrius himself," Charles said. "If he really didn't die."

Charlotte's fingers stopped on the wall. A person who had been "dead" for twenty years, controlling an underground network spanning three countries from the shadows, using children's bodies to develop biological weapons, using a family doctor to poison his great-nephew.

She recalled William's face in the basement of Edward Manor.

"Does your grandfather know Demetrius is alive?"

"I'm not sure." There was a trace of something Charles rarely showed in his voice—him forcing himself to face a possibility he didn't want to face. "But the early morning access records on that server in the basement were William's. If Demetrius has been dead for twenty years, what was William doing on that server in the middle of the night?"

Charlotte didn't respond. Some deductions didn't need to be spoken aloud; speaking them would only push the blade deeper into the flesh.

"I've sent you the scanned blueprints." Charles's tone returned to calm. "Take a look first. We'll discuss the plan tomorrow."

"Okay."

Charlotte hung up. She opened the encrypted email. The blueprints were hand-drawn, with neat lines and detailed annotations.

Three underground levels: the first level was a storage area, the second level was equipment rooms and a monitoring center, and the third level was marked as "core experimental area."

Charlotte's gaze moved across the third level's floor plan. A cargo passage ran from the parking lot behind the Bowers Villa directly to the first underground level, bypassing the main entrance security check. This matched the refrigerated truck entry and exit route Felix had monitored.

She took a screenshot and sent it to Felix. "This passage. Can we use it?"

"Let me cross-reference it with the security data I got to see if there are any contradictions."

Charlotte leaned back against the wall. Her mind was racing. Every entrance and exit on the blueprints, every corridor, every security checkpoint left coordinates in her visual memory.

Thirty seconds later, Felix replied. "No contradictions. The cargo passage's security setup is two levels lower than the main entrance. Refrigerated trucks enter and exit between 3 and 5 AM every day. During this time slot, there are only two personnel on duty at the passage."

Charlotte put her phone back in her pocket. She returned to the hospital room. Michael was still sleeping, the green dots on the heart monitor jumping at a steady pace in the darkness. Charlotte sat down in the chair beside the bed.

Her phone vibrated again. It was Felix.

"Boss. Urgent intel."

"Go ahead."

"Activity detected in the underground levels of the Bowers Villa. Thirty minutes ago, two refrigerated transport trucks entered the cargo passage from the parking lot behind the estate. The license plates are newly changed, not among the regular plates we recorded before."

Charlotte's hand gripped the armrest of the chair tightly.

"It's been forty-two hours since Rebecca sent out the distress call." Felix's voice dropped. "If they're transferring people and equipment—"

Charles sat in the chair across from her. He'd arrived at the hospital at five o'clock, holding a security data summary Marcus had compiled overnight.

"Cargo passage. 3 to 5 AM, two people on duty." Charlotte tapped the lower left corner of the blueprints in her hand with her pen tip. "This is the only entrance that doesn't go through the main entrance security check."

"Is there secondary verification inside the passage?"

"The blueprints mark a cargo scanning station. You have to pass this checkpoint to enter the unloading area on the first underground level."

"What about personnel identification?"

"The refrigerated truck drivers use temporary work badges with no biometric information." Charlotte flipped to a screenshot of security data Felix had sent. "Felix cross-referenced it. In the logbook for refrigerated truck entries and exits, the driver names are different every time, but the license plate numbers have appeared repeatedly eleven times in the past month."