cicada

Chapter 840 Pulling the Clouds (3)

Zuo Zhong walked along the corridor to the door of the safe house, looked at the messy interior, and then at the door panel on the ground that was blown away by the shock wave, and frowned. The dangerous goods used by the target were quite powerful.

Such a violent explosion, I don't know how much evidence can be left behind, it seems that they will stay here in the past few days, and thoroughly screen the leftovers at the scene.

Moreover, there was a pungent smell of kerosene in the air, which proved that even if dangerous goods were not used, the target could still destroy the evidence by simply setting fire to it, but he did it anyway. What does it mean?
It means that the other party is extremely aggressive, which is a dangerous signal, and we must pay special attention to this point in future investigations and arrests, lest the target die with them.

"Deputy Director, please look, this was found at the scene."

At this time, Wu Chunyang, who stepped in first, came out with gloves on, and handed a tattered piece of iron to Zuo Zhong.

Gu Qi on the side heard the words and came over to observe for a long time, and said in a somewhat uncertain tone.

"This seems to be a nameplate on a typewriter. Deputy Director, your guess is correct. The blurred printing of the word "three" is indeed a trap left by spies."

"Don't rush to draw conclusions for the time being. Preconceived ideas are the most taboo in intelligence reconnaissance. It will not be too late to make inferences after collecting all the evidence."

Zuo Zhong glanced over the parts and said something, then continued to walk into the house.

When he walked to the middle of the room, he looked left and right, and found that the paint on the walls and the floor had been charred, and the interior furnishings were also in tatters, completely unable to see their original shape.

The hearts of those present sank. No matter how powerful the Secret Service is, it is impossible to recover evidence from the ashes. It is estimated that there is little hope for investigating the true identity of the target.

It's all because of the trash in the Secret Service Headquarters. If it weren't for them, the spy leader would be sitting in the interrogation room now. The more they thought about it, the more angry they became, and they wished they could bring Xu Enzeng back and beat him up.

"Crack."

Zuo Zhong walked around the room when he suddenly stepped on something, and there was a crisp sound. He took out a handkerchief and wrapped it around an object a few centimeters in size. He held it in his hand for a while to identify it carefully, and found that it was a piece of pottery.

Pottery, a kind of utensil made of clay or clay after kneading and firing, has a long history, even dating back to the Neolithic Age ①.

The ancients used them to hold water, stew food, store grain, and used them as practical utensils for life.

However, in the Republic of China, most of these functions were replaced by stronger and more beautiful porcelain and iron, and only a small number of utensils were still made of pottery.

The most common of these is the brazier, which can be bought for two to three cents. It can be used for sacrifices, heating, weddings and funerals, and almost every household has it.

Therefore, it is not surprising that pottery fragments and even braziers were found at the scene. Of course, the spy leader certainly did not use them to burn paper money for the locust, but it should be used as a tool to destroy paper documents.

Thinking of Zuo Chong raising his head sharply, he said to everyone: "Find some tarpaulins immediately and seal all the doors and windows to prevent the strong wind from blowing away the ashes. There may be important physical evidence here.

In addition, send people to seal~lock the scene within a radius of 100 meters, no, 300 meters, conduct a thorough search, and go through the roof, trees, and every house, focusing on paper fragments!
The shock wave formed by the explosion and the strong wind may have blown them to the vicinity, causing the brothers to widen their eyes. This is related to whether the spy leader can be caught, do you understand? "

"Yes!"

Everyone in the Secret Service answered the order loudly, and after discussing for a while, they dispersed to execute the order. After cooperating for so long, there is no need to emphasize who will do what.

Wu Chunyang, Shen Dongxin, and Wu Jingzhong, who are good at intelligence analysis, led the personnel to conduct the search. Gu Qi, who is a senior official, accompanied the deputy director to investigate on the spot.

As for rough and dirty work such as arranging tarpaulins and sealing ~ locks, Song Minghao and Gui Youguang consciously took over. It is important for people to have self-knowledge. Instead of barely making do, it is better to do what they are good at.

Soon, the originally chaotic scene was emptied, and several trucks dragged the dead and injured from the Secret Service and Secret Service Headquarters to a nearby hospital.

Immediately afterwards, most of the block was surrounded by groups. Groups of spies squatted on the ground, climbed houses and trees, or knocked on doors to enter houses, and searched the surrounding areas from the center of the explosion.

In the biting cold wind, many people's faces were black and blue, and some people had frostbite on their hands, but no one complained of suffering or tiredness, and they all focused on searching for evidence.

When encountering mud pits and ponds, in order not to miss any suspicious items, they directly took off their gloves and clothes, and slowly groped with their hands, feet and bodies in the cold sewage.

Under such circumstances, even if the spies had undergone special anti-cold training, they would not last long. They would fall into a state of hypothermia within seven or eight minutes at most, and had to take turns to replace them.

Gu Qi, who has always been careful, was secretly worried when he saw this, and quickly sent people to collect a large amount of ginger and typhoid decoction from the vegetable market and pharmacy in Hanyang, and cooked several large pots of ginger soup and medicine on the side of the road for the operators to keep warm.

As for Zuo Zhong, he didn't care about it right now. He and a few small spies collected all the ashes with a small shovel, separated the large pieces, and then sifted the ashes several times with the densest sieve.

This job requires patience and care, because if you don't pay attention, you will miss important clues. Even Zuo Zhong didn't dare to be careless.

The search continued until dark. After nightfall, support personnel from Wuchang even brought large-wattage light bulbs and diesel generators, which illuminated the scene as if it were daytime.

Looking at the glare of the light outside the window, the residents in the blockade dared not speak out. They didn't understand or know how important this matter was, so they had to draw the curtains, cover their heads with the quilt, and cursed softly in bed.

Early the next morning.

The first round of search came to an end. In the previous command post, the tired-looking people held a meeting to gather the clues in their hands and provide a basis for the next step.

"It is reported that we found fragments of the timer used for the mechanical alarm clock on a utility pole 25 meters away from the scene, which may be the remnants of the timer bomb.

No fingerprints were found on it. I am going to have someone compare all the alarm clocks on the city of Jiang to find out the specific brand and find the target from the purchase route.

In addition, the brothers also found a large number of paper fragments, and it is impossible to determine whether they are related to the case, and technical personnel need to do a detailed inspection. "

Wu Chunyang was the first to speak, and he sat back after speaking, not because he disrespected the officer, but because he was too tired, and it was all due to his willpower that he did not fall asleep.

Shen Dongxin followed closely and reported the results of the search. Their harvest was even less than that of Wu Chunyang. They only found hundreds of large and small pieces of paper, most of which were recovered from the hut.

Dirty or not, the possibility of physical evidence flying from the explosion site to the latrine is almost zero, which means that the more than ten hours of hard work have been wasted.

But this is the normal state of intelligence investigations. Not all efforts are rewarded. Sometimes it depends on luck. Obviously, the secret service's luck this time is not very good.

Just as he was talking, Gu Qi brought in more than a dozen army-used lunch boxes, muttering in his mouth: "Sharpening knives is not a mistake for woodcutters. Everyone eats first. After working for so long, it is not good to be hungry."

"Well, Old Gu is right."

Hearing his old partner's words, Zuo Zhong was delighted. He stretched out his hand to open a lunch box, saw that there were beef with sauce and fried pork with cabbage inside, and nodded with a smile.

"Hehe, the quality of the food is good. Let's talk about it while eating. Let's catch up with the trend of breakfast meetings in European and American countries today."

As a joke, he quickly picked up the chopsticks and took two bites. After eating the hot meal, his exhausted spirit was instantly refreshed, and his shivering body slowly recovered a little bit of temperature.

When everyone saw that the deputy director had eaten, they were not polite, and scrambled to grab the lunch box, as if they were starving to death and reincarnated, eating with great joy.

Wu Jingzhong, one of the three persons in charge of the search, padded his stomach a little bit. Seeing that Zuo Zhong and everyone were eating deliciously, he didn't know whether he should speak or not.

However, thinking of the other party's vigorous and vigorous work style in the past, he hesitated for a while before putting down the lunch box and said something unusual.

"Deputy Director, someone under my command found a photo in the bushes, with kerosene sprinkled on it, accompanied by high-temperature burn marks. I think it may be related to the case."

"Oh? Tell me about the situation."

Zuo Zhong picked up a piece of meat and nodded, then signaled him to continue eating. It is a requirement of a gentleman to eat without talking or sleeping without talking, and there is no need for them, the gang of spies, to stick to such rules.

Hearing this, Wu Jingzhong picked up the lunch box again but didn't eat it, he held up his chopsticks and replied: "It's not accurate to say that it's a photo, at most it's half of it, and the surface was burned with a few holes.

The spy leader should have set the fire first, with the purpose of destroying the evidence. As a result, when the photo was burning, the flame was blown out by the air wave and carried out of the window, and was blown to the bushes tens of meters away by the strong wind.

If my guess is correct, I can only say that the sky has eyes, if the target hadn’t set up a bomb~bomb, this evidence would have been turned into ashes like other evidence, you see. "

After roughly talking about the situation, he gently put a small piece of "photo" on the table, carefully observed Zuo Zhong's actions, and was ready to answer the other party's questions at any time.

Zuo Zhong raised his head and ate the last bite of food, his eyes flicked across the table, there was very little content on the fragment of the photo, only a Buick car was driving, and the trees on both sides of the road were lush and lush.

This is neither an image of a person, nor a scenic spot. Who would take this kind of photo, and what is the purpose?

From the analysis of the composition, the photographer is not far from the rear of the car, pressing the shutter with a low profile, which seems to be a stealth shot. Could it be that this is a photo taken by a spy spy during intelligence investigation?

A guess flashed through his mind, he picked up the teacup and covered his hands, and began to consider whether he could find out the target through this clue, but there were two problems to be solved first.

—that’s where the photo was taken, and where the car belongs.

The first point is difficult to achieve. This is not an electronic photo of later generations. There are various camera information and shooting data in the file, which can be easily retrieved through civilian software.

If you want to infer the location of the photo from the old-fashioned photos, you can either rely on landmark buildings, or pedestrians, or look at place name signs. There are no such information photos.

The second point was originally very simple, but unfortunately, a hole happened to be scalded in the position of the license plate, leaving only a "6", and even the style could not be seen clearly, and the background color of the license plate could not be seen in the black and white photos.

Otherwise, things would be simple. The style, color, and pattern of the license plates in each city in the Republic of China were different.

The case seems to have entered a dead end here. Could it be that there is really no way to figure out these two issues? Zuo Zhong frowned, with a thoughtful look on his face.

　①The name Neolithic Age was first proposed by British archaeologist Lubbock in the middle of the 1th century.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)