Helen Foster looked at the boss, full of confusion, and didn’t answer. Brian Cooper thought for a moment and said, “I guess Little David might not know the value of the suitcase, but he definitely knows there’s something important inside, which is why he’s so anxious to get back… That’s strange, using a suitcase worth twenty thousand yuan to carry something—what could possibly be inside? It must be something someone entrusted to him!”

Inside the suitcase was four hundred thousand yuan in cash.

This was money from Alfred to David Carter, meant for buying a car and renting a house.

With the money in hand, David Carter first found a family housing compound of a government agency and rented an apartment there. Then he spent several days wandering the car market and bought an inconspicuous silver Skoda Octavia. After taking care of all this, David Carter left a message at Alfred’s hotel, and that very night, he waited for him in the newly rented apartment.

The new apartment was located in the building at the very edge of the family compound. The building was five stories high, and David Carter’s apartment was on the third floor of the innermost unit. This kind of old brick-concrete building is already rare to see in the city, given the wave of urban redevelopment.

Alfred had been running around somewhere these past few days and seemed quite exhausted. He stood by the window for a long time before regaining his composure, looked around at the surroundings, and said with satisfaction, “This place is really nice! It’s a work-unit compound, the surveillance equipment is all independently set up and not networked, so unless someone specifically goes to the security room to check, there’s no way to access the surveillance footage remotely. That makes it much easier for me to come and go… The environment inside the compound is also good, with very few outsiders. During working hours, apart from a few elderly people taking walks, you can hardly find any young people… Very good, very good.”

After speaking, Alfred returned to David Carter, handed him a map, a pile of receipts, and a cell phone. “My mission has run into a bit of trouble, but since you haven’t had any training, you can only help me with some support work.

Oh, I came to China under the pretense of being on vacation. These are tickets for tourist attractions I booked in advance. In the next few days, take my phone and visit these tourist spots, take a few photos with my phone… Also, you need to go to the locations I’ve marked on the map and spend some time at each one. Once you’ve done that, the task is complete.”

David Carter hesitated for a moment and asked cautiously, “Can I ask why I need to do this? Oh, and is there anything I should pay attention to?”

Alfred stared at David Carter, thought for a moment, and replied, “…I wouldn’t normally need to explain, but considering you’ll eventually become one of us, you’ll have to know these things sooner or later. What’s more worrying is: you haven’t had any professional training, so you might slip up in small ways. So I’ll tell you—now, take the battery out of your phone.”

After David Carter followed his instructions, Alfred walked around the apartment, checked each room, then sat down on the old sofa left by the landlord and pointed at the furniture around the room. “All this was left by the landlord?”

David Carter quickly nodded. “The good thing about this apartment is that it’s ‘move-in ready’—all the furniture and appliances were left by the landlord. Since you needed it urgently, I chose this place, paid a year’s rent, and put down a three-month deposit. All this is old furniture and appliances, not worth much on the second-hand market. The three-month deposit is more than enough to cover them. Also, the apartment has both a phone line and internet…”

Alfred pointed at the phone on the table with the battery removed and changed the subject. “A cell phone is basically a small wireless transmitter, and the SIM card records all the signal towers you’ve connected to. This is something people can really take advantage of… With advances in technology, investigative methods are constantly evolving. When a crime happens, the police just need to check all the cell phone signal records near the scene at the time of the incident to know who was present.

Of course, given China’s population, that number could be enormous. However, the victim’s phone also records their movements. By cross-referencing the victim’s phone records with those of suspected numbers, it’s easy to spot phones that ‘coincidentally’ appeared near the victim with high frequency…

That’s not the scary part. The scary part is, once a suspect is identified, even if your phone is turned off, the monitoring party can remotely, with a small program, secretly turn on your phone’s microphone and camera, and listen in or watch everything happening around you without you ever knowing…”

Chapter 13: Contact Becomes a Problem

Alfred then pointed at the phone in David Carter’s hand. “The phone I gave you has a special device inside. It can play pre-recorded ambient sounds at set times, and occasionally simulate a ‘call answered’ state, playing some pre-recorded conversation. What you need to do now is: carry this phone around, so it looks like I’m traveling. The scheduled ‘calls’ make it even more convincing that the phone is really with me…

Oh, and you don’t need to bring your own phone. Otherwise, if there’s always another phone near this one, no matter how many times you change your number, it’ll seem suspicious.”