200: The Ghost Fleet and the Weight of Gold

Wang Dalong was stunned by Lin Feng's nonsensical words. He leaned his head over, looking at the report filled with German 'hieroglyphics,' his face a giant question mark.

"Fleet? Where? Isn't this just stuff about recruiting sailors, logistics, and quarterly reports? Brother Feng, don't scare me. We just got out of a devil's cram school; are we going to fight a navy now?"

"Look here." Lin Feng's finger pointed at an inconspicuous German phrase: "'Matrosen-Ergänzung' (Supplementary Sailors)."

His fingertips were steady, and his voice was flat.

"From 1947 to 1949, in just two years, they were recruiting experienced sailors every quarter, totaling over three hundred people. But according to the Duke's data and Allied intelligence monitoring records after the war, these Nazis didn't even have a single fishing boat over a hundred tons on the surface in Argentina."

Wang Dalong's brain spun rapidly, and he finally sensed that something was off.

His eyes widened, his mouth half-open, as a ridiculous thought emerged: "Wait! You mean... these recruited sailors were for ships that can't be seen? Ghost ships?!"

"Exactly." Lin Feng could hardly hide his excitement as he quickly tapped on his encrypted laptop, data scrolling rapidly across the screen. "After World War II, the navies and ports of South America, especially Argentina, were under strict surveillance by Allied intelligence. They couldn't possibly have a full-scale surface fleet; that would be like running around the world with 'I am a Nazi' tattooed on their foreheads."

"There is only one answer..."

Lin Feng pulled up a structural diagram of a WWII German submarine, enlarged it, and pushed it toward Wang Dalong.

The structural diagram of the WWII German Navy submarine was clearly displayed before them on the screen.

"U-boats."

"Submarines?!" Wang Dalong looked at the thing on the screen, feeling a chill run from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. "My God! They actually sailed these things from Germany to South America? It's been so many years; can they still run? Don't they need fuel, maintenance, and spare parts?"

"At the end of World War II, the German Navy executed a secret operation codenamed 'Regenbogen-Regent' (Rainbow Regent)." Lin Feng's voice wasn't loud, but it seemed to possess a magic that unfolded a sealed chapter of history before them. "A batch of the most advanced Type XXI U-boats, loaded with high-ranking officials, top scientists, and the most important technical data, vanished into the mists of the Atlantic on the eve of Germany's surrender, like water droplets merging into the ocean. Most people thought they were sunk or scuttled at sea. But now it seems..."

Lin Feng tapped lightly on the laptop's touchpad.

"This place was one of their final destinations."

He immediately began using the hotel's high-level secure network to perform cross-searches across vast archives of declassified intelligence and global historical databases.

Keywords were entered rapidly: U-boat, South Atlantic, Argentina, 1945-1960.

On the screen, data streams flashed by as servers around the world worked for him.

However, a few seconds later, the result returned on the screen was a glaring blank.

[No Relevant Results Found]

Aside from a few submarines that voluntarily surrendered to Argentine ports after the war and were taken over by the Allies, there were no records showing any traces of large-scale, undiscovered U-boat activity in the South Atlantic for fifteen years after the war.

Not a single clue.

"They wiped their tracks completely clean." Lin Feng leaned back in his chair, brows furrowed, his fingers unconsciously tapping the desk with a rhythmic 'thud, thud, thud.'

Only the monotonous tapping and Wang Dalong's slightly heavy breathing remained in the room.

"Or rather, Von Ehrenberg's group used completely new identities and disguises from the start, cutting ties with the 'Nazi' label entirely. Like a gecko dropping its tail, they discarded their most conspicuous past."

The investigation seemed to have hit another dead end.

Wang Dalong looked at Lin Feng's furrowed brows and then at the table full of German documents that looked like gibberish. He felt his head swelling. He spoke cautiously: "Then... Brother Feng, is this clue dead? These people are too good at hiding; they're practically Ninja Turtles."

"No."

Lin Feng shook his head, and the 'thud, thud' tapping stopped.

His gaze moved from the blank computer screen back to the pile of musty old papers.

"Any operation requires money."

His voice regained its calmness.

"Especially maintaining a submarine force and conducting crazy research like the 'eye of odin'; it's a bottomless pit. They must have their own vault, a massive one capable of supporting eighty years of squandering."

Lin Feng seemed to have figured out a key point, and his entire aura changed.

He quickly pulled a thinner document from a pile of archives recording personnel transfers and ideological reports.

On the brown paper cover of the document, a title was printed in German Fraktur: 'Imperial Property Overseas Transfer and Custody Plan.'

Lin Feng opened the file, and its contents made both him and Wang Dalong hold their breath.

The document detailed a complete inventory of the wealth they had brought from Germany back then.

Easily liquidated diamonds and a batch of precision industrial equipment had long since been exhausted in the early years for survival, building connections, and bribing local officials.

The latter half of the list recorded the truly prized treasures.

Hundreds of classical oil paintings looted from major European museums, each worth a fortune—Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer... the names made Wang Dalong's head spin.

And at the very end of the list, one of the most shocking assets was marked in bold text.

Gold.

A full twelve tons, all cast into standard one-kilogram bars and stamped with the Imperial Eagle and the swastika.

"Artworks are too big a target, but they can be dispersed and moved in small batches by submarine to be hidden around the world." Lin Feng's train of thought was incredibly clear, and his speaking speed increased. "But not gold."

"Twelve tons of gold, while not large in volume, has a very real weight. Using submarines to transport it is too inefficient, and every secret voyage carries a huge risk of exposure. They are fanatics, but they aren't fools. They wouldn't use such a clumsy method to move their lifeblood."

Wang Dalong's mouth was wide open in an 'O' shape. He pulled out his phone and frantically tapped the calculator, muttering to himself: "Twelve tons... one ton is a million grams... today's gold price is... I... I can't count how many zeros are at the end! My goodness! How much money is that!"

Lin Feng looked at him in surprise.

"Haven't we found even more gold before? Is there a need to be this shocked?"

Looking at the sheepish Wang Dalong, Lin Feng continued.

"Therefore, they must have established an extremely secret and absolutely secure vault on land."

He stood up and began rummaging through the archives, the papers rustling loudly.

He was looking for any clues related to 'infrastructure,' 'warehousing,' 'security,' or 'logistics.'

Finally, at the very bottom of a box, his hand touched a flat object with a different texture.

It was an inconspicuous brown paper bag.

The bag had no cover, no date, and no markings, as if it had been tossed in randomly. If it weren't for Lin Feng's carpet-style search, it might have lay at the bottom of the box for another eighty years.

Lin Feng poured out the contents.

There were no thick reports or complex blueprints.

Only a few thin sheets of paper that had turned yellow and brittle with age.

On them was a list crudely typed on a typewriter, listing the names of a dozen companies: construction companies, shipping companies, agricultural import-export companies, and even a seemingly harmless textile factory.

Each of these company names was ordinary; placed in the Buenos Aires business directory, they wouldn't attract anyone's attention.

Wang Dalong leaned over to take a look: "What's this? A shopping list? Or their supplier list?"

Lin Feng didn't answer. His finger lightly brushed over a corner of the paper bag.

There, someone had lightly written a phrase in pencil.

"Periphere Unternehmen."

Peripheral Enterprises.

Looking at those company names, the fatigue on Lin Feng's face vanished.

He smiled.

It was the cold smile of a hunter who had finally found the tracks of his prey.

"Found it."

Wang Dalong was startled: "Found what?"

Lin Feng looked up and waved the list in front of Wang Dalong.

"Their front companies."