511: Chapter 511 Barrett Pleads Guilty in Court

Amador laughed.

He released the pin. His right hand reached into the inside of his belt for the second one—not connected to a detonator, but four high-explosive grenades attached directly to his body.

"Viva la causa."

A tranquilizer dart from a Lin Xiao Special Forces operative struck his temple a fraction of a second before he could detonate them.

As Amador fell, the safety levers of all four grenades had already popped off.

The delay fuse counted down—

Three.

Two.

Night Owl grabbed the solid wood desktop with both hands, violently overturning it to press down over the grenades, while ordering everyone to hit the deck.

The solid wood desktop was first blown upward by the shockwave—the two-inch-thick oak board fluttered like a piece of paper for a fraction of a second.

Then it shattered.

Wood chips and shrapnel struck the walls.

The plaster on the ceiling fell like snow.

The Financial Faction member's scream was drowned out by the explosion—his left calf was torn open by a jagged piece of shrapnel.

Blood soaked through his trouser leg and dripped onto the floor.

Night Owl stood up from the pile of splintered wood.

A three-inch piece of wood was embedded in his right bicep like a driven nail.

He pulled it out himself, tightening a tourniquet with one hand.

The bleeding stopped.

"The Warmonger Faction member committed suicide," he pressed his throat mic, his voice devoid of any fluctuation. "The Financial Faction member is captured. Study room inventory—all five encrypted data disks retrieved. Documents intact. Gold is in the basement—have the bomb squad check the fuel depot detonation device."

Anvil's voice came over the encrypted channel: "The fourth audio channel completely recorded their conversation admitting to the entire process of Operation Razor. The Financial Faction member's computer was interrupted by us before it could upload to the cloud. The data on the hard drive—the capital flows of all proxy wars waged by Council of Elders over the past thirty years, weapon procurement channels, the list of bribed politicians from various countries—"

Night Owl flipped through the scattered documents on the ground.

One of the pages was a handwritten fund allocation table.

The header was printed with Council of Elders's double-serpent staff logo.

The table listed the names of seventeen countries, each followed by an amount in millions of US dollars.

Amador's signature was signed at the very bottom, in dark brown ink.

The bomb squad in the basement sent a report: "The fuel depot detonator has been dismantled. The underground vault contains—"

The transmission paused for a moment.

"—four hundred and thirty-seven kilograms of gold bars. Certified by the London Bullion Market Association. Purity of ninety-nine point nine-nine percent."

Night Owl didn't look at those gold bars.

He packed the five encrypted data disks into a shockproof and waterproof case, closed the lid, and pressed the self-destruct lock button—if the case was forced open, the built-in micro-bomb would blow the data disks into powder.

It wasn't that he didn't trust his own people.

This was his professional habit of many years.

Three weeks later.

Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center. Four-thirty in the morning.

Barrett stared at the LCD TV screen embedded in the opposite wall.

The TV was on, muted, showing static on the screen.

He had been watching from the time the Merida operation should have begun until now.

The minute-accurate schedule in his head was repeatedly recalculated: the attack on the mining area slowed down cobalt concentrate mining by seven to ten days. The fairway mines blockaded the Nakala exit for three to five days. Short positions profited by over forty percent.

Then—the rare earth anchoring statement was released before the London market opened.

All short positions were devoured. The price was pinned right above the opening price.

His fingers tapped out a rhythm on the edge of the iron-frame bed. It wasn't anxiety.

It was waiting.

Four-thirty-one in the morning. The TV screen switched from static to a live news broadcast. CNN's breaking news ticker rolled at the bottom of the screen:

[The International Criminal Court's attempt to formally arrest Council of Elders core member Carlos Amador failed—Amador committed suicide by detonating a bomb. The Merida stronghold was destroyed by Myanmar Special Forces. Captured documents show that Council of Elders orchestrated multi-national coups and manipulated proxy wars over the past thirty years.]

The news ticker repeated three times.

On the fourth time, the footage cut to an aerial shot of the Merida estate—a hole was blown into the east wall of the main building, and the bomb squad was moving gold bars stamped with the London Bullion Market Association certification mark out of the underground vault.

A reporter stood outside the estate's main gate, with a row of evidence boxes lined up behind him. Each box had a numerical code attached to it.

Barrett saw himself when the TV screen switched—not a photograph. It was a screenshot of the "Firestorm Operation" document signed in his own hand. The bottom right corner was marked: Evidence Code E-0447.

He stared at that code.

E-0447. It differed by only one letter from the batch number of his approved mine procurement—DM61-2020-0447.

Kramer's Type 214 submarine hull number L-332 was also fake.

The letters remaining in the gaps of the acoustic tiles were in the Dolphin-class format, but the hull was German-made.

A fake hull number was fitted onto a fake hull.

Fake documents were signed on fake victories.

He remembered what he had said in Council of Elders's secret room— "Empires do not die in artillery fire. Empires die on forged accounts."

His fingers stopped on the edge of the iron-frame bed.

The rhythm was broken.

The Hague time was six hours ahead of Manhattan. Ten-thirty in the morning.

The International Criminal Court.

Sunlight shone through the glass windows of the courtroom dome onto the defendant's seat.

The bailiff untied Barrett's handcuffs.

He moved his wrists and heard someone speaking in a lowered voice from the back rows of the gallery.

The presiding judge struck the gavel.

"Defendant Barrett. Among the documents captured at the Merida stronghold, there is a thirty-four-page handwritten instruction record. Handwriting analysis confirms it is an exact match to your signature on the 'Firestorm Operation' document. Do you need to review the comparison report?"

Barrett's lawyer stood up—and sat back down.

The official notice of his trust fund being frozen was still folded in the interlayer of his briefcase.

Barrett didn't look at his lawyer.

He took off his metal-framed glasses and wiped the lenses.

There was actually no dust on the lenses—the inner side of the lenses reflected the lines of his own eye bags.

"There is no need to check," he said. "I wrote that one from Merida. Thirty-four pages. The ink on every single page was drawn from a submariner's ink bottle. The signature on the last page—"

He paused for a moment.

Reporters in the courtroom held their breath simultaneously.

"The signature on the last page was written with the exact same pen used to approve 'Firestorm Operation'."

He put his glasses back on. The sound of the metal frame hitting the bridge of his nose was very light.

But in the quiet courtroom, it was amplified by the sound system to every corner—like the sound of a certain era closing its doors.

Naypyidaw Presidential Palace.

Li Lanzhi sat in the chair opposite Zhang Cheng's desk, separated by the walnut desk piled high with documents.

The real-time footage of The Hague courtroom was projected onto her tablet via the Shuguang Cloud quantum encrypted link.

Her electronic stylus paused on the screen for two seconds.

In the footage, Barrett was taking off his glasses.

She made a note at the bottom of the page: Barrett pleads guilty in court. All cases involving Council of Elders have been fully tried.

She raised her head.

"Zhang Cheng, the verdict from The Hague is out. Life imprisonment."

Zhang Cheng put down his enamel cup. The Pu'er tea in the cup was still steaming.

Outside the window was a dry-season afternoon in Naypyidaw, and the teak forest outside rolled with green waves under the afternoon sunlight.

"Haskins gets twenty years. Abramovich gets fifteen years. The Financial Faction member from Merida underwent emergency surgery at The Hague medical detention center due to a left leg shrapnel wound. On the third day after surgery, his lawyer handed him a stack of documents—Vega's reverse-tracked records of his personal account flows. Every single transaction corresponded to the blockchain records in the five data disks captured by Night Owl. Extradition requests from sixteen countries lined The Hague prosecutor's desk. After reading the documents, he signed all the plea agreements. Once finished, he put down his pen and spoke his first sentence since his arrest: 'Give me today's Financial Times.' His managed hedge fund accounts, encrypted wallets, Cayman Islands shell company equities—along with the compensation fund for all survivors of proxy wars waged by Council of Elders over the past thirty years—were all transferred to the International Criminal Court."