20: Chapter 20 A Note Conceals a Deadly Intent

The appetizer plates were silently cleared away by the waiter.

The main course arrived: charcoal-grilled ribeye steak with roasted asparagus, and a small dish of truffle mashed potatoes.

With knives and forks in hand for the steak, both men entered a more relaxed eating rhythm than during the appetizer course.

Topics flowed aimlessly across the table like water: the Naval Academy cafeteria had changed its menu, housing prices in San Francisco had risen again, Walsh's wife had recently become obsessed with gardening and planted a row of lavender in their yard, only for it all to be dug up by squirrels, while Edward mentioned a newly opened golf course in Las Vegas.

Every topic was as natural as exhaled air.

But beneath this seemingly casual conversation, both men's brains were operating at full speed on a completely different system.

Walsh noticed that when Edward talked about the golf course in Las Vegas, the topic transitioned naturally from the quality of the turf to "newly built courses consume so much water," and then from water consumption to "water and electricity in Las Vegas are stretched thin right now."

He sensed that Edward was pulling on an invisible thread, slowly tightening it at a very gradual pace...

At the other end of that thread, something was tethered.

And Edward?

Edward noticed that when he said the words "water and electricity are stretched thin," Walsh's steak knife paused on the bone china plate for less than 0.3 seconds.

After the pause, Walsh's knife continued to move steadily, cutting a piece of steak exactly the same size as before, and the rhythm of putting it into his mouth was exactly the same as before.

Perfect.

Too perfect.

A normal, unsuspecting person would not have such precise rhythm control on this topic.

The time was right.

Edward cut a piece of steak, his movements unhurried, his knife and fork making a uniform and restrained sound against the bone china plate.

"Come to think of it, the lifeblood of Las Vegas's water and electricity all depends on that Hoover Dam."

His tone was as light as if he were discussing baseball scores.

"Let's see, since the Hoover Dam was completed in 1936, it's been nearly ninety years. Providing power and water to the entire state for so many years, it really can be counted as a miracle of the West."

After he finished speaking, he put the cut piece of steak into his mouth, chewed twice, and then picked up his wine glass, letting the red wine hide his expression behind the rim of the cup.

Walsh's knife and fork did not stop.

"Hoover Dam," he repeated the name, his tone just as casual as Edward's, as if he were just naturally following the topic, "it truly is the most remarkable engineering feat in the West."

"When I was at the CIA, I went through some old archives. Under the construction conditions of the thirties, being able to build such a massive project in the desert was truly not easy."

"Providing water and electricity for nearly ninety years, it's quite a legend."

As he spoke, he cut a piece of asparagus and put it in his mouth.

Chewing, swallowing, then picking up his napkin to wipe the corners of his mouth.

All his movements were fluid and seamless, without a single flaw.

But if someone were to record the heartbeat inside Walsh's chest right now and amplify it a hundred times, they would hear a dense, abnormal pulse frequency.

Hoover Dam.

Edward Warren, his old classmate, his political ally, had flown specifically from Las Vegas to Washington, invited him to dinner at 117 Chestnut Street, chattered for two hours about mundane family matters and old times, and finally steered the topic toward the Hoover Dam.

He would never believe that this dinner was truly for catching up.

Before he even walked in the door, his intuition had already been warning him.

Now, intuition was no longer just intuition; intuition had found evidence.

And what made Walsh's heart rate accelerate was not that Edward mentioned the Hoover Dam itself.

It was the way Edward mentioned it.

It was too normal.

It was so normal that it was like one sentence leading to the next, naturally sliding to that point, with water and electricity and Las Vegas's water consumption used as a setup, and the Hoover Dam's engineering history used as an extension, with no deliberate transitions in between, no jarring breaks that would cause alarm.

If the person sitting across from him wasn't Eli Walsh, a man who had been immersed in the intelligence system for nearly thirty years and spent every day analyzing every trace of abnormality in others' words and actions, any other high-ranking federal official would not have thought a single word Edward said tonight was special.

But Walsh knew.

He knew that this "too normal normalcy" was in itself abnormal.

Because Edward Warren was a man who never chatted aimlessly.

He didn't do it at the Naval Academy, he didn't do it in the Senate, and he wouldn't do it tonight at 117 Chestnut Street.

In Walsh's mind, a piece of paper suddenly appeared.

It was a very thin piece of paper, slightly yellowed, with somewhat frayed edges; it had no government file stamps, no security classification markings, not even a title.

It was just a plain white piece of paper, with seven or eight lines typed out on an old-fashioned typewriter; some were place names, some were names of buildings, and some were just abbreviations composed of a few letters.

Three years ago, on the day he took over as the Director of the Intelligence and Analysis Division of the Department of Homeland Security, his predecessor, that old Intelligence Division Director named Lawrence Gore who was about to retire, called him into his office.

Gore's office was on the seventh floor of the Department of Homeland Security building, facing west, where one could see the silhouette of The Pentagon across the Potomac River.

It was an ordinary Tuesday, the sun was shining brightly, and Gore was sitting in his old leather chair that he had used for over a decade, looking no different than usual—an old civil servant about to retire, his eyes carrying a sense of relief that he could "finally go home and plant flowers."

But when he closed the door and confirmed it was locked, when he turned around, what Walsh saw in those eyes was not the relief of retirement.

It was a heavier, deeper silence, as if he were entrusting something to you for a lifetime, yet could not say a single word more.

"Walsh," Gore said, not using his title but calling him by his first name, which was uncommon in official circles, "you haven't been in the intelligence system for a short time."

"Naval intelligence officer, CIA, and now here."

"You should know that the Department of Homeland Security's Intelligence and Analysis Division is the nerve center of the entire homeland security intelligence system."

"You know the work on the surface—intelligence integration, analysis, and sharing, reporting suspicious events from various states, and so on."

Then he took that piece of paper out of the drawer.

The movement was slow and solemn.

"But in this place, power is not just what floats on the surface."

"Some things, some names, some places do not belong to any public directory in the Lighthouse Country's system, nor do they belong to any searchable legal statute."

"They exist outside of archival records, but their power is greater than any legal statute."

He placed the paper on the desk and slowly pushed it toward Walsh with two fingers.

"This is for you."

Walsh looked down at the paper.

There weren't many words on it, seven or eight lines.

He recognized a few of the names; some were place names, one was a military base code, and two he had never heard of before.

"This piece of paper was left to me by my predecessor, the old Division Director," Gore's voice was very low, so low that Walsh had to lean forward slightly to hear clearly, "and his predecessor got it from the one before him."

"From the time I took over as Director of the Intelligence and Analysis Division until now, nearly twenty years, I have kept it."

"Now it is your turn to keep it."

Walsh wanted to say something, but Gore had already stood up.

He picked up his briefcase, took that gray trench coat he had worn for nearly twenty years off the coat rack, and walked to the door.

When his hand was on the doorknob, he paused.

He did not look back.

"Everything I can tell you is on that piece of paper," Gore said, his voice even lighter than before, as if afraid that walls have ears, "the rest... I cannot say."

Sometimes saying nothing is a thousand times more effective as a reminder than saying everything.

Then he opened the door and walked out.

The office door closed again in front of Walsh.

He sat there alone, looking down at the paper.

The paper was very light, almost weightless in his palm.

But he stared at it like that for a long time.

In the three years since then, he had kept the paper locked in his private home safe, remembering those names in the office only by memory.

Because Gore had made it very clear that some things cannot be archived, cannot be photocopied, and cannot appear in any file system that can be accessed under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

They can only exist in the cerebral cortex of successive Directors, and on a private slip of paper passed down by word of mouth.

And at this moment in the back hall of 117 Chestnut Street, facing the crackling fire in the fireplace, Eli Walsh's memory was precisely struck by a certain line on that paper.

That line read— "Hoover Dam (Hydropower)"

After the dam's name, the words "Hydropower" were specially marked in parentheses.

At the time, Walsh didn't understand why a parenthetical note had to be added after hydropower parameters that should have been accurately recorded two centuries ago.

Now he vaguely understood.

His old classmate, old comrade-in-arms, Nevada Senator Edward Warren—the real purpose of today's dinner was aimed at the Hoover Dam.

And, judging by his tone, his way of laying the groundwork, and that "too normal normalcy" he had deliberately cultivated, he wasn't just asking casually.

He was probing something so deep that he dared not speak of it explicitly.