21: Chapter 21 After the party ended, everyone was filled with unease.

Walsh was making rapid judgments in his mind.

Frank Gall had said: "Do not investigate, it cannot be investigated."

Once someone crossed the line regarding the places and things pointed to by every line of text on that piece of paper, their life would be hanging in the balance.

But the one crossing the line now was not him; it was Edward.

Edward was in Las Vegas, in Nevada; he was on his own turf, and he had discovered something himself.

Those things had led him to the Hoover Dam and brought him to Washington.

How much did Edward know?

How much did Edward think he knew?

What did Edward hope to get from him?

Walsh cut a piece of steak and put it into his mouth.

During the dozen seconds it took for the beef to be chewed up in his mouth, he made a decision.

He could no longer let Edward hold the initiative in this conversation.

He needed to take the initiative.

Even if it was just one step, even if it was just sticking one foot out to test the depth of the water.

He swallowed the steak, wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin, then naturally picked up his wine glass and spoke as if he had suddenly remembered a small matter.

His tone was very light, just like everyday conversation, without any transition, emphasis, or change in inflection.

It was so light that if a third party were sitting nearby listening, they wouldn't think this sentence was any different from the small talk they had been having before.

"By the way, Ed, speaking of the Hoover Dam, I remember that the water and power supply in southern Nevada has always been fairly stable, right?"

After he finished speaking, he took a sip of wine.

The rim of the wine glass happened to cover his eyes.

Edward's gaze met Walsh's for a fleeting moment above the rim of the glass.

Then he also picked up his wine glass and took a sip.

When the two men set their glasses down at the same time, the sound of the glass bottoms hitting the white linen tablecloth was faint and synchronized.

It was like two boxers who, after circling each other for three full rounds in the ring, threw a punch at the same time.

"It's alright,"

Edward said, his tone indifferent. He set his knife and fork down on the plate with a small, crisp sound, then looked up and smiled.

"The lights in Sin City are so bright; how could they shine if there wasn't enough power?"

"That's good." Walsh also smiled.

After smiling, he didn't ask another word.

He knew this exchange was enough.

Both sides had already gotten what they needed.

In the fireplace of the back hall, the oak wood was burning brightly, occasionally spitting out a small cluster of bright sparks that flashed and vanished between the warm yellow light and the white linen tablecloth.

The waiter cleared away the main course plates and served dessert, two crème brûlées, the caramel on top scorched to a golden translucence.

As Walsh gently tapped the caramel shell with the back of his spoon, the topic had naturally shifted in another direction.

Edward asked about that old instructor Walsh had at the Naval Academy, and Walsh mentioned that he had just passed away last month. The two men fell silent for a few seconds, then picked up their wine glasses and clinked them.

Everything that followed belonged to a relaxed conversation between two old friends.

Baseball, the weather, whether to go to the hunting grounds in Texas together at the end of the year.

The two men chatted more relaxedly than during the appetizer and main course stages, and the laughter in their voices was a bit more genuine.

But only they knew that the reason for this relaxed latter half was precisely because the information that needed to be conveyed in the first half had already been fully delivered.

The remaining time was left for the steak and red wine.

Around nine-thirty, the two men said goodbye at the entrance of 117 Chestnut Street.

The vintage brass wall lamp at the entrance stretched their shadows long, casting them onto the quiet cobblestone street of Georgetown.

The May night breeze blew in from the direction of the Potomac River, carrying the cool scent of the river water.

Edward's driver had already brought the car to the entrance; it was a black Cadillac.

Walsh didn't call for a driver; he had driven himself tonight, and that dark green vintage Cherokee was parked on the side of the road opposite.

The two men stood under the wall lamp and shook hands.

The grip of the handshake was slightly heavier than when they had first walked in.

It wasn't intentional; it was a tacit, instinctive reaction.

Like the look exchanged twenty years ago on a destroyer in the Persian Gulf after completing a joint exercise.

"Next time you come to Las Vegas, I'll treat you to the best ribeye steak in town," Edward said. "Steak in Sin City is better than in Washington."

"The steak where you are is too greasy," Walsh laughed, a complex emotion flashing through his gray-blue eyes. "But if I really go, you'll have to open the bottle you've kept the longest in your cellar for me. Don't try to fob me off with cheap stuff."

"When have I ever fobbed you off?"

Edward let go, turned, and got into the car.

The black Cadillac slowly drove along the cobblestones of Chestnut Street, its taillights flickering twice at the corner before being swallowed by the night.

Walsh stood where he was, watching the car's taillights disappear until they were gone, then turned and walked toward his old Cherokee.

He opened the car door, sat inside, and inserted the key into the ignition, but his hand stopped before he could turn the key.

In the hearts of the two old politicians, at the same instant the car doors closed, completely different giant waves surged.

Edward Warren leaned back in the backseat of the Cadillac, the Washington streetscape outside the window slowly receding before his eyes.

He took his phone out of his pocket, opened an encrypted messaging app, found Raymond's name in the contact list, and typed a line:

"There is indeed an inside story regarding the Hoover Dam; Eli knows some of it but doesn't dare to say everything."

"When he proactively brought the water and power topic to the table, the layer of things hidden in his eyes couldn't fool me."

He looked at that line of text, hesitating for a few seconds before clicking send.

Then he flipped the phone over, placed it on the seat beside him, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

What emerged in his mind was the micro-action he had inadvertently caught after Walsh mentioned the Hoover Dam—the ring finger of his left hand on the base of the wine glass, trembling very briefly, no more than twice.

Walsh had clawed his way up from the bottom of the intelligence system over these past few decades to where he was today, and he had always been the most steady one.

Edward had known him for nearly thirty years, and the number of times he had seen him truly reveal emotional fluctuations could be counted on one hand.

So, even if it was just two light tremors, it was already an irrevocable signal.

The Hoover Dam, that ninety-year-old dam, the secret buried beneath it might be even worse than the worst conclusion he had deduced in his fishing cabin at Gold Lake.

And Walsh didn't dare to say it; conversely, if it was something that even Walsh didn't dare to speak about, could the weight of it be light?

Meanwhile, at the other end of Chestnut Street, seven miles away, Walsh sat in his Cherokee with the engine off, his hands resting on the steering wheel. The engine wasn't running, and the street outside the car window was deserted.

He looked through the windshield at the empty cobblestone street of Georgetown ahead, motionless, even his breathing unconsciously slowing its rhythm.

The conclusion he had reached was no less than what Edward had obtained.

Edward's trip was aimed at the Hoover Dam; there could absolutely be no other possibility.

His old classmate—that Edward Warren who never did anything without purpose, who calculated every step ten steps ahead, who was invincible in strategic simulation games at the Naval Academy because he "would seal off every one of your retreat paths in advance"—had sat here today, spent nearly two hours, and drawn a huge, seamless circle, and right in the center of that circle were the words "Hoover Dam" and "water and power."

Edward was not only testing him, but he already knew enough, at least enough to make him fly from Nevada to Washington to invite a Director of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis to this meal.

And as to exactly what Edward knew, Walsh didn't need to guess.

To be able to make the head of a century-old political family that held absolute power in Nevada spare no effort to fly across the entire country to test his old friend, the answer to this matter could only be on a thin sheet of paper without an official seal, without a security classification number, and which did not exist in the Federal Government archives.

After finishing this meal, both old politicians had obtained the answers they wanted from the other's subtle reactions.

And they both knew what the other had taken from them.

But both men, by unspoken agreement, chose the same way of communicating—speaking in riddles.

Walsh spoke in riddles because he couldn't say it explicitly.

He couldn't reveal a single word of what was listed on that thin sheet of paper to anyone.

It wasn't because he didn't trust Edward, but because saying it would do no one any good.

And Edward spoke in riddles because he, too, didn't dare to say it explicitly.

Aliens, Deep State, the base beneath the Hoover Dam... just touching upon any one of these words would be courting disaster.

Before he had burned through to Walsh's bottom line, how could he possibly lay his own cards on the table first?

Therefore, from beginning to end, neither of them had laid the matter bare.

Edward didn't ask, "Is there an alien research base under the Hoover Dam?", and Walsh didn't say, "The old director told me this matter cannot be investigated."

They used red wine glasses, ribeye steaks, crème brûlée, and old memories from the Naval Academy to replace everything that should not have been said.

And it was precisely this highly compressed, tacit silence that was more earth-shattering than any direct words.

Walsh sat in the car for a long time.

The lights on the other side of the Potomac River dyed the edge of the night sky into a blurry orange-red.

Occasionally, a late-night commuter bus drove by in the distance, the vibrations traveling along the cobblestone road, causing the Cherokee's steering wheel to tremble slightly.

He suddenly recalled a scene.

It was the Naval Academy graduation ceremony.

The sun was very intense that day; he and Edward stood in their respective queues, wearing crisp, ironed white naval dress uniforms, waiting for the principal to call their names.

Edward that day was young, bright-eyed, the Edward Warren from the Nevada desert; when the principal called his name, he turned his head and glanced at Walsh.

That glance was full of confidence, full of ambition, full of a young man's disdain for the world.

Back then, they thought the waves of the Persian Gulf were already the most dangerous things on this planet.

But today, that young man from Nevada had become an old politician with graying hair, sitting in front of him, using red wine glasses and the Hoover Dam to test a truth he shouldn't have touched at all.

And Walsh himself sat in an old Cherokee with the engine off, holding a non-existent piece of paper, guarding a secret that could not be told.

Walsh turned the key half a turn.

The engine let out a low roar, shattering the silence of the late-night cobblestone road in Georgetown.

He put the car in gear, drove out of the parking space, and drove away from Chestnut Street.

The taillights flickered twice at the street corner and disappeared into the boundless night of Washington.