76: Chapter 76: Meeting to Investigate the Mole, Shocking Expose of Alien Secrets

Heinlein leaned back in his chair, picked up the cold leftover coffee on the table, took a sip, and finally spoke.

Amidst the indignant and noisy chatter filling the conference room, his tone seemed exceptionally calm.

It wasn't that he didn't care, but rather that as someone who had just come from the corridors of the White House, he possessed an understanding of the "current situation" that the others in the room had yet to fully grasp.

"Money is hard to make, and shit is hard to swallow."

He placed the coffee cup back on the table, his tone as flat as if he were stating a physical constant.

"We're lucky to even get five million. You didn't see the state of things in the Oval Office today."

The conference room fell silent.

Heinlein did not elaborate further on the specific details of what happened in the Oval Office,

but everyone present was a veteran of the intelligence community; they didn't need him to spell it out.

"As for how to use this five million..." He swept his gaze across everyone present.

"I heard that the Hopkins, Remington, and Knox families are teaming up to throw a trap-laden banquet for Musk and Edward. The location is the Commander's Banquet Hall at Joint Base San Antonio."

"Send a few people to keep an eye on it when the time comes."

Mosby stuffed the payment notification into a folder, his expression fracturing into half sarcasm and half genuine bitterness. He gestured directly with open hands toward the nauseating spreadsheet on the screen.

"Keeping an eye on it means satellite tracking, tailing cars, tailing on foot—just basic intelligence coverage... That kind of work isn't even worth five million."

"Forget about the Limb Regeneration serum; we won't even be able to get our hands on the chemical dregs."

Heinlein looked around at the department heads present and flattened the newly printed internal payment notification on the table, pressing it down firmly.

When he spoke again, his tone was not raised, yet it instantly brought the previously rowdy conference room back to a state of sharp focus.

It was not an order, but rather the cautionary tone of an old intelligence bureaucrat who had seen too many dead people—and too many living ones turn into corpses just by taking one wrong step—when the only remaining option was the most conservative one.

"Colleagues, I suggest we all manage our respective departments well and watch our words and actions lately."

"Think about it. Just now, in the White House Oval Office, I saw a puppet who can't even control his own sphincter."

"If even the President is in this state, do we, who are merely working for others, really think we are any safer than him?"

Ali Wu of the Intelligence Analysis Division took her glasses off her nose and placed them on the classified folder on the table. Without looking up, she gave a barely perceptible nod in Heinlein's direction.

Raj Patel, Director of the Science and Technology Division, was shaking his head at first, but stopped mid-shake, his Adam's apple bobbing.

Mosby straightened the stack of funding documents scattered on the table and didn't reply.

Heinlein looked at everyone present.

He waited for their emotions to settle completely before slowly clasping his hands on the table. He continued in a tone that was quieter than before, yet carried more weight than any loud shout.

"Ordering the CIA to investigate the Limb Regeneration serum, but forbidding the CIA from investigating Aliens..."

"Think carefully about this order. The logic behind it is fractured."

"In the same intelligence scenario, two technologies originate from the same lead. The President wants one, yet turns a blind eye to the other."

"Why?"

"Why would a president who needs someone to wipe his ass after using the restroom be so opinionated specifically on the topic of Aliens?"

"He no longer has the neurological reaction speed for that."

"He isn't the one making the decisions."

"It's the layer behind him... the ones we don't name. And those people specifically forbid the CIA from touching the alien aspect."

"This restriction alone tells us more than enough."

The conference room fell silent for a moment.

Then, Ali Wu's hands on the table suddenly tightened. Her lips parted and closed, and in an extremely low, slow voice, she finished the logical chain that Heinlein had left unspoken:

"As the chief executive of the Lighthouse Country, he knows Aliens exist but forbids any investigation. There are only two possibilities."

"Either... the forces controlling the President reached some sort of consensus with the Aliens long ago, making them allies."

She paused. No one in the conference room interrupted; even Mosby froze.

Ali's voice remained steady, her syllables clear and dry as she stated the only remaining second possibility:

"Or... the forces controlling the President are, themselves, the Aliens."

In that instant, the entire conference room fell into absolute silence.

A deathly silence reigned, and terror gripped the room!

Everyone looked at Heinlein,

but he merely folded the funding notification slowly, stuffed it into his briefcase, raised his head, and said calmly to everyone present:

"This is why I told you to watch your words and actions."

...

Joint Base San Antonio, Lackland Air Force Base Commander's Banquet Hall, exactly 9:00 PM.

This banquet hall was normally reserved for receiving foreign military and diplomatic delegations at or above the defense minister level.

The four walls of the hall were inlaid with military flags and battle engravings dating from the Revolutionary War to the present. The three crystal chandeliers hanging from the domed ceiling were donated by the Air Force Academy Foundation in the 1960s,

the hand-polished Czech crystal pieces on the chandeliers alone were worth as much as a single-family villa in the suburbs of San Antonio.

But tonight, this banquet hall did not belong to The Pentagon.

It had been rented out by the three major military-industrial giants. Every military sentry post from the Joint Base headquarters to a three-mile radius outside the banquet hall had been replaced by the joint security forces of the three private militaries.

The vehicles parked at the entrance were not military Hummers, but bulletproof armored Mercedes-Benzes and custom presidential Cadillacs with civilian license plates, each registered on the defense contractors' confidential list.

The interior of the banquet hall had been rearranged.

The main table was set right in the center, covered in a starched, crisp linen tablecloth. There were no flowers, no name cards, nor any superfluous decorations.

Only three high-backed leather chairs stood side-by-side at the head of the table, the armrests of each as wide as those of a throne.

Seated at the banquet tables around the main table were dozens of elites and dignitaries from the Department of Defense, the Congressional Armed Services Committee, and various defense contractor lobbying firms,

all of them were affiliated forces kept by the three giants—

some were black gloves, some were white gloves,

and some were merely silent pawns responsible for raising their hands to vote in favor of key funding bills.

No one spoke loudly; everyone was waiting.

At exactly 9:00 PM, the doors to the banquet hall were pushed open from the outside.

Edward Warren walked in front, wearing a dark gray casual jacket and a white shirt with no tie. His expression was the same as during their meeting at the Gold Lake fishing cabin—

steady, restrained, and unperturbed.

Musk followed half a step behind him, wearing his signature dark blue SpaceX work jacket. A patch of newly grown skin on his wrist peeked out from under his left sleeve, while his right hand was casually tucked into his pocket.

Neither of them walked fast, nor did they walk slow, as if entering an unfamiliar room whose layout they already knew.

They had barely taken ten steps into the banquet hall when someone at the tables started.

A middle-aged man in a charcoal gray Armani three-piece suit, his hair meticulously slicked back with pomade, held a glass of whiskey and turned to speak to his neighbor.

His volume was carefully controlled to avoid shouting directly at Musk and Edward, yet remained within a subtle range that allowed them to hear perfectly:

"Is that the Warren from Nevada? His family has been hunkered down in Las Vegas for over a century, and they haven't even touched the threshold of Washington."

"To be honest, local political families like that don't even have the right to beg for scraps in Washington."

His neighbor, a female partner at a defense contractor lobbying firm wearing a pearl necklace, chuckled softly upon hearing this and chimed in with equally precise volume:

"Huddled in the desert for over a century—they're nothing but country bumpkins with some money."

"Being able to step through this door today must be thanks to the accumulated blessings of the Warren Family's ancestors."

Edward heard it.

He didn't react much; the corners of his mouth dipped by a mere millimeter, but he still turned his head to give the two speakers a cool glance.

He didn't know them, nor did he need to.

He knew that in this room,

his Warren Family's century-old foundation in Nevada was nothing but a joke in the eyes of these people.

Musk heard it too, and his reaction was much more direct than Edward's.

He pulled his right hand out of his pocket, spread his palm toward the two speakers, and curled the corners of his mouth slightly, though he didn't laugh aloud.

Another dignitary from the other side of the tables spoke up, this time targeting Musk.

A man in his early fifties, wearing an Army War College commemorative ring on his finger, stood up with a glass of red wine,

gestured to his neighbors to "hold that thought,"

and then spoke unhurriedly in a thick, authentic Boston accent:

"As for that rocket guy... the South African."

"A country bumpkin crawled out from the southern tip of Africa, came to the Lighthouse Country to build a few stainless steel tubes, and now the media hypes him up as some pioneer of humanity's journey to Mars."

"To be honest, in my eyes, he has always been an upstart from Africa, and that has never changed."

A few suppressed chuckles rippled through the tables,

a few lobbying firm lawyers sitting in the corner even raised their glasses and tilted them slightly toward the speaker.

Musk stopped in his tracks and turned to look at the man with the Army ring. There was no anger in his voice, only a half-playful, half-mocking tone of amusement:

"When this South African bumpkin's stainless steel tubes beamed your satellite TV signals down from geostationary orbit, part of the monthly satellite bill you paid was actually rent for those very tubes."

"But I understand."

"Everyone here has lived for generations off inherited wealth and military funding, so it's only natural you look down on those of us who actually build things with our own hands."