MMB Chapter 175 Temporary Security
Chapter 175 Temporary Security
West Berlin, Tempelhof Airport.
The deep blue Gulfstream G4 was parked on the dedicated VIP parking apron. The auxiliary power unit (APU) emitted a steady, low hum, and the cabin maintained a comfortable temperature of 22 degrees Celsius.
Outside the porthole, the evening in West Berlin remained gloomy.
Beside the conference table in the cabin, Hans von Schneider sat sweating profusely in front of a portable fax typewriter. His fingers tapped rapidly on the keyboard.
Satsuki sat on the white leather sofa opposite her.
She took off the black trench coat she had worn in East Berlin and put on a soft beige cashmere cardigan. In her hand, she held a gilded tea set from the Sèvres porcelain factory, the steam from the black tea rising gently into the air.
"Ms. Saionji, the wording of this letter of intent..."
Hans stopped tapping, pulled out the half-printed sheet of paper, and looked troubled.
"That's far too harsh. It could even be described as...insulting."
Hans looked at the German text on the paper.
"Given the outdated production equipment and chaotic inventory management of your factory, our group only agrees to purchase it in bulk under the guise of scrap metal recycling."... If you sent such a message to the East German Ministry of Foreign Trade, they would tear it up immediately. Prussian pride would not allow them to accept such terms.
"Prussian pride?"
Satsuki chuckled softly. She put down her teacup, her fingertips gently tracing the gold rim.
"Mr. von Schneider, pride needs bread to sustain it. How many marks does their bread cost now?"
"Keep negotiating. Lower the price by another twenty percent. And add a clause: 'If agreed, your company must appoint Dr. Klaus Weber of Carl Zeiss Jena as your plenipotentiary representative to be responsible for inventorying this batch of waste.'"
Hans swallowed hard.
He couldn't understand his employer's actions at all. He went to East Berlin, met a poor, unsophisticated engineer, and came back wanting to send out this extremely absurd letter of intent to acquire the company.
But he dared not disobey and could only grit his teeth and continue typing.
"Tap tap tap tap..."
Fujita stood beside Satsuki, his gaze fixed on the typewriter that was spitting out papers.
"Young Miss," Fujita said in a low voice, "the Stasi's informants have been watching him outside the café. He's most likely already in the interrogation room. Would sending this fax backfire?"
Satsuki turned her head and looked at the gray sky outside the porthole.
"Hounds have a very sensitive nose. Once they smell something, they'll bite down hard and won't let go."
Her voice was very soft, carried away by the breeze in the cabin.
"Since they smelled it, let's throw them a rotten bone."
Satsuki turned around, her gaze falling on the document Hans had just printed.
"The bureaucrats firmly believe in the greed of capitalists. They are convinced of the profit-seeking nature of capitalists and will never believe that we are doing charity, let alone that we are doing it out of any sense of mission."
She picked up the Montblanc pen on the table and signed "SA Group Europe" at the end of the document.
"Send it out."
"Send it to the East German Foreign Trade Ministry."
Hans took the document and inserted it into the fax machine's paper feed slot.
"Sizzle—sizzle—"
Accompanied by a harsh scraping sound, this letter of intent, carrying an extremely humiliating tone, transformed into an electronic signal, passed through the cold, towering Berlin Wall, and flew to the other side of the wall.
……
East Berlin, underground interrogation room in an unnamed Stasi building.
The iron gate was pushed open.
A high-ranking military officer in uniform walked in, holding a fax he had just received. His face was ashen, and his lips twitched slightly with anger.
The two agents in charge of the interrogation immediately stood up, stood at attention, and saluted.
The officer ignored Weber behind the table and went straight to the agent in charge of the interrogation. He lowered his voice, his tone revealing a suppressed irritability.
"Come out for a moment."
The officer turned and walked towards the dark corridor outside the door.
The agent quickly caught up and slammed the heavy iron door shut behind him.
The air in the corridor was even more damp and cold than in the interrogation room. Water droplets dripped from the walls, running down the cracks in the brickwork.
"Sir." The agent stood at attention, his gaze fixed on the document.
The officer handed over the fax.
"Take a look at this. It was just forwarded from the Ministry of Foreign Trade. It's SA Group's letter of intent to acquire SA Group."
The agent took the paper and quickly scanned the German words.
"Scrap metal recycling," "chaotic management," and "defective products"—every line exudes condescending disdain, precisely hitting the sore spots of East German bureaucrats. At the end of the document, Dr. Klaus Weber is clearly designated as the plenipotentiary representative.
"Those greedy Western vampires!"
After reading the contents, the agent gritted his teeth and cursed under his breath.
"What do you take us for? A junkyard?!"
"The Ministry of Foreign Trade called directly into the director's office." The officer clenched his fists tightly behind his back. "Several ministers felt extremely humiliated by this."
The agent looked up, a hint of wariness in his eyes.
"Sir, isn't this too much of a coincidence? He was just brought back by us, and the fax from West Berlin arrived right away. Is there any possibility of collusion? Perhaps this is just a smokescreen to cover up their espionage activities."
The officer gave him a cold look.
"Coincidence? You think I haven't considered that?"
The officer took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, pulled one out, and then crumpled it in his hand in frustration.
"I checked the reports from my informants. The entire contact between the two sides lasted less than ten minutes. The international fax had to go through multiple layers of lines in West Berlin, and the timeline is flawless."
"More importantly, the intelligence agency verified the woman's identity. The Saionji family, one of Japan's top conglomerates. Capitalists of this caliber only care about profits. To forge a diplomatic-level business fax with the group's official seal and accurately send it to the Ministry of Foreign Trade's confidential office within thirty minutes requires an extremely large intelligence network."
The officer pointed inside the iron gate.
"That old man inside has a clean record for twenty years. He doesn't even have a passport to go abroad. Do you think he has the ability to direct a multinational conglomerate to cooperate with him in a charade?"
The agent fell silent.
Reason told him that this was indeed impossible. There was no way an optics nerd could control all of this in ten minutes.
Even if there's only a one in ten thousand chance it's a disguise.
The officer's tone became extremely heavy, revealing a deep sense of helplessness.
"We must also treat this as a genuine business transaction."
"Why?" the agent asked, puzzled.
"Because the country is out of money."
The officer lowered his voice, and his words sounded particularly desolate in the empty corridor.
"The situation in the Soviet Union... is not good. Aid has stopped. The national treasury's foreign exchange reserves are almost depleted. The bureaucrats in the Ministry of Foreign Trade now have eyes that turn red at the sight of West German marks. Although this letter of intent is full of insults, it promises to pay in real hard currency."
The officer reached out and tapped Weber's name on the fax.
"The Ministry of Foreign Trade has issued its instructions. No matter how humiliating this deal may be, as long as it can bring back US dollars, we must continue the negotiations."
"The other side has appointed Weber as their plenipotentiary representative. If we detain him in the basement now, this deal that could bring in life-saving foreign exchange will fall through. Then, the Stasi will be blamed for sabotaging the country's economic development. The director can't bear that responsibility, and neither can you or I."
A layer of cold sweat seeped out from the agent's back.
He understood completely.
Faced with extreme economic pressure, all doubts must give way to foreign exchange. They need money. They cannot afford the political risk of botching the deal.
Therefore, they had no choice but to believe that this was a farcical spectacle orchestrated by arrogant capitalists and greedy engineers.
"I understand, sir."
The agent lowered his head and handed the fax back to the officer.
"The capitalist's greed explains everything. He's cleared his name."
"Go in." The officer straightened his uniform collar. "Give him some face. We need him to get a good price for that scrap metal."
The two pushed open the iron gate and walked back into the interrogation room.
Weber glanced furtively at the two who had entered.
The officer walked straight to the iron table and slammed the fax onto it.
"Take a look at this."
When Weber saw the German text above, his heart skipped a beat.
The paper was printed with a "Letter of Intent for the Acquisition of Defective Optical Equipment" from SA Group. The wording was extremely arrogant, and the offered price was outrageously low.
The document explicitly designates him—Dr. Klaus Weber—as the contact person at the end.
A closed loop has been formed.
The lie he fabricated to protect himself just ten minutes earlier was now perfectly corroborated by official West Berlin documents.
The officer walked up to Weber, his tone softening slightly.
"Dr. Weber, it seems you are indeed dealing with these barbarians for the sake of the nation."
"Your suspicion has been cleared."
The agent stepped forward and pushed the stack of East German marks and the briefcase on the table back in front of Weber.
"Not only were they cleared of suspicion."
The officer pointed to the fax.
"The foreign trade department and the factory have decided to officially appoint you as the fully authorized technical representative for this inventory clearance project."
"Your mission is singular: do everything in your power to extract as much foreign exchange as possible from this arrogant Japanese woman."
Weber sat on the hardwood chair, his hands gripping the handles of his briefcase tightly.
He lowered his head, concealing the intense tremor in his eyes.
Clear oneself of suspicion. Obtain official authorization. Legally access Western capital.
Everything was within the girl's calculations. The timing was impeccably precise. She even knew exactly what kind of questioning he would face in the interrogation room, the East German bureaucrats' anger over face, and their extreme thirst for hard currency.
"I see."
He stood up, his voice still hoarse.
"I will do my best."
"Go back, Doctor. The factory will send you a car tomorrow."
The officer waved his hand.
He picked up his briefcase, turned, and walked towards the iron gate.
By the time I stepped out of the gray building, it was completely dark.
The night in East Berlin was bitterly cold, and the smell of lignite was even stronger in the air than during the day. The streetlights were dim, and a few dilapidated Trabzon cars drove past on the potholed streets, their exhaust pipes spewing blue-white smoke and making a plopping noise.
Standing in the cold wind, Weber took a deep breath.
He reached into his right pocket.
His fingertips touched the thin strip of paper. It contained a Swiss bank account number and a promise to change his life.
I turned around and glanced at the gray building behind me that represented fear.
Just minutes before, he was a suspect, his identity vanished into thin air. Now, he carries the official mission entrusted to him by the authorities.
I looked up at the dark night sky.
The searchlight beams from the direction of the Berlin Wall swept slowly across the low-hanging clouds, tracing pale streaks. A gust of wind swept across the empty square, lifting a discarded old newspaper which rustled softly against the rough cobblestones.
He's safe... temporarily.