(Three months later - now)
Now, in the police station, Martin looked at the pale ceiling above him and told himself: the culture of a strange place, including some secret unspoken rules, obviously need to be tested and adapted!
The next morning. As he had expected, the officer asked Martin to meet again with the young man he had knocked unconscious. The shaggy-haired young man pretended to be as calm as a toad on the shore, holding his head up with the pride of a victim, and leaning back as if he were ready to get away in the shortest time possible in the face of danger. Martin leaned forward to be polite, and tried, in a humble way, to reconcile with the young man by discussing his claim. But the gesture caused a shudder through the young man's body,which make the young man again gaze the standing officer prayerfully and pretended to listen to Martin attentively.
Martin: "I didn't push your father. He fell on his own. But I'd like to hear what you want." The young man touched his neck and the back of his head, then said, "My father has broken a bone, and his health has gotten worse. Based on his hospitalization and his mental loss, I ask for 400,000 yuan in compensation."
Martin: "Four hundred thousand? I don't think it would cost more than twenty thousand in his case. Even a broken bone wouldn't cost that much."
The young man seemed to finally summon up his courage: "That's the price. This is in Shanghai.
Don't you know the cost of medical and post-medical care in Shanghai?"
Martin began to think about how to negotiate with the man who was just bluffing.
Martin: "No, no more than 30,000, after all, I did not hit the person. I just care about the old man and I am willing to pay with a negotiated attitude, otherwise there is no need to say more."
The young man: "No, you hit him, the cost is at least 350,000 yuan"...
After talking about 200,000 yuan in the discussion, the price can not come down. This figure was beyond Martin's budget, and Martin was even more annoyed by the young man's attitude. This misfortune seemed to have brought him into contact with some local ruffian, and Martin knew that such negotiations required patience, especially in such an unfamiliar place.
When the young man had left, the police officer sighed and jokingly addressed Martin helplessly, "That's a tricky issue."
Martin asked in a consulting tone, "Isn't there any other way? After all, I didn't hit that old man, so I have to pay that much money!"
Police officer: "Your case is not an individual case, it has been said in the news commonly, why don't you watch it? You need proof. You can take a video or find a witness, and after that , you can send your help to anyone!"
Martin sighed, too. He had never really noticed this. "What to do? How going to happen in the end?"
Officer: "If the claimer keeps saying no, either arbitration or court."
Martin: "How much is usually awarded?"
Policeman: "I don't know, it could be thousands, it could be hundreds of thousands, depending on the injuries and the causes." After all, the law here emphasizes the protection of the elderly."
Martin had to start thinking about other options. The odds are stacked against him, will people expose him? He has seen videos on his mobile phone, some people will expose something they can't solve or feel unfair on the Internet, to get pressure from the Internet. Still, Martin thinks he gets some support from it. But more importantly, he didn't want to blow his cover. If things were going badly, he thought, he would have to call his organization. Apparently, killer groups have an effective way of dealing with some difficult problems.
However,at that same evening, Martin was unexpectedly summoned again by the police. The reason was that someone came to the police station and provided a video of the day. This video recorded the whole thing that happened that day. The police think they know for sure that Martin was innocent of the old man's fall.
Martin: "Can I go out then?"
Officer: "Yes, we have confirmed that you have nothing to do with it. However, we have a few more questions that we may need to ask you."
Martin remained alert, for he noticed that the officer was still looking at him strangely.
Martin thought about the recorded video. It immediately occurred to him that the video might have recorded two shots of himself that could have been delivered in an immediate and potentially fatal manner only after professional training. But he wasn't flustered. In fact, it was not the first time he had been questioned like this. And he always handled it perfectly well.
Indeed, as Martin had expected, the officer then asked him some questions about his past training and so on.
In a prepared vein, Martin said that he had been trained by a Muay Thai martial arts club, and so on. He also pretended to be a little upset. In the end, some of Martin's seemingly unquestionable personal information was recorded by the police officer as if by the book. When he was finally released politely, Martin breathed a sigh of relief. However, he had some regret. It can be said that he has left a "criminal record" in this city. As for the impact this "record" may have on his future career, he is hard to speculate. It's just that Martin knows it. Any attempt to conceal his identity here would be far less likely.
'Damn it. 'Martin muttered to himself.
That evening he went back to his hotel. He looked at the bustling city through the floor-to- ceiling Windows of the guest room in front of him. Martin began to enjoy the colors of the city at night. However, the words that had been spoken to him by the old man on the plane when he left for Hong Kong came to him now, and they seemed to grow more and more mysterious through the light of the night. "They can't be true. No, what was I thinking? ' Martin smiled wryly, and after drinking his glass of whiskey on the ice rocks, he went to sleep.
He woke up early the next morning for breakfast and went to work through the company's proxy server. He didn't stop typing until he realized the server was down. Then, out of the blue, he
got a call that made him realize he had a bigger problem waiting for him. The call gives him a message on an encrypted channel, which he decrypts with a secret key and confirms is an internal communication from the organization. This message tells Martin that organization has monitored tracking activity to Martin! There are multiple points constantly tracking down Martin's identity and history, and almost all of them come from the same place -- China, and almost all of them come from Shanghai. Some of these IP addresses are clearly professional government agencies. While Martin isn't sure he's fully exposed yet, he knows he's at least on the list of suspects. He believes the other side does not yet know his true identity, because if so, he would be greeted today by some armed men or agents. But it is also possible that, even if his cover is revealed, nothing will happen at this point. After all, each place has different rules for its jurisdiction. In many parts of the United States, for example, killers are not wanted. But spies tend to get worse treatment from the government. "Do they suspect that I am a killer who has nothing to do with them, or do they confirm that I am a spy? What will they do? Are they going to wait for me to reveal myself, or are they going to wait for me to reveal a bigger connection?" Martin mused that, at the moment, he has no way of knowing the true nature of his opponent. Who is hiding in the shadows.
Martin received the organization's notice, the first time immediately cut off all the original communication channels. He is confident that he plans to stop using any of the organization's resources for the time being and continue his mission through his own talents. On one of his previous missions in New York, the local government even had agents lurking in his house area and his place of work. In the end, he was still lured in other directions by various means. Until he completes his mission and leaves safely.
He left the hotel and entered an Internet cafe on the street. He searched for local online rental services and decided to rent a room instead of a hotel. He watched the balance on his credit card. Now he needs to start saving money. He also needs to find a local job to earn money, to supplement his own funds, and to make himself truly invisible to the general population.
In the end, Martin searched online for several downtown rentals that cost around 7,000 yuan a month. He set up an appointment with an agent to start looking at the apartments. He had always thought that the housing in Shanghai was much cheaper than that in Hong Kong, but the fact was beyond his expectation.
Agent: "The house in city center is that expensive, the house you expect that if it counts the public area will be more than 10,000 yuan a month, or, would you like to try the house in the suburb?"
Martin decided to give up the lively and warm downtown, chose a slightly farther away, only need to pay about 4,000 yuan a month house. He believes those distance problems can be solved by the subway. When he first came to Shanghai, he was impressed by how convenient the subway was.
Martin first went to some decorating companies, comparing prices, and considering that he did not want to spend too much time in the bargaining process, he finally solved the furniture arrangement problem through the IKEA chain store. The 50-square-meter living room has become a temporary home for him to complete his current work.
His mission has also its troubles. Since he stopped using the organization's services, he has lost many sources of information and has been unable to access restricted websites, including those in Europe and the United States. And he doesn't want to talk to some secret contacts on his phone, all of whom may be being tapped.
He was trying to find the office of the mysterious man he was investigating, to spy on him. The strange thing was that Martin never saw the man after work. The man seemed to disappear again! Alone in his little room, he waited for the days to pass until he hoped the organization would tell him that it was safe or that a new opportunity would open up. But waiting did not solve the problem. It was only when he had a dream and realized the money he needed right now began to claw his teeth that Martin realized a financial crisis was looming. It is urgent to find a local job to support himself.
Since he stopped taking advantage of the callback and answering services offered by the organization, Martin has troubles at almost every interview. To avoid the problem of age fraud, his real age on his resume has made his job opportunities, once again, rarer than ever. Even the Shanghai branch of a Fortune 500 foreign company received his resume and rejected him outright, which left Martin puzzled. Because Just over a year earlier, Martin had interviewed for the same position at the US headquarters when he was on assignment in the US, and received an offer. They were very impressed with Martin's abilities and skills. He couldn't understand why the Shanghai branch would reject him for no reason. It happened so often that he began to wonder if all the companies' recruiters had been trained in the same recruitment system. Martin was more willing to believe that someone was playing some kind of backroom game with him to the point of forcing him to leave Shanghai, 'It seems like I'm really being monitored.' With each rejection of his job application, it seemed to him that the more powerful and elusive forces behind him were trying to drive him out of the city.
Once, while talking to a junior engineer who was a recruiter on a recruitment app, Martin even had the unthinkable idea that behind all the recruitment networks, there must be a single, monolithic organization. Otherwise, how could the requirements be so unimaginably uniform and unnatural?
The junior engineer's job description is,
Mustbe 211,985 full-time undergraduate college;Mustnot have more than 2 jobs experience in 3 years;Musthave worked for more than 5 years and have more than 3 years of relevant experience;Nowork employment gap time for more than 2 years;Under35 years ..
...
What the purpose of these demands is, Martin really can't understand right now. According to British recruitment requirements, just that age discrimination requirement alone is already illegal, except for specific jobs. The British are more passionate about life, and it is common for them to travel after a year or two or even more. The happiness index of British people has been used as an important indicator of social development. This demand for a young engineer struck a certain unspeakable fear into Martin, especially when he compared it with the strange shadows he saw in his meditation, as if he were being caught in a spider net. 'Do the locals feel this, too? This will certainly hinder everyone's ability to perform ', he began to suspect that there may be a hidden powerful organization hostile to China. Otherwise, who would do something that would harm the development of the country?
"Would it be the Illuminati or not? 'thought Martin. The people who want to bring China down are most likely the United States. There have been rumors for some time that China is now growing faster than the US in many places. His visit to Shanghai has certainly convinced Martin that there is truth to the rumor. The Illuminati is said to be one of the most powerful groups within the United States that controls capital. As China's national power grows stronger and stronger, some American conglomerates have begun to fear China.
"Could it be Japan? The country, which has a history of capital war with China, is obviously equally suspect. "Not likely." He thought carefully and dismissed the suspicion. Japan, most of the time, does not have that capability. Russia? ... Martin's inner answers, sifted through one by one.
He finally found a private company that was relaxed about Martin's age, but pleased with his excellent language skills and ability to help them solve practical problems. However, the company's salary was significantly lower. One of the employees, talking to Martin outside of work, casually remarked, "In this economy, people need to live on a tight budget.No one known if there would be tomorrow for oneself in company." For some reason, Martin didn't think the employee was lying. The reason: He noticed that after the employee said that, like a ghost, he slipped back to his desk and buried himself in his work. As if he were afraid anyone would hear what he had just said.
Through this company, Martin was finally starting to make some money. Outside of work, he began to investigate the mysterious man again. Although his ability to use the Internet was very limited, he discovered that there were many illegal and invisible channels for reselling information on small local websites. Martin then made an appointment with an online data trafficist. An inconspicuous coffee workshop on Changle Road was Martin's careful choice of trading place. To his surprise, that overweight data dealer seemed not as sinister as he had imagined, but had the confidence to talk to Martin about the price: 'It can't be lower than this price, this is already the cheapest.' Martin didn't want to talk to him too much, he just wanted the result as soon as possible. There are two ways to make a deal, says the confident trafficker. One is for the trafficker to provide information about the people involved. The other is that the trafficker simply provides a lot of data and lets the buyer look it up on his own. To avoid letting anyone know his true motives, Martin carefully chose the latter. He paid more than 10,000 yuan for data that could identify people and prepared to complete his suspect list.
After receiving the USB flash drive containing the data and examining it on the spot, Martin couldn't help but be shock by its contents. It contained quite a bit of confidential company and employee information. In Britain, such information is only available to the country's intelligence services or special government agencies. As he look at the unkempt data vendor in front of him, he think to himself: 'Some of the people here who look like the underclass hide light under a bushel'. Martin tried to communicate more with the dealer, for it seems to him that he had once again picked up some hint of the shadowy world. However, no matter how much Martin tried to use his trained communication skills, he could not extract any more real information from the dealer about the data dealer himself.
The data trafficker: 'That data is in the hands of a lot of people in society, and as far as the source of that data, a lot of it comes from the people who work there. '
Martin: "Would the company's security department know about this?"
The data trafficker: "Of course, the technical security companies do it all the time. The problem is that there are people who have access to the data. They make the rules and they use the rules to export the data themselves. My guess is that a lot of that data is leaked by people in the companies themselves."
The data trafficker keep their mouths shut. Martin, though, doesn't believe him. This, Martin felt, was the sort of thing only a corporate spy would do. How many people would do something so illegal for so little money? He knew that in many countries this kind of behavior would be punishable by a criminal sentence.
For the sake of his future mission here, Martin decided to leave the dealer alone. He did not want to alarm anyone unnecessarily.
Back at his apartment, Martin studied the data. One day, he considered himself lucky, because from the data, he found information on the list of skeptics, including their ID cards, bank card numbers, addresses, and so on. He also found information about the mystery man from the data. The next day, his reconnaissance began. He arrived near the home address he had written down, ready to watch the mysterious man's every move, as he always did before preparing to assassinate any target. He needs to observe their family members, their habits, even the security surrounding them.
But, to his surprise, Martin had not seen the mysterious man come or go for days, day or night, when it was supposed to be time of going to work and end of work. Only other men and women had sometimes been seen going in and out of the house. It was not until two weeks had passed that he became aware of a problem. He suspected that the information on that data might be false. Martin immediately contacted the data dealer, but the guy seemed to have disappeared like a mystery, with no response from him either by phone or email. Martin knew something: He'd met a scammer. 'Damn it,' he shouted. At this point, his mind began to slide through, imagining how he would punch the data guy again and again when he found him again. In the end, Martin managed to control his anger and told himself he had to calm down. A professional killer who has lived through a hail of bullets needs to stay focused and calm in every moment.
Martin doesn't believe in fate. He also doesn't believe in bad luck. One of the organization's most respected psychology instructors had told him in a training session that to be a killer one must control his emotions. Losing control of emotions often leads to the loss of rational judgment. An occupation with high risk can be dangerous, even fatal, if it is affected by the risks created by emotional fluctuations! Martin vividly recalls the instructor, gesturing at the board with a thin stick, telling him, "You have to learn to break that law of attraction. What the killer needs above all is to maintain absolute logic and concentration in his work, excluding emotion, so that one can remain unaffected and minimize all uncertainty." The lecturer had just finished speaking, as if to demonstrate that what he was talking about was not just theoretical research, Martin suddenly saw instructor's left hand as fast as lightning, and the thin stick in instructor's hand flew like a bullet, pinning a distant gecko, which was climbing, directly and firmly against the white wall.
Martin particularly remembered what the lecturer then said: "This is concentration. When you have absolute concentration, you can start trusting your instincts, as I did. Nothing happens by accident in this world." This phrase was taken to heart by Martin, so he interpreted all luck as a matter of natural probability, which he applied to all his tasks. Success, he decided, was a matter of careful planning and execution. Face to failure, one does nothing but planning and planning, until the execution is successful finally.
However, if there is any luck in this world, Martin's luck has been that bad of late. Less than two weeks after he had joined, the company he was working suddenly went out of business. On the night before the company closed, the boss disappeared. When Martin went to save his salary for the month, he was confronted by an embarrassed accounting man who told him that the company's assets had been used as collateral for other debts and could no longer be paid. When Martin consulted a local law firm, he was not impressed, because of the limited liability system to liquidation of the company. It is estimated that Martin will receive little or no compensation as a result of the liquidation process. Once again, he will have to find his own way. For now, his situation is even worse, for some time to come, perhaps because of the economy, he got fewer interviews. And those interview requirements are getting higher and higher each time, and many companies have changed the original requirement of a bachelor's degree to a master's degree as a mandatory requirement for hiring. And they still strictly require that the first degree must be 211 or 985, which undoubtedly makes Martin directly rejected.
All sorts of changes forced Martin to end his plan. He wants to increase the probability that the data would be correct by buying more data and sampling it multiple times, using a method of mathematical probability. Because he noticed that some people's information was inconsistent, such as a single person, often holding more than one different piece of data. Unfortunately, after looking through a lot of data, he's still unable to confirm the exact information about the man he is tracking. 'Could this man really be a ghost? 'thought Martin. As the days passed, and every night in his dreams, Martin seemed to see his bank card jump out of his wallet and attack him as a green tentacled, foul-smelling monster. After being awakened, Martin felt more and more anxious.
As a professional veteran, Martin has encountered many unexpected changes in his past missions, such as killing opponents, blowing out tires on the road, and even people who are identical body double to the target character. In killer missions, the unexpected is often the norm. To accommodate his surprise, Martin had an elaborate plan of change: He had learned that a popular and discouraged cost-cutting way of living in Shanghai was "group renting." At the same time, flexible employment does not require high entry costs.
To find a group rental, Martin turned to his former house agent. This time, that agent referred him to another person, who in turn referred him to another person claiming to be an agent, and so it went on and on like a relay baton competition, until finally the baton was passed to a middle-aged man.
The middle-aged man led Martin to a new building located outside the 'outer ring' of the city, and they arrived at a room on the 10th floor. As soon as the door opened, Martin found that the nearly 1,200-square-foot room was divided into several smaller rooms by wooden panels, with each room measuring less than 10 square meters. Even though there was no one there during the day, the room still seemed too cramped to Martin, who felt a suffocating sense of oppression. He imagined what it would be like when all the residents moved in, and he involuntarily swallowed a mouthful of saliva. It seemed as if he could already feel a burning and foul odor spreading throughout the room.
After leaving the room, Martin willed himself to look at some more houses, but he could not accept the results. Until, by chance, he met an old local old Auntie landlady. She rented a room in an old bungalow on Big Deer Road. It caught Martin's interest. Finally, he selected the 10 square meter room at the price of 1500 yuan. Although the first few groups rented only 800 yuan, at least here, he felt that the breath contained in his chest began to become a little easier.
The 50-year-old woman is clearly born in Shanghai. Martin could not understand her native tongue, but he could make out the general meaning of the words by the syllables. After paying and completing the necessary formalities, the old aunt left. Martin then heard the news that the old aunt had another house of Demolition,and with 10 million relocation fee, she bought a larger house, the Housing Demolition policy in Shanghai let Martin feel temporarily unable to understand. He knew that he had to take on several difficult tasks before he could possibly get a similar amount of compensation. Here, the houses seem like lottery tickets with indefinite lifespans that are sure to win the jackpot. For a moment, he even wondered if he had made the right career choice. "Maybe it is all the doing by those organization behind the scenes?" Martin was skeptical again, unable to understand why this might lead to a distribution of wealth that widened the gap between rich and poor in society. At the same time, he was afraid of the seemingly unnatural forces behind this phenomenon.