Chapter 349: Meeting Up!

Time to return to ten hours ago!

Over at the Expert Group.

When their private plane landed at Washington airport, it was not yet dawn.

Outside the porthole was a layer of gray-blue, low-hanging clouds, and the indicator lights on the airport runway stretched into blurred, red-and-green ribbons of light in the mist.

The roar of the engines came from both sides of the wings, shifting from high to low, and finally fell completely silent amidst a slight jolt.

The reading lights in the cabin were still on, casting cone-shaped spots of light onto everyone's faces.

No one was sleeping.

Before long, the plane finally came to a complete stop.

Outside the porthole, a black SUV was parked on the tarmac, its roof warning lights flashing blue in the darkness.

Two people stood by the car door, wearing dark coats with earpieces tucked into their ears; they were clearly Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.

The cabin door opened, and the cold morning wind poured in, carrying the smell of Aviation Kerosene and the damp scent of earth after rain.

Wesley was the first to walk out; the hem of his overcoat was flipped up by the wind, but he did not reach to press it down, nor did he stop his pace.

The members of the Expert Group followed behind him, walking down the boarding stairs one by one; their leather shoes made dull, rhythmic sounds on the metal steps, like a group of people knocking on a massive, tightly shut door.

The SUV's engine was already running, and the white mist spewing from the exhaust pipe looked exceptionally thick under the light of the blue warning lamps.

Three agents stepped out of the car, exchanged brief greetings with the Expert Group, and then left together.

From the airport to the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters, the drive took about forty minutes.

Outside the car window, the highway stretched into the morning mist, and the streetlights slid over the roof one after another, like a zipper being pulled open rapidly.

No one in the car spoke; there was only the low sound of the engine and the occasional roar of cars passing by in the opposite lane.

Forty minutes later, the car stopped in the underground parking garage of a gray-white building.

The elevator went straight from the parking garage to the eighth floor, and when the doors opened, the fluorescent lights in the hallway made everyone's faces look deathly pale.

At the end of the hallway was an unmarked gray door with a fingerprint scanner next to it; an agent pressed it, and the door gave a soft click and slid open.

Behind the door was a massive Command Center.

Three walls were covered in screens, each divided into dozens of small grids displaying different images—surveillance footage of the Metropolitan Opera House from various angles inside and out, traffic cameras from the surrounding blocks, internal recordings from the United Health Annual Meeting, and a real-time updating map of police incidents in New York City.

There were not many people in the Command Center, but everyone was in a state of high tension; some were on the phone, some were typing on keyboards, and some were speaking urgently into headsets, the air filled with the scent of caffeine mixed with anxiety.

Two people stood in front of the screen wall.

Henry and Hank.

As soon as the Expert Group walked in, the two of them went up to meet them.

"Henry, long time no see." Upon reaching them, Li Changyu reached out his hand directly.

Henry gripped his hand.

Both men had strong hands; when they gripped each other, the outlines of their knuckles stood out clearly beneath their skin.

"Thank you for your hard work." Henry's voice was deep and hoarse, like an engine that had been running for a long time: "But I will say it again, the situation we are facing is more complex than what you heard over the phone..."

Li Changyu nodded and stepped aside to reveal the Expert Group behind him.

"Hmm... let me introduce you first; this is Liu Xuemin, the most famous criminal investigation expert in Huaxia." Liu Xuemin stepped forward and extended his hand.

Henry gripped his hand, and the two did not exchange much pleasantry.

"Chen Zijin, suspense novelist, also a member of the Expert Group."

Chen Zijin pushed up his glasses and gave a nod.

"Wang Yuheng, micro-identification expert." Shui Ge nodded.

"Wang Ruomei, well-known forensic doctor in Huaxia."

"Zhu Guowei, Criminal Psychology expert."

"Lin Xu, genius hacker."

"Chen Xiong, Zhou Yun, Zhuang Yan—from the Pursuit Team. This one, I don't think I need to introduce, Detective Matthew, your old partner." The four of them stood in a row.

"Hello... long time no see, Matthew."

"Long time no see."

After exchanging greetings with these few, Henry's gaze finally fell on Wesley and his assistant David.

He knew Wesley; although they had never worked together directly, both their names had appeared many times in the Interpol directory.

"Detective Wesley, I have read the reports on the situation in London."

Henry's voice dropped by half a degree, as if he were speaking of something that could not be said aloud, "When you were pursuing him in London, he also vanished into thin air while inside the encirclement. I want to hear you tell me yourself—what exactly did you find at the end of that incident."

Wesley took a step forward, standing in front of Henry.

His gaze did not waver, and his voice was very flat.

"We found nothing. The technical report only wrote three words: 'Cause unknown.' It wasn't because we didn't try hard enough; it was because his disappearance truly left no physical traces. Thermal imaging showed his body temperature signal dropping from peak to zero in the same second. Our technicians exhausted every analytical method available..."

The expression on Henry's face did not change, but his right hand unconsciously gripped the seam of his trousers.

The movement was small, but Hank saw it, and Li Changyu saw it too.

"Let's go to the monitoring console first," Henry said.

He turned around and walked toward a screen wall on the east side of the Command Center.

The Expert Group followed behind him, their footsteps making dense, dull sounds on the plastic floor.

Hank had already pulled up the surveillance footage of the Metropolitan Opera House stage area in advance; the largest screen was frozen on the frame of Chu Chen standing in the center of the stage—his hands in his trouser pockets, the curve of his mouth clearly visible, with that row of massive white numbers behind him.

Henry stood beside the screen, took the laser pointer handed to him by Hank, and the red dot drew a circle on the screen, encircling Chu Chen's body.

"This is the main camera angle for the stage area, shot from diagonally above the stage, with 1080p resolution and a frame rate of thirty frames per second. This camera covers a fifteen-meter radius in the center of the stage. Our technicians have analyzed this footage frame by frame three times, from the moment Chu Chen stepped onto the stage until the lights went out."

He pressed the button on the laser pointer, and the footage began to play.

The crowd surged up from the audience, like a tide washing over a dam.

Chu Chen stood in the center of the stage, his body tilted slightly, as if making way for the first person.

Then—Henry pressed the pause button.

"In this frame, he is there."

He pressed the play button again, the footage advanced one frame, less than one-thirtieth of a second.

Then he pressed pause once more.

"In this frame, he is gone..."