Twenty Seven Years

  Chapter 142 Mutual temptation

   After Verak returned to Cell 208 and told Keating all the content of the conversation with Lecter, Keating was so shocked that he couldn't speak. On the one hand, he was shocked by the massive amount of information, and on the other hand, he was shocked that Lecter was so arrogant that he dared to say such words in front of others.

   "It seems that there is already a deep conflict between them." Keating stroked his fingers for a long time before he spoke, "In this way, the feasibility of our backup plan has been greatly improved."

"Yes." During the conversation with Lecter, Veraker realized this, "Lecter is very interested in the position of warden, and Adel is unwilling to give it up. Now it is up to them to decide who can sit in this position. The ones in the seats are us."

   Keating, like Veraker, also discovered one of the places where there was no answer, no matter how you looked at it, it didn't make sense: "Why is Adel unwilling to leave?"

"I'm thinking about this too." Veraker originally planned to ask Keating what his opinion was, but Keating was also puzzled by this. It doesn't make sense to arrange a better job, could it be that he has feelings for this place?"

"It's hard to convince people to have feelings for such a place." Keating felt that there was a lot of content in it. "I think there are two possibilities. First, he knew that Lecter wanted to replace him, so he wanted to use Lecter's Demand for more things. Now he seems unmoved by women with money and power. In fact, it is just that the conditions proposed by Lecter have not met his psychological expectations. It's something very important to Del, and because of this, he can't give up the position of warden."

   "Which one do you think might be beneficial to us?"

   Keating said bluntly: "Of course it's the latter."

After pondering, Verac analyzed Keating's reason for saying this: "For the former, Adel is a smart man. Even if he wants to maximize the benefits of using the position of the warden, it will not exceed the capabilities of Lecter and his father, so It's not a problem if they don't agree for a while, they will reach a cooperation sooner or later, and then we won't have a chance to mediate, right?"

"That's right." Keating said, "And if it's the latter, judging from Adel's performance in this series, it should be that he will never give up the position of warden no matter what, and he won't tell the reason why he stays here. Yes. Then the conflict between them will be irreconcilable, and it will become more and more serious as Lecter gets more and more gold information from us."

   "If this is the case, it will save us the trouble of actively intensifying them, and we can directly disclose the gold information to Lecter."

   "However, as far as the current situation is concerned, the situation is not so optimistic." Keating said worriedly, "Why do you think Adel hasn't made any moves since he met you?"

Verac just wanted to ask Adel why he was so calm, but Lecter was still sitting steadily when the situation was good. Hearing Keating just asked, he guessed by the way: "If it is the first possibility, then Adel is indeed There is no need to do anything, his focus should be on how to talk to Lecter. If it is the second option, it will be much more complicated if he has not acted for a long time. Either he has no way for the time being, or he already has other countermeasures. Otherwise, you won't come to see us and compete with Lecter for clues to gold."

"We have to test and test. How about this? Didn't you say that the investigation on the last clue will have results tomorrow? Then tomorrow when the clues are confirmed and Lecter's trust in you is greatly increased, you will reveal some of the gold to him." clues." Keating decided to find a way to find out what Adel was doing, "In this way, Adel gets the news, if the situation is the second possibility, he will definitely take action as soon as possible. At that time, the worst result, It’s nothing more than finding out that Adel and Lecter just didn’t agree on cooperation, and the best result is the second possibility, and we can find out what countermeasures Adel has.”

   "This is the best." Verak didn't expect to use this method to stimulate Lecter and Adel in order to obtain more information and further intensify the conflict between the wardens. "You are the best teacher."

"It's just some tentative means. If the final conclusion is that they just didn't agree, then the difficulty of implementing the backup plan will rise sharply." Keating was always worried that the first possibility was, so his face lost the previous smile and was full of worry. , "Preparing for the worst possibility, we have to make some progress in the frontal escape plan, otherwise the two roads will be blocked, and there will be no possibility of getting out."

Verak nodded solemnly: "Understood, teacher. I also planned to get another piece of information from Dawn during the briefing today, but unfortunately we were not assigned to the same batch today, and he seemed very cautious and didn't dare to Let others hand it over to me, and we can only wait for tomorrow to see if we can get the same batch for release."

"Okay." Keating began to reveal new information about gold to Veraker, so that Veraker could change his wording and report to Lecter tomorrow, "Gold is transported to Dunman by multiple routes, and there is a ship carrying gold on the sea route Because it was in disrepair and was caught in a storm, it sank in the shallow sea near Carment City. Tell Lecter about this tomorrow."

"But teacher, is this one too obvious? What if they fish out the sunken ship and find some clues based on the ship?" Verak didn't rush to agree, but first tried to stand in Lecter's perspective and think about how to Take this clue that Keating revealed to the extreme. In his view, this clue could easily be caught by Lecter, who would discover the location of the gold.

"It's not that easy to salvage the sunken ship. It will take at least a few months for them to verify and use this clue." Keating didn't care, "And, if we want to stimulate Adel, we must give enough weight this time." clues. If we can leave within a month, this clue is nothing to them.”

   "Huh..." Veraker suddenly felt a great responsibility, and he solemnly said to Keating, "Don't worry, we will definitely go out."

  —

  October 16

   Today, Verac got his wish and Dawn was assigned to the first batch of prisoners. He first pretended to chat with Keating, who was also extroverted for a while, and then chatted with the prisoners he knew all the way, and came to Dawn, who was still lying alone in the sun.

   "How's it going?" Dawn said as soon as Verak sat down, closing his eyes and meditating.

   "How do you know it's me?" Verak asked with a smile.

   "Except for you, no one else will take the initiative to talk to me during the wind." Dawn opened his eyes and glanced at Verak beside him, "What's the matter?"

  Verak briefly revealed the difficulties of the frontal escape plan and the situation of the backup plan: "This is the case at present. To be on the safe side, we can only choose two ways to advance, and finally choose the right time to decide which plan to come."

   "This is the information collected in the past few days." Dawn stretched out his hand seemingly unintentionally, and stuffed the folded paper under Verak's leg.

  Verak looked up at the sun slightly, did not pay attention to the prison guards around, pretended to lift his pants, and quietly pinned the paper with information on his waist: "Do you really have any suggestions for the frontal escape?"

  His plan for a frontal prison escape has not progressed for several days, and all forces that can cooperate must be gathered to work together to break the deadlock.

"Do you still remember the agreement we made when we cooperated?" Dawn seemed to be trying to make things difficult for Veraker, trying to get this young man who knew nothing about his heights and depths to retreat. "I am only responsible for providing you with maps and information on prison guards. Other cooperation, Unless your plan has made substantial progress and the feasibility is high enough, don’t think about it.”

   "Although there is no progress yet, what I can assure you is that this is an unprecedented and most promising opportunity to leave here." Verak persuaded earnestly, "I hope we can all go all out."

   "I've heard this kind of words dozens of times." Dawn dismissed it, "Do you understand what I mean? You are not the only one, and you have never had a real chance to leave here."

  Verak sighed: "Then I can only convince you when I make progress."

   "I hope you have." Dawn said.

   "Let's go." Verak didn't know how to face this sense of powerlessness. The prisoners who were supposed to be on the front line with him were either numb or cold, which made him feel even worse when he was already struggling.

  After returning to Keating, Verac pushed the wheelchair and inadvertently handed the information paper to Keating: "Teacher, keep it safe."

   "Don't worry." Keating already had experience once, and he was sure of bringing the intelligence paper back to Cell 208 safely. "Will Lecter meet you in the infirmary today?"

   "Yes, he is now focusing on gold and the position of warden, so he will wait for my report every day. Even if there is often no progress, he is still very interested in chatting with me." Verak said.

   "Then I'll leave it to you at noon." Keating patted Verac's hand pushing the wheelchair.

  Verak gave a heavy "hmm".

  —

   At noon, after lunch, Verac and Lecter met in the infirmary.

   Lecter is probably addicted to changing the dressing. This time, he called the doctor away and took full responsibility for changing Veraker's dressing: "Come on, lie down, and I will change your dressing later."

   "Why are you interested in this kind of thing..." Although Lecter changed his dressing yesterday and nothing happened, Verac still couldn't let go of Lecter, a lunatic.

   "How interesting this is, heal the wound you made yourself!" Lecter unwrapped the bandage for Veraker strangely.

  Verak simply disassembled it by himself: "I will report to you that there is a new progress in the clue of gold."

   "Oh? Let's talk first, and then change the dressing." Gold is the most important thing in Lecter's mind now. He didn't care about removing the bandage and changing the dressing for Veraker, so he asked first.

"Mr. Keating told me about an incident when he transported gold to Dunman." Verac didn't stop, and skillfully removed the bandage, "They used various methods to transport gold, one of which was It is a waterway, starting from Carment City, and transporting gold to Dunman by boat. The weather happened to be bad that day, and there was a storm. Mr. Keating forced the boat to set sail in order to hurry. The last boat was in disrepair , was overturned by the waves not long after leaving the pier, and sank in the shallow sea."

   "So, there is a sunken ship with gold in the shallow sea near Carment City?"

   "That's right." Verak lay on the bed, waiting for a dressing change. "By the way, you said yesterday that the last clue can be verified today. How is it now?"

  Lecter kept the important information in his mind: "Ah, it's been verified, it's true, but it's a pity that Keating was very clean, and we didn't track down the gold's whereabouts based on that clue."

   "What do you think of this new information? There should be many clues on that ship."

"It's not as easy as you think to salvage the sunken ship." Lecter had the urge to call his father immediately to report the new information, but when he saw that Verak was lying down, he had a rare patience and stepped forward to change Verak's dressing. "I estimate it will take several months to find out."

   "A few months is a bit too long, I will try to ask for more new clues." Verac showed his favor in front of Lecter, never forgetting to let Lecter relax his vigilance against him.

  Lecter was in a good mood, and he was no longer so cautious when taking the medicine: "This information is very critical. Even if there are no clues on board, just salvaging the entire ship's gold is enough to make a great contribution."

   "Then is there any benefit for me?" Verac found that this information could not only test Lecter and Adel, but decisively began to fight for more things.

   "What do you want?" Lecter's tone was relaxed, and he didn't care about Verak's request.

  Verak didn't have anything he needed for a while: "I haven't thought about it yet. When I think about it, I will tell you together with the previous one."

   "Whatever, by the way, what day is it today?" Lecter changed the subject suddenly.

   "October—" Verak just blurted out two words, and cold sweat immediately broke out on his forehead, "It's the middle of the month. Isn't the new prisoner reported on the twelfth of every month? It's been several days."

   "It should be number sixteen." Lecter said.

  Verak breathed a sigh of relief, and seemed to defuse Lecter's temptation again.

  He and Keating were secretly counting the date. If Lecter, as the deputy warden, didn’t know what date it was today, and he, a prisoner, said it so easily, it would be hard not to arouse Lecter’s vigilance towards him. Only by pretending to be vague about time can he continue to show weakness and increase Lecter's trust in him.

   "That's only a few days away."

   "What?" Veraker didn't understand what Lecter meant.

   "Peace Day on October 20, don't you know?" Lecter asked.

  Verak knew there was such a festival, but he had never had it in the slums, so he never took it to heart: "I know, is there any arrangement for the prison?"

"I think it's a rare and good day. I just got itchy hands recently. I can arrange some big event to celebrate the festival." Lecter quickly prescribed the medicine for Veraker and asked him to sit up and re-bandage the bandage. "You have Any good ideas?"

  (end of this chapter)