Chapter 8: Dark Diamond (3)
One interrogation was drawing to a close. Director Lin and the others rose in unison, scraping chairs. They'd extracted a wealth of useful information from Deputy Director Ma — time was short, the mission heavy, and they needed a quick meeting to decide their next move.
The cuffed man on the interrogation chair looked thoroughly defeated. He threw out one last question:
"Wait — can you at least tell me how you found me?"
His eyes glittered with unconcealed resentment.
"You couldn't have reached me. Black Moses is all —"
"Single-point contact, isn't it?"
Director Lin sneered. "Your clearance level was high — only Kunjiao could reach you. For a long time, we couldn't even touch a hair on your head."
Gold-rimmed lenses flashing, Director Lin loomed over this maggot with grim satisfaction, his voice dripping ice: "In late September, your son got into trouble abroad and needed a lot of money. You couldn't produce it, so you turned to Kunjiao."
Ma Ming's eyes flickered — that had indeed happened.
Director Lin continued: "Kunjiao didn't give you the money directly. Instead, he told you that the five hundred thousand dollars Shane had illegally obtained from that transnational trafficking case was still hidden in a hotel in Mae Sot, Thailand. This money — Chinese police didn't know about it, Shane was dead, and Charlie Group had no intention of reclaiming it. So it was unclaimed black money. If you wanted it, he'd give you the location."
Five hundred thousand dollars — over three million yuan — more than enough for Ma Ming to make his son's problem go away. And since it was cash, it wouldn't even touch his accounts. He couldn't have asked for better.
"The next day, your wife went to Thailand under the pretext of tourism."
Director Lin locked eyes with Ma Ming: "Well, Deputy Director Ma — did you find that five hundred thousand dollars or not?"
Ma Ming's face contorted — in that dilapidated hotel, in a grimy men's locker room, behind a metal locker, in the ceiling space above, they had indeed found a black travel bag containing five hundred thousand dollars.
That money had exposed him?
But… Kunjiao had given him that inside information. There was no way Li Yufu would have leaked it to the police. It made no sense.
He snarled in a low voice: "No — you're lying to me. Tell me the truth!"
Director Lin and the others turned and walked out without a word.
— They had no obligation to answer his questions.
Less still to tell him about Elyse.
The truth was, starting from the second half of this year, Elyse had gradually begun handling some matters for Kunjiao. She always did well, saving Li Yufu time and effort.
When Li Yufu needed to close a deal with Herod and most of his capital was tied up, and Ma Ming kept demanding money, he'd been hard-pressed. So he used the solution Elyse proposed.
Elyse had no idea who the single-point-contact mole was — but she'd used that bag of money to fish him out.
Whoever went to Thailand to collect the cash was the big ghost.
Ma Ming, however, would never know this. He'd been undone by a young woman's offhanded scheme.
And that young woman was now trapped inside the White Tower of Tika.
5.
The joint special operations task force surrounded Tikka.
Tikka was a sprawling town, and it concealed Kunjiao's heavy arms — men, weapons, many of them diehards who would fight to the bitter end.
The White Tower sat on the hillside, its position formidable, easy to defend and difficult to assault.
After Li Yufu fled back to his lair, it finally dawned on him — something was very wrong. The people pursuing him were highly trained, most likely police.
Worse still — Chinese police.
Once inside Tikka's perimeter, he might have used the terrain to shake off pursuit, but unexpectedly, a force from Duan Po had joined the joint operation.
This warlord — who'd left Southeast Asia over half a year ago — had quietly returned to northern Myanmar at some point.
Duan Po was intimately familiar with the terrain of northern Myanmar, and jungle warfare was his forte. Li Yufu's men were scattered, fleeing back to their stronghold in disarray. Tikka devolved into street-by-street combat.
Duan Po pressed harder and harder, clearly intent on killing him.
But Li Yufu understood — what Duan Po really wanted was Elyse. He was trying to take her back.
By this point, Li Yufu had essentially pieced it together. Elyse had called the police in. She was the mole.
Once the full picture crystallized, his first reaction wasn't fury — it was disbelief.
— What kind of monster was she?
Elyse had long since stopped wanting to live — he knew that. Her illness was getting worse. But now that it had come to this, he refused to grant her wish.
She was bound hand and foot inside a small reception room. The room had also become Kunjiao's makeshift command post. From deep night to dawn, from morning to dusk, the siege raged for a full day and two nights.
During that time, Elyse's condition flared — she went into shock once. Cry was called in to administer a hasty dose of medication.
Li Yufu was constantly on the phone or radio, his men rushing in and out with reports. Cup after cup of strong coffee went down — the news got worse and worse, and his eyes grew bloodshot.
This time, he was well and truly finished.
Elyse hadn't moved at all. She lay curled in a corner like a hollow shell, maintaining the sideways posture she'd collapsed into after the shock.
Long legs in leather shoes stopped before her eyes. Li Yufu tiredly dropped to one knee and regarded her silently for a moment.
Whether he killed her, tortured her, or imprisoned her — nothing could truly hurt her anymore.
She was an invincible dead soldier.
He tilted her chin. Her face was ghastly pale, but an eerie, faint smile lingered on her lips — a hint of that old familiar madness.
"Boss Yu," she said softly. "I'm so happy."
Li Yufu sat down beside her.
"Little one."
He stroked her hair with the ease of long habit — but also with a glimmer of genuine admiration.
"Little one, if only you'd met me first. How I wish that were so."
He sighed, long and deep —
"If you'd met me from the start, I would never have let anyone hurt you like this. And now, nothing can be undone."
He truly felt a pang of regret.
Elyse closed her eyes coldly. No, she thought, clear as day — even if she'd met Li Yufu first, she'd still have fought him to the death.
Another explosion boomed, closer to the hillside now. Outside, someone shouted for Li Yufu.
He stood, his gaze lingering on her for several moments, then said with a touch of regret: "I'm sorry, little one. I can only play with you this far."
He started putting on his coat, eyes still on her —
"But when Duan Po's men and the police reach this room, they'll find your eviscerated corpse. I'll hang you from the White Tower's front door to welcome them."
Li Yufu flicked his wrist — still polished even now — and fastened his watch, looking down at Elyse:
"How does that sound? Satisfied with that death?"
Elyse actually gave his proposal serious thought. Then she answered softly:
"It's so hot. Guts spilling everywhere would stink. Better to just hang me."
Li Yufu laughed aloud, crouching to pat her cheek.
"As you wish."
A sudden blast of heat erupted beside the White Tower — the second floor's carved glass dome shattered, shards cascading down. Li Yufu, already striding for the door, looked back — and in that moment, the power was cut. He saw that Elyse had somehow propped herself against the wall. Her half-smiling face vanished into the dark.
But her voice slithered to his ear like a snake:
"There's one thing I've never quite understood."
"For over twenty years, sitting across from your wife's remains sealed in the wall — weren't you afraid? Mayfly —"
Li Yufu's feet stopped.
6.
In the ink-black darkness, Elyse rose as though she'd been born for it. Between her fingers, she held a thin razor blade — the kind from a utility knife. Cry had slipped it into her bound hands when she came to administer the medication.
She'd helped her again.
Hidden behind her curled-up posture, she'd already sliced through the ropes. She'd been waiting for the right opening — and this was it.
Amid the frantic shouts from downstairs, the man retreated rather than advanced. He turned, and his voice in the dark was lethal:
"Who told you that name?"
The girl moved through the pitch-black room like a phantom, effortlessly sidestepping the chair, the floor lamp, the potted plant, the bookshelf. She pulled open a drawer with unerring precision.
Her voice drifted, seemingly from nowhere, and she laughed:
"Duan Po told me you were the operative who defected twenty-seven years ago, codename Mayfly. Your wife was the high official's daughter who eloped — Shen Huaiqiu. But I don't think you know — Shen Huaiqiu was engaged to Duan Po before she ran away."
Li Yufu's face twisted.
The voice seemed to come from the left, then the right — inside, then outside. Li Yufu whirled and lunged, but his hand closed on nothing but cold, empty darkness.
"So I have a better guess."
She laughed softly from somewhere farther away.
Li Yufu began to tremble. He felt what she was about to say — she was about to speak his deepest, most terrifying secret…