The Blacklist

Chapter 162: High-value Lucky Money

At noon, Carrie rushed to Boston, came out of a small suburban airport, and drove a low-key Chrysler sedan towards the city. On the way, he received a call confirming that the target was still in the presidential suite of the five-star Wyndham Hotel!

Five kilometers after leaving the airport, Carrie, who looked completely different after putting on makeup, drove into a motel on the left side of the road, checked into a room with a credit card under an alias, bought some bread, canned food, beer, etc. from the hotel supermarket, and walked into the guest room yawning.

Twenty minutes later, he went out again and threw some food packaging and beer cans into the trash can, then returned to the guest room "trapped" and locked the door!

More than an hour later, Kerry, with a completely different face, appeared in downtown Boston, driving a mid-to-high-end Lincoln SUV into the underground parking lot of the Wyndham five-star hotel...
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In the SER command hall, Abby, who got the serial number, quickly found out that the recipient of the full set of porcelain teeth was Dr. Henry McGlashan, and found the man's business address through the National Medical Association: 3230 Kettering Avenue.

At this time, Dembe called and told Donald that there was a funeral supplies store on Kettering Avenue, which should have clues!

Ha! Everyone laughed. This time they didn't just sit there and wait. They found clues before Reddington's intelligence. Does this mean that SER's level has improved?

Donald and Nawabi, who had the strongest mobility, set out immediately and rushed towards the target with the field action team; Elizabeth and Mira stayed in SER as backup, and the second group of action team members supported by SLR began to stand by.

As the commander-in-chief, Cooper felt very relaxed and stayed in the office to drink tea. This group of subordinates brought him great surprises. A seemingly unsolvable mystery actually had new clues! He no longer envied Carrie. Isn't such a SER good? ——
Around three o'clock in the afternoon, the SER team was analyzing the various items found in the funeral supply store - of course, no one was caught, and Carrie, who was far away in Boston, had already returned to the motel.

This time, he really slept for a while, then got up and went out at around four o'clock, checked out of the room at the counter, bought some things in a small supermarket, and then drove away.

When he returned home in the evening, Gina had already returned and packed dinner, but Elizabeth stayed at SER to work overtime.

After washing up, he ate while listening to Gina's description of SER's busy day without commenting - he knew that the case could be solved on the surface, but in fact it was not really solved, leaving a loophole, which also shows the power of the secret society's methods!

However, this is not the time to reveal the answer. He plans to give the secret society one more blow when they think they have succeeded, to let them know what "stealing a chicken but losing the rice" means!
In addition, when he was dealing with Jasper this time, he got a new clue - the secret society has an attack plan in progress. Starting tomorrow, he has to find a way to solve that trouble. Let SER's brothers solve the matter of the corpse bride themselves!
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It was past ten o'clock in the evening, and everyone was still busy in the SER command hall. Abby, who came to help, had something to do tonight and had left early, so Alam became the technical expert again.

During the search in the afternoon, a lot of exquisite paper figures, paper horses and other special items were found in the funeral supply store. Alam found a lot of things through the Internet and told everyone that these things are traditional funeral supplies in various Asian countries, and these items appear in pairs, and the images of men and women are specially and exquisitely shaped. This made him judge that it was for a special local custom - ghost marriage!

According to folk tales from various Asian countries, if a young man or woman dies before getting married, their souls will be lonely and helpless in the underworld, so their families will look for a person of the opposite sex who has also died, and pair them up with their own deceased children to form a couple in the underworld, in the hope that they will live happily in the afterlife!

"You mean: Lin Maqiao and the seven Asian women's bodies were stolen and sent back to Southeast Asia for ghost marriages?" Elizabeth asked in surprise.

"It should be!" Aram nodded confidently. Although this reason seemed absurd to Americans, it was a custom in Asia, and the case was indeed very strange, so everyone had no choice but to believe Aram's judgment.

"What about this?" Donald asked, pointing to a box of US dollars in cash found in the ceiling ventilation duct of the funeral home on the table next to him.

"Ha! Speaking of this, I have a big discovery!" Aram became excited, "The $100,000 in cash in this file box is not ordinary currency..."

"Hmm! Could it be counterfeit money?" Cooper, who was holding a teacup and listening to everyone analyzing the case, immediately became alert and asked.

"No, it's real money!" Alam said, "But this kind of real money is very special. The first four digits of its serial number are A888, and there is no 4 in the entire serial number!"

No one understood what this meant. What was so special about this currency?
Donald frowned and asked, "What does this number mean?"

"Statistically speaking, the chance of not having a 4 in an -digit dollar bill is virtually impossible, unless it is specially printed," Alam explained.

"Aren't you saying that this money is fake?" Mira asked from the side.

"NO! What I mean is: the cash in this box is all 'lucky money'!" Alam said. Seeing that everyone still didn't understand, he explained in detail: "Since the millennium, the Ministry of Finance has issued currency products with collectible value to Chinese and other Asian groups during the Chinese New Year. The numbers all start with 8 or 168, and do not include the number 4. There are denominations of 1, 2, 5, and 10 US dollars. The selling price is more than five times the face value. The collection value after the launch is very high!"

Cooper looked at the dollars in the box and said in disbelief, "Aram, are you saying that this box is full of this kind of 'lucky money'?"

"Yes." Aram said, "This box of lucky money has a face value of $10, but its value is at least $50, or even $100 million."

Wow! Everyone exclaimed in surprise. It must be said that this was beyond their previous knowledge!

Alam continued, "Lucky Money is limited in quantity, up to 10 denominations, and can only be bought from one place - the U.S. Treasury Mint!"

Donald immediately said, "So, these lucky money are probably the rewards for corpse stealers and smugglers. As long as we find out the buyer's information from the Ministry of Finance, we can find out who the employer is."

(End of this chapter)