Mercenary I am the king

Chapter 721 Black Money
"They say no one in the world understands the desert better than you Bedouins. It seems they are right."

When Song Heping followed Nura's camel caravan out of the Arish Desert, they arrived at a small village near the Mediterranean Bay of Tina.

The village is located in a very remote area, dozens of kilometers away from the Suez Canal area. The prosperous towns are concentrated near the canal, and this place has become a forgotten corner.

Egypt did not invest too many resources in construction here, which was actually due to the shadow left by that war.

In that war, the Hoopoe army invaded the Sinai Peninsula in one fell swoop. The Egyptian army was defeated and retreated to the North African mainland. Although the Sinai Peninsula was regained through an agreement later, it has always been a concern. Apart from building military facilities to strengthen defense, there is almost no infrastructure for people's livelihood here.

"Sister Nura!"

As soon as we arrived at the village entrance, a little girl about six or seven years old rushed over quickly after seeing the camel caravan.

Nura jumped off the camel, opened her arms and hugged the girl, patting her back gently and kissing the little girl on the face several times.

"That's his daughter, right?"

Jiang Feng whispered, "The beautiful lady is getting married."

Song Heping looked at the guy's meaningful smile and realized that he must have something else to say, but he couldn't respond.

Some questions are a trap no matter how you respond.

"We will rest here and replenish our supplies. A ship will arrive in about three days to take us to North Africa. You can also rest here for a while, but don't even think about running away. Everyone here belongs to me."

After saying that, he carried the little girl towards the village.

The salty sea breeze carried the aroma of baked naan. When Song Heping untied the scarf covering his face, his fingertips touched tiny grains of salt.

The wooden piles at the fishing village pier were wrapped with faded nylon ropes. A dozen dromedaries were lying on the sand with their knees bent, chewing bean cakes, their eyelashes stained with the golden-red sunset.

Twenty minutes later, when Song Heping was resting in a tent in the village, Nura walked in.

As Noura handed over the satellite phone, the bronze bracelets clinked dully in the twilight.

"Didn't you say you wanted to contact your people? Here's to you." Her dark brown eyes reflected the flickering light of the campfire. "Remember to use the encrypted channel."

Song Heping's fingers were trembling slightly in the sea breeze as he dialed the number.

He has been out of contact with the outside world for nearly ten days.

“Song! You finally called!”

The sound of the Ferrari mixed with the station announcements of the Moscow Metro.

"We're all worried about you! Where are you now?"

"In the Sinai Peninsula, it's safe for now. I plan to establish my own base here after reaching Africa."

"Base?"

"Yes, when the time comes, let the brothers come over. It won't be a problem to stay in Russia all the time." Song Heping said, "It's better to start your own business than to rely on others."

"Great! I feel the same way. The atmosphere here..." Ferrari seemed to have something to hide: "It's too complicated."

"I'll let you come over once I'm settled, but before that, you have to arrange our funds. We may need to use some funds by then."

Song Heping suddenly remembered something.

“How much money do I have available now?”

"Two and a half billion dollars."

Ferrari quoted an astronomical figure.

"In fact, if we hadn't used some of the money to donate to those military guys, the funds that could be mobilized now would probably be over 4 billion." "There's no end to making money." Song Heping said, "Did the money they gave them all come from Mexico?"

"That's right, it's all illicit money from over there." Ferrari said with a smug look on his face, as if he had pulled off a successful prank. "I reckon the CIA will soon track it down. Once they figure it out, it's bound to be a huge surprise."

"Be generous to me, everyone. If they still dare to ask for it, we'll give it to them," Song Heping said. "The more people we give, and the more military personnel we can get involved, the better it will be for us."

"rest assured……"

Ferrari began to settle the accounts.

"Just a month before you were added to the list of KB elements, I was still sending money to their relatives. For example, the son of the deputy director of the Pentagon's Equipment Procurement Bureau registered a sailing club in the Cayman Islands and was planning to hold a competition. Our overseas company sponsored them with $3 million..."

"Our remittance records in Mexico show that Peter and the various companies and charitable foundations founded by the children of high-ranking US military officials in Iraq have received twelve payments from us in the past six months. Oh, wait, thirteen. One of them was transferred anonymously through a company in Houston..."

"Well done! Transfer the money to Z Dong immediately. It will be easier to access later. I'm an expert at fighting wars, but you're an expert at money laundering. I'm counting on you for this."

Suddenly, a long horn sounded from the east side of the fishing village.

Song Heping turned his head and saw six Bedouin men carrying a whole roasted lamb towards the central tent. The silver chains wrapped around the lamb's horns jingled in the firelight.

The children were chasing and playing with date palm branches, and an old woman wearing an amber necklace was looking at him.

Song Heping's thumb unconsciously rubbed the anti-slip grooves of the satellite phone.

The tent was filled with the aroma of mint tea, mixed with the spicy smell of burning resin. He suddenly noticed that the smugglers' families who seemed to be sitting casually around the campfire actually formed a perfect circular defensive formation - the women holding babies just blocked all shooting angles.

Noura stood by the fire and waved at him, "Song, come and have dinner."

On the other end of the phone, Ferrari continued.

"Oh, there's one more thing. The most exciting thing is..." Ferrari lowered his voice, "The CIA Audit Department retrieved the accounts of the West Point University Alumni Foundation yesterday, but they will never find out that the funds we transferred in Cyprus have actually been partially injected into their alumni foundation..."

"Hahahaha! Well done!"

……

Just as Song Heping was having a transoceanic call with Ferrari, in Langley, 8,000 kilometers away, Deputy Director Pence was throwing a mug at the LCD screen.

Brown coffee stains spread across the financial statements of the Bright Futures Children's Foundation, turning the name of a Pentagon lieutenant general into a hideous dark spot.

"What a bunch of maggots!" He tore off his dark blue tie and stared at the blockchain transaction graph that the data group had just restored.

Those flashing nodes flickered in the dark conference room like a string of blood-stained pearls - Song Heping's drug proceeds from Sinaloa, Mexico were directly transferred to a shell company in Delaware, and finally to the account of a private school in Virginia's luxury residential area, in the name of an alumnus of the lieutenant general's son who had studied there.

Erin, the head of economic crime analysis, swiped her tablet at her desk. “…and what’s even more ironic is that three of the donations were used to buy bulletproof school buses.”

She pulled up a picture of blonde schoolchildren waving from a yellow bus emblazoned with the Foundation's logo.

"And the arms dealer who produced these buses just received an order for armored vehicles from the Marine Corps last week... This has formed a hidden chain of interests. Sir, if we continue to investigate, I guess..."

At this point, the supervisor stopped talking and seemed to be hesitant to continue.

Pence grabbed the laser pointer, and the red light trembled and stopped at a certain crypto wallet address.

"This is the flow of funds marked as 'Musician Gifts'."

He suddenly froze, and the light was pointing at the alumni association account of his alma mater, West Point Military Academy.

Thousands of kilometers away, Song Heping walked out of the tent and quietly came to the wooden rack where fishing nets were drying.

In the salty night air, he heard Ferrari's final words of advice: "It's starting to snow in Moscow. Remember to prepare iron shoe nails for your camel. We will wait for your orders. Remember, brothers will always follow you."

(End of this chapter)