50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 434 The Archives Director's Peculiar Habits

Just as Sun Zhiwei disguised himself and infiltrated the central children's store in Lubyanka Square, the train bound for the East officially departed from Yaroslavl Railway Station.

By this time, all the train doors were closed, and the KGB officers, feeling that everything was safe, began searching every compartment in carriage 14.

When they searched Sun Zhiwei's compartment and learned that Sun Zhiwei had gone to the toilet and had been gone for a long time, they began to search the entire train with great anxiety.

After confirming that they couldn't find him, they checked Sun Zhiwei's suitcase, but unfortunately, it only contained a whole suitcase of books and not the documents they were looking for.

Unwilling to accept defeat, these people launched a wider search. Several hours later, the entire train station had been searched, but the person was still not found.

While Sun Zhiwei was still digging a tunnel beneath the children's store, his two colleagues on the train had already been arrested and taken back to the KGB building across the square.

On the afternoon of March 20, Sun Zhiwei completed the excavation of the tunnel and built his temporary residence in the basement of the KGB building.

He then discovered that his two colleagues, who were being held upstairs, were implicated by him.

Sun Zhiwei felt deeply sorry for this, but did not regret his decisive escape at the time.

These two colleagues should be safe, at most they'll suffer a little, since they didn't know any secret information to begin with.

Their knowledge of Sun Zhiwei was limited to his name.

Moreover, the name they knew wasn't 'Sun Zhiwei,' but rather the name of the colleague whose place in Beijing had been taken by Sun Zhiwei.

The KGB were overjoyed to get that name and even formed a new team to find him.

Unfortunately, what they didn't know was that this name wasn't Sun Zhiwei's real name at all, so the results they found were completely wrong.

In the following days, Sun Zhiwei stayed in the basement of the KGB building and thoroughly browsed the vast amount of classified information in the KGB archives.

Since he had plenty of time and no urgent missions, he took the opportunity to carefully observe how the KGB was operating.

One day, he also saw Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, the current director of the KGB, personally receive an elderly couple who were clearly from abroad.

Through their conversation, Sun Zhiwei learned that the elderly couple's wife, Norwood, was a devout believer from London.

Norwood provided vital intelligence to the Russians for 48 consecutive years, starting in the 30s, and never received a penny from the KGB until his retirement.

It is said that Norwood's intelligence played a crucial role in the Russians' rapid mastery of nuclear weapons manufacturing technology.

That's why the KGB chief personally received her.

During this time, Director Yuri wanted to give Norwood a large bonus, but she refused and only accepted a Red Banner Medal of War.

Even the most cynical person cannot help but admire such pure believers, and Sun Zhiwei is no exception.

He did not interrupt the meeting, but simply watched her arrive and leave as an observer.

Not long after, he discovered something else interesting.

The current director of the archives, Vasily Mitrokhin, secretly makes copies of classified documents every day under the guise of work.

Then, when I got off work, I took the photocopied confidential files home.

Because of his position as curator, no one ever checked his luggage or car, allowing him to easily take away various classified documents. After confirming that the curator was indeed illegally obtaining classified information, Sun Zhiwei became very interested in him.

Although he can now see all the classified files, there is simply too much material in the archives.

Moreover, these materials are a mixed bag, with truth and falsehood intertwined, making it impossible for him to find much truly valuable content in this vast and sparsely populated database.

However, the materials that the curator took away each time were very valuable, which clearly showed that he had carefully selected them.

If he could obtain the information that the curator had previously acquired, he could save a lot of time searching for information.

So, one day after get off work, he drove a stolen car and followed the curator Mitroshin's car until he found his home.

It was a large suburban villa with poor security, which allowed Sun Zhiwei to easily sneak in.

Just as he was scanning the terrain and preparing to take action, he discovered the villa's spacious basement.

The basement contained no other clutter or gold and silver jewelry, only rows of neat filing cabinets.

The filing cabinet contained photocopies of all the confidential files he had brought home since he took over as curator eight years ago.

There are already more than a dozen cabinets filled with tens of thousands of confidential files.

At this moment, Sun Zhiwei suddenly remembered the identity of the curator from his memory.

More than a decade later, the retired former director, Mitroshin, apparently due to severe financial difficulties, took some intelligence files to London and sold them for a good price to MI6.

Later, Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge University professor and historian, conducted research on parts of the Mitrokhin Archives for several years.

Finally, in 1999, he wrote a book that caused a sensation around the world—"Sword and Shield: The Mitrokhin Files".

It was this book that led to the exposure of the spy identity of the old lady who received the Red Banner Medal of Combat at the KGB building a few days ago, resulting in her arrest at the age of 87.

Fortunately, the London courts at the time did not prosecute Norwood, and she eventually passed away peacefully at the age of 93.

So it seems that the curator's hobby was secretly hiding classified documents.

If he hadn't later become financially strapped and unable to make a living in his old age, he might not have sold some of the archives here.

However, this gave Sun Zhiwei a special opportunity to safely obtain these confidential documents without worrying about causing too much of a stir.

The problem is that there are quite a lot of documents, nearly 2. How can he ship them back to China?
Using space transportation is possible, but it would be impossible to explain afterward. He would have to use a method that a normal person could do to transport the documents back.

Sun Zhiwei sat in the car for a while, but couldn't come up with a good solution.

They could only decide to get their hands on the documents for now, since they would have to wait a few more days to get back, his revenge hadn't even begun yet, and they could think about the transportation issue later.

So he parked his car on the side of the road and waited for Curator Mitroshin to put away today's documents and lock the iron door to the basement.

He then used his spatial abilities to collect all the documents on the bookshelf in the basement of Mitroshin's house into his space before turning back to Lubyanka Square.

(End of this chapter)