50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 483 New Mission

Time flies. Sun Zhiwei rested at home for more than a month, and the New Year was over before a new task came down.

This new mission stems from a military order that began last year: Amsterdam is preparing to sell two diesel-electric submarines.

At this time, Western Europe was facing economic difficulties, and Amsterdam was experiencing a downturn in the shipbuilding industry, resulting in a large number of shipbuilding workers losing their jobs.

Therefore, when a submarine order worth 5 million was placed on their shoulders, their faces changed.

Despite our strong opposition, the Amsterdam parliament approved the arms sale.

Amsterdam is a fascinating country. In the 17th century, it was a world maritime power, known as the "Carriers of the Sea."

Later, they were repeatedly defeated by Britain and France in the struggle for maritime supremacy, and eventually began to decline, never to recover, and became a second-rate country.

However, they have been independently developing and building submarines since the 20s, making them one of the few countries in the world capable of independently developing and manufacturing conventionally powered submarines.

During World War II, their submarine combat achievements in the Pacific region even surpassed those of the US Navy's submarine force at the time.

What they want to sell this time are two improved versions of the "Sailfish-class" submarines developed in the 60s, which have been renamed "Sea Dragon-class".

It was actually made by returning two old Spearfish-class submarines that had been in service since the 70s to the factory for refitting.

The Amsterdam parliament has now approved the deal, determined to make this extra money.

After we responded diplomatically, the higher-ups felt that this was too weak. After all, Amsterdam is only a second-rate country now. How could we let a small fry like us bully us?

So they thought of "Di Ting" (谛听), after all, "Di Ting" had a proven track record.

This kind of mission is actually quite strange, because even the higher-ups don't know what the mission objective is.

Because they didn't know how far "Di Ting" could go, and they didn't want to make the task too difficult, putting "Di Ting" in danger.

When Xu Yimin assigned the task to Sun Zhiwei, he also mentioned the above dilemma.

Sun Zhiwei understood after a moment's thought that the two submarines could not change the balance of power much.

It's one thing for us to be bullied by the Russian bear and the bald eagle, but it's really infuriating that a second-rate country like you would try to give us attitude.

We must make our stance clear on this matter, otherwise similar incidents will continue to occur, leaving us exhausted from dealing with them.

Simply put, the higher-ups want to teach Amsterdam a lesson, and if they can sabotage the deal, that would be even better.

Having understood the mission's details, Sun Zhiwei began preparing for it.

The first step is to gather information about the other party. The company that accepted the order in Amsterdam is a private shipbuilding company called Rotterdam-Skelter-Velocity Group (RSV for short).

RSV had previously been building Spearfish-class submarines for the Amsterdam Navy, but now, due to insufficient business, it is at risk of going bankrupt.

This order was the shipbuilding company's lifeline, and they continued to place these two orders to keep operating.

So their shareholders started using all their skills to lobby members of Congress, and eventually Congress approved the deal.

Although the two sides have not yet formally signed a contract, the legal obstacles that prevented the order from being completed have been removed, and the rest is simply a matter of negotiating the price and transaction details.

The main driving force behind this was Pülter, the vice chairman of the Amsterdam Parliament's Defense Committee, with the specific implementation handled by Federer, the business manager of RSV. However, that was all the intelligence we had domestically, because we hadn't previously taken them seriously and rarely collected detailed intelligence on them.

Without further intelligence support, he would have no choice but to go to Amsterdam and gather information himself.

On February 15th, Sun Zhiwei took a domestic flight to Huangpu City.

Currently, the only direct flight between China and Amsterdam is located in Huangpu District. Direct flights between Amsterdam and Beijing are not expected until the 1990s.

Sun Zhiwei may look down on Amsterdam, but it's not actually that bad now. After decades of development since World War II, it has become a developed country.

Amsterdam enjoys a pleasant climate with mild winters that rarely drop below 0°C. Several canals flow into the city, earning it the nickname "Venice of the North Sea."

Amsterdam and its surrounding areas are highly urbanized, and many parks and squares were built in the suburbs after World War II.

A large number of new residential houses were also built there, which generally have more spacious and bright spaces, gardens and balconies.

It boasts advanced technology in fields such as electronics, chemicals, water conservancy, shipbuilding, and food processing, and has a well-developed financial services and insurance industry.

Its agriculture is highly intensive and mechanized, and it has consistently ranked as the world's second-largest exporter of agricultural products.

Apart from its average military strength, it is on par with major European powers such as Britain and France in all other aspects of economy and culture.

It is considered a second-rate country precisely because it has made little progress in military affairs. In today's world environment of great East-West conflict, it can only be regarded as a second-rate country.

Under normal circumstances, its Congress should not have approved this arms sale in the face of our diplomatic pressure, but in reality, Congress actually voted to approve it.

This caught us off guard, which is why Sun Zhiwei came here.

He used a fake identity to arrive in Amsterdam on a direct flight, changed his identity at the airport, and then left the airport to blend into the city's crowds.

After a week, Sun Zhiwei finally figured out the inside story of this arms sale.

Actually, there's nothing complicated. There's only one key figure: Puller, the vice chairman of the Amsterdam Parliament's Defense Committee.

Puller owns a significant stake in RSV, and at the same time, his political enemies have recently launched attacks against him, making it highly likely that he will lose his position as vice chairman of the National Defense Committee in the elections at the end of this year.

Thus, this $5 million arms sale became his lifeline.

On the one hand, he could use this arms sale to save his RSV company, which was about to fall into trouble.

On the other hand, securing arms sales would create jobs for thousands of skilled workers, a boost to his prestige that would be highly beneficial in his next parliamentary election.

That's why he put in all his effort, running around tirelessly to secure this arms sale.

Now that the problem has arisen and the person who created it has been identified, his task is to resolve the problem as much as possible.

Since the parliamentary resolution had already been passed, there was actually nothing more for the parliament to do. However, since the culprit, Puller, had benefited greatly from this incident, Sun Zhiwei was naturally not going to let him off easily.

And that RSV company that took the order—a company on the verge of bankruptcy—dared to act recklessly. What else is there to say? Just take them down.

(End of this chapter)