50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 487 Leave it alone
At this time, the captain's Boeing 707 was parked in a corner of the airport because it had no flight mission, and the surroundings were dark.

He quickly approached the aircraft, and once he reached a distance where the space could sense him, he activated the space to stack large wooden crates containing over ten tons of blueprints into the cargo hold at the bottom of the 707.

After completing all this, he changed his clothes and dressed up as a passenger, waiting in the departure hall.

A few hours later, as dawn broke, he saw the captain and crew return to the plane and begin the pre-departure routine checks.

Not long after, airport maintenance workers rushed to the plane and worked for half a day before reluctantly leaving.

Around noon, an announcement suddenly came over the loudspeaker in the departure hall of Schiphol International Airport:

"Dear passengers, we regret to inform you that the Boeing 707 flight originally scheduled to depart for Pujiang Airport at 13:15 has been cancelled due to mechanical failure. Please proceed to the ticket office in an orderly manner to reschedule or request a refund."

Even after passing the test, Sun Zhiwei still dared not relax, keeping his eyes fixed on the Boeing 707 on the tarmac.

Time ticked by, but the plane remained motionless. Sun Zhiwei began to feel anxious, but he forced himself to continue waiting.

The fact that no one searched the plane was a good sign, indicating that the situation was not out of control and that he believed the captain could handle it.

At this point, becoming a captain isn't just about knowing how to fly a plane; it's about leading an entire crew. You can't lead a team without some ability.

It wasn't until 3 p.m. that he saw the plane slowly start its engines, then taxi towards the runway and join the queue waiting to take off.

He breathed a sigh of relief once the Boeing 707 took off, and then calmly left the waiting hall.

Upon returning to the hotel, he immediately locked the door and took out his radio to send a message to Xu Yimin.

We need a reliable person to pick us up at Pujiang Airport, and the 707 will be in the air for seven or eight hours, so there's plenty of time.

By the time he finished everything, it was almost dinner time. He hadn't eaten or drunk anything all day, and his stomach was rumbling. So he quickly ran downstairs to the restaurant to have dinner.

While waiting for his food to be served, he picked up a copy of this morning's NRC Handelsblatt.

In a small square in the business section, there is a record of RSV Group Director and Vice Chairman of the Defense Committee, Puller, who was hospitalized with a stroke after receiving the shocking news from the Port of Rotterdam.

Treatment of stroke is still in its early stages internationally, with the first large-scale stroke study (>300 cases) only starting last year.

A systematic review of stroke won't be available for another ten years. Right now, all we can do is rest. There aren't even any effective treatments or Western medicines yet. He's pretty sure Puller is finished, and he deserves what he got.

The following day, Sun Zhiwei moved to a hotel in the city center and began sightseeing in Amsterdam. Two weeks later, the news was finally confirmed.

The Neue Rotterdam Business Daily devoted a large section to reporting on the RSV Group's bankruptcy declaration due to insolvency.

After taking over the entire RSV Group, the Amsterdam parliament discovered that it was now just an empty shell, burdened with billions of dollars in debt.

The only valuable items are the design blueprints for a few ships, all of which are outdated models from over a decade ago.

The blueprints for the latest model of the "Walrus-class submarine" only include the most basic structural design drawings.

The council learned from RSV headquarters that because the Walrus-class destroyers were modified as they were built, there were only two complete sets of blueprints. One was in the Rotterdam shipyard, where engineers made modifications as the ship was being built; the other was a copy of the revised blueprints that the shipyard backed up daily in the archives of the old Rotterdam office building.

As a result, one circuit caught fire and the other ammunition exploded, and now the complete blueprints are completely ruined.

Of course, what no one knew was that there was one last complete set of blueprints for the Walrus-class submarine, which was already in a classified research institute on the mainland.

The Amsterdam parliament is now in a rather awkward position. They had originally planned to take over the RSV Group and also accept their order for two Sea Dragon-class submarines.

After all, Congress has already passed the arms sales agreement, and those who needed to be offended have already been offended. It's a waste not to make this money; it's $5 million!

As a result, they now discovered that the blueprints for the "Sea Dragon" class ship need to be re-examined, but all seven of RSV Group's key engineers had perished in the Rotterdam shipyard explosion.

If we send new engineers to familiarize themselves with the blueprints again, it will take at least one or two years.

In addition, engineers need to innovate and design an improved version of the "Sea Dragon" based on the "Swordfish" class, which will take several more years.

There's also the issue of the shipyard. The shipyard in Rotterdam has been completely destroyed, and most of the skilled workers have been lost. The cost of rebuilding the shipyard and compensating the employees will be another huge sum of money.

The money for the orders hasn't arrived yet, and the estimated amount to be paid out in US dollars already far exceeds the money that the orders could generate.

What's the point of doing that? Nobody's willing to do a business that's completely unprofitable.

Although lawmakers have the power to control national revenue, they can't afford to squander it like this. If this kind of thing is exposed by the media, will they still be able to continue serving as lawmakers?

As a result, the lawmakers began to back down on the matter, and no one was willing to take responsibility.

Meanwhile, the deputy chairman of the defense committee who previously oversaw this project, Member of Parliament Puller, is now lying in the ICU of an Amsterdam hospital, his fate unknown.

That evening, Sun Zhiwei clipped all the news articles he had recently collected related to the RSV Group and packed them in a brown paper bag.

These are all sources of information for the analysis report he will be submitting later, and they need to be submitted together with the analysis report.

That evening, the report was completed, and his analysis concluded that the sale of the two submarines would be indefinitely delayed, and the possibility of resuming the transaction was slim.

He then sealed the report and materials, preparing to send them back to China through diplomatic channels.

There is no longer an embassy in Amsterdam, only a chargé d'affaires office, but at least a basic secure communication channel is still maintained, which is sufficient to transmit a not-so-confidential analysis report.

After submitting the report, he planned to go to Australia.

He saw an interesting news story in the "International Oddities" section of today's NER Rotterdam Business Daily.

Just recently, the radar dome on top of the newest radar on the Australian Navy's HMAS Melbourne aircraft carrier suddenly fell to the seabed and disappeared.

What was originally just an ordinary strange story about a foreign navy reminded Sun Zhiwei of the bizarre encounter of the HMAS Melbourne.

(End of this chapter)