Gravedigger of the Empire

"Knock knock..." A knock sounded in the empty room. Fred turned the doorknob of Kahn's office, only to find that the door was locked.

He frowned, unable to understand why Kahn had left the office he had just acquired so quickly.

Normally, shouldn't you be sitting here reading the newspaper or taking a nap on the table?

"Where did he go again?" he muttered, then turned and left.

In another empty room, a rustling sound suddenly rang out.

With a sharp click, the apartment door was pried open.

Kahn entered the room and closed the door behind him. He walked confidently to the bookshelf, opened the door, and took out a book.

Tucked inside the book was the spare key to the room, and the true owner of the house would never return.

He stepped lightly on the wooden floor, glanced around the room, and everything was exactly as he remembered.

Because the windows hadn't been opened for a long time, there was a musty smell in the room.

The flowers on the windowsill had long since withered, leaving only brittle, black stems.

The original owner of this house was a military officer who had worked in the logistics department for many years.

He bought this place with funds whose origins he couldn't disclose, and treated it as his "private place."

The things that the other party embezzled over the years are all kept here, and no one knows about them.

Kahn discovered this place by chance.

However, in his previous life, he clumsily told his superior, Lieutenant Colonel Miken, about the news.

As a result, the other party came here with him and "accepted" everything in the room.

Thinking about these past events, Kahn walked to the corner of the room and gently knocked.

The echo was very spacious. In order to hide some things that were not meant to be seen, the original owner of the house was willing to give up part of the area and create a mezzanine.

Crouching down, Kahn laboriously moved the chest of drawers aside, revealing the safe inside.

In his previous life, he and Lieutenant Colonel Miken spent a lot of money to hire a professional locksmith to open this safe.

But now... he doesn't need to go through that trouble anymore. Because he remembers that string of numbers perfectly clearly.

Once the numbers were aligned, the safe was opened with ease, revealing stacks of banknotes inside.

Ignoring the worthless paper, Kahn took out the gold bars stored inside, which were the most valuable items.

Kahn stuffed two-thirds of the gold bars into his pocket, smiled, closed the safe, and scrambled the numbers on it.

He stood up, felt the heavy weight on his waist, and laboriously moved back to the chest of drawers.

Kahn glanced at the traces of dust wiped away on the ground and frowned. It seemed he would have to clean this place up before handing it over to Lieutenant Colonel Miken.

After all, the shoe prints all over the room, and the marks left by the dresser... it's hard to explain.

He clapped his hands, dusted off the dust, and turned to walk back to the middle of the living room.

The rest was simply a matter of maintaining the same course of action. The only difference was that he took a windfall that even Lieutenant Colonel McConnell himself was unaware of.

There's nothing we can do; he's just too poor right now.

He walked all the way back to his office, unlocked the door, and went inside.

He casually opened the bottom drawer of his desk, placed the gold bars inside, and covered them with the messy old documents that were originally left there.

Then he closed the drawer, locked it, and began to change back into his military uniform.

To avoid drawing attention, he changed into casual clothes before making his move.

Just as he was fastening the collar of his military uniform, the door was pushed open again.

Fred walked into the house looking disheveled, with documents tucked under his arm and a glass ashtray in his hand, leaving him with only one hand to open the door.

The first thing he did upon entering was to place the ashtray he was carrying on Kahn's desk: "I was just here, but I didn't see you."

"I thought the weather was nice, so I went for a walk," Kahn said with a smile, casually telling a lie. Of course, he couldn't just blurt out that he had just gone out and stolen a bunch of gold bars.

"It's good to relax." Fred, unsuspecting, pulled the file from under his arm and placed it on the desk.

He then pointed to the ashtray he had just placed on the table, his tone tinged with a hint of smugness: "The one I found for you doesn't count as an asset of the investigation committee."

"Thank you!" Kahn pointed to the cracked mirror hanging on the wall. "When can you replace this for me?"

"You'll have to arrange that yourself," Fred said with a smile.

After saying that, he pointed to the documents on the table: "This is your job, the lieutenant colonel means that you take a look first... check these equipment lists, get a general idea, and in a couple of days you will accompany the British and French members of the committee to the warehouse to verify the inventory."

"Me?" Kahn feigned surprise.

"Is it me? We all have jobs, you're the only one with nothing to do... You don't need to do anything, just follow along," Fred explained.

"I understand." Kahn walked over, picked up a stack of documents, and flipped through them casually.

He knew perfectly well what it said: an army warehouse in Berlin where a batch of weapons was stored.

According to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, these supplies must be registered and inspected, and those that do not meet the requirements must be destroyed.

Those weapons, unable to kill enemies on the battlefield, could only lie in dark warehouses awaiting their fate of being dismantled.

"This is your first mission since your promotion. Don't be nervous, it's actually quite simple," Fred advised, but he wasn't worried at all.

Kahn had done similar work before his promotion, but back then he went with others and wasn't really on his own.

Aside from the fact that the numbers didn't match up and would be questioned by the British and French, the job wasn't actually that difficult.

Anyway, the British and French would take inventory of all the weapons inside, so having Kahn along was just a formality.

In reality, you can just go to any Tom, Dick, or Harry and they won't cause any problems—you'll just get a scolding, it's no big deal.

"Why should I be nervous? It's just a matter of getting a few insults." Kahn had already thought of a solution, but he still said it like this.

"Yes, just pretend you didn't hear it. Anyway, it'll all be transported away and destroyed in the end, and they can't do anything to us even if it's a little worse," Fred advised.

He had been there more than once, so of course he knew what kind of people those British and French were.

Kahn nodded, as if he had made a mental note of something.