Chapter 1217 - 1145: Defection!
The carriage, emblazoned with the Holy Alliance emblem, sped down the road, while cavalry ahead drove the crowd to evade.
The black carriage carried a large black box, and before it came to a halt, one by one, the gendarmes and Cheka officers armed with spring guns and military sabres jumped out.
"Cheka operation, bystanders keep clear!"
A kick struck the oak door of the apartment, which burst open, revealing startled residents at the doorway.
A team of gendarmes disregarded the reactions of these residents and stamped up the stairs.
They split into three groups: two teams blocked the downstairs, while one team ascended for arrests.
However, unfortunately, when they arrived, only an empty room remained.
The window was wide open, and the curtains fluttered in the breeze.
Everything was orderly and clean, as if the owner had merely not yet returned home.
Except for one point.
That was, after inspection by the Cheka, all the materials, books, documents related to machinery, even scrap paper were gone.
To this extent, no further words were needed; it could be almost definitively concluded that this Kapen had defected.
As the operation leader left the room, he saw René approaching slowly; he immediately saluted: "Sir, we believe there’s an eighty percent chance Kapen has already defected."
"He’s one hundred percent defected; we already have evidence," René said coldly. "I’ve already checked ahead at the ports and border stations."
"Can we catch him?" Not to mention Kapen himself is an elite engineer of the Holy Alliance, and he left with large amounts of valuable materials.
"Unknown." René couldn’t guarantee the answer to this question.
It’s currently September, the time of the Expo, the busiest period.
This Kapen timed his escape perfectly; even to check him would require significant time and effort.
Humans are humans, prone to error.
If Kapen was lucky, this would cause inspectors to be careless, allowing him to genuinely escape.
Moreover, impacting the Expo for him would be a case of sacrificing the greater for the lesser, and Holy Alliance policies would definitely not change because of this.
So from René’s perspective, the probability of Kapen successfully escaping was very high.
Entering the empty room, he examined it thoroughly, searching for clues.
"But why? For what reason?" The operation leader following him was puzzled.
Kapen and Loughton emerged from the same laboratory, even studied under Leonardo.
The latter has already been designated as a candidate for academia, and Kapen, the senior, stayed during Holy Alliance’s most critical time, and is now choosing to defect?
Going to the Holy Alliance, can he still indulge in his beloved star cards? Or is there a hidden agenda?
René hesitated for half a second: "Kapen seemed to love star cards, but in his laboratory, he found himself stuck between high and low.
Compared to ordinary people, he’s certainly very smart, but his intelligence is limited; to quickly acquire wealth, he could only rely on other methods.
From his odds in star card gambling, along with a series of actions hoarding star cards, one could see some patterns."
"There must be external factors too, right?" The operation leader knew that without an objective driving force, no one would risk such great pressure to defect for no reason.
"We currently speculate that due to hoarding star cards and gambling, he incurred significant debts, allowing the Flanians to exploit it."
"... Wasn’t he checked in the recent purge campaign?"
"This was also one of the triggers. He escaped the purge with Flanian assistance, and now he had no choice but to flee."
The operation leader was momentarily speechless; such simple greed led to the demise of such an important experiment and a top mechanical engineer.
"Luckily, this time he only destroyed the Clockwork Wagon, and it didn’t harm His Grace. With some repairs, it shouldn’t affect the Expo."
"Not affect it?" René opened Kapen’s wardrobe, moving aside folded clothes piece by piece, "Do you know why I’m one hundred percent sure he defected?"
"Why?"
"Last night, he secretly brought in a Flanian suicide soldier carrying Dragon’s Breath into the Clockwork Wagon laboratory; now it’s burnt to ruins..."
Putting aside how the Dragon’s Breath ended up in the hands of the Flanian suicide soldier, just this event alone was enough to give the operation leader a sense of foreboding.
"That, that..."
"Yes, you guessed it right."
The technical confidentiality level of the Clockwork Wagon was very high, plus many components were difficult to manufacture.
Thus, the blueprints were preserved independently, and many parts were hand-crafted by Dwarf Artisans.
Even though the Flanlaya Spy destroyed the Clockwork Wagon experimental model, as long as the general framework remains intact, repairs would merely require some extra effort.
But the Flanlaya Spy certainly knew this, and so besides extracting the Holy Alliance’s mechanic, they also set fire to the lab, causing explosions.
A significant number of handmade parts distorted in the flames and more fearsome, vast amounts of data blueprints burned in the fire.
Luckily, Kapen had some conscience, he evacuated the duly appointed artisan engineers.
Due to advancements in clock technology, the laboratory fire and Clockwork Wagon explosion occurred almost simultaneously.
After the fire broke out, most artisans and engineers escaped unharmed, even managing to save some blueprints and materials.
As long as they were unharmed, rebuilding a Clockwork Wagon engine from scratch would be no problem.
But this still requires time, and only ten days remain until the Expo’s commencement.
Despite being ten days away, recreating a Clockwork Wagon engine, no matter how calculated, seemed impossible.
Because the Dwarves’ hand-crafted parts featured a failure rate, often requiring about ten attempts to produce one successful piece.
Even if they could hand-craft the parts, assembling and fine-tuning the Clockwork Wagon engine are equally time-consuming tasks.
Especially with such a tight timeframe, achieving the prior performance that rivals the carriage is full of uncertainties.
"No backup?" Hearing this, Horn couldn’t help but angrily shout, "What’s going on? Who arranged it?"
The reporting engineer nearly fainted, stammering incoherently: "Your Grace... Your Grace... We... have, have... backups..."
"Where’s the backup?"
"Destroyed by Dragon’s Breath too..."
"What? Why?"
"Because both original and backup were in the Clockwork Wagon laboratory, for high confidentiality purposes."
"When I say backup, I mean keep an extra copy, just in case!" Horn rarely raised his voice, "Who told you to put the backup and original together? What sort of backup is this?"
People often saw the head of government as a trinity, akin to a gestalt beehive mentality.
But upon ascending the papal throne, Horn realized it was not so.
He was more like the mind of an octopus, each tentacle with its own thoughts.
He could request those tentacles to do something but couldn’t precisely control how they did it.
Or, he could precisely control but at the cost of relaxing control over the broader direction of other tentacles.
Like this instance, Horn’s leadership requested a backup, and the execution level placed the backup and original together.
They thought it was to prevent a component failure, needing a backup ready for replacement.
Even ten people passing along a message could get it wrong, never mind the transformation of a complex decision during execution.
Before the advent of high-speed, instant communication technology, such slipups were almost unavoidable within such a rough setup.
And even after such technology emerged, sometimes jokes would still occur.
Faced with Horn’s angry rebuke, the engineer simply fainted.
Massaging his temples, Horn could feel his forehead tense with throbbing veins, and a solemn silence fell over those around him.
Leonardo’s lab certainly was a breeding ground for talent, having produced Holy Alliance’s first theological academician, alongside its first defector, a senior engineer.
After thinking for a long time, Horn turned and left: "Summon the cardinals, let’s immediately hold an emergency meeting."