"According to the Navy's original plan, when scrap steel can only be sold for 2 million dollars. How good is this now? Just brush the surface of paint to remove rust, and make it look newer, you can make it 5 million according to the market price of second-hand ships. ”

"The power system was originally scrapped, and the customer was also very good at talking, allowing a major change in the design of the power compartment, welding and removing the partition, and getting a civilian diesel engine power, 50,000 or 60,000 horsepower is enough. He is also willing to pay another $3 million for this power and control system, with a total price of 8 million. Where can you find such a talkative business?"

"Therefore, the second goods of the coordination committee just don't know the difficulty of running a business, as if the technology doesn't need money to fly down from the sky!"

As the project approval progress progressed, the relevant personnel of Newport News's mothballing business department finally got busy and began to toss the "Olistani", which had been decommissioned and mothballed by the Navy since the end of the Vietnam War, and sought to be scrapped.

Everyone is highly motivated, and they also complain about the rigidity and ungroundedness of the co-ordination department from time to time after work.

At the same time, as the customer side shows more and more easy-going, easy to communicate. Even the most picky guy had to shut up.

As we all know, aircraft carriers are about speed, and the current customers are completely unconcerned about speed.

When the "Olistani" was designed, it was designed according to the total power of 150,000 horsepower on the four axles, with a top speed of 32 knots and a cruising speed of 15 knots. There are four sets of 37,500 kW steam turbine engines to provide navigation power, and two sets of 7,500 hp diesel engines to provide supplemental power when idling, or to provide on-board power when the engine is down.

However, when the Vietnam War ended and the ship was scrapped, the steam turbine and boiler lines were old and obsolete, and now it would be expensive to reorganize, and only the diesel engine could be replaced and used.

The benefits of diesel engines are fuel saving, fast starting, and flexible loads. However, it is not easy to achieve super power, and the diesel engine is more bulky under the same power (not counting the boiler room and steam pipeline, if you count it, it is still the steam turbine heavy, because the diesel engine does not need the boiler room), and the limit of the marine diesel engine in the 80s is to achieve a single 20,000 horsepower and 70,000 or 80,000 for the whole ship. Therefore, only slow civilian cargo ships like to use fuel-efficient and economical diesel engines.

The sales staff of Newport News Shipyard, when they first came into contact, were also worried that customers would be dissatisfied with the slow power change.

And I had to be embarrassed to inform the customer that "because the steam turbine is an axial structure, and the diesel engine room is more thick and short, three-dimensional, so the diesel engine must be welded and removed from the original aircraft carrier's engine room protective armor."

Who knows that the customer is very bold, he doesn't care about what armor is not armored, and he speaks very beautifully:

As long as you don't charge extra for the construction of welding and dismantling the armor, the engine room armor can be dismantled at will! We sincerely buy lottery tickets for the guests' tours, and the engine room armor is of any use? And no one uses bombs and torpedoes to blow up our cruise ship!

The thick steel plate remains, and it still accounts for our displacement! Remove the cabin that happened to be vacant and put more supplies on it. By the way, since we don't need steam turbines, we have dismantled all the boiler compartments! Let's change them to galleys and cold storage on ships!"

Newport News Shipyard has taken on the Navy's discerning customers for several lifetimes, and for the first time it saw such a request, it was moved to tears - of course, only by the money.

After evaluating it, the cost of dismantling those scrap iron and replacing four 15,000-horsepower diesel engines with a total cost of less than 2 million, and the customer was willing to pay 3 million for the modification, plus the previous 5 million for the hull itself, this business is still quite bold.

As for the power plummeting from 150,000 horsepower to 60,000 horsepower, the top speed was reduced from 32 to 18 knots, and the economy cruise was even reduced to 10 knots, and the customer didn't care.

The client's only request was not to undermine the ship's seaworthiness and to ensure that it could sail safely across the Atlantic, from the United States to the Mediterranean. As for the follow-up, anyway, the scope of activity is in the calm Mediterranean bath, which is not so particular.

In this case, if Commissioner Lucas jumps out again and insists that the person who bought the ship has a military purpose, he will definitely be ridiculed by his peers as a psychopath.

The $8 million for the purchase and refurbishment of the powertrain was subsequently added to the contribution of the new Monaco bookmaker – of course, in the form of the boat, for $8 million in kind.

These details of the accounts are taken care of by themselves, and there is no need to go into details.

……

The timeline goes back months.

Back in July, during the summer vacation, that is, when Gu Biao ended his trip to Monaco and just returned to China.

Regarding the things that made waves in Monaco, after Gu Biao returned to China, he was tight-lipped, except for Han Ting, who might guess some clues, no one else knew.

In other words, what Gu Biao did did not have any behind-the-scenes forces. At least until Lucia burped, Gu Wei didn't intend to listen to the dictates of any force.

Even if in a year or two in the future, his gambling ship in Monaco is officially opened, and someone in the country gradually notices this and takes the initiative to contact him (if, only if, it is very likely that no one in the country notices the occurrence and existence of this thing), he will not allow anyone to take the ship away.

At most, it is allowed to visit and visit like other normal tourists, or to outsource some interior decoration work - of course, in terms of money, if some old friends of Gu Biao come forward, Gu Biao can consider inviting everyone to have fun and reimburse the travel expenses of the Monaco tour. After all, money is not a problem, Gu Biao doesn't care about these small money.

Who made Gu Biao always trust the judgment of the great man: The international situation in the 80s was a considerable period of time, and it was impossible for a world-class war to occur.

What if a broken ship capable of taking off and landing the F-4 Phantom is restored? The F-4 Phantom is only a broken cargo like the MIG-21 of the Lucia camp, or a further copy of the MiG-21 J-7.

By the beginning of the 90s, the J7 had no combat effectiveness at all, but instead pulled hatred in vain, which alerted Americans or others, and could not be drawn.

It is also a country like Ah San, who loves face and is not afraid of hatred, or because Ah San needs to deter the Ceylon issue or the Maldai issue right now, and wants to do things in a position deep in the Indian Ocean where shore-based aircraft cannot reach, then it is necessary to buy international goods.

At this point, the situation in the blue ocean and the Indian Ocean is completely different, because the Indian Ocean is an open ocean, and if you run to the deep channel to the south, there is no shore-based aircraft that can reach it.

The blue ocean is an inland sea surrounded by land and island chains, and if you are not sure that you can use carrier-based aircraft to defeat Li Jiapo's shore-based aviation in one step, then it is better not to have carrier-based aircraft.

As everyone knows, with the exception of the F-14 that the Americans can come up with at the moment, the combat effectiveness of carrier-based aircraft of the same era has always been a little worse than that of shore-based aircraft, and decisiveness will only be given in vain.

In addition, in addition to keeping a low profile, Gu Biao's second note after returning to China is that for at least a few months, he does not plan to do anything that does not conform to the character of "only focusing on quick money and focusing on short-term interests".

He does not want to leave any enemy or even a partner with the stereotype that he "has a big plan and a hidden ambition".

For example, in the short term, the console Walkman can be sold as if nothing had happened.

Record companies and entertainment brokers must spend all their time drinking and expanding their operations.

Other Xiangjiang real estate families' fraudulent land and money projects, to brush up more of their sense of existence, pretend to be very interested.

During the Hongmen banquet that year, Liu Bang was instigated by Fan Zeng as "this ambition is not small" because he was "greedy for money and goods, so beautiful", and after entering the customs, "there is nothing to take from the property and nothing to give the women luck".

Then Gu Biao must not make this mistake again. He wants to get the goods desperately, and Mei Ji is desperate to be lucky (at least it looks like it is shown to outsiders)

And the matter of "actively purchasing sensitive, state-of-the-art lithography machines and semiconductor process equipment for Xiangji" was to be implemented in September in Gu Wei's previous plan.

Now, because of the additional demand for Taoguang, it has to be slowed down a little.

Gu thought about it again and again, and decided to slow down a little for one to two months, and then start contact in October and close the deal in November, even if it caused the equipment purchase to be 5% ~ 10% more expensive than the original plan, and paid more money in vain.

Regarding the adjustment of the details of this deception, Gu Biao did not even notify Zhang Zhongmou.

Here's what he had in mind: if nothing else, the Plaza Accord would have happened in late September.

Gu Biao didn't want anyone to think that he could predict the Plaza Agreement too early, and he didn't want people to think that he was too concerned about the industrial part of Xiangji.

However, if the yen exchange rate rises first, even if it only rises by a few percentage points first, then Gu Biao will react again, and use the reason that "if you don't hurry up to buy those imported goods that must be bought from the capital now, the yen will continue to appreciate in the future, and it may be more expensive", "rushing into battle to buy, buy, buy", it will seem a lot short-sighted, and the nature will change from "the plotter is big" to "stop loss".

Americans will feel that "Gu Biao's character has indeed not changed, he is still the sinister, cunning, and pure financial speculator." The main purpose of engaging in Xiangjidian is to use Zhang Zhongmou's prestige to defraud the development zone planning and land.

However, because the investment agreement with Zhang Zhongmou was written, he had to passively perform the contract. Later, he desperately bought and bought the cutting-edge equipment, not because he wanted to do big things, but because he was afraid that the equipment would be more expensive in the future if he didn't buy it now, which was a purely financial consideration to chase the rise and kill the fall."

In this way, relying on the cover of Yue himself, Gu Biao once again changed from a conspirator who was plotting to kill Yu Ben to a retail investor who was deceived into entering the market by Yu himself's market shocks.

There are also disadvantages of this, that is, later in August, and even in September, Zhang Zhongmou saw that the time was ripe and desperately contacted Gu Biao, wanting him to make a move, participate in the negotiation of Japanese suppliers, and make a deposit, Gu Biao always played with Zhang Zhongmou and disappeared, or various excuses to obstruct him.

Zhang Zhongmou was so angry that he was depressed, and it was also a loss that the deadline written in the investment agreement had not yet arrived, and at the same time, the factory of Xiangji Power had not been built, so Zhang Zhongmou was not good at unilaterally breaking the contract.

However, Zhang Zhongmou has also slandered Gu Biao hundreds of times on various occasions, so that all walks of life in the Xiangjiang industry and even in the semiconductor circles of Asian countries know that Zhang Zhongmou is not compatible with Gu Biao, the scum of cheating money.

By the way, all the people who evaluate, review and practice in the industry have also lowered their wariness of Gu Biao to the extreme.

"Gu Biao, this guy, when he was young and hot-blooded, he may still be a little patriotic, but after he was plotted by someone in his career and was completely driven out of the officialdom, maybe his temperament changed greatly, which is in line with the personality. In the United States, if a politician is cut off from his career, he will no longer be patriotic if he is bent on money. ”

Many foreign observers, combined with the details of Gu Biao's resume that he officially left the system only last year, fully developed their brains to find a reasonable explanation for Gu Ao's "great change in temperament".