May 4, 1854, the eighth day of the fourth month of the fourth year of Xianfeng, Thursday.

9 a.m. U.S. time sharp.

Fifth Avenue, New York, England Branch Building, 2nd Floor VIP Services Hall.

A middle-aged American man, accompanied by two yellow-skinned entourage, made his way to the counter.

"Honorable sir, what business do you want to handle?"

"I want to exchange for gold!"

As he spoke, the middle-aged man took out a million-pound bill from his purse and handed it to the counter attendant.

"Okay, sir, please wait!"

The banknotes with a denomination of one million pounds, which belonged to commercial bills issued by the Bank of England, were mostly used for settlement between commerce and international exchange, and because of the huge denomination, the waiter had no authority to dispose of them, so he hurriedly called in the general manager of the bank.

Soon, the general manager of the bank came to the service hall at a high speed, and he was very excited, because the commission on the amount of business transactions worth millions of pounds was enough for his salary for a year.

The general manager of the bank recognized the middle-aged American man at a glance, and hurriedly said: "It turns out that Mr. Henry, where have you made your fortune recently, this kind of banknote worth a million pounds is not something you can get casually, you must have made a fortune!" ”

Henry said expressionlessly: "I said York, don't talk nonsense, I still have something to do!" ”

"Yes, yes, yes!" The bank manager named York hurriedly nodded his head, looked at the two yellow-skinned men beside Henry, thought it was Henry's entourage, and didn't pay attention, he received Henry very carefully, and then began to check the authenticity of the million-pound bill.

I saw the manager of York take out a small box from the safe and take out a document from inside, which was used to check the authenticity of the million-dollar banknotes.

Soon, after the York manager's repeated checking, after confirming that there was no problem with the banknotes, he smiled and said: "This is indeed the banknotes issued by my head office in England, may I ask Mr. Henry what business he wants to handle?" ”

"All for gold!" Henry said impatiently.

The York manager was dumbfounded when he heard this. Normally, the pound is directly linked to gold, and the pound can be directly exchanged with gold, which is no problem in principle.

However, the Bank of England has been established for hundreds of years and has enough credibility to make sterling users trust the strength of the pound, and they usually exchange gold for pounds on weekdays, because it is convenient to use, and they will only exchange pounds for gold unless they are specially needed. Even if the exchange of gold, basically there is not much, the general one-time exchange amount will not exceed 10,000 pounds, after all, gold is too heavy, 10,000 pounds is about 70 kilograms, it is not easy to carry, 1 million pounds is more than seven tons, generally only at the end of the year international trade settlement will be used, so on weekdays the bank vault is not prepared so much gold.

So York told Henry about the situation. They said they could wait a few days, and they informed the head office to transfer the gold and then exchange it.

Henry frowned and turned his head to look at the two yellow-skinned men beside him. One of them then stepped forward and whispered a few words in his ear, and Henry nodded.

"I have an urgent need, I can exchange as much gold as I want! The rest is topped up with dollars! ”

Seeing that the other party insisted, York had no choice but to agree. So he immediately ordered the bank clerks to get busy.

Three hours later, the bank clerk counted the weight of the gold and the amount of dollars, and carried it out in ten large iron boxes.

"The total weight here is 650 kilograms of standard gold bars and 4.76 million dollars. Please keep it away, Mr. Henry! Plus, we've deducted $3,000 in fees and gold transaction fees, so if you think it's okay, sign it! ”

Mr. Henry nodded, signed immediately, and then, accompanied by two other yellow-skinned men, the bank clerk helped carry ten large iron boxes to the two large carriages in front of the bank.

Then, under the envious eyes of a group of bank clerks, Henry and his party drove away in two carriages loaded with huge sums of money.

The manager of York was very happy that he would be able to get a $1,000 commission on this transaction, and life would be much better for his family.

However, if York had known that the Bank of England headquarters had inexplicably fired him a few months later, he would have cried to death.

Somewhere in Queens, two carriages from the England branch stopped, and a dozen yellow-skinned men quickly removed ten large iron boxes.

At this time, the middle-aged American man named Henry said to one of the yellow-skinned men: "Okay, Mr. Lee, I have already raised a million pounds of money for you according to your request, and I also ask you to release my family immediately." ”

The yellow-skinned man surnamed Li smiled: "Don't worry, we have our own bottom line in doing things, we won't kill innocents indiscriminately, your family hasn't seen us, and we don't know what we are doing with you, so we won't hurt your family!" ”

"Then I've seen your faces—" Henry said halfway through, realizing the danger and running away.

It's a pity he didn't escape. I saw that the man surnamed Li suddenly pulled out a dagger, covered Henry's mouth and nose, and stabbed Henry's heart.

The whole process is very clean and clean, and it looks like it is professionally trained.

That's right, his name is Li Yuan, he is an orphan adopted by the Li family, and when he grew up, he became the Li family's nursing home, and later became Li Weiguo's personal soldier, loyal to Li Weiguo, and now he joined the China S.H.I.E.L.D., received strict agent training, became a special agent team leader, and was sent to New York by Li Weiguo to be responsible for the American part of the "May Fourth Patriotic Action".

"Carry the body to the wall, seal it with masonry, remember to restore it exactly as it was, and no one can find his body"

"Don't worry, team leader, as long as this house doesn't fall, no one will be able to find this person's body!" A team member patted his chest to make sure.

"By the way, team leader, why did you hide this man's body so tightly?" Another member asked.

Li Yuan smiled slightly and said: "In the future, learn from me and hide this person's body, even if the American police track it down, they can't find Henry's person and body, so they can only think that Henry abandoned his family and ran away with a huge amount of money, so that we can hide our whereabouts as much as possible, understand?" ”

"Understood! Or the group leader is wise! More than a dozen agents slapped each other.

"Alright, pack up and evacuate! We're only halfway there! ”

Li Yuan paused and continued: "The next thing we have to do is to use this money to buy the things on the purchase list that the adults gave us, and then leave the United States safely with the things and gold." Only when we return to Shanghai will we complete the task, do you understand?

"Understood!"

Li Yuan nodded and asked, "Have you inquired about all the things on the list?" ”

An agent replied: "Don't worry, team leader, we have been in the United States for more than a month, and we have already inquired and understood, if it weren't for the fact that the adults had to act on May 4th, we would have returned to China in triumph." ”

An agent next to him smiled: "Don't say it, after staying in the United States for more than a month, I found that I can actually understand the language of birds spoken by Americans, which was before." When I saw foreigners, I didn't know what he was muttering. ”

Everyone immediately laughed, and they all felt the same way.

Li Yuan nodded and said, "Okay, hurry up and take it away!" ”

"Yes!"

Soon, Li Yuan quickly disappeared with a group of agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

In the following days, Li Yuan and his people successively purchased all kinds of materials listed on the list, and the largest expenditure was a steam-sail hybrid iron-hulled steamer, which was purchased from an American businessman. Worth more than three million dollars. It happened to carry Li Yuan and his entourage back to Shanghai with all kinds of supplies and the gold and dollars left over from shopping.

Putting aside Li Yuan and his entourage, Li Weiguo sent a total of fifty-seven squads this time, almost all of the elite agents of the China S.H.I.E.L.D. agency. They went to the United States, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and other European and American countries, as well as the British colonies, such as British Canada, British Australia, British India, etc., to cash out gold and local currency from the branches of the Bank of England in these places. They then use local currency to buy local supplies and ship them back to China with gold.

Each of the fifty-seven squads carried an identical counterfeit £1,000,000 bill. Distributed to 57 Bank of England branches around the world, and at the same time began operations on May 4 to cash out counterfeit* banknotes from Bank of England branches.

Because the 57 identical million-pound counterfeit banknotes made by Li Weiguo can be completely fake, and the anti-counterfeiting code numbers on them are the anti-counterfeiting codes on the genuine banknotes, so they can deceive the Bank of England, unless these 57 identical counterfeit * banknotes appear at the headquarters of the Bank of England at the same time, it is absolutely impossible to find out that there is a problem.

This is also Li Weiguo's housekeeping skill, worthy of the honor of an expert in counterfeit banknotes.

Fifty-seven teams, each facing different circumstances, eventually succeeded in completing their mission, cashing out a total of £57 million in gold and supplies from 57 branches of the Bank of England, and then swaggering back home.

Three months later, the 57 Bank of England branches sent the year's bank settlement statements to the Bank of England headquarters in London for year-end reconciliation according to their geographical location.

Sir George Smith, Managing Director of the Bank of England, was delighted to see a significant increase in the total volume of business at the Bank of England this year. Because in previous years, the business volume of banks has increased, but it is good to increase by a few million or so, but this year is different, the business data report of branches around the country shows that this year's business volume has surged by more than 60 million pounds compared with last year, and George seems to have seen a beautiful scene of the Bank of England dominating the world.

However, soon a manager bursts in in a panic, shattering George's illusions.

"Oh no, Your Excellency President, something is wrong!"

"Pete, what makes you so flustered, it's really ungentlemanly!"

The manager named Pete didn't care about any etiquette, and said anxiously: "Your Excellency, President, if you can still stay calm when you see these banknotes, then I really admire you!" ”

George was confused, took the dozen or so banknotes in Pitt's hand and saw that they were all million-pound business vouchers, and there seemed to be nothing wrong with them.

"What's wrong? There's nothing wrong with these bills! ”

Pete rolled his eyes, pointed to the red ink codes on them, and said, "Look at these codes!" ”

Puzzled, George looked at the code on each banknote in turn, and gradually his face changed.

"What's going on? How is it possible that more than a dozen of them are all codeced the same? ”

"That's the problem!" Pitt said nervously: "This is a special million-pound commercial voucher issued by us, and only 200 have been issued in total, because the amount is huge, and each one is individually coded for anti-counterfeiting, and each code is different." ”

"Then how come these dozen or so are all the same?" George asked, his voice already shaking.

"Obviously, only one is real, the others are fake!" Pete didn't want to admit the result, but he had to say it.

"A dozen fakes? That's more than 10 million pounds! George's face instantly turned from ruddy to pale.

At this moment, another manager barged in, and he also had a dozen million-pound bills in his hand, which were exactly the same as those in Pitt's hand.

"Don't tell me the code of your banknote is the same!" George preemptively said.

"So you already know!" The manager said in surprise.

After hearing this, George immediately stood on the spot, and the cold sweat on his forehead crackled and fell.

After a long time, George came back to his senses and asked in a trembling voice, "How many are there?" ”

Pete had already counted them and replied, "Thirty-seven have been found so far!" ”

George said, "What do you mean by currently?" You mean there's more? ”

Pete said with a bitter face: "This, I'm just speculating, I have asked all the managers to check all the million bills before I came!" ”

At that moment, the door was slammed open again, and several managers arrived at the same time, all holding identical million-pound bills.

"Whew!"

George rolled his eyes and fainted. (To be continued......)