Chapter 1: Mohair

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November 20, 2020

What is the difference between today and the past, the alarm clock interrupts the good dream, looking at the clock feels as if the speed of the second hand is many times faster,

I quickly put on my clothes and pants and headed for the airport.

12:45, flight number TK27, Shanghai-Istanbul

I arrived half an hour before the flight, and quickly completed the security check and walked through customs to my seat in the terminal. The person sitting next to him was chatting aimlessly with his finger swiping the screen of his mobile phone in his hand.

"Hello sir! Are you going on vacation to Istanbul? A lady next to her asked

"Well, oh noβ€”on a business trip," I replied

"Hagia Sophia is truly spectacular, it's nice to think about." The lady said excitedly

"It used to be the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and Islam and Orthodox Christians shared that church." I replied with two sentences

"A must visit Turkey for a good time"

After a long flight of 13 hours, early in the morning, we arrived at Atatuk International Airport without a hitch.

I pulled my suitcase and walked to the exit with a tired face, and the person who picked me up was already waiting at the greeting gate holding a sign in Chinese.

My name is Liu Fei, and my position is a foreign trade buyer.

This time, he was commissioned by Tucker to purchase wool from a pastoral area on the outskirts of Antalya.

My colleague is a local, his name is Taksim, and he speaks Chinese well.

When we met, we chatted and set off together, of course, he was the driver.

The journey from downtown Istanbul to Antalya is 820km and takes 10 hours to travel.

The car sped along the Aegean coast...

As night falls, after driving a long mountain road, I see a sign in front of me that reads "Z Area 5Km", which is 23 kilometers from the city of Antalya, and there is hardly any scenery on the side of the road except for the trees and the occasional wooden house. After passing through a large arch made of stones, we finally arrived in Zone Z.

The entrance to Area Z was barricaded with a 4-meter-high barbed wire fence, and a security guard stood there every 15 meters or so, his eyes unblinking. At night, searchlights flickered on one side of the fence, and the air smelled of nervousness.

When he reached the door, Taksim stepped on the brakes, only to see a person walking in the distance at the gate.

"Please show your ID!"

Taksim took out his prepared documents from his coat pocket and handed them to the guards.

The guard scanned it twice and opened the door.

The full name of Zone Z to the outside world is: Buklin Free Container Warehouse Management Zone, which contains goods from various countries.

Taksim comes here a lot and certainly knows Z well.

Afterwards, Taksim and I walked into the warehouse together.

The warehouse, the size of ten football fields, was filled with containers that looked like stacks of cut Tetris, one layer after another, some with ajar doors to reveal the contents of the boxes, and some tightly locked with chain locks.

From time to time, I hear the sound of a dog barking in my ears...

Walking down a narrow aisle, we walked into a red container called "MHKYAR", Taksim opened the door of the box with great skill, and then I walked in, and there was a pungent smell of goats coming from the inside of the box, and I was nauseous, and I walked quickly to the outside of the box and vomited.

"Are you alright, young man?"

"It's okay, it's okay~" I replied with my hand over my nose as I forcibly replied.

"This is real Angora wool~" he said.

"No wonder, this smell is stronger than ordinary sheep!"

"This shipment only arrived last week"

"According to the original order, we took a batch of samples first, you can take a look." With that, Taksim took a handful of wool from it and handed it to me.

While calmly holding the wool, I picked up the testing tools I had brought to check the quality of the goods, and within half an hour, I was sure that there was no doubt about the authenticity of the goods. "Angora wool, or mohair for short, is one of the top breeds in the world, and a single wool is as long as a middle finger, so what do you need it for? I don't know, but this time the purchase volume is 1,000 tons. This is the largest list in my 10 years in the industry, which is unprecedented. "Tucker is very strict about the standards of this cargo, and it has been sampled and sent to China by many suppliers in many countries for verification, and this time I need to go to the field to carefully check.

Soon after, I had a video conference with my colleagues in China and happily signed the purchase contract.

"See you in China!" Maxim said with a smile

"See you or leave!"

Tucker Corporation:

It is with a heavy heart that we are very sorry to inform you that your containerized cargo has gone missing through a Red Sea vessel while in transit. In this regard, we are cooperating with the local search and rescue department to conduct a comprehensive search and rescue. We are deeply sympathetic to the loss caused by this, and if we find any clues, our company will notify you as soon as possible. Hereby urgently!

Ocean International Transport Group

December 1, 2020

β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”

In the middle of the night, Liu Fei received this urgent email from Ocean Shipping Group in his company mailbox, and he tried to calm himself down, which was too unbelievable. In peacetime, pirates and hijackings often occur in Somali waters, for which the Chinese government has deployed military forces in the port of Djibouti and Somali waters, and many international ships have used force to ensure safe passage.

"I don't care what method you use, use all the means you can to get this cargo back! Liu Fei, if this batch of goods is messed up, we won't be able to eat and go around. The voice of Pan Liang, the boss of Tucker Group, came from the phone.

"I know... Okay, Mr. Pan, I'll arrange the relevant work! ”

After the incident, the search and rescue team searched and rescued the radar missing area for 3 days without any clues, and Liu Fei stared at the search and rescue situation day and night on the search and rescue boat. The sound of radar rang out in his ears one after another, but in the face of the vast sea, Liu Fei's heart didn't know what to do. Search and rescue ships use sonar systems to gram salvage nets in accordance with the rest of the gradual search of the demarcated area, 10 meters, 11 meters, 15 meters .... A search like NO MESSAGE is as difficult as finding a picture of your family in the sea of the internet without a key match.

A bunch of all kinds of starfish, all kinds of sea fish and lobsters, three drifting bottles, all with some small moldy notes inside. In the night, Liu Fei and a group of search and rescue crews, while watching the search and rescue situation, looked at the salvaged items and tried to read something...

At two o'clock in the morning, everyone except the captain and two members of the search and rescue team were asleep.

A tremor broke the silence of the entire ship,

The pendants on the wall of the rest room fell to the ground one by one, and several glass bottles were shattered.

Everyone woke up.

"What's going on?"

"Something has been hung on the ship's propellers," said the captain

"It is necessary to stop the search and rescue immediately and send people to dive underwater for maintenance"

The sirens sounded, and everyone on board became nervous.

Crew members Kerry and Jeff put on their wetsuits and jumped into the sea, the sea was unusually quiet in the moonlight, and there was no idea what was hidden under the quiet bottom of the sea. Five minutes later, Jeff dived out of the water from the side of the boat and removed the oxygen mask.

"There's a lot of seaweed on the oars, and a bunch of reef rocks."

"The rocks knocked off a piece of the propeller's blades and tangled up with the seaweed."

Now two people go into the water and can't clean up the seaweed without the help of tools.

At this time, Liu Fei's brows were tightly locked, and he was at a loss, which meant that the search and rescue operation had to be stopped, the ship was not searched, but the search and rescue ship broke down. The search and rescue ship could not move forward, so it could only send a distress signal to the headquarters again.

At this time, 3 days have passed since the disappearance of the freighter, and there are still no clues.

"Before the disappearance of the vessel, a radio signal sent to the headquarters was 20 nautical miles east of the Herak Islands, which was transmitted at 12:15 a.m., after which there was no signal, and any radio signal calling the crew was busy." said the search and rescue captain.

According to the predetermined route, today the ship should appear again in the Indian Ocean.

Liu Fei returned to his bedroom tired at this time and saw the broken bottle on the ground and the broken piece of paper, only to see a bunch of incomprehensible graphics written on the paper: it didn't look like a normal person's notes. It looked like hieroglyphs, but it didn't look like it, a bunch of Arabic numerals and hieroglyphs, with some stumbling notes and a few lines on the side. It was as if it was the only meaningful clue found with handwriting, but it was nothing.

The ship waited for the rescue ship to come near the Creek Islands.......

Not long after landing on the island, the inhabitants of the island received news that a fisherman said that he had heard a roar and light in the middle of the night when he was out fishing.

Early the next morning, Liu Fei found the witness according to the information given by the islanders....

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