Chapter 2437: Sonia (XIV)

This was a standard background check question, and Dawen and Xiaowen weren't surprised. After thinking for a moment, they said: "We haven't heard her say such things."

"Is she dissatisfied with her status?"

"Dissatisfied? Why would she be dissatisfied?" Ju Wenjing found this puzzling. "Being a Senator's life secretary—that's a position so wonderful you wouldn't dare dream of it..."

Wang Kai smiled somewhat awkwardly. "Let's not ask why—just whether she is or isn't."

"I haven't heard her say anything like that." Ju Wenyi shook her head. "It's just that sometimes when she talks about her homeland, she gets quite wistful. Says she misses her family."

"What about her life and work here?"

"Nothing to be dissatisfied about. She says the comforts are much better here than in Italy—she just feels lonely."

Wang Kai wasn't actually interested in Valentina. Asking about her was merely cover for his real subject, so he avoided probing too deeply lest he pry into private matters and offend Dong Yizhi.

"What about Sonia?" Wang Kai casually brought up his real target.

"Teacher Suo? She's a very clever person, and beautiful too!"

"Chief Wang, you've found the right people to ask!"

He could tell these two apprentices greatly admired Sonia.

Wang Kai followed his earlier routine, asking about Sonia's work and life situation one by one. The two girls answered truthfully about everything.

The results satisfied him. Sonia was passionate about her work and studies. Naturally, she had no complaints about the Senate or Senators.

"Does she have children?"

"She has a daughter, eight months old, absolutely adorable." Ju Wenyi's eyes sparkled. "Different from our children—her skin is so white, so fair and tender, makes you want to nibble on her. Her eyes are extraordinarily large—bigger than walnuts!"

"Does she like children?"

"Of course she does. How could she not?"

Wang Kai desperately wanted to ask: Is Sonia's family life harmonious? But after consideration, he refrained. Instead, he asked several roundabout questions to determine whether Lin Hanlong and she had a good relationship.

After all his inquiries, though Lin Hanlong and she didn't see each other often due to work, their relationship seemed good—at least she hadn't complained about anything. Sometimes she would even mention that Lin Hanlong was "extremely erudite" and "very caring." This kind of emotion—calling it love seemed somewhat inappropriate, but the familial affection between household members was certainly abundant.

He then asked about several field expeditions, especially whether Sonia's mood had been abnormal before or after expeditions. He received positive responses:

"Before going, she was so excited—said she was a bird out of its cage."

Wang Kai's scalp went numb. "And after returning?"

"After returning, she was even more overjoyed. Said she'd struck it rich."

"That's right—she brought back so many specimens, all smelly but she treated them like treasures."

"At that time the museum wasn't built yet. She worked in the Survey Team's workshop making specimens, cataloging—working through entire nights. It was only when Chief Cui forced her to go home that she'd leave."

"Then the next afternoon, she'd come back again. Ha ha ha."

...

Wang Kai relaxed. He now had at least fifty percent confidence in discussing this matter with Lin Hanlong!

Having gathered enough information about Sonia, he chatted casually about a few other people, then put the materials in his briefcase.

"Thank you both for your cooperation. I've ordered sweet soup for you—eat before you head back, and be careful on the road. I'll take my leave first."

Wang Kai returned home. He had originally intended to burn these materials and throw them in the stove, but on second thought, he organized them properly and put them in a document folder—sending them back to the company for archiving was more appropriate.

He had accepted this task only because someone had commissioned him, and he'd been somewhat reluctant. But after his conversation with Ju Wenyi and Ju Wenjing, they had indirectly sketched out that this Portuguese woman was not only deeply learned but also remarkably capable. If she could join the expedition team, she would be a formidable asset.

That being the case, he should try to recruit her. Wang Kai thought: next, he'd need to win over Lin Hanlong!

However, when Wang Kai went to Lin Hanlong's optical factory the next day, he found no one there. The factory staff said he had gone to do "secret work."

"Secret work?" Wang Kai was completely puzzled. He hadn't heard of Lin Hanlong having any connection with intelligence agencies. Though the optical factory provided large quantities of technical equipment to military and police, Lin Hanlong himself was a pure technician who didn't get involved in these departments' specific affairs.

"Then where is he?"

"According to regulations, the Chief's whereabouts are confidential." The answer was crisp and direct.

Wang Kai knew he couldn't learn anything at the optical factory, so he could only inquire around in mechanical circles. Finally, he learned from Yuan Haowen at the Weighing Instrument Factory that Lin Hanlong had gone to supervise the testing and finalization of a shipboard rangefinder.

"I'd advise you not to go looking for him. Though the testing ground is right at Maniao, it's a military restricted zone. You'd need to apply for a pass, and by the time your application is approved, he'll probably be back."

"Alright, I suppose good things take time," Wang Kai said helplessly.

East of Lingao's Red Brand Harbor lay a peninsula jutting deep into the sea, sandwiched between Red Brand Island and Maniao Peninsula. At the tip of this peninsula stretched a large expanse of coastal mudflats covered with mangroves and wild shrubs, sparsely populated. After the Senate established Maniao Fort military base on Maniao Peninsula, this area was designated as "military land." Residents were gradually relocated, and multiple training grounds were established, making it part of the military base.

As part of training, Army engineers had built quite a few roads here. Most led to various training grounds, while a few road entrances were blocked with barriers and guarded by sentries. These roads mostly led to important testing facilities.

At this moment, if Wang Kai had come here, he could have shown his pass to the guards at a certain road checkpoint, then followed the dirt road all the way to a floating dock by the sea. A group of people was busy working around several strange-looking machines.

Li Di was examining the device before him. It resembled a capital T—a horizontal column as thick as a large tree stump mounted on an equally thick vertical support. The horizontal column was very long. An adult man placing his hand on one end couldn't reach the other end no matter how much he stretched. Looking at it from the sea direction, two transparent round glass windows could be seen on the side of the horizontal column. Circling around behind the windows, at the center of the horizontal column was a pair of small protruding cylinders, also fitted with shiny glass. Looking more closely, below the small cylinders you could see several knobs, reading dials, and so on. Just then, someone opened a mechanism on the horizontal column, revealing it was hollow inside. Li Di reached in and felt it, then laughed: "Using granite, no less—trust Old Lin to come up with this."

Lin Hanlong was wearing a blue cloth work uniform of local manufacture. Though it had been washed, traces of oil stains and grime were still visible. He smiled bitterly. "A solution when there's no solution. Even this took quite a few brain cells to figure out."

The optical device before them was a two-meter naval rangefinder he had recently made. The Navy had been clamoring for this thing for a long time, but he had kept putting it off, instead making various optical instruments urgently needed in industry and agriculture. The reason for not making this wasn't any great technical difficulty—the rangefinder's structure wasn't much more complex than binoculars. Rather, limitations in materials and processing methods had prevented him from making it. So it wasn't until recently that he began working on it.

First was the base that served as the ranging reference. Theoretically, it should be made of Invar alloy with its low expansion coefficient. The result of inquiring with the metallurgical sector: Invar alloy couldn't be made because there was no nickel. No nickel because the Senate didn't control any nickel mines. The result of inquiring with the trade sector: importing nickel ore from Southeast Asia wasn't feasible because currently no one was mining it. In the past, if the Senate wanted to mine it themselves, they'd have needed to dispatch exploration teams and miners protected by military force—too expensive for the cash-strapped Senate. Now the Nanyang Company had promised to mine non-ferrous metal ores in Southeast Asia, but when that would happen was unknown. After all, the company had just been established.

Lin Hanlong knew how long it took for a company to go from establishment to project completion. Moreover, this involved mining—if luck was bad and the mine was inland, road and infrastructure construction alone could take years. So he had to consider a makeshift approach first.

After checking the expansion coefficients of various materials, Lin Hanlong boldly decided to use granite for this base. As a sturdy, corrosion-resistant stone with a low expansion coefficient, granite had already replaced the bases of many pieces of equipment in the Senate's industrial system. His optical factory had long since upgraded many pieces of equipment to granite bases—the heavy granite effectively blocked external vibrations, improving the quality of optical assembly.

To ensure this carefully carved and polished elongated granite base wouldn't break apart when jostled at sea, he added a cast iron sleeve around the granite using interference fit. He wanted to see if this would work.

Li Di watched Lin Hanlong make some minor adjustments to the rangefinder, then call forward a young naval petty officer to continue operating it. He felt this rangefinder's quality seemed acceptable—at least it was fairly clear and bright to look through, better than the Lingao-made binoculars the Navy currently had.

Thanks to the large population brought back by Operation Engine, Lin Hanlong had been able to select professional polishing craftsmen from among the arrivals. These people had years of polishing experience, grinding everything from jade ware to bronze mirrors—they lacked neither patience nor touch. After learning optical lens grinding methods, aided by modern quality testing methods, they quickly became the best lens grinders. With these masters, Lin Hanlong could now grind small batches of relatively high-quality special lenses. The lenses installed in this rangefinder were their trial products, noticeably higher quality than mass-produced items.

(End of Chapter)