Chapter 659: Victim is in Good Condition (Part 2)_2

Deathstroke was an actual person in the mercenary circle. It didn't take them long to find the information about this mercenary named Deathstroke.

And not only did they find it, but so did the KGB. This was the most substantial evidence the KGB could hope for. Deathstroke was an American, and his profession was that of a mercenary, is this not exactly the American way? And you claim it wasn't you?

Congress refused to acknowledge the allegations publicly and turned the pressure onto the CIA internally, asking them to investigate who was responsible. However, the CIA was quite innocent. Previously, Congress told them to devote all their efforts to an operation in Mexico and avoid distractions. They did as told, and as a result of the turn of events, they were the unfortunate ones in the end.

Disgruntled they were, but they still had to investigate. After much probing, the CIA finally concluded that it might be their own hired hand that did it, but they had no clue who hired him in the first place.

Or rather, it wasn't that they couldn't find out, they were just too afraid to find out. As for the suspects, everyone was a possibility. However, the CIA couldn't blatantly go up to Capitol Hill and expose everybody, right?

Even though the US government adamantly denied involvement, they couldn't present any proof of an internal dispute within the Soviet Union, so their rebuttals didn't seem very reliable. Even though they sought support from some nations, anyone who heard about this situation would fundamentally believe that America was the culprit.

The reaction within the Soviet Union was even more intense. Even though the cold war was nearing its end, both countries still cared about their reputation. If the Americans were trying to stir things up first, then they should be prepared to face our wrath. On the evening of the incident, alarms sounded in the Kremlin.

The Soviet Union claimed that they would employ a series of retaliatory measures, including priming nuclear missile silos and were not afraid of escalating the conflict into a hot war at any time.

With their swift actions and enduring tough stance, they were still more formidable than America, even at their weakest. Even if their leaders had been bribed, they were still compelled to react aggressively in the face of public outrage.

However, the US Government was quite upset by this response. They had paid a heavy price to cultivate their insiders within Moscow, and instead of helping to ease the tension, they displayed an aggressive attitude. Had their money been spent in vain?

The double-agents caught in the middle also felt aggrieved. If they wanted to keep their positions, they had to follow public sentiment and appear very radical. Any attempt to waffle might be seen as a weakness by their political adversaries, undermining their position.

To keep up appearances, they had to exhibit a tough stance. After all, it was the Soviet way, anyone who conceded first would be branded as a traitor. Nobody wanted to be the scapegoat.

What caused more headaches for the CIA was the person they had supported heavily and deemed the most unprincipled among all was the one that got assassinated. At this point, it was safe to say that he was gone for good.

The majority of the remaining factions were still wavering, hoping to benefit from both sides. They seemed reliable in normal times, but when it came to a critical moment, the CIA discovered that they were not reliable at all. Huge sums of money had been spent, on a bunch of thankless opportunists.

As a result, the CIA began to question its original strategy of infiltrating the Soviet Union. The person who initially proposed and managed the plan faced criticism as well.

After the plan had been proposed, they had spent a lot of time, energy, and money trying to win over these fence-sitters. But now that things had gone awry, these people either asked for more money or simply denied knowing anything about the situation.

Whether they were pretending to be superior and asking for more, or if they thought the Americans who could do such a thing were too stupid to rely on, in the end, a huge rift had formed between the CIA and these fence-sitters.

They should have realized earlier that they cannot rely on unreliable people. Those who could be bought by them could naturally be bought by others as well. Even if they weren't bought by someone else, they would undoubtedly take advantage of the situation in a crisis.

Now that they knew these people were unreliable, the CIA began to think about how to clear their names, but they didn't have any evidence. They weren't even sure if it was their own people behind this, although most of them leaned towards that it was their own who did it and were now trying to get rid of the problem as quickly as possible.

In the CIA's local station in Metropolis, Kira sat in a chair and heaved a deep sigh. Her dark circles under her eyes showed that she probably hadn't rested for days.

Kira took a sip of water, and with a hoarse voice asked, "What does the boss say? Do we continue to look for evidence?"

Her subordinate sighed and said, "Yes, the order has never changed, we need to prove as soon as possible that we didn't do it…."

"I remember, you also graduated from the police academy." Kira looked at her subordinate, "The academy should have taught you that if you want to analyze whether a person has a motive to commit a crime, you should look at his relationship with the victim. From his actions and psychology, analyze if he had the necessity to kill the victim."

"Right now, the Soviet Union is the victim, and we are the suspects. To prove we didn't have a motive, we need to show that we didn't have a necessity to kill the victim."

"Did we have a reason to do that?" the subordinate asked.

"From the perspective of the general public, we certainly had a reason, because we are mortal enemies. Ordinary people wouldn't overthink, they'd believe that if someone ended up dead, it must've been the doing of their greatest enemy, and we're the greatest enemy of the Soviet Union." Kira put down the cup and said by holding back her lips.

"But…" the subordinate lowered his voice, "Didn't we say it before? The new person in power wanted to implement democracy, which was beneficial to us. So, what's our reason to kill him?"

"You can be more specific. We've bought him off. Now the question arises, how are we going to explain this?" Kira stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and spoke as she drew:

"To argue that we had no reason to kill him, we have to expose to everyone that he was one of ours, thus reaching the conclusion that 'we had no reason to kill one of our own.'"

"Disclosure to the world that the supreme leader of the Soviet Union was one of us…" Kira said while holding back her lips, "it's like trying to stop the bleeding by cutting an artery."

"We can go along with it, but we can't say it out loud." Kira shook her head, "Even if we truly win in the end, we couldn't admit it. We can only say that their theories couldn't stand up to scrutiny and led to an irreversible tragedy. That would corroborate that we were in the right."

The subordinate also sighed, "Now the entire system is inspecting internally, just to identify the person who did it. Who is he?"

In a place out of the subordinate's sight, Kira turned around, showing a complex expression. She said, "Yeah, who is he really?"