Chapter 57: Alder Pollen

During the daytime on the boat, during his final, dying moments, William used his remaining strength to point to a number in his mobile phone's call log, signaling his wife, Helga, to contact Xu Jiayi.

Upon learning over the phone that Xu Jiayi was not a core senior executive of her husband's commercial team, but rather a scientist, Helga—whose mind had not shattered from grief—instantly realized that her husband harbored a monumental secret far beyond his professional duties.

"Yes, Helga. William led myself and about ten other artificial intelligence experts of various nationalities in monitoring the despicable actions of a madman," Xu Jiayi stated firmly to Helga. "William has some evidence in his hands, which he intended to give to me, which is why he asked you to contact me immediately. At the same time, however, I suspect that his condition is not as simple as a mere seafood allergy."

Helga replied, "I refuse to believe it either. Miss Xu, I kept the leftover sandwich. Both my children and I are entirely certain that the crab meat inside was identical to the sea crabs served at the hotel. Although the doctors say that even with the same protein, a person can develop an allergy at different times, the probability of that is simply too low. Besides, how could an allergic reaction be so violent that even epinephrine failed to work!"

"Where are you now?"

"William is in the town hospital's mortuary," Helga's voice choked up again, but the strong-willed wife did not dwell on it and continued, "I am waiting for the police to arrive. There is no one around me."

"What about the children?"

"They... they are being looked after by some kind elderly Chinese women whom we met while touring the mangrove forests."

Hearing that there were other tourists present besides the yacht's crew, Xu Jiayi pursued the matter: "Helga, when the accident happened to William, what were those elderly women doing? Were they also eating sandwiches? Did any of them come into contact with the food the sailor handed to William?"

"No. The sailor placed the food on the table, and everyone took theirs at random. The Chinese tourists ate their sandwiches before William did. I remember very clearly that William felt stuffy and went to stand by the mist cooling system for a while, and then I handed him the sandwich I was holding. From beginning to end, the sailor held the bread, calling out to the monkeys toward the woods, and did not participate in distributing the sandwiches. Furthermore, the sailor did not attempt to destroy the sandwiches at the time; he even retrieved the ones the Chinese tourists had, and the yacht company handed them over to the ambulance doctors. The hospital tested them and told me no poison was found."

Helga tried to provide as much detail as possible, while Xu Jiayi, listening with rapt attention, latched onto a single word.

"Mist cooling system? What mist cooling system?" she asked Helga.

"Well, just like the equipment they have in tropical open-air bars that sprays out water vapor."

Hearing this, Xu Jiayi suddenly recalled what Zhou Yongtai had said about how artificial intelligence in the future world could carry out mass slaughter of humans in low-cost, highly effective ways.

It was almost akin to the gas chambers of Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Only, what William had encountered today was certainly not carbon monoxide.

"Helga, aside from shrimp and shellfish, what else was William allergic to?"

"Uh, he was allergic to Berlin's black alnus pollen—very severely—so we moved to Frankfurt."

Xu Jiayi knitted her brows tightly, but quickly issued instructions: "Helga, hold onto the auto-injector pen. More importantly, do not change the clothes you and the children are wearing today. Also, regarding those Chinese elderly women, if they are wearing shawls, go to them immediately and say you feel cold, asking to borrow their shawls to wear. I am flying to Langkawi today, right now, immediately!"

Xu Jiayi hung up the phone and, without a single moment of delay, rushed to Changi Airport.

...

Singapore is only a little over an hour's flight from the central-southern part of Malaysia.

Before the sun set, Xu Jiayi arrived in Langkawi.

As a "native" who had grown up in Malaysia before attending university, Xu Jiayi knew well that a free-and-easy resort destination like Langkawi was quite unlike Batam Island—Singapore's backyard—which featured shady alleyways where she could acquire what she needed.

At eight o'clock in the evening local time, Xu Jiayi appeared outside the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, dressed in a "police uniform."

Moreover, she was wrapped tightly in a headscarf.

In religiously observant Malaysia, this was a common attire for female police officers.

Before long, Helga appeared in the lobby.

Resting a hand on her faux holster and walking with head bowed under the doorman's gaze, Xu Jiayi stopped and looked from the shadows into the brightly lit hotel.

The lobby manager immediately walked toward Helga, greeting her with a cautious and concerned demeanor, seemingly wishing to accompany her to meet the police.

Helga suddenly stopped, rebuking the manager sharply. It did not seem hysterically out of control, but the guests near the seating area all raised their heads.

The lobby manager apologetically pressed his palms together, halted, and returned to the desk on one side of the lobby.

Helga hurried out of the hotel, nodded in acknowledgement to Xu Jiayi disguised as a "female police officer," and got onto the motorcycle parked on the side.

The motorcycle drove toward the center of town, circled the police station once, and then returned to the hotel.

Walking past right under the lobby manager's nose, Helga was still carrying her backpack.

However, the items inside had already been handed over to Xu Jiayi.

These included: William's computer, his mobile phone, the outer garments of Helga and her children, the shawls of the two Chinese elderly women, and the empty cylinder of the used emergency injection pen.

When Xu Jiayi caught the return flight back to Singapore, the sun of a new day was just rising from the eastern coast.

Without stopping to rest, she hurried to her old friend's biotechnology laboratory.

Near noon, the test results came out.

On the outer garments of Helga and her children, as well as on the shawls of the Chinese tourists who had shared the boat with them, pollen was detected—alder pollen.

Alder was precisely what Helga had referred to as black alnus.

"Can you tell from the gene sequence which region the alder comes from?" Helga asked her old friend, a doctorate in biology.

"They are only distributed in the temperate and cold zones of the Northern Hemisphere; let me try," the doctor said, standing up, walking over to another piece of equipment, and instructing the artificial intelligence to run a screening.

"This is high-latitude Northeast Asian alder, not European or North American," the doctor stared at the conclusion provided by the artificial intelligence and said to Xu Jiayi, "In other words, this pollen likely originated from Heilongjiang or Jilin in China, or perhaps from Japan and South Korea."

At the same time, the doctor's assistant walked in and reported, "No epinephrine residue was detected inside the barrel of the injection pen, but alder pollen was detected."

Xu Jiayi understood completely.

This was no accident involving crab meat allergies, but a deliberate murder.

Using a lightning-fast blitz strategy, she had managed to seize the evidence.

Saying goodbye to the doctor, Xu Jiayi prepared to immediately report to the lawmaker when Ronan's message came through.

"Jiayi, regarding the portrait of Dr. Li's muscle reconstruction based on his skeletal structure, take a look at this image first. I had my AI assistant help reconstruct it. Do you recognize this person?"

Xu Jiayi examined the picture sent by Ronan.

Indeed, it did not resemble the ID photo on Dr. Li's passport, yet it was the face of the most common East Asian man.

"I don't recognize him," Xu Jiayi replied to Ronan.

"Then take a look at these few images I sent; I reconstructed them manually myself."

Xu Jiayi stared at the newly transmitted portrait for half a minute before typing a single sentence back to Ronan: "I know who the mole is."