Li Jin was reeling from his good fortune. He had found a Russian buyer for Black Jade』s neuroprocessor on the sector of cyberspace that teemed with dealers from a whole load of former Eastern Bloc tries. The find had been much quicker than anticipated. He had placed cryptiformation about the chip on a bulletin board that he knew was a mag for fencers of stolen teologies iern Europe, especially Russia. These guys dealt in traband of various descriptions, advanced processor design, cutting-edge software, blueprints to classified puter systems, aircraft design and who knew what else.
Li Jihat the serious buyers automatically monitored the boards with bots that notified them when something iing emerged on the market. The bots were traio filter out hoax messages and other well-knowronic scams. Li Jin had written such bots himself so he knew how they worked. A potential buyer had picked up on his post and the message had e back from an Oleg Krachev from the Moscow Institute of Superputing.
Li Jin had done his homework, finding the institute』s patch of cyberspad bing it with a fiooth b. There was an Oleg Krachev there alright, head of purchasing. He presided over a sizeable budget. Li Jin leased to see that the budget was of such a size as to fortably absorb the amount he was asking for without even making a dent in the whole. This Russian Krachev』s barely cealed excitement was another piece of good news. He wanted more info on the chip to determis authenticity and Li Jin had followed up with the quantum puting theories he knew only an expert would bite on.
A preliminary deal had been reached eleically. The exge would be done in Hong Kong. Li Jin would deposit the chip in a safety deposit box at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. He would the up with Krachev in Kowloon Park where he would exge the deposit slip for the credit. He had already set up several cyberspace bank ats with carefully selected financial institutions. The ats all used names of random villagers from his hometown in Shaanxi provihe village would e together for this ohought. But, how to make sure that Krachev didn』t cheat him out of the chip? He had only thought of one solution. He would instruct Krachev to make the payment by radio and oisfied that it had gohrough, he would instruct the Russian oo pick up the chip. Then he would disappear into the crowds on Kowloon』s bustling Nathan Road.
Li Jin had slipped out of the puter lab at Tsinghua Uy unnoticed and gone shopping in nearby Zhongguan for the radio, a credit transfer devid a bat kh a wicked-lookied edge. Now with all these things in his backpack he had just one more errand to run. He o pay a visit to Professor Yao』s home to retrieve the backd. This was easily the most dangerous thing he had to do, not ting the unknown factor of the Russian. In Hong Kong he could take precautions. He was in trol of the battle field. The professor』s home was another matter altogether. The place could be crawling with PSB agents. Worse still, they could have already found the professor』s backd. But they wouldn』t know what to look for aher did he. He figured he』d find it somewhere in the professor』s den. Although he had been to the professor』s home, he had never been in the professor』s study before. Mentally, he tried to picture which side of the siheyuan or four-sided pound the professor would have located his study. Tradition dictated on the southern side. But these days, who was that fastidious ab