According to the information on the card, Black Rose's next target is the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, and the start time is tomorrow night.
This also means that if Mary and Shirakawa Qing want to continue chasing, they have to go abroad, and they must do so as soon as possible.
This may be a bit troublesome for Shirakawa Kiyoshi. After all, he came to England from Japan. Now he has to go through a lot of procedures to go to France. It is relatively simple for Mary. After all, she is...
No, probably not simple either.
The reason is very straightforward, to put it mildly...her salary is not very high.
Since entering college, Mary has never asked for money from her family. Except when she can't make enough money, she basically works while studying in college to earn tuition and living expenses.
And her way of working is to be a detective.
Speaking of pride, Mary is still very confident in her reasoning ability. She was a somewhat famous college detective in London a few years ago.
Just when Mary's own detective career was flourishing, people from MI6 came to her door.
Her excellent reasoning skills made these people want to recruit her into MI6 and train her to be an excellent intelligence officer.
In the context of the Cold War at this time, this position was still very popular, and it could basically be said to be an iron rice bowl.
In this way, after discussing with her family, Mary finally decided to give up her career as a detective and instead embrace the iron rice bowl of MI6.
After a long period of relevant skills training, Mary became a glorious new MI6 agent with excellent results some time ago, the kind who has a low salary and often travels outside.
This is normal. Newcomers need experience.
So at this juncture, she is indeed not very rich. She can maintain her daily expenses, but if she wants to go abroad...
"Are you still going to Paris?"
It was getting late, and on an extremely remote road in East London, Mary and Shirakawa Kiyo were eating ramen at a roadside stall.
This is a roadside ramen stall set up by a Japanese who has lived in the UK for a long time. The ramen chef is a middle-aged uncle with a shiny bald head.
Under normal circumstances, such roadside stalls are not allowed in London, especially foreigners.
The main reason is that such roadside stalls do not pay taxes, and they also affect the appearance of the city. They are of no benefit to the government. Once caught by the London Police Department, they will be invited to the station for coffee.
But what is abnormal is that this is the East End, a famous slum area in London. Before the subsequent vigorous rectification, in this place with relatively chaotic security, it is quite normal for such roadside stalls that do not comply with city regulations to appear.
Mary used to come over occasionally after get off work late at night to treat herself. After all, British recipes are really rubbish...
"Yeah." Sitting at a small table with Mary, Bai He counted his head.
"Those cultural relics stolen by Black Rose will be returned to the country where they originally belonged after a period of time. Baihe, my suggestion is that you don't need to continue chasing them to Paris, because this is actually unnecessary." Mary persuaded.
In her opinion, Black Rose would send the cultural relics back anyway, and it would be a complete waste of time for Bai Heqing to continue chasing them.
"no."
He understood what she meant, but Bai Heqing still shook his head and rejected her.
"I have to take these artifacts back with my own hands."
"Why?" Mary asked doubtfully.
However, Bai Heqing did not answer her question immediately.
He looked down at the carvings on the small table in front of him. After a long silence, he spoke.
"Bringing the stolen cultural relics back with my own hands is a task I must complete during this trip."
Mary was very smart, and she immediately reacted after hearing Bai Heqing's somewhat incomprehensible words.
"Is this... a mission given to you by your master?" she asked tentatively.
Japan is a typical family politics. According to the information obtained by the major, Shirakawa Qing seems to have a close relationship with one of the families.
She had already guessed that Bai Heqing's trip to London might be a "book of achievements" specially given to him by the head of the family.
The Japanese side has probably already prepared everything related to it, and is just waiting for Bai Heqing to return with the stolen cultural relics to build momentum for him.
And if he couldn't bring back those cultural relics, it would be an intolerable failure not only for Bai Heqing himself, but also for the family standing behind him.
"Yeah." Bai He counted his head, acquiescing to her guess.
"Here comes the ramen~"
At this moment, the ramen chef came over with two bowls of ramen and placed them on the table.
"Sorry." Mary was silent for a moment, picked up the chopsticks, and said, "I can't go to Paris with you."
Putting aside financial issues, if Bai Heqing goes to Paris next, MI6 will have no reason to monitor him anymore, and she will naturally have no reason to follow Bai Heqing anymore.
"There is no need to apologize." Bai Heqing shook his head gently and said, "You have helped me a lot today. Without you, the case would not have progressed so smoothly."
"polite."
Mary replied, took a big sip of the ramen in the bowl, and then let out a long sigh of satisfaction.
It tastes delicious after a tiring day.
"But speaking of it, Baihe, you actually surprised me today." Mary said suddenly.
"Why do you say that?" Bai Heqing asked, taking the chopsticks and chewing carefully.
Compared with Mary's slightly heroic eating, he is much more gentle.
"Because you were very ruthless when you were dealing with the mafia gangsters in the bar this morning. I thought you were a very cold-blooded man. I didn't expect that you would actually help me catch cats and take care of lost children." I was really surprised to come home..." Mary said with a smile.
Perhaps thinking that the two of them were about to be separated, she spoke more freely.
"……Um."
Hearing her words, Bai Heqing's hand holding the chopsticks suddenly paused, and he opened his mouth slightly, as if he wanted to say something.
"Your feeling is correct. Under normal circumstances, I don't want to do these things."
"Huh?" Mary looked at him curiously.
"For me, in addition to my normal duties, helping the elderly and children is actually a very troublesome thing."
Bai Heqing replied honestly.
"It's just that someone wanted me to do it, and I didn't want to disappoint her."
Bai Heqing used the female "she" in this sentence, which reminded Mary of his little book that looked like it was written by a woman.
She was a little curious, but after hesitating, Mary still didn't ask.
"There is an old saying in the East, a gentleman does not care about his heart."
After finishing the ramen in the bowl in a few mouthfuls, Mary smiled and said, "No matter what you think, Shirakawa, at least you did it, right?"
At that time, Mary didn't really realize that Shirakawa Kiyo was not really kind, but someone wanted him to be kind, so he showed it like this.
And such people can easily go astray.
(﹃)
(End of chapter)
