Chapter 709 The Three of Us

Compared to China, which is the manipulator behind the scenes and therefore fully aware of the whole situation, and the United States, which is the culprit, although it does not know the whole picture but can understand most of the joints, the EU's response is somewhat slow.

The main reason is that since the Balkan crisis broke out at the end of March, they have changed from talking about the situation in the Balkans to being the soy sauce.

The situation was completely dominated by the Allied Command in Campania and the Allied Air Command Center in Emilia Romagna.

The main purpose of the US military launching the Allied Forces Operation was to disrupt Europe and run on the euro. In addition, it had long realized that these European allies were extremely unreliable. The intelligence briefing to them was basically equivalent to sending it to Lubyanka Square at the same time.

Although the Cold War is over, the inertia is still there, so it is naturally impossible to be open and honest with European "allies".

Under such circumstances, most European countries actually rely heavily on their foreign media to obtain information from the front line.

Although it is called "media", a considerable number of its staff are almost semi-open intelligence agency agents.

In normal times, there seems to be nothing wrong with relying on this method, even because he is on the front line and can rely on his status as a reporter to go on a rampage on certain occasions. The speed of obtaining information is compared to that of the Allied commanders who rely on long-range reconnaissance and electronic warfare methods. The department needs to be a little faster.

But last night, for reasons we all know, these media...

Lost contact.

The first person to realize that something was wrong was the French Directorate General for External Security.

It's not that this agency is very capable in terms of capabilities, but that their director Yannick Sanson, like Ding Gaoheng, was watching TV because of insomnia at 23:47 local time.

Then, the broadcast signal suddenly stopped.

At first, Sanson didn't take it seriously. His first reaction was to call a friend who worked at a national television station.

Then I quickly received news that the source of the broadcast signal suddenly disappeared.

The other party even asked him for help asking what the reason was.

Next, Mr. Director continued to make the same judgment as Ding Gaoheng, and logically believed that electromagnetic interference may have been released due to military operations.

However, as a senior French intelligence officer, his contacts in Europe are much richer than those of Ding Gaoheng.

So I called an acquaintance working in Brussels and asked if there would be a large-scale military operation that night.

The answer was that not only was there no large-scale military action that night, but a request from the US military was even forwarded.

Allied aircraft are not allowed to fly south of 45° north latitude.

At this time, Sanson finally began to realize that something was not quite right.

Having worked in intelligence agencies for most of his life, he certainly knows that when the US military conducts military operations that truly involve core secrets, it will not share intelligence with its allies. At most, it will only report it after the fact.

An abnormal situation like this tonight is obviously a signal that the US military is performing a special mission.

In fact, at this point, it is impossible for a normal person to imagine that his family was directly hit by six aerial bombs.

So does Sanson.

He simply wanted to know what mission the Americans were performing tonight without telling their allies, even at the expense of interfering with radio and television satellites.

After all, he is an intelligence officer. For France, the United Kingdom and the United States are also "very suspicious allies." Some things can be kept secret, but they must be known.

So, as usual, he first notified the inter-ministerial intelligence committee, and then contacted his subordinates and asked them to contact intelligence personnel in the Balkans through "special channels" to confirm the local situation.

There was a problem with this contact—

The Intelligence Committee was also unable to contact frontline personnel.

This is completely different from the nature of media broadcast signal interruption.

You must know that intelligence agencies rely on military satellites for communication. Although the satellites themselves belong to France, the characteristics of the communication frequency bands are in line with NATO standards.

No matter what happens, the US military cannot interfere with the communication tools it uses.

Moreover, technical personnel from the General Administration of Foreign Security assured that the satellite was in normal working condition, and that there were no problems with their contact with intelligence personnel in other parts of the world.

In this way, there seems to be only one possibility left...

It's not the signal that's wrong, it's the people or the equipment that's wrong.

Sansong was already suffering from insomnia and couldn't sleep, but after being so startled, he didn't even feel sleepy at all.

In fact, even at this point, he still didn't think about it from the perspective of his family being killed. He was mainly worried that he might be controlled by the local counterintelligence agency.

So Sanson's first reaction was to contact his counterparts in Germany and Italy.

Because the intelligence agents of these two countries also disguised themselves as media, they stayed in the same hotel as the French TV staff.

If they were really attacked by the other party's security agency, basically they wouldn't be able to escape.

Of course the British were also there, but in the eyes of Sanson, a Frenchman, the Angsa barbarians on the other side of the strait were really not one of his own.

There is also a Spanish media in this hotel, but they are really just media and are not involved in intelligence work.

The results were not surprising at all.

All cannot be contacted.

This further confirmed Sanson’s suspicion——

Our intelligence officers must have been praised.

It should be said that his guess was correct to a certain extent.

It's just that this promotion is not that promotion.

Being promoted by the other party's security agency is a huge dereliction of duty by the leadership of the intelligence agency.

Therefore, Sanson's first reaction was to suppress the matter first.

Although the intelligence officers were arrested, and they were arrested together with the real media staff who were unaware of the incident, it was a major event that could shock the people, and it was impossible to hide it.

But at least we can find a way to throw the blame away.

The next morning, local time, at 0:20.

Under tremendous pressure to shirk responsibility, Sanson rushed from home to the General Intelligence Bureau's office half an hour later and held a video and telephone conference with two other colleagues who were also forced to work overtime because they were worried about taking the blame.

After some routine wrangling and incompetent rage, the three of them realized that the biggest trouble at present was that after the Allied operation began, they had cut off the official communication channels with the Balkans.

In other words, even if you want to negotiate terms with the other party now, you can't talk.

"Perhaps... we can try to find a third-party country to coordinate?"

Sanson was the first to try to suggest.

"A third-party country? What about, for example?"

Simone Crosetto, director of the Italian Foreign Intelligence and Security Service, shrugged, obviously not very optimistic about this idea:

"And more importantly, we have no leverage."

Originally, the opinions within the EU on the Balkans were not unified. A considerable number of people believed that a strategy of maximum pressure should be adopted in order to maximize interests.

Once you really break your skin, there will be no room for change.

However, overconfidence and the Americans' fanning the flames from behind still caused this relatively rational voice to be drowned in the end.

Crosetto was one of the important supporters of this view.

Nowadays, he naturally speaks with a bit of yin and yang aura.

"We will talk about the exchange of intelligence personnel later. The top priority is that we must understand as much as possible about the situation. It is not only our agents who have lost contact this time, but also many people from several media outlets. We cannot hide it for too long. If we don’t know everything when faced with questioning, the situation will be in trouble..."

The head of the Federal Intelligence Service, Volker Luedler, was a German in the traditional sense, with an old-fashioned and unsmiling personality. When he saw that the other two colleagues seemed to be in conflict with each other, he quickly made peace in the middle:

"When the two Germanys were reunified, in order to express goodwill, our intelligence agency recruited some Stasi members. Although the arrangements were for work that did not touch the core business, we can still use these connections to cooperate with our old rival the Federal Republic of Germany. Contact the Security Bureau and ask them to act as an intermediary.”

Even during the Cold War, both sides of the Iron Curtain maintained fairly smooth channels for information exchange, let alone now.

"But...it is also possible that the FSB was behind this incident. You must know that the TV broadcast signal at that time was suddenly cut off, and all our media and intelligence personnel lost contact almost at the same time. Such a high-level counterintelligence operation can only rely on It’s probably going to be difficult for the security services in the Balkans to do that.”

Sansong was still a little worried:

"Now if we contact each other like this, will it..."

He was still a little worried about losing face.

Crosetto seized every opportunity and continued to be weird:

"It doesn't matter. Anyway, we have often lost people like this in the past half century. We don't care if it happens again or twice..."

Rudler knew that now was not the time to quarrel, so he quickly intervened before Sansong Hongwen:

"Anyway, we don't have any evidence yet, and we're not even sure what happened."

"Besides, even if the Russians take action, we can first listen to their conditions..."

"..."

After some coordination, the three people finally managed to unify their opinions.

In fact, from the perspective of Rudler, who knew the Russians better, this matter did not seem to be the work of the Federal Security Service.

There are agents hidden in the media, which are basically a known fact to the Russians.

But no matter in terms of ability or willingness, the other party has absolutely no reason to take action at this time point.

And he still does it without any discernment.

The acting style is too rough.

Moreover, the intelligence personnel of the three countries are actually not much different from the real media in their role. There is really no need to go to war...

But as to what other possibilities there are, Rudler really can't guess.

More than a hundred people were all lost.

If they weren't under control, could they all be dead?

Just as he was thinking this, the phone on Sanson's desk suddenly rang on the other side of the meeting.

Logically speaking, when this kind of leader is in a meeting, his subordinates will not call in unless there is something shocking.

The latter was about to turn off the voice system when he heard the phones ringing from Crosetto and Rudler.

The three of them picked up the phone almost at the same time.

"Director, we just received news from our staff in Brussels."

The slightly anxious voice of his subordinate came from Rudler's phone:

"Our intelligence station in the Balkans suddenly experienced a violent explosion just before midnight. The casualties are currently unknown. According to the current information, it is likely that a bomb dropped by a US B2 bomber... But this It seems that the bomber did not return, and it was probably shot down by the air defense force..."

"?"

Rudler never expected that the possibility he had just thought about would come true. His mind suddenly buzzed, his vision went dark, and he almost lost consciousness.

After finally recovering, he quickly raised his head and looked at the TV screen in front of him.

Although the three of them had turned off their voices, it seemed from the expressions of the other two that they had seen a ghost.

The news they received should be the same...

…

The news spread to the top levels of major EU countries in a short period of time.

In fact, at this point, their speed of information acquisition is still far ahead of the capital and Moscow, which are thousands of kilometers away——

After the B2 was shot down, in order to completely blow up the wreckage and rescue the pilot, the US military dispatched the entire deck of the Roosevelt and launched a very high-intensity attack wave. Therefore, although the overseas agencies of the latter two were also aware of the explosion, However, due to strong electromagnetic interference, there was no way to transmit the information back to the country in the first time.

In addition to being anxious, they can only take risks and go out in all directions without clear instructions to see if they can collect some useful information.

However, in the following hours, other than holding an emergency meeting of leaders and saying a few nonsense words at the press conference, the EU countries did almost nothing else.

This is actually understandable——

European countries are highly dependent on the US military for their defense.

However, this time the culprit was the other party.

Who can I turn to to seek justice?

Until almost morning, the United States gave an explanation that "an anti-aircraft missile missed its target and then hit by mistake."

Everyone knows that this rhetoric is nonsense, but for European countries that dare to be angry but dare not speak out and do not want to make the matter bigger, it is a relatively easy choice to calm the matter.

As long as you put the blame on the enemy, you will be innocent.

Originally, everyone was already ready to cooperate.

As a result, within a few hours, several international media outlets that were not too concerned about the excitement exposed a clear photo of an unexploded bomb——

Three GBU31.

Currently only the US military is using it.

Now, even covering the lid is a luxury.

In order to quell domestic public anger, all countries had no choice but to make further decisions to suspend participation in allied operations.

Then……

Just continue to maintain the state of brain death.

And this also caused them to miss their last opportunity to seize the initiative...