Chapter 2590 - Investigation (Part 17)

Fortunately, Yuan Shuzhi had informed his contacts before going undercover. Political Security officers should be watching the shop around the clock. If anything went wrong, he only needed to make it out the door—safety waited just beyond the threshold.

This knowledge eased his nerves. He ate and slept on schedule, and occasionally retreated to the accounts room to flourish his brush, penning crooked poems and melancholy verses. He maintained the appearance of a man content with his lot, biding his time.

Zheng Mingjiang had been waiting in Guangzhou for nearly two months with little to show for it. Every morning when she opened her eyes, her first question was whether any new reports had arrived.

Reports did arrive, of course. Under Lu Cheng's direction, the investigation team had identified roughly fifty medicine peddlers who purchased from Jubao Tang. By tracking their movements, they mapped where the drugs ultimately ended up—but this did nothing to crack the case itself. All they learned was that these "miracle drugs" had spread not only throughout Guangdong province but had also seeped into neighboring Guangxi, Jiangxi, and Fujian. As distance increased and the chain of resales lengthened, prices multiplied several times over. The best-selling Lushi Powder cost 300 fen at Jubao Tang; by the time it reached Xianxia Pass near Fujian, the price had ballooned to one yuan.

Drug dispersal itself wasn't the problem. The real issue was that none of this money was reaching the Senate.

To force the enemy's hand, Zheng Mingjiang consulted with Wu Mu and settled on a "startle the snake by beating the grass" tactic—applying enough pressure to provoke action without causing them to vanish entirely.

The pressure had to be precisely calibrated: frightening enough to prompt a response, but not so severe as to scatter them. Zheng Mingjiang decided to have Cheka conduct a surprise inspection of Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital.

In the seventeenth century, the preciousness of antibiotics was beyond question. Given their enormous medical value and the Senate's monopoly on production, they qualified as strategic materials. Cheka's surprise hospital inspections were routine—they usually uncovered some problems and snared a few unlucky souls. But this gang had grown their "miracle drug" operation to such a scale without exposure; they clearly possessed some skill. As long as this inspection resembled previous ones, the enemy would take precautionary measures but wouldn't disappear. The profits were simply too large for anyone to walk away.

"Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital is a major institution with considerable influence," Wu Mu said. "Have you discussed this with your colleagues in the health sector? Director Lin and Elder Deng..."

"Dr. Shi gave me full authority before I came. As for Dr. Lin and Section Chief Deng, they won't object either. After all, we're rooting out parasites. Won't the hospital be better off once they're exposed?" Zheng Mingjiang understood his meaning perfectly. "The key point is this: based on the intelligence we've gathered, the enemy is clearly using prescriptions to extract our allocated drugs. Besides Lingao itself, the largest recipients of allocated drugs are Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital and Joint Logistics."

Wu Mu nodded without speaking.

"Honestly, for quite a while I suspected Joint Logistics was the source. Their supply chain is the longest, with small, scattered endpoints that are mostly impossible to supervise. Any link in that chain could easily siphon off drugs. And Joint Logistics handles the largest total volume." Zheng Mingjiang pointed to a pile of Ten-Person Team reports. "But consider this: although the Bobo Army uses the most drugs, their endpoints are small and scattered—unlikely sites for significant leakage. The transit points—warehouses and transport lines—would be more vulnerable. But large-scale leakage there would inevitably cause frontline troops to run short on medication. Yet neither the secret battlefield reports from the Ten-Person Team nor the Bobo Army Internal Newsletter compiled by General Staff's Political Department shows any obvious drug shortages. Combine that with intelligence from our undercover agents about enemies trying to purchase blank prescription forms, and we can reasonably conclude the leaks are more likely occurring at civilian medical endpoints."

"I see." Wu Mu nodded appreciatively. "But why do you believe it's Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital specifically?"

"I haven't concluded that yet," Zheng Mingjiang said, shaking her head. "But inspecting Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital offers several advantages. Their management system is the most comprehensive. Anyone obtaining drugs from there would necessarily leave traces. We might not have noticed those traces before, but now that we roughly understand their methods, we can follow the trail. As for the smaller medical endpoints—they might have problems too, but they won't be the main channel of leakage."

And so, under Zheng Mingjiang's arrangement, Jin Zhijiao, head of Cheka's Guangzhou Committee, announced a surprise inspection of Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital's pharmaceuticals.

During the inspection, all medical records and ledgers stored at the hospital were extracted and transported to a unit at the Great World. Because the audit was far more complex than routine inspections, they needed reinforcements to verify these accounts quickly. Besides Cheka's local auditors, a batch was dispatched from Lingao—nearly all of them audit training students on the verge of graduation. Several inspectors from the Guangzhou Tax Bureau were also borrowed to assist.

Before starting, Zheng Mingjiang held a mobilization meeting in the large conference room—partly to brief everyone, partly to provide professional training. Though Cheka conducted audits and inspections regularly, this one differed from the simple verification of whether accounts matched inventory. So Zheng Mingjiang planned to spend the morning explaining the audit's direction and key points to the inspection team.

For this meeting, she had prepared slides and brought a large blackboard for supplementary explanations.

"I won't elaborate on this operation's significance—it concerns the leakage of controlled drugs." After briefly explaining the work content and relevant precautions, Zheng Mingjiang continued: "Before we begin formal training, I have a few words to say. Many of you participating in this operation are young people who've only recently started working. I want to give you a special warning."

The veterans from Cheka and the Tax Bureau inspection departments had rich frontline experience in audits and investigations. But Zheng Mingjiang wasn't confident about the newly-assigned auditors. Most were young women fresh in their careers. From her limited work experience, their most common mistake was assuming—because they themselves were good people—that whoever sat across from them must also be good. They would instinctively cover for the audited personnel, helping them square their accounts. In the moment, they could only see the person in front of them. Face-to-face interaction swayed their emotions: if the other party was forceful, they might automatically defer; if the other party played coy, they might feel too soft-hearted to push back. They couldn't see the abstract interests of the Senate. They forgot the people under Senate governance they were supposed to represent. They might even forget their job duties entirely. To put it bluntly, they lacked principled resolve, failed to uphold the spirit of "serving the Senate and the people," and ended up neglecting their responsibilities.

Therefore, Zheng Mingjiang specifically instructed the inspection personnel to raise any irregularities they discovered immediately. If uncertain, they should discuss and record the issue—never speculate about possible explanations and let suspicious points slide.

"Don't get sentimental with the people you're auditing! This is struggle—life-or-death struggle against reactionary elements!" She spoke with murderous intensity, slashing her hand downward as if chopping off heads.

"Now, I will announce work discipline for the audit period..."

The audit was conducted in several conference rooms within the unit. Staff ate and slept on-site, with meals and necessities delivered by designated personnel. No documents, paper, or writing materials could be removed without approval. National Army White Horse Squad guards stood at the unit door, permitting no unauthorized persons inside—and of course, no one could leave either.

Afterward, Guo Huiwen distributed booklets to everyone. "This is a guide to diagnosing and treating common infectious diseases. Normal prescription dosages and treatment durations should fall within the parameters listed here."

Beyond common accounting issues, Zheng Mingjiang outlined other matters requiring attention: verifying whether the hospital's registered medical record totals and prescription numbers corresponded with pharmacy dispensing ledgers and receipts; whether medical record entries, prescription issuances, and pharmacy registration times were consistent; whether the age of archived papers and handwriting matched their registration dates; whether medical record and prescription times aligned with the signing physicians' duty schedules; whether the number of hospitalized and outpatient patients at any given time fell within bed and outpatient capacity; whether prescription drug quantities, treatment durations, patient visit frequencies, intervals between visits, time since previous prescriptions were consumed, mandated follow-up schedules, cumulative total medication, and even household registration data showed any anomalies. For military personnel, this also included verifying correlations with unit designations, stationing periods, relevant battle situations, and casualty compensation rosters. Each department's received drug totals, administered drug totals, current inventory, prescription issuance times, and pharmacy dispensing times would be compared and analyzed against Lingao's historical shipping data—with all data ultimately consolidated and cross-referenced against total figures sent from Lingao.

Any discovered problems were to be immediately transmitted to police and Political Security departments to facilitate external investigations and field surveys—such as on-site evidence collection at hospitals with obvious irregularities, and home visits to patients with unusually frequent consultations.

(End of Chapter)