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“You said before that security here is tight enough for you to feel safe If that’s so, then how do these saboteurs get in?”

“I don’t think they do I truly believe that our difficulties have had less to do with malicious intent or ‘saboteurs’ than with ineptitude and inexperience I fault paying people, who’ve never done this kind of work before, a hundred and twenty-two dollars a month for very hard labor At the saht want to pick up whatever they can find here and sell it for whatever price they can get”

“Could the All-Patriotic Society be involved?” She circled back just to satisfy herself

“Look, Xiao Da is a nutcase, but that doesn’tto do with our problee-scale terrorism”

Stuart, who caious freedom, wouldn’t understand that China considered the cult a domestic threat On the other hand…

“Sadly, your country has already learned that religious fanaticism can lead to horrible acts of terrorisest threat here?”

“A bo wars for defensive or offensive purposes If this one ever went, millions of people would die Which is why the dam is protected by two divisions of soldiers, as well as missile batteries”

“Have you ever ?”

“I don’t believe so”

“Did he ever work here?”

“I don’t know,” Stuart answered in frustration “I don’t recognize the name, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t worked on the project”

“Do you have people here who are members of the All-Patriotic Society?” Hulan asked

“I don’t personally hire the people ork on my crews As for the others, well, there are about seventy thousand people working here—”

“At the visitors’ center, I read it enty thousand,” she said

“They said it would be twenty thousand when they started It’s closer to seventy thousand today They said it would cost ten billion dollars US to build Later that figure was revised to twenty-four billion, but it will probably be closer to seventy billion by the time it’s done”