After listening to Natasha's nonsense about Mr. Sullivan, which they could have gathered from the files they had read, Mr. Sullivan,
Prentiss asked, "Does Mr. Sullivan have any business competitors?"
"No enterprise can avoid competitors in business," Natasha said with a smile.
"Recently? In the past three months, have there been any more decisive business moves? "
"Sorry,
I joined two months ago and became Mr. Sullivan's secretary less than a month ago, "Natasha said apologetically.
Prentiss changed the subject. "Can you tell us more about Mr. Sullivan and Miss Martinez?
What's their relationship like? "
"They're a very loving fiancé and fiancé."
"Then why haven't they married after five years of engagement?"
"It's their private matter,
I don't know much about it. "After a moment of silence, Natasha stood up and said,
"Would you like something to drink? Coffee or tea? "
"Water is fine." Watching Natasha go out,
Prentiss looked a little helpless,
"This is a complete waste of time. Does Mr. Sullivan know what it means to be on time? "
Bruce shrugged,
They had made an appointment with Mr. Sullivan, but when they arrived, they found that Mr. Sullivan was still in a meeting, and the meeting was not over after nearly an hour. They didn't know if it was intentional or not. And the conversation with Natasha seemed to say a lot, but in fact, there was nothing useful.
Soon,
Natasha came in with the water,
Bruce thanked her and asked, "Lina,
You just said that Mr. Sullivan and Miss Martinez are very loving,
How？ Can you be more specific? "
"Mr. Sullivan's memo says that he has dinner with Miss Martinez at least four days a week,
He gives Miss Martinez gifts every day,
He would use the name of Miss Martinez when he was doing charity work.
He even named the perfume brand under the Fragrance Company after Miss Martinez … "
Natasha listed a bunch of things. It only meant that the two of them were very loving,
But if they were lovers, why did they put dinner and gifts in the memo?
Bruce and Prentiss looked at each other,
Then they looked at Natasha,
Natasha winked at him, with the same courteous smile on her face.
Bruce's phone rang. He took it out and looked at the message, then handed it to Prentiss and said to Natasha, "Can you introduce Joey's Green of Spring perfume to us?"
"Please wait a moment." Natasha came back with her laptop. "Since this is just a perfume brand under the group's subsidiary company, Spring Green is the new spring perfume from Joey Brand. It's a female perfume that will be launched soon. The front notes are aquatic mint, citrus, and reed. The middle notes are lilac and white peach. The back notes are white cedar and blue cypress."
After that, Natasha opened the browser and entered the homepage of Joey's Perfume. She pointed the screen at the two of them. "This is the Spring Green."
On the screen was a picture of a perfume. The delicate glass bottle was tilted, and a drop of transparent yellow liquid flowed out of the bottle and landed on the green leaves below. "1.16 million? What's this? "Prentiss looked at the numbers and was surprised that his voice was a notch higher than usual.
Natasha looked at the screen and slightly opened her mouth with a surprised expression. "This … Before every new product is launched, a bottle of perfume personally made by Miss Martinez will be auctioned on the homepage of the official website. It's a promotion method."
But Joey was neither a star nor a person of high status. How could a small bottle of perfume be so expensive? And this wasn't like the XX collector's edition from famous perfume brands. Just the crystal bottle and the gold or diamonds on it were worth hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those perfume prices weren't that exaggerated.
"Can the perfume of the past be sold at such a price?" Bruce asked.
Natasha quickly operated the computer and found the page of the previous perfume auction. She was relieved. "No, no. Most of the previous perfume auctions were sold at a few thousand dollars. The most expensive one was less than thirty thousand dollars."
This was also an inflated price. The final price of these perfume was only a few hundred dollars. This was just a way to attract attention.
The message Bruce received was from Garcia, telling him that the ransom offered by the kidnappers was the bottle of Spring Green perfume. He especially emphasized that the bottle was worth more than a million dollars.
Bruce and Prentiss returned to Quantico and brought Mr. Sullivan, who had finally finished his meeting. It was just right that Mr. Sullivan had held the meeting because he didn't want to see the two of them.
When they walked into the office, they heard a voice from the landline on the desk connected to a bunch of instruments. "I have confirmed that she is still alive. I will tell you how to make the exchange." Then the phone was hung up.
"Garcia, can you trace it?" Hotch stood by the phone and looked at the light on the phone with a serious face.
"Sorry, sir. The kidnappers used a disposable phone, and the call time was too short. We can't triangulate it."
"Where is the bottle of perfume now?" Rossi interrupted the awkward but polite conversation between General Martinez and Mr. Sullivan that had been going on since their first meeting.
"I have already asked someone to deliver it from the processing plant," Sullivan replied.
"Didn't you say that Joey made it himself?" General Martinez was from the military. He stood up straight and his voice was loud.
Sullivan looked around and was slightly embarrassed. "Yes, but it still needs to be packaged."
What a straightforward general. Sighing in his heart, Bruce asked, "What's so special about that bottle of perfume? Why would someone bid more than a million dollars? "
Sullivan met Bruce's gaze and looked away. "Maybe the online auction was just a prank, and the kidnappers believed it. This bottle of perfume is the same as the other thousands of bottles in the processing plant. The auction on the official website only takes a few seconds to register an account to bid. There is no identity verification. "
Bruce saw that Sullivan was evasive, or at least hiding something. "Then how did you contact the buyers in the previous auctions?"
"Oh, that's just the support of our relatives and friends. General Martinez has bought it twice." Sullivan looked at Martinez, who didn't say anything in tacit agreement.
Bruce noticed the way he addressed Martinez, and based on their behavior just now, it was easy to tell that the two didn't have a good relationship. "Every time?"
"Not all of them. After the successful bid, a transaction interface will appear. Fill in the receiving address and payment. It's the same process as online shopping, but you can choose to turn off this page. There's no loss."
"This thing costs more than a million dollars? God, it costs a few thousand dollars to spray it once. Poverty has limited my imagination. "Garcia covered her chest with one hand and looked at the small box on the table.
On the table in the conference room was a palm-sized gift box. The glass bottle inside contained more than 100 milliliters of transparent yellow liquid on a foam pad. The bottle design was simple and exquisite, but compared to the price, it felt like a shoddy product.
"It costs about 0.1 milliliters per spray, and it takes about three to five sprays. That's about 2,800 dollars per spray." Reid noticed everyone's gaze and looked at Garcia, who was sitting in front of the computer and typing seriously on the keyboard. "Erm … I mean, it's strange that the kidnapper asked for the perfume. Even if the perfume is worth more than a million dollars, wouldn't it be troublesome for him to deal with it?"
"He could have asked for a transfer. It's safer for the kidnapper to have one less step to retrieve the item." Brosnan looked at the office below through the window. Hotch was standing by the phone, telling the two of them what to pay attention to if the kidnappers called again. Martinez's anxious expression was a stark contrast to Sullivan's expressionless face.
"A bank account in Cyprus. That's a tax haven for the Russians. Many Russian gangs in the country use that. Or a high-security Swiss bank account that we can't trace at all," Prentiss added.
"Unless the kidnapper's goal is the perfume, or there's something special about it that we don't know about. From the product inspection report, there's no problem. The perfume has been sampled for testing, but the results will take some time. "
The whole thing was very strange. Miss Martinez belonged to the low-risk group. She lived a regular life and had no bad habits. General Martinez was not like those politicians, who would always have some proposals or votes that would anger some people. He was a government worker with a higher security level. As for Mr. Sullivan, he was the president of the Alena Group. Although he had some business competitors, the Alena Group's main industry was the biopharmaceutical industry, which was in cooperation with the military. Their advanced technology was irreplaceable in this aspect, and the other aspects were just average. Why would he choose this small perfume brand?
Bruce was thinking about this when his phone suddenly rang. It was a text message from a number he had never seen before.
[Can Mr. Sullivan not come back in three hours? Romanov.]
Bruce raised his eyebrows and took out the business card that Natasha had handed to him at the Alena Group. At that time, Prentiss winked at him with a teasing expression and matched the number on the card.
Just like how Natasha didn't ask him why Sullivan was taken away by the FBI, Bruce didn't ask her why she asked. Of course, they both knew that even if they asked, they wouldn't get an answer. But since the two things had nothing to do with each other, Bruce was happy to do her a favor. But based on what he knew about Natasha's identity, he guessed that she was probably on a mission to infiltrate or steal intelligence.
[If there's nothing urgent that he needs to deal with.]
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