While major media outlets scrambled to cover European football giants' "Asia tours," "United States tours," and "blockbuster summer signings,"
one outlet seemed entirely uninterested in any of it.
"The Sun: Exclusive bombshell! The Eastern Caesar's diplomatic hosting duties? What really happened behind the red walls!"
Subtitle: Feeding fish at the Summer Palace, a hat caught by the wind in the Forbidden City, and the secrets of an eighteen-year-old princess and a twenty-one-year-old Chinese superstar.
Reporter: Graham Smith.
[Previously]
Dear readers, do you remember me?
The eyewitness to the Saint Petersburg White Nights incident and the Sochi Black Sea reef incident, the victim of strawberry dumplings, the man detained by Russia's Security Bureau for forty-eight hours and bitten on the backside by three stray dogs... your paparazzi hero!
I'm back.
I thought my trip to Russia had been the pinnacle of my career.
I thought nothing could be more humiliating than being bundled into a black van beside the Neva River by three burly men with buzz cuts.
I was wrong.
Because this time, I didn't even qualify to be bundled into a van.
All right.
The editor-in-chief looked at me and sighed deeply. "You can't get in. Use the old method."
The old method.
Informants.
The lifeblood of The Sun, the secret to its survival, the thing that struck terror into Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street... our informant network!!!
[Informant No. 1: Senior Middle Eastern interpreter, Mr. Tarik.]
Our paper paid him two hundred euros a month for information, enough to buy roughly 120 bowls of beef noodles in China and persuade him to hold nothing back from the irresistibly charismatic Agent Smith.
Mr. Tarik sent his first encrypted message:
"Big news. Li accompanied Her Highness on a tour of the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City today."
I