Moody lowered his mud-spattered boots from the desk, and the chair legs hit the floor with a dull thud.
"All right, enough rubbish." His magical eye rolled around in its socket before settling on Lin Ze.
"You're Lin Ze? Scrimgeour told me you took down three Death Eaters single-handed."
"Just luck. Those three happened to be pretty stupid," Lin Ze said.
Moody stared at him and gave a hoarse chuckle. "Heh... interesting. Already know how to keep yourself in check at your age. Not bad."
"I hear you've got a list, too? Let's have a look." Moody raised an eyebrow, making his enormous magical eye look even more sinister.
Lin Ze opened his notebook and pushed it toward Moody.
The pages were densely covered in lines, with name after name marked on them.
Moody glanced down, then immediately looked away. "Ahem... good. For now, we can use this list of yours as a guide."
Watching Moody's eye spin wildly, Lin Ze strongly suspected that the lines in his notebook had made him dizzy...
When Moody handed the notebook back to Lin Ze, he deliberately avoided looking directly at the densely packed lines, though his expression was quite satisfied.
"Plenty of people on the list. We'll take them one at a time." He looked at Lin Ze with his normal eye, while his magical eye had turned who knew where.
"Who would you recommend we go after first?"
Lin Ze tapped a name with his fingertip.
"Augustus Rookwood."
"Rookwood?" Ben leaned over for a look.
"The Unspeakable from the Department of Mysteries? He's a Death Eater?"
"Whether he's a Death Eater isn't important." Lin Ze closed the notebook.
"What matters is that we investigate."
"But we need a reason, don't we?"
"Using his position to pass internal Ministry of Magic information to the Dark Lord."
Moody's magical eye swung around and fixed on Lin Ze. "Solid evidence?"
"I had the goblins at Gringotts help me look into the deposits in Rookwood's private vault there-not his family's deposits."
"He's a low-level employee earning less than two hundred Galleons a year, yet over the past five years, he's deposited more than eight thousand Galleons in installments. The deposits came after every large-scale destruction of secret Ministry outposts by Death Eaters."
"Eight thousand Galleons?" Ben's eyes nearly popped out.
"That's more than ten years of my wages!"
Kingsley nodded thoughtfully. "Unspeakables might seem bound by all sorts of rules, but in reality, they have access to a great many internal Ministry secrets."
"Exactly." Lin Ze nodded.
"If he's an Unspeakable, won't we have to notify the Department of Mysteries before arresting him?" Ben scratched his head.
"That lot aren't easy to deal with. Every last one of them is weird and cryptic. Last time I delivered documents there, they looked at me like I was a toad for their experiments."
"No need to notify them," Moody cut in gruffly, his magical eye staring at the ceiling at an unnatural angle, though no one knew what he was looking at.
"The Special Operations Team has independent law enforcement authority. As long as the evidence is solid, we arrest him. We don't have to defer to anyone."
"But the people in the Department of Mysteries certainly won't let it go." Kingsley leaned back in his chair.
"They've always thought they were a cut above everyone else. Even Aurors have to notify them in advance before entering their territory."
"Everyone is equal before the law. Even Unspeakables aren't above it," Amelia said firmly.
"Ben, if you're scared, you can stay in the office and sort files," Lin Ze said with a smile.
"Who said I was scared?" Ben shot to his feet, his tie slipping behind his shoulder.
"I, Ben Frick, have seen it all! Just last month, I went head-to-head with Crabbe!"
"Didn't you say you were just eavesdropping outside the door, and then nearly wet yourself when he tapped you on the shoulder?" Kingsley said unhurriedly.
Ben's face flushed crimson. "I was misleading the enemy, making him think I was useless so he wouldn't be on guard against me! It's a very sophisticated tactic. You lot wouldn't understand!"
"Oh, so all this time we thought you were useless, you were actually misleading us?" Reed interjected for once.
"You..."
"All right, all right." Moody waved a hand, and his magical eye suddenly swung around to glare at Ben, frightening him into dropping back into his chair.
"Now that we've picked our target, let's move. Lin, you handle the arrangements."
Lin Ze stood, walked to the blackboard, and erased Crabbe's name, replacing it with Rookwood's.
The chalk squeaked as it moved across the board.
"Rookwood keeps a very regular schedule." He drew a line on the blackboard with the chalk.
"He arrives at the Ministry through the Floo Network at eight sharp every morning and leaves at six in the evening. He never goes out in between. His office is in the Department of Mysteries. Getting there from the main hall means passing through three security checks."
"We can't just make our move inside the Department of Mysteries, can we? Those Unspeakables would throw us out."
"We won't arrest him inside." Lin Ze drew a circle on the blackboard.
"We'll wait until he finishes work. He usually takes the Ministry's Floo Network home. We'll intercept him in the Floo Network hall."
"Simple and brutal. I like it." Moody grinned.
Kingsley, however, did not smile.
He stared at the rough diagram on the blackboard, frowning slightly. "If he resists in the Floo Network hall, or gets advance warning and runs, we'll need a backup plan."
"Good point. Rookwood has a small house in north London, registered in his mother's name. We can send two people straight to his house. Amelia, I'll leave applying for the arrest warrant to you."
"It's already prepared." Amelia pulled a stamped document from the dossier and placed it on the table.
"We just need to fill in the name."
Ben sucked in a breath, his eyes fixed on the stamped, blank arrest warrant.
Just how much influence did it take to get Crouch to stamp this sheet without asking who they intended to arrest?
"Come on, it's just an arrest warrant. Is it really worth making such a fuss?" Lin Ze picked up the blank warrant and held it up to the magical light as though checking its authenticity.
"Mr. Crouch is putting his trust in us. We can't let him down." He handed the warrant to Amelia.
"Fill in Rookwood's name. For the charge, put 'suspected of providing classified intelligence to the Dark Lord.'"
Amelia took the warrant, picked up a quill, and neatly filled in the charge.
"How are we dividing up the team?" Kingsley asked.
Lin Ze glanced at Moody, but Moody said nothing, merely staring blankly at him.
Lin Ze simply spoke up himself. "Four people in the Floo Network hall: me, Moody, Kingsley, and Ben."
"Four of us to block his way. Safer that way."
"Amelia, take Everett and Reed to his house. If Rookwood changes his route at the last minute and doesn't use the Floo Network, or gets advance warning and runs, you'll lie in wait at his door."
"Understood," Amelia answered succinctly.
"What if he's neither in the Floo Network hall nor at home?" Ben raised his hand to ask.
"Then he's most likely got word and fled. But given Rookwood's personality, he won't run. He's spent so many years in the Department of Mysteries that he thinks he's covered every angle. He won't abandon everything he's worked so hard to build just because of a few people like us."