"So that crew member detained in the Italian holding facility—was he the type with no background?" Lu Mingfei asked.
"I'd say the crew members working on the *Yamal* all had some sort of background, more or less," Chu Tianjiao said. "After all, they were all former special forces. Some had ties with high-ranking military officials, while others knew bigwigs in the gray market. Take the crew member I went to visit, for instance: nominally, he was detained by the Canadian military, but in reality, that's just a facade to shut the public up. The Canadian military used the pretext of detention to get him off the hook from the people's court. In truth, they'll quietly ship him out of the country after a while, though officially they'll tell the public that the crew member is serving time in prison. Almost every crew member pulled off the *Yamal* meets that kind of end."
"That couldn't be more normal," Chu Zihang said. "You see that kind of thing in every country. Whether among big conglomerates, the military, or political circles, people of the same stripe always cover for each other because of entanglements in the interest chain. That's what they call 'officials shielding one another.'"
Chapter 1097