Chapter 1423 - The Mission Brief
"So the shell's power is reduced?"
"No—the explosive charge is greater than in the museum-piece shells, and the blast is more powerful." If Lin Shenhe had been present, he would probably have expounded at length on the superiority of high-density columnar black powder. Xue Ziliang couldn't be bothered. He didn't think much of Lingao's homemade explosives anyway. "Those couple of cranks you just gave would be enough to blast a pirate speedboat to pieces."
"Too bad there's no steam engine." The mercenary was never confident about anything without a motor.
"In Manila, you have nowhere to take on coal. The Industrial Sector did have people suggesting we experimentally install a hot-bulb diesel engine on this ship."
"I don't recall the Planning Institute having any diesel."
"There is a little, actually. If push comes to shove, you could burn coconut oil. But after the Industrial Sector people tinkered with it for a while, they said they couldn't get the fuel pump working, so the whole thing fell through." Xue Ziliang said with some regret. "This ship was originally going to get a diesel engine—the space was already set aside."
The former mercenary neither knew nor cared what a hot-bulb diesel engine was. In any case, apart from lacking a propulsion system, everything aboard the Esmeralda was satisfactory and impeccable. The fake count returned to the captain's cabin in high spirits.
"We've lingered here long enough. Let's go to Malate. That little bay is just big enough to hold the Esmeralda. More importantly, the Count ought to be able to see his ship at a glance from the villa window."
"Interesting."
Xue Ziliang sat cross-legged on the floor of Lando's study. A large piece of canvas covered the cork floor in front of him, spread with all sorts of battered metal scraps. These had been secretly collected by Ji Mide, on the Count's orders, from the artillery firing range on the outskirts of Manila: fragments of spherical and conical shrapnel shells and explosive shells. The shattered conical shell bodies were covered with rust spots, and on the remaining copper or lead expanding driving bands, the ridges carved by the rifling were clearly visible.
"Look at this thing—the Spanish Saturn V."
Vince picked up a rocket carcass that was completely charred but still more or less intact in shape. If Lin Shenhe had seen it, he would probably have recognized it as an improved Congreve rocket, even though the body, made of rolled sheet iron, had a strange taper from thick to thin. The guide rod affixed to the body had burned down to a short stub. On the nose cone, several rows of neat round holes could be seen, their edges distorted and cracked by high heat. The incendiary compound inside the warhead had sprayed out from there, leaving traces of a sulfur-and-asphalt mixture.
In fact, after this rocket was launched from the artillery firing range, it had somehow veered off course in mid-air and plunged into a nearby village. When Ji Mide, disguised as a Chinese peddler, bought this "devil's firework" from a Tagalog peasant woman, she was still weeping over her hut, which had been burned to ashes.
"This friend of yours should be drawing a hundred thousand dollars a month from bin Laden to build him a nuclear bomb. Why would someone like that risk his life to smuggle a few broken rifles?"
"Damn it, Paul brought Hale aboard. Before he got on my ship, I had no idea such a person even existed in the world. Would you like something more? Rum or wine?"
"Rum, thank you. Just how much good stuff have you scooped up in Manila, my lord?"
Lando took a dripping rum bottle from a wooden bucket filled with well water, poured some into a glass, added a bit of guava juice, and topped it off with soda water.
"Too bad there's no ice."
"I'm quite satisfied with soda water and rum. Thank goodness the Council of Elders has always been 'cosmopolitan' when it comes to creature comforts."
Xue Ziliang stopped slowly sipping the ruby-glinting, bubbling liquor in his glass and instead threw back his head and drained it in one gulp. He set down the glass, opened the briefcase he had not let go of since disembarking, and handed Vince a brown paper packet. The seal was stamped with a bright red wax impression: "Classified. Destroy after reading."
Inside the brown paper packet were several documents with different letterheads. The instructions Vince received were far more complex than he had imagined.
He had to establish regular radio contact with Lingao; thoroughly investigate the military strength and economic situation of the Manila colonial authorities—he noticed that Jiang's intelligence bureau was more interested in the latter than the former. He was to report on the movements of the colonial authorities at all times, port information, especially information on the Manila galleons; and collect all kinds of intelligence about the situation in Europe from colonial officials and merchants. He was even to try to obtain permission for an expedition team from Lingao to enter the interior.
Although the Executive Committee was unwilling to invest resources in conquering the Philippines at this time, it had long coveted the mineral deposits beneath the archipelago. As for the ghost-like, possibly existent former comrade of his, the Intelligence Bureau's orders were: "Try to confirm his existence," but "avoid active contact that might result in self-exposure."
This year the Philippine rainy season had come late, but it had come at last. Raindrops the size of beans pounded the window glass, converging into a waterfall of streaming water. The Esmeralda had dropped anchor in the small bay near the fishing village. This bay was formed by a natural stone jetty extending from the shoreline, which happened to block the wind and waves surging from the northeast.
"How long can you stay here?"
"Not long. Special Reconnaissance Command will call me back soon. You can give orders to the captain and the four Special Reconnaissance Squad members. Their instructions are to follow your orders in the Philippines unless they receive new orders radioed from Lingao."
Vince gazed out the window. The curtain of rain beyond the glass blurred his vision. All the sails on the ship had been furled and neatly lashed to the yards. He could just make out several figures in oilskin raincoats moving about on deck—sailors on watch.
From downstairs came the banging of hammers, audible even through the closed study door. Chinese artisans from Manila were laying pipes in the garden despite the heavy rain, installing the newly arrived bathroom fixtures under the direction of the naturalized technician who had come with the ship.
None of this investment was meant to add to his show of lordly grandeur, he thought. The villa in the Count of Fananovoua's name would serve in the future as an intelligence center targeting the Manila authorities, as well as a trading post for the Australians in the Philippines. The Chinese in the Lingao Council of Elders were just as fiendishly shrewd as the congressmen on Capitol Hill. In their eyes, the little ship they had provided him was equivalent to an entire carrier battle group. Vince Lando had to produce results, or else he and Jiang might together face a congressional hearing.
He stuffed the orders back into the brown paper envelope, set it alight with a lighter, and tossed it into the fireplace.
"That Hale," Vince said, watching the paper licked into ash by the flames, "said he was from America. Didn't you find anything about him on the computers?"
"You're joking," said Xue Ziliang. "If there were a Japanese or Japanese-American named Hale in the ATF or Immigration files, I'd certainly remember. The thing is, there isn't."
Xue Ziliang had made a mistake. Although he did not remember any Japanese or Japanese-American named Hale, both the FBI and Immigration databases could find a Japanese-Brazilian student named Evaristo Rosa Okamoto—a terrorist on the wanted list.
In 1974, thirty-year-old Kenji Okamoto left his homeland with his wife and child, crossed the ocean, and finally settled in a village on the outskirts of São Paulo. Although by the seventies the postwar Japanese emigration wave had passed, no one in Brazil—with its more than a million Japanese-Brazilians and Japanese nationals—would pay much attention to a new Japanese immigrant.
But as time passed, the local Japanese community gradually discovered he was a difficult person to approach, especially disinclined to associate with other Japanese immigrants. They did not know that this farmer who claimed to be from Kumamoto was a distant relative of Kozo Okamoto, who had become infamous the year before for spraying gunfire in Tel Aviv International Airport. Kenji had emigrated to Brazil to escape the police, and this he had carefully concealed. His son's Portuguese name was given by his stepmother. In the third year after settling in Brazil, Kenji's wife died of illness. After several years as a widower, he married a mixed-race Brazilian Catholic woman and added her surname to his son's name.
Young Okamoto grew up on this nearly isolated farm, as taciturn as his father. Besides farmwork, he had a self-taught talent for repairing cars and all kinds of farm equipment, which earned him considerable praise among the Japanese immigrants in the surrounding villages. And when Evaristo was admitted to the Florida Institute of Technology and went to study in the United States, it caused quite a stir among the generations of farming Japanese-Brazilians.
Evaristo Rosa Okamoto displayed no remarkable peculiarities while pursuing his degree. When federal agents questioned them, his professors and classmates could only recall a medium-build, mild-mannered, quiet Japanese student with good grades. Besides his studies in mechanical and chemical engineering, he was quite interested in Eastern history and had taught himself Arabic in addition to Japanese.
To raise money for a trip to Asia, he had worked during vacations for Union Pacific, maintaining and restoring the antique steam locomotives. His passion for those old machines had impressed even the railroad company's engineers.
If it had not been for a chance drug raid that led police to discover detailed diagrams and some already-manufactured components for remote-controlled explosive devices in his apartment, he would have continued playing the harmless, well-behaved student indefinitely.