Chapter 138: The Tattoo
He couldn’t afford to offend these two missionaries. He hadn’t fully made up his mind yet and, for the time being, still needed the two fools to conceal his identity. At the Australian customs, he repeated the same story he had used to fool the Jesuits over and over again to the local officials.
However, the biggest problem with this story was that he hadn’t expected the Australians to conduct mandatory, and thoroughly naked, physical examinations on all entrants.
When Weiss took off his shirt and exposed his back, he heard the sharp hiss of indrawn breath from the doctors and officials behind him. He wasn’t sure if their surprise was because they had seen the tattoo or because they knew what it meant. If it was the latter, all his bullshit would be for naught.
They probably have a hidden camera in the immigration inspection area and have already taken pictures of me from all angles, Weiss thought.
Damn it, these Chinese have definitely recognized what the tattoo on my back is.
Weiss Lando had never imagined he would become a mercenary, at least not when he was a child. A few years after he was born in a dilapidated Italian immigrant neighborhood in San Francisco, his mother passed away. His father, a construction worker, would often beat him after getting drunk at the local tavern. But when he wasn’t drunk, the construction worker from Calabria doted on his son. Weiss still remembered his father, dressed in his Sunday best, sitting in the front pew of the church, smiling as he led the choir.
The choir robes were old and smelled of years of accumulated sweat, just like the Italian district itself.
Weiss disliked the place where he was born. The old Italian district was dirty and dilapidated, with a musty, isolated smell. The streets were dangerous and chaotic. People said that coming to America was like coming to paradise, but paradise was clearly not in the Italian district. It was just another replica of the Italian hell.
During his high school summer breaks, he preferred to stay with his classmate Leo, fishing in the Golden Gate Bay on Leo’s family’s boat under the scorching California sun, or shooting seagulls with Leo’s father’s old Springfield rifle. He quickly became a crack shot, the terror of the bay’s seagulls. Seagull meat was inedible, but watching the tufts of feathers scatter at the muzzle of his gun gave him a strange sense of satisfaction.
One day, as he and Leo were lying on the deck of the fishing boat, they heard a roar that cut through the sky, even drowning out the sound of the waves. Two Tomcat fighters streaked over their heads, the sun outlining their swept-back wings in gold.
“I want to be like that,” he told Leo, “flying a fighter jet across the ocean.”
The dream of becoming a fighter pilot was soon seemingly forgotten. Despite being popular with the high school girls thanks to his outstanding physique and good looks, Weiss Lando became infatuated with Mrs. Warren, the new high school music teacher, a petite and charming married woman. She gave him music lessons, encouraging him with dreams of one day performing at the Metropolitan Opera, comforting him, and doting on him, while not minding the overly familiar advances of this passionate teenager more than ten years her junior. But things eventually went wrong. After spending an entire weekend afternoon alone with Mrs. Warren, Weiss was nearly shot and killed by the enraged Mr. Warren. He left school and never went back.
His dream of becoming an opera singer was shattered—he found that music held no appeal for him without Mrs. Warren. And the Navy certainly wouldn’t let a high school dropout fly a fighter jet—they suggested he become a sailor.
Weiss himself never expected that, simply because he had nowhere else to go, he would wander into an Army recruiting station. He ended up crossing the ocean to Korea, becoming an infantryman in the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division. In the Army, he might have become a sergeant, and if he had successfully completed his contract, he might even have gotten funding for college.
It happened on a weekend before Christmas. The base town of Dongducheon, near Camp Casey, was in a festive frenzy. By nightfall, all the bars and dance halls were packed with rowdy soldiers and all sorts of customers. Army Corporal Weiss Lando was sitting in a corner of a bar, sipping his drink slowly. Suddenly, a woman’s scream erupted from the bar counter, followed by a burst of wild laughter and cheers. Weiss saw the Filipina barmaid being held down on the counter by two white men and a short, fat Korean. The barmaid’s skirt was torn off, and she screamed and struggled, but her frantic wiggling only elicited louder, more unrestrained laughter. Weiss knew the girl and was quite familiar with her.
A bald white man with a small mustache was cursing as he held the girl’s waist, his pants already down to his knees. His head suddenly exploded along with the beer bottle smashed on it, and he fell silently. The second white man felt his neck being grabbed and his face slammed down on the counter. He screamed as shards of glass dug into his face. The Korean was about to pull a revolver from under his clothes, but Weiss grabbed his wrist and pushed it down hard. The gunshot shook the entire bar, the bullet passing through the Korean’s knee and shattering his right kneecap.
The bar owner called the police, and the military police arrived soon after. Weiss was sentenced to seven months in prison for assault. In prison, he saw an ad in an SOF magazine. He made up his mind, and after his release, he quickly chose to be discharged and went to Croatia. The dangerous path he had chosen had forged in him a habit of taking things as they come, and he intended to continue doing so now.
The summer in Lingao was unbearably hot, especially in the top-secret conference room of the Political Security General Bureau, where the doors and windows were tightly shut and there was no ventilation. To ensure no one could eavesdrop, this godforsaken place didn’t even have windows.
Several barrels of ice were placed in the room, and an electric fan, salvaged from the “holy ship,” whirred loudly, but everyone gathered around the table was still sweating profusely.
The weekly internal security meeting, jointly held by the Political Security General Bureau, the Arbitration Tribunal’s Investigation and Execution Bureau, the Army, the Navy, the Foreign Intelligence Bureau, the National Police, Customs, and the Cheka, was in session.
The representatives were all staring at a stack of photos in the hands of Yang He, the head of the Customs quarantine camp. He was rambling on about his “major discovery.” He was so proud of his discovery that he repeated certain things several times.
“This must be the man we’ve been looking for, the one who disappeared from Ship A,” Yang He concluded, as Zhao Manxiong, who was chairing the meeting, took the photos. A slide projector had been set up in the conference room, and photos taken from various angles were enlarged and projected onto the screen. The man on the screen was a Latino white man, appearing to be under 40, over 1.8 meters tall, with a lean and well-proportioned physique. His dark brown hair fell to his neck.
In the frontal photo taken at customs, he was resting his hands calmly on the arms of a chair. His sun-tanned face was ordinary, with no distinguishing features. Only his soft, watery brown eyes, which were quite attractive to women, were wide open, gazing at the Transmigrators in front of the screen with a frank expression. When the fifth photo was shown, it caused a small stir in the room. It was a picture of his back, taken in the quarantine camp. An extremely eye-catching tattoo was on the white man’s broad back: an F-14 fighter jet, flying over a pirate flag with a skull and crossbones.
“Looks pretty hot—” Dongmen Chuiyu suddenly commented.
“What? You want to have a gay relationship with him?”
“I’m just worried he’ll cause a stir among some of the female Transmigrators,” Dongmen Chuiyu said. “He could become a destabilizing factor. Just like Salina, Pan Pan, and Miss Mendoza are also destabilizing factors.”
The office erupted in laughter. But everyone agreed that although the Latino’s face was unremarkable, his rugged features and powerful build had a certain masculine charm. He would likely be favored by modern women.
“He should be secretly eliminated for the sake of stability and unity,” someone said.
“In addition, the physical examination also found more than a dozen obvious scars on his shoulders, abdomen, and limbs,” Yang He said. “We took photos of each one. After examination, some were found to be from gunshot wounds, and some were old surgical scars. These surgeries could not have been performed in the 17th century.”
“What’s this man’s background? What identity did he use to enter?”
“He’s an attendant to the priests sent by the Jesuits,” He Ying said, flipping through his notebook. “Three months ago, Lu Ruohua went to Macao and said the Jesuits were preparing to send new missionaries to the Lingao diocese. This time, four people came: one priest, two friars, and this man. His Chinese name is Wei Landuo.”
“Do we have more information on this Wei Landuo?”
“No. The priest and friars were questioned separately. They don’t know him either. They rarely saw him before leaving Macao and only know that his appointment as an attendant was made personally by the Jesuit Superior in Macao, Geronimo. These friars don’t seem to have a good impression of him.”
“Where is Wei Landuo now? Still in the quarantine camp?” The question came from Jiang Shan of the Foreign Intelligence Bureau.
“He and the missionaries are in a separate room in the quarantine camp,” Yang He said. “A guard has been posted at the door of the room.”
“Then what are we waiting for!” Dongmen Chuiyu, representing the General Staff, said sternly. “He’s a spy, a saboteur, a potential dangerous element! He should be arrested immediately, thrown in prison, and interrogated separately! I don’t believe we can’t get the truth out of him.”