Chapter 141: The Interrogation

According to Weiss, living in the bell tower was to “listen to the bells of God every day to atone for his sins.” However, when Father Jin Lige, filled with admiration, came to visit his attendant, he found the situation of this half-baked ascetic was not good.

“My child!” Father Trigault exclaimed, grabbing Weiss Lando’s trembling, outstretched hand. The hand, once as strong as an iron clamp, now felt so soft and weak, cold and soaked in sweat. “What’s wrong with you? Are you ill?”

Weiss shook his head, beads of sweat rolling down his pale face. “It’s just an old ailment acting up. Some old wounds are hurting badly. Father, you know I fought against the heretics and was wounded.”

He sat on a straw mat in the bell tower, leaning against a pile of clutter. His voice was low and urgent, some words slurred, clearly enduring great pain. “It is all God’s will.”

Weiss closed his eyes, kissed the crucifix the priest offered him, and leaned back on the straw mat, panting heavily. Jin Lige felt very troubled. Father Lu Ruohua was renowned for his medical skills even in Macao, but he had already gone to the countryside to spread the gospel. He decided to go to the monastery to ask the two Australian priests for help.

What Father Jin Lige didn’t know was that as soon as his footsteps disappeared down the stairs, all of Weiss’s symptoms vanished. He sprang nimbly from the straw mat and leaned against the louvered window of the bell tower. The watcher at the church entrance had not left with Jin Lige. It was time to leave this bell tower. Weiss felt he had seen enough of what he wanted to see from this highest point in Dongmen Market. He had even witnessed a drill of the marine corps once.

The next day, Father Jin Lige learned from Abbot Wu of the Lingao Monastery that his attendant had been properly cared for and admitted to the Bairen City General Hospital. When the priest went to visit the hospital, Weiss was alone in a private room. Although he looked weak, his spirits were much better. Father Trigault stayed in the room for a while but felt uncomfortable. Although the room was clean and bright with white walls, it was filled with an unpleasant medicinal smell, and the windows had iron bars, which brought back unpleasant memories of the quarantine camp for the priest.

Abbot Wu, who accompanied him, relayed the Australian doctor’s diagnosis: Mr. Weiss Lando’s condition was very serious, the root of the illness having accumulated over many years. To be completely cured, he would need to recuperate in Lingao for six months or even longer.

Lando himself was not a clergyman, and when the Father-General had appointed him as an attendant, he had not specified what use this soldier was to be put to. From this perspective, it didn’t matter to Father Jin Lige’s missionary work how long Lando wanted to stay in the Lingao hospital. The priest suddenly had a feeling: the reason Lando had suddenly changed was perhaps because he was about to be called by God.

“My child, are you sure you don’t need the anointing of the sick?” he asked with concern, looking at Lando lying on the hospital bed.

Lando gasped, “No, thank you, Father. I feel I still have a chance to serve God…”

He lay silently on the bed. The room was very quiet. Lando thought of nothing—he had played his cards, and now it was up to the Chinese to respond.

He still had one last trump card, but that depended on whether the Chinese valued it. After all, they held a full hand of good cards.

My goods are still in demand, he thought. He had noticed that most of the native personnel used a type of muzzle-loading rifle with a percussion cap, and the handguns used by the security personnel also had a rustic, homemade feel to them. Not to mention the muzzle-loading cannons he had seen the soldiers drilling with.

The Chinese of Lingao lacked modern weapons, just as they only had that one freighter in the port, with all the rest being sailing ships. This indicated that they couldn’t receive a continuous stream of reinforcements from another time-space and had to rely entirely on themselves to produce everything.

No matter what they could produce, the industrial level of the Chinese in Lingao did not seem to have surpassed the 20th century. Although Lando was clueless about science and technology, he at least knew that the 20th century could produce breech-loading firearms and metal-cased cartridges. In that case, his automatic rifles and machine guns would be a great temptation to them.

As Weiss Lando was secretly escorted out of his hospital room under the protection of four armed personnel, he knew the most critical moment had arrived. The people he was about to meet would be the masters of his fate. He didn’t care about that; fate had already thrown too many surprises his way. The worst outcome would be a 9mm bullet in his forehead tonight, which was still much better than being roasted on a cross by religious fanatics.

The armed agents escorting him were clearly different from the security personnel who had “escorted” the bishop’s party from the quarantine camp. The leader, though he had an Asian face, was about the same height as Weiss. The others were also burly and well-built, clearly elite soldiers. Perhaps because they were not on a surveillance mission, their holsters were hung directly on their belts, revealing the blocky Glock pistols—these were definitely not products of a workshop in Pakistan or some other place. Lando suddenly realized that his status had been significantly elevated.

They followed a hidden corridor to the back door of the hospital. The night was deep, and although the streetlights were bright, there was not a soul in sight, only two jeeps parked quietly. Weiss was hustled into the front vehicle by the agents. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw four soldiers in the second vehicle, wearing steel helmets and holding automatic weapons. A light machine gun was mounted on the roof. Though it was just a glimpse, Weiss recognized it as a modified Serbian M77B1 automatic rifle.

Weiss sat in the back seat, sandwiched between two armed agents. Along the way, he fought the urge to turn and look back. This was the first time in three years he had enjoyed the service of a car, and if things went badly, it might be the last.

Weiss knew that his strategy of showing goodwill to the Chinese of Lingao was a risky gamble, and his recent discovery had been like a bomb exploding in his mind. Neither the Chinese nor the French government would equip their armies with such a rare rifle. If the Chinese had found the ship, once they decided he was no longer useful but still a danger, they might send him to meet God in the simplest way possible. But he had no other choice. Before the king fell, he hadn’t completely lost this game of chess.

The jeep screeched to a halt, startling Weiss from his thoughts. The car had left the brightly lit, bustling area near Dongmen Market and turned onto a small road by the highway. A barrier was set up at the entrance of the small road, complete with a guardhouse, barbed wire, and sentries. The jeep passed through without having its papers checked. They came to a row of dark courtyards. The driver rolled down the window and exchanged a few words with the sentry. After checking their papers, the jeep drove through the gate and stopped in front of a row of houses. As Weiss stepped out of the car, a dazzlingly bright light shone in his eyes, almost blinding him. The second jeep had been following closely behind and now had its headlights on, pointing directly at them. Undoubtedly, it wasn’t just two headlights aimed at him, but also the light machine gun mounted on the roof.

Weiss saw nothing clearly as several hands pushed him into a building. He stumbled through a corridor and was pushed into a room at the end. Several arms forced him into a chair in the middle of the room. The door slammed shut behind him.

After a while, his eyes adjusted to the change in light. He gradually made out that it was a bare room with whitewashed walls. Besides the incandescent bulb on the ceiling, there was no other electrical equipment. The high windows had iron bars welded to them, and the large cast-iron chair he was sitting in was fixed directly to the concrete floor. It was a chair specially designed for interrogation, with rings on the armrests and legs for chains. A long rectangular table was placed about two meters in front of him, and behind it were two large, closed doors.

Just as he was carefully examining the meager furnishings of the interrogation room, trying to glean some valuable information, the large doors in front of him suddenly opened, and several people filed in. They were not in uniform but in civilian clothes. What surprised Weiss slightly was that among the several obvious Chinese, there was a tall white woman, who looked to be in her thirties, both capable and beautiful—a typical modern Western woman. She wore the gray “Mao suit” common among the Chinese and natives here. Her cold face had a “finally caught you” look, which reminded Weiss of the federal law enforcement officials he had dealt with in the past.

“Mr. Weiss Lando, you’ve finally arrived.”

Lando raised his hands in surrender. “It is God’s will,” he said, deciding to be as frank as possible.

Salina looked with interest at the man in the striped hospital gown sitting in the interrogation chair. He, in turn, gave her a cheerful, childlike smile, which had probably charmed many girls before—but his brown eyes remained cold and alert.

You bastard, you’ve finally fallen into my hands, she thought. When the Political Security General Bureau had asked her to help analyze some photos of suspicious entrants, Salina had recognized him at a glance. Weiss Lando had a record. While working at the ATF, she had come across a case file on an arms smuggling operation. A large number of automatic rifles, ammunition, and even Claymore mines and SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles were found hidden in a container on a freighter carrying animal feed. Although the ship was seized in US waters, some of the DSA-58 rifles had still flowed into Europe and ended up in the hands of the Kosovo Liberation Army.