Chapter 460: The Dispatch Mission

“The last bus has left, service is over,” Weiss interjected, his eyes brazenly scanning the waist and soaring chest beneath the one-piece dress.

Jiang Shan coughed, a hint for him to mind his manners.

“Take my official car back,” Jiang Shan said, walking out first. He didn’t want this woman around, and he certainly didn’t want her to delay important business. A Red Flag carriage was parked outside the auditorium. Jiang Shan gave the driver a few instructions and, with the air of a perfect gentleman, opened the carriage door. Liu Shuixin lifted her skirt, stepped onto the footboard, revealing a silk-stockinged thigh, and offered a charming smile to the two men standing by the carriage. Weiss Lando let out a shameless whistle.

“Where are you staying this time? Still at the General Office’s Second Guesthouse?” Jiang Shan asked as the Red Flag carriage turned a corner and disappeared beyond the gates of Fangcao Di.

“Yes, it’s better than staying at the church,” Lando said. “It’s exhausting pretending to be a devout believer.”

“Shall we walk over?”

“It’s five kilometers, Director.”

“Are you in a hurry?”

“Huh? No, there are no cars anyway.”

They walked out of the gate, and the student on duty saluted them. Outside the gate was a large fruit orchard—originally, there was only a small thicket of miscellaneous trees here, but now the entire high ground where the campus was located had been planted with various fruit trees by the students. It was quiet all around, the gravel crunching softly under their shoes. They descended the high ground and took a turn on a road near the sea. The silence of the night was broken by the distant Bopu Shipyard. The workshops were brightly lit, drowning out the starlight near the horizon. Sparks shot out from the chimneys from time to time, like fireworks being lit. The boilers hissed with steam, and the buckets on the overhead cranes groaned. The cranes clattered, the winch brakes squealed like piglets, and the monotonous thud of the steam engines, combined with the clang of iron being hammered and the screech of the saws, made the whole factory seem like a giant beast whose outline was hidden by the night, crouching on the beach and breathing with its powerful iron lungs.

“How beautiful!” Jiang Shan said.

Lando couldn’t understand what was so beautiful about it. But he knew the aesthetic tastes of this bunch of Chinese: more rivets, more steam, big and black and crude. “Is a new warship about to be launched? Good heavens, let me think. Whose turn is it to be unlucky now?”

“Have you been to Manila?”

“I have, 370 years from now,” Weiss tried to make a joke, but seeing no response from Jiang Shan, he continued, “Operation Hunger was quite exciting, but the Spanish ships were just too filthy. Feces and rats everywhere. Do you want to sack Manila now? Alright. I can disguise myself as a Spanish official, let’s call me—Francisco Franco. No need for warships, I’ll just take ten canisters of poison gas, turn the valves at night, and you can all go in with gas masks and empty Manila’s silver vaults.” He suddenly remembered something and stopped. “Damn it, the Jesuits will recognize me. Then I’ll be burned at the stake!”

“There aren’t many Jesuits in Manila,” Jiang Shan smiled. “The religious orders in Manila are mainly the Franciscans and Dominicans. Even if there are Jesuits, most of them have probably never been to Macau—although the Portuguese and Spanish have the same king, they are not friendly with each other.”

“One is enough.”

“Mr. Lando, have you ever heard a famous quote from an ancient Chinese strategist: ‘Control others, but do not be controlled by others’?”

“No, but in Africa, someone told me a Chinese saying: ‘He who strikes first, prevails.’”

“In your report this time, you pointed out that Li Siya has been in frequent contact with the Spanish recently. We have sent special personnel to investigate in Macau, and one of the Spaniards who visited Li Siya is an envoy of the Governor-General of Manila.”

“Manila wants to get that piece of intelligence sold to Batavia, right? Did they get it?”

“Perhaps they already have. Li Siya is not loyal to anyone. It’s not surprising that she would sell the intelligence to the Spanish again. But she has never been a real threat to us, except for that one moment.” Jiang Shan didn’t want to elaborate on this issue; some things were not for everyone to know.

Lando realized that this was “Director Jiang’s” hint that Li Siya was no longer his concern.

Jiang Shan took out a fine linen handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He began to talk about some strange signs from the Spanish: they were buying large quantities of pig iron from Guangdong through their agents in Macau. Saltpeter, mercury, and zinc ingots, known as “white lead.” These goods were being shipped from Anping to Manila by the boatload. The Spanish had rarely bought these items directly from China before. And now, the Spanish were even trying to recruit coppersmiths and blacksmiths from Guangdong to work in Manila; previously, they had only recruited sailors.

“So, the Spanish want us to pay a price for our piracy?”

“No, it’s been less than half a month since we intercepted the Manila galleon, and the Spanish have been acting this way since the beginning of this year. So I think their actions are directed against the Dutch.”

The Governor-General of the Philippines in Manila, de Tavora, had always been worried about the Dutch threat, constantly appealing to the king for more money and soldiers to strengthen Manila’s defenses. The Spanish in the Philippines were in a bad situation. The Dutch were constantly harassing them throughout the East Asian seas and had repeatedly attacked Spanish colonies, causing the Governor-General a great deal of trouble.

The high-ranking officials of the Philippine colony seemed to live in constant fear of a Dutch attack.

“The Spanish are in a very bad state,” Jiang Shan said. “We have a series of reports from the Governor-General to the Privy Council. The Spanish are short of funds—without the supplies from the Manila galleon, the authorities can’t even maintain the status quo. They also lack manpower. At sea, they are harassed by the Dutch, and on land, there are native uprisings. Their trade is doing very poorly, and they have to attract a large number of Chinese to cultivate the land, but they are also full of suspicion towards the Chinese.”

“If they are in such a bad state, why have they suddenly increased their spending—it seems these expanded imports are all for military use—and not for profitable investments.”

“Exactly. Especially their sudden increase in mercury imports—it’s too much. Do you know what the amalgamation process is?”

“No, I’m a soldier through and through.”

“The amalgamation process is a method for refining precious metals like gold and silver. It requires a large amount of mercury,” Jiang Shan said. “We know that the Philippines produces gold and silver. But the Spanish of this time don’t know that…”

Lando’s eyes sparkled. “I understand what you mean.”

“We need someone in Manila,” Jiang Shan said as the lights of Bairen City came into view along the road. “Even if we can easily defeat any enemy armed with 17th-century weapons, intelligence is still necessary. I need to know exactly what the Spanish are capable of and what they intend to do.”

Sending a Chinese was out of the question. Jiang Shan had considered this long ago. The Spanish were very suspicious of the Chinese. The Chinese residential areas were restricted, and the scope of Chinese activities was mainly in the middle and lower strata of Manila society. The upper class was controlled by the Spanish, and a Chinese person—no matter how wealthy—would find it difficult to access the upper echelons of Manila.

“Sounds good,” Weiss cleared his throat. After walking for so long, he was dying for another bottle of kvass. “But if it goes wrong, this might be the last time I serve you.”

“You think so?”

“Please don’t be offended, Director. When I predict the outcome of things, I usually think of the worst-case scenario first.”

“In that case, we will carve your name on the wall of the Intelligence Bureau—and if you wish, you can designate a naturalized child as your heir.”

They walked the last stretch of the road in silence. “Intelligence Bureau meeting tomorrow morning at nine,” Jiang Shan said to the naturalized receptionist standing outside the guesthouse, gesturing for him to open the gate for Weiss. “I’ll send a car to pick you up. Good night, Mr. James Bond.”

“Good night, Mr. M.”

Jiang Shan returned to his office. A thick pile of reports on the interrogation of the prisoners from the Manila galleon had already been delivered to his desk.

The reports were very detailed, with statistical data and as much personal information as possible, even for the humblest sailor and slave.

Among the 289 prisoners were Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Germans, and black people, as well as Malays and Chinese, the latter two mainly serving as sailors. There were also some of mixed race. A very typical crew composition for a ship of the Age of Discovery.

The utilization and disposal of the prisoners was a matter for the Planning Institute, but the Intelligence Bureau and the Political Security Bureau had to give their opinions. Their recommendations would determine who could be utilized, who could be ransomed and released, and who would “labor until death.”

He skimmed through the reports. Mendoza’s report on Donna Marina de Arellano caught his interest. He read it carefully, then looked at the interrogation reports of the maid, the chaperone, and the captain, and also checked the inventory of the spoils of war. It confirmed that Marina’s story was completely true—she was indeed a bride-to-be, being sent to Manila to marry her fiancé.

A noble bastard girl going to Manila to get married. Although no one could say who she was going to marry, Jiang Shan didn’t care much—he figured it was just some Spanish official.

If that was all, she was of little use. They couldn’t recruit an 18-year-old Spanish girl who had spent ten years in a convent as a spy—not to mention the racial issue, they had just stolen her dowry. If she were to be kept in Lingao and distributed as a spoil of war to the elders, the debate and arguments over how to distribute her and the subsequent questioning would cause another fierce storm.

Extorting a ransom seemed to be the most profitable and safest option.