Chapter 1424 - The Man Called Hale

Subsequent discoveries gradually made the facts clearer. Evaristo had been working with peripheral organizations of al-Qaeda. These bombs were to be smuggled into Japan, reassembled, and used to attack the American Embassy and U.S. military bases. But young Okamoto did not fall into the net, nor did he flee back to Brazil as the police had expected.

A year and a half later, intelligence agencies found him in a training camp in southern Lebanon. Over the following years, he appeared sporadically in Palestine and Syria. The last time Americans knew of young Okamoto's whereabouts was in Iraq in 2007, when he narrowly escaped a U.S. military raid on a Shia militia underground weapons factory.

The torrential rain pounded on tents and bamboo hats with a dense crackling sound. The locally conscripted native laborers called out to one another, trying to find shelter from the rain in the military camp. They were not permitted to enter the Spanish soldiers' tents, so they could only gather under the trees with a few banana leaves over their heads as makeshift cover, letting the downpour soak them through.

Besides this group of wretches, there was one other person standing outside the tents—a man wearing a Chinese-style bamboo hat. His whole body was wrapped tightly in a black friar's robe made of coarse woven wool. In the mosquito-infested tropical jungle, this was a good protective measure, and in the rainy season, this rough woolen fabric was also effective at shedding water. Only by getting up close could one see, beneath the deliberately low-pulled brim of the hat, an Asian face.

Evaristo Okamoto had grown accustomed to standing alone outdoors to calm the excessive excitement in his heart. The various elaborate religious rituals his stepmother had drilled into him since childhood were very useful now for disguising himself as a fanatic. Even certain traces of faith remaining from his childhood had begun to occupy his mind in a distorted form.

Escaping from Iraq, fleeing blindly, boarding a smuggling ship, and then—like the Philadelphia Experiment—transmigrating through time and space: all of it had come as suddenly as this downpour.

When the dying Okamoto was washed up on Dongsha Reef, he had somehow miraculously survived. After more than two months of drinking rainwater and eating shellfish and raw fish, a Portuguese merchant ship bound for Malacca had rescued him. The two things he had inherited from his stepmother—Catholic faith and Portuguese—had saved him. And so the terrorist Evaristo Okamoto, having already transformed into Hale the arms-smuggling gang member, transformed once again: he became Paulo Takayama, a Japanese Kirishitan persecuted and exiled for his faith.

Perhaps after that, God suddenly took mercy and favored this fake believer. Paulo Takayama had been obscure in Manila until he rose to fame by manufacturing rockets that decisively defeated the Acehnese army during their renewed siege of Malacca. When some Jesuits publicly questioned his background out of jealousy, he claimed, just as he had always said, to have followed in the footsteps of his great kinsman Takayama Ukon and come to Manila. In gaining the trust of the Spanish colonial government and the Church, he had achieved initial success.

In another two days, when the army returned to Manila, Paulo Takayama's reputation would surely rise to a new level. This was an unquestionable victory—a triumph. The colonial army, in its expedition from Lingayen through the Agno River valley all the way to the Cordillera Mountains, had easily wiped out hundreds of Ilocanos, razed the fortified villages built by the descendants of fierce Chinese pirates, and occupied the rich Baguio valley. The casualties in battle had been astonishingly few.

The new-style cannons and rockets that Paulo Takayama had devoted all his ingenuity to inventing deserved the chief credit, though he would certainly face the wave of praise with the notable modesty for which he was known. But his achievements and his name would certainly be reported once again to the Council of the Indies by the Governor, and might even be presented before King Philip IV. Some said he might even be ennobled for this.

A bride of noble illegitimate birth was already waiting for him in Manila. But Hale was not interested in any of this—compared to the title of Liberator of Humanity, what did any of this amount to? If not for the fact that this would effectively consolidate his position in Manila and win him sufficient official support, he would not have bothered with it at all.

With enough support, Paulo Takayama could organize an expeditionary force of Spaniards and Japanese volunteers, liberate Japan from the ignorant, barbaric rule of the Tokugawa shogunate—just as Evaristo Okamoto, before transmigrating, had devoted himself to liberating Japan from the oppression of American imperialism. The difference was that back then he could only hope to sacrifice himself for his ideals; in this time and space, he seemed to see the liberator's laurels and the ruler's throne beckoning to him.

The tropical downpour came and went quickly. The rain ceased, the clouds scattered, and the sun shone on the wet ground. Paulo Takayama suppressed his excitement and turned to enter the tent. He did not notice that on the northern horizon, a small dark cloud was gathering ever larger, slowly drifting closer.

The villa near Lingao Point Park theoretically belonged to the General Affairs Office, but it was the Foreign Intelligence Bureau that used it most frequently. Jiang Shan always arranged the joint intelligence working conferences in this former residence of Wu De. Outside the villa walls, sentries stood guard, ensuring security and secrecy. Open the window and you could see the beach at Lingao Point—far more comfortable than the airtight, sealed conference room of the Political Security Bureau. Even when the shutters were closed for the projector, fresh sea breezes still wafted in, dispelling the indoor heat.

"Let's look at this one."

The slide projector cast an image of a triumphal celebration. The howitzer that Paulo had supervised the casting of—said to have played a decisive role—was displayed on a parade float. The photo was taken from very close range. Vince Lando had probably hidden his camera in the folds of his cloak and shot it from close to his body.

Jiang Shan was not very familiar with old-style artillery. After searching his memory, he thought this gun looked like a hybrid of the 90mm bronze mortar and the Dahlgren gun he had seen years ago at the Yūshūkan in Tokyo.

"Unfortunately, the legendary Paulo Takayama did not appear in the triumphal parade. It is said he declined to attend on grounds of health. All over Manila, they are praising his indifference to glory."

Xue Ziliang continued his report on his reconnaissance in the Philippines. New photographs were projected onto the screen.

"At least three new gun emplacements have been added to the Fort Santiago ramparts, all fitted with 24-pounder converted rifled guns made by boring rifling into old bronze cannons."

The photographs were enlarged bit by bit. He pointed his white rattan crop at various details, drawing the attendees' attention: the elevation screw beneath the breech, the iron-clad wooden rails with pivot tracks laid on the platform floor, the four-wheeled gun carriage snug against the triangular-truss lower carriage.

Rather CIA-ish, Jiang Shan thought, but sending field agents to infiltrate enemy territory to take these photographs in person, then sending them back on a disguised courier ship—it's slow, inefficient, and unsafe.

His thoughts drifted years into the future, to an Intelligence Bureau conference room with real-time satellite reconnaissance images scrolling across a big screen, drone aerial photographs showing every detail, and the Foreign Intelligence Bureau's U-2s, Blackbirds, and Global Hawks forming the world's most efficient surveillance network.

Later he would have to talk to Zhan Wuya—the aviation industry needed to get underway as soon as possible. Before they could build planes, he would try to get the Resource Department's remote-control aircraft models. The drone force could get started first. He should also ask Lin Hanlong—how could aerial reconnaissance do without high-precision lenses and cameras?

"...The fortifications discovered on the northern edge of the Cavite Peninsula are completely different—no bastions. Four circular coastal batteries, connected by communication trenches, with a covered trench for infantry extending outward. Please note the parapet constructed here... This fortress faces Fort San Felipe on the peninsula to the south across the water. If both are fitted with rifled guns of sufficient range, they can effectively blockade Cavite Bay."

Jiang Shan realized he had been daydreaming when Xue Ziliang's report was nearly finished. He silently reproached himself. Indulging in random thoughts had recently become a habit, as if only thus could he temporarily suppress a certain undercurrent of desire in his heart. He forced himself to sit up straight in his chair, drew his attention back, and listened on.

"...Finally, Fort San Antonio, south of Malate Bay. The Spanish call it a fort, but it was really just a wooden barracks with a crude little round keep. Recently they've started major construction here. Judging from the foundation work underway, this is a small-scale bastion. It may be equipped with fifteen to twenty cannons. The observation post established by the intelligence station can fully monitor the progress of the battery construction—it's only two kilometers away..."

"So that arrogant American gun-runner who's lost sight of who he is has actually placed our intelligence station right under the enemy's guns."

Wang Ruixiang interjected. As a former member of the Naval Forces Division and the First Weapons Design Team, and a veteran of Operation Engine, he had always had strong opinions about the Manila operation.

"There is no such threat at present," Xue Ziliang said, somewhat annoyed at being interrupted. "All the newly constructed fortress gun mounts discovered so far are installed on semicircular tracks, with a directional field of fire not exceeding 180 degrees. The two batteries under construction can only bombard the sea; they cannot aim northeast toward Malate village and the harbor."

"Fine. That Japanese bastard has built all these genius batteries and mounts—what's he going to put on them? Is he going to rifle every Spanish cannon? Never mind anything else—making new shells of every caliber to fit all those mismatched guns would be enough to work even a genius to death."

"The Japanese devil is still using expanding driving bands—not bad, quite advanced, with something of his ancestral Type 89 grenade discharger and his godfather country's chemical mortars about it. But the bands are made of copper, so the cost shoots right up—and you need precision machining. If he himself isn't afraid of being worked to death, the Spanish Governor is surely worried about the guy bankrupting him."