Chapter Ninety-Four: The Full Story

“Ah, no—Boss, I didn’t mean it!” Stanley blurted out when he saw Chen Cao’s dark expression and the murderous glint in his eyes.

Chen Cao said nothing. His gaze remained fixed on Stanley’s hand.

Stanley looked down and nearly wet himself. In his panic, the hand holding the pistol had turned the muzzle directly toward Chen Cao.

His legs went weak. With a thud, he dropped the gun and fell to his knees. “Boss, I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t!”

“Heh, this is getting interesting. Little brother, I’m off first. Have fun,” the black-clad man said from the floor as the two men stared each other down.

They both turned toward him and saw that he had already pulled the dagger from between his thighs. With his other hand, he dragged the blade across his own throat. A jet of blood sprayed out, and half his neck had been cut through by the razor-sharp knife. Yet his face showed not the slightest trace of pain. On the contrary, his expression made him look even more sinister and bizarre.

“Good. Fine. Better if he’s dead. Let everyone die,” Chen Cao muttered. The trail had gone cold, the money was still lost, Mei Mei was in grave danger, and worst of all, even if he threw the case away now, no one would believe he hadn’t taken it. After one blow after another and days of relentless running, he had begun to fray at the edges.

And now the culprit behind all of it was the trembling Stanley before him.

Seeing the bloodshot fury in Chen Cao’s eyes, Stanley no longer had the courage to stand. He had heard every word Chen Cao had just said to the assassin, and he was certain that the now-unhinged Chen Cao would use those methods on him. Just imagining those vivid, grisly tortures sent cold sweat crawling down his back and filled his body with shivering gooseflesh.

“Boss, what boss? Calm down!” Stanley stammered as Chen Cao’s dagger gave a faint shake in his hand. He knew Chen Cao had already decided to kill. “Just three minutes—no, no, two minutes—and five hundred thousand U.S. dollars absolutely won’t be a problem!”

Chen Cao slowly rose to his feet. His eyes, gradually losing focus, were devoid of any light. Holding the dagger, he said slowly, “I hate being lied to most of all. I think you know what happens to people who do that.”

“Boss,” Stanley said quickly, “I’ll tell you what’s in the case. Besides the coordinates, there are gems—colored gems. Do you know gems? Diamonds, agates, emeralds...”

Chen Cao stepped up to him, grabbed his dark brown curls, and yanked his head back to expose his throat. He set the dagger against Stanley’s neck and pressed lightly. A thin line of blood seeped down along the blade. “You think I’d still believe you now?”

“Boss, you have to believe me. I did lie to you, that’s true, but I really came to join you. Really. I don’t even know what you do, but I truly want to work with you. Believe me—once we finish this job, we can retire straight away,” Stanley said, his voice breaking into a cough.

“Why should I believe you?” Chen Cao said coldly from behind him.

“I don’t know what’s so special about those coordinates,” Stanley said, “but I do know that, because of them, mercenaries and organizations all over the world are frantically searching for them now. They mean a vast fortune. I only found out by accident at Sebastian’s guerrilla headquarters in Odru.”

“Sebastian’s headquarters?” Chen Cao recalled the battlefield in Odru. That meant the secret would surely be known to that man as well. Would he also go to the location of the coordinates? It was a question worth thinking about. He eased the dagger away from Stanley’s throat.

“Yes, the second leader’s headquarters!” Stanley felt Death retreating a step farther away the moment Chen Cao released the knife. At the same time, he had already decided that Chen Cao really was the boss he ought to follow. The aura that had just flared from him was not something an ordinary man could match.

Chen Cao picked up the pistol from the floor, drew a cigarette from the pack, and clamped it between his lips. He was not usually a smoker, but now, according to Stanley, the situation seemed to have taken a turn. He needed to think carefully.

“Now you speak. If even one word is wrong, you’ll become the vengeful spirit of this room.”

At that, Stanley shuddered all over and hurriedly knelt again. “Boss, I’m already calling you Boss. You have to believe me. I really wouldn’t dare lie to you!”

“Cut the crap,” Chen Cao said, his face darkening again.

Stanley hastily pulled out a lighter with an ingratiating smile, lit Chen Cao’s cigarette, then took one for himself and lit it too. The two stood around the black-clad man’s corpse as Stanley began to speak.

“All right, Boss. I’ll tell you the whole story from beginning to end, with nothing held back. After the death of the great leader Alfred, the second leader, Sebastian, suddenly vanished without a trace, as if he had disappeared from the face of the earth. After our guerrilla unit was absorbed, we immediately joined the government forces and cooperated with the Allied Army in postwar search operations. Later, during one of those searches, my squad found a black case inside a command post in a valley. That was your case. From that moment on, my nightmare began.” Stanley wiped the cold sweat from his face.

“Holy war organization, the case, the coordinates...” Chen Cao fell into thought. Those elements were hard to connect. He turned his eyes to Stanley. “What do you mean? Go on.”

Stanley took a deep drag on his cigarette. “As the squad leader, of course I was going to keep the case for myself. I took it home, only to discover that it had a built-in bomb inside. There was no opening it. Of course, I’m not stupid. I figured that if the case had been made so intricately, it must contain very important intelligence. And I—didn’t I tell you, ever since the war started, I’ve made a living by selling off a bit of information here and there? So I found the intelligence officer from Mainz whom I usually dealt with and handed him the case. At the very least, I could get some money out of it.”

Chen Cao seemed to understand. “I think that the moment you handed over the case, your nightmare began, because you crossed someone’s taboo.”

“Ah.” Stanley sighed. “To tell the truth, Boss, you’re right. I still don’t know whether I’m lucky or just hard to kill. After I gave the case to that intelligence officer, he looked at it and immediately gave me ten thousand U.S. dollars. He didn’t even examine it. Just handed it over. I was thrilled. While I was happily counting the money, the Mainz intelligence officer looked at the case again. He didn’t open it. Instead, he gave it back to me and told me to take it to Husum and deliver it to someone. Once I delivered it, the trader would give me fifty thousand U.S. dollars and arrange my route into Husum. Think about it: money coming in, and it was only a simple errand. Why wouldn’t I do it? You have to understand, I was long sick of staying in Odru.”

Chen Cao took a drag on his cigarette and thought to himself: If that intelligence officer didn’t turn the case over, could he be a mole? He asked, “What happened after you got to Husum?”

Stanley ground out his cigarette on the floor with force, having already shaken off the fear Chen Cao had inspired, and said through gritted teeth, “It was a disaster. I carried the case all the way to Husum in a constant state of dread. I reached the trading point designated by the intelligence officer in Helle, found the old yellow-skinned man in a remote village, and he opened the case right in front of me. Do you know what I saw? Gems. A whole bag of gems—rubies, topaz, emeralds. My eyes nearly went blind. There was also a military map inside. And guess what happened next? That bald old bastard finished looking and immediately pulled a gun from behind his waist and pointed it right at me!”

Stanley mimed a gun with his hand and theatrically aimed it at his own head. “I thought, that’s it, I’m done for. I’ve lived this long and I’ve never even touched a woman, and this is how I go? I closed my eyes. But then I felt all sticky on my face. I wiped it and it was blood. I looked down—good God, the old bastard’s head was gone. Must’ve been the gunshot. At that point, who had time to care about anything else? I didn’t even bother with the gems in the case. I just ran for my life!”

Chen Cao snuffed out his cigarette and said, “So the moment you arrived in Husum, someone was already on your trail. That alone was enough to kill you a hundred times over. But you’re not just lucky—you were also saved by that same luck. It seems the intelligence officer wanted you dead, while the other side only wanted the case. What happened after that?”

Hearing Chen Cao, Stanley even remembered to give him an ingratiating thumbs-up. “I wandered around Husum for several days, and the money on me was gone in no time. I knew that if I went back to Odru, there’d be only one road left, and that was death. But if I stayed in Husum, there was no future either. After circling around and around, I ended up back in Helle. You know, in Husum, a man dies no more noticeably than an ant. That old man was dead, and Husum would never know. Besides, he had been trading with the Mainz army, so he must have had money. Maybe there were valuables at home. I gritted my teeth and decided to loot the corpse. When I got into that little house, damn me if it wasn’t full of bodies—and from the looks of it, they were all mercenaries. That had nothing to do with me, of course. I was there to make money, so I started searching around. To be honest, the haul was pretty good—various banknotes, at least seven thousand U.S. dollars. Then the door suddenly creaked open. I was so scared I nearly shook apart, so I hid in the dark. Then I saw a yellow-skinned man in a suit carrying something, tiptoeing out. Damn it, the case hadn’t even been taken yet. I remembered the gems inside and followed him. Later I discovered he was the chief physician at the Raine Hospital. I thought that was strange—what was a doctor doing with such a hot potato? Then, as you know, Boss, I found out you were helping that chief physician make the exchange. I was very clear on this: the first two times, he really was having you trade human organs. The last time, though, it was that case!”

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