Lost and Spy

Administrator of the eight provinces of Northern Luzon!

How can it be!

How could Marcos give up this spot that he worked so hard to get!

No, no.

Sheikh Dan told himself over and over again in his heart.

Hesitant, disbelieving, excited...

In short, his mood now cannot be described in words.

He didn't believe that such a good thing would happen, but he hoped that such a good thing would really happen to him.

"What I need is peace, not war." Meng Shaoyuan said with a serious expression: "What I also need is win-win cooperation between both parties, rather than mutual defeat. Therefore, every word I say now is serious.

What do you think Marcos’ real goal was? Just an administrator of eight provinces in Northern Luzon? No, his political ambitions go far beyond that. He sees further. The presidential election in the Philippines will officially begin soon, and that's when he will start his real political path.

He will enter the presidential palace, hold a position close to the president, and then seek further political heights! "

Sheikh Dan believes this.

On more than one occasion, Marcos talked about his political ideals.

However, many ideals seem too naive and childish in the eyes of others.

Simply unrealistic.

For example, Marcos once openly declared after being drunk that one day he would stand at the top of the Philippine political stage.

what is that?

What else but the President?

No one believed what he said.

It was only after he was appointed as the administrator of the eight provinces of Northern Luzon that everyone discovered that Marcos's promise might not be fulfilled.

Now, these words came out of Meng Shaoyuan's mouth, and they seemed to add something different.

Sheikhdan couldn't make a decision for a while.

"He has visited Roxas." Meng Shaoyuan said without concealment: "Although Roxas was once an important member of the puppet government, you obviously know that he has received strong protection and will participate in the Philippine general election. .

Why did Marcos visit Roxas? What is his real purpose? I think you already have the answer in your mind at this time. No one can stop Marcos from pursuing his dream. So what happens to the role he holds now once he actually gets going?

We need balance, we don’t want too much power concentrated in the hands of one person. When he enters the core political circle of Manila, who will take over as the administrator of the eight provinces of Northern Luzon? We will never see another Marcos take over, that is not in our interest. "

Sheikh Dan's heart was pounding.

Now, he began to believe it.

Yes, Americans need to strike a balance in the Philippines.

It is impossible for them to put all their interests in the hands of one family.

Someone must take over the position left by Marcos.

What could be more suitable than the Narendasan family?

There was no way Xie Hedan's expression could be concealed from Meng Shaoyuan.

This is where the difference between Sheikh Dan and Marcos lies.

Sheikh Dan only focused on immediate interests.

But Marcos took a longer-term view.

Meng Shaoyuan then struck while the iron was hot and said: "In the eight provinces of Northern Luzon, there is not only one Marcos family, nor only one Narendasan family, but also many other families. Maybe it is you, maybe someone else, who sees this family Are you willing to fully cooperate with us?"

"Colonel, I think I should think about it carefully." Sheikhdan took a deep breath: "I want to know what we need to pay."

"Reconciliation, comprehensive reconciliation." Meng Shaoyuan stared at him: "We don't want to see any more unnecessary bloodshed. We want to see peace in Manila and even the Philippines. As for the conflicts between families, I think they can be temporarily 's shelved.

Mr. Narendasan, profit is the only thing. To continue the bloody battle, or to be the administrator of the eight provinces of Northern Luzon, you have to make a choice, and this choice is in your hands. "

"One day, Colonel." Sheikhdan immediately said: "In one day, I will give our final answer."

"Okay, Mr. Narendasan." Meng Shaoyuan said with a smile: "I'm waiting for your answer, right here. I hope it's the answer I want to see."

Sheikh Dan left, feeling very excited.

But just as he left, Levi appeared.

Meng Shaoyuan smiled bitterly: "Mr. Levi, every time you show up, something always happens, right?"

"Yes." Levi looked extremely serious: "Colonel, do you know the 'Silver Star'?"

"'Silver Star'?" Meng Shaoyuan was startled: "Is that a battleship?"

"No." Levi looked solemn: "That's an American merchant ship, an American merchant ship in 1940."

……

In February 1940, Captain Smith of the American "Silver Star" was sailing in the Strait of Malacca.

The hot sailing and the humid sea breeze made the crew drowsy, and even Captain Smith felt a little sleepy.

However, a rapid knock on the door woke Smith up.

The person who knocked was the ship's correspondent. He reported to the captain that just now, an emergency Morse code was intercepted.

Smith immediately went to confirm. The crew gathered around the telegraph machine, waiting for the correspondent's deciphering results.

Smith felt a little anxious, but at the same time he was a little excited. The deciphering result finally came out.

"This is the Man of Medan. We are floating. All the crew, including the captain, are dead. I am trapped in the chart room and cockpit, and probably everyone on the ship is dead."

What followed was a sequence of noises and murmurs that the crew could not understand. Just when Smith was about to issue an order,

They heard a second Morse code message. This message was very brief, but the deciphered result made all the crew members hold their breath unconsciously.

"I'm dead too."

After that there was no more signal.

Captain Smith realized that the shipwreck encountered by the other party might be far more serious than he imagined, and he could not wait any longer.

He immediately ordered a search for the target ship, and another merchant ship received a distress signal at the same time.

After the "Silver Star" communicated with him, it determined the approximate location of the distress signal through triangulation. The "Silver Star" was closer, so Smith took the lead in the search and rescue mission. After several hours of searching, they finally found the "Man of Medan".

This is an old-fashioned steamship. It is drifting aimlessly on the sea. It is not using any power to propel it, and no crew activities can be seen. There does not seem to be any damage on the outside.

Smith, who was holding a telescope, was a little confused. It didn't look like he was being attacked at all. Could it be that the distress signal was fake?

He asked the crew to blow the whistle and sent a contact signal to the other party, but received no response. The sound of the signal was as calm as the sea.

After thinking about it, Smith decided to lead some crew members to board the ship to check. However, when they boarded the "Man of Medan", what they saw not only proved the authenticity of the distress signal, but also made them shudder.

The sailors were lying messily on the deck, some holding their arms tightly, as if to protect themselves. Some curled up their limbs, as if they were avoiding something.

Each of these sailors stared at the sky with wide eyes, their expressions frozen in horror, as if they had encountered a terrible scene like a nightmare, and their skin had begun to rot, and the sailors had obviously lost their lives.

Smith and others were still approaching the deck of the ship when they discovered a pet dog. He was facing forward and frozen in a growling posture.

"In all my years at sea, I had never seen anything like it." Smith recalled afterwards: "When we stepped on the deck, we found the skin of sailors, their eyes staring at the sky, their mouths open, so... Horrible sight, and their faces!”

"I will never forget their faces," Smith later recalled.

Afterwards, Smith led the crew to conduct an in-depth investigation.

The boiler room has been operating normally. The temperature inside the cabin even reached 40 degrees Celsius.

But when they first entered the cabin, the crew of the "Silver Star" felt a biting chill for a moment.

The captain was found in the cockpit, and the pilot also maintained a posture similar to that of a sailor. It was as if he was trying his best to avoid the fate that had befallen the sailor.

Even the boatmen in the inner cabin have the same expression and posture.

The only difference is probably the correspondent.

He was lying next to the telegraph machine, still maintaining the posture of sending the telegram. It seemed that he was the one who sent the distress signal to the "Silver Star" and died after sending the last brief signal.

However, at this time, Smith suddenly discovered something very strange. The correspondent's skin had also shown signs of corruption.

It only took a few hours from the time the "Silver Star" received the distress signal to the time it discovered the Man of Medan.

If the correspondent was still alive when the letter was sent, he would have been dead only a few hours.

Why is corruption happening so fast?

After confirming that there were no casualties, Smith decided to tow the strange "Man of Medan" to the nearest port.

Just as the crew was using ropes to connect the two ships, smoke suddenly appeared from the Man of Medan, which seemed to be the location of cargo hold No. 4.

The fire spread quickly, and Smith immediately ordered the crew to return to the Silver Star and cut the ropes.

Within a few minutes, the "Man of Medan" heard a loud noise and sank into the sea with the secrets that no one on board knew.

Smith kept detailed records of the entire Man of Medan expedition.

But there were three points he still couldn't figure out.

First, there were no external injuries on any of the crew members, but judging from the stiff posture of their arms, it showed that they were just stretching their muscles until the last moment, and it could be clearly judged that they had experienced unimaginable pain.

Secondly, the skin decays much faster than normal, which is very unreasonable.

Third, in this case the hull was intact, with no obvious signs of damage or similar.

But when he tried to investigate further, he found all official records from the Netherlands or Indonesia at that time. No steamship named "Man of Medan" was found, which even made him wonder whether everything he encountered was an illusion.

After submitting the information to the Albany Times, Smith disappeared into the sea of ​​​​people, and the Silver Star was sold and renamed, never to be seen again.

After the story of the "Man of Medan" was reported, it became a topic of conversation for many Americans after dinner.

Even the Merchant Marine Research Record published by the U.S. Coast Guard included this incident.

However, the more people know the story, the more likely it is that something is wrong.

It was discovered that an Indonesian newspaper developed three consecutive press releases recording the entire incident.

In this report, the story goes much the same way.

However, the entire story is told not by the captain of the Silver Star, but by a German survivor of the Man of Medan.

After the accident of the "Cotton Blue Man", the German crew fled to the Marshall Islands and were eventually rescued by a local fleet. They were already dying when they were rescued.

Fortunately there was an Italian missionary on board who knew German.

The German sailor told the missionary everything he knew before he died.

According to the German crew, the Man of Medan was tasked with transporting large quantities of sulfuric acid to Costa Rica.

However, the container malfunctioned midway, releasing toxic gases that unknowingly killed the entire crew except for him.

At the same time, he also mentioned in his last words that the entire operation and route of the "Man of Medan" were secret in order to avoid official eyes and ears everywhere.

The Italian missionary told his friend Silvio what he had heard.

He authored this report. This statement seems logical and can explain why there is no official record of the "Man of Medan" and other issues.

But there are still some untenable aspects. For example, sulfuric acid is difficult to volatilize, and only high concentrations of sulfuric acid will volatilize.

It is hard to imagine that all the crew members on such a large ship were poisoned at the same time, but no measures were taken until everyone lost their lives.

After this, many conspiracy theorists put forward their own ideas about the "Man of Medan", but they were basically just conjectures without evidence.

Gradually, many people began to agree with a view that the "Man of Medan" might be a fabricated story because someone discovered reports about the "Man of Medan".

As early as 1940, it had appeared in many British newspapers, including the Yorkshire Evening Post and the Times. Among them, words such as mysterious deaths, no injuries, and "Man of Medan" were prominently listed.

Other details are similar to the last report. The author of these reports in 1940 was the same Italian Silvio as the reports published in Indonesian newspapers eight years later.

So many people believe that Silvio made up the story in 1940 and submitted it to the British media.

But the war had just broken out at that time, and the British people were more concerned about the war, and no one cared about the news about a strange ship.

But Silvio himself was very satisfied with the story he made up, so he submitted it to different media eight years later.

It was finally packaged into a maritime legend. As time went by, more and more people began to agree with this statement. (End of chapter)