1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 4033

Thanks to the camel drivers' initiative to call for help, the camp was able to fire flares and warn others in time, successfully driving away the uninvited guests outside the camp, and no direct conflict occurred between the two sides.

The camel driver who managed to escape has temporarily saved his life, but the interrogation he faces after being brought back to the camp will not be so easy to fool.

Takahashi Minami personally interrogated the camel driver, and without much effort, he got him to confess everything.

Upon learning the truth, Takahashi Minami was naturally furious. It was extremely rare for a traitor to have infiltrated his team and succeeded. If the matter hadn't been ongoing, he would have readily drawn his gun and shot the man on the spot.

Despite his anger, Takahashi Minami ultimately refrained from acting rashly, lest someone in the vicinity lay an ambush under the cover of night. He patiently waited until dawn before personally leading a team, escorting the camel drivers, to the meeting place to search for traces of the local caravan.

If you try to find them again at this point, those guys will naturally not wait obediently in the same spot. They will have already taken advantage of the night to escape, and the hoofprints on the sand will have been covered by the wind and sand, making it impossible to track them down.

However, the camel driver had already confessed that he knew some details about this caravan, which was why he traded with them. He would investigate further later and eventually catch them.

At the rendezvous point last night, people found the box that the camel driver had stolen and sold, along with its contents. The group had abandoned the box while chasing the camel driver, focused solely on recovering the money they had paid him. Now that their scheme had been exposed, there was no way they could have come back to retrieve the rest of the goods.

Of course, nearly half of the soil samples in the boxes were disassembled and thrown away by the other party, making it impossible to reconstruct them.

However, for this geological exploration mission, the losses are still within a tolerable range. This is because each time soil samples were taken, two copies were preserved: one was sent back to China for the Ministry of Construction to formulate a construction plan, and the other was kept by the special operations division. Although a box of samples was unfortunately destroyed, fortunately there were backups, so the work wasn't all for nothing.

Takahashi Minami picked up an empty tube from the ground and muttered, "I've been hunting geese all day, but today a goose pecked my eye. What a bunch of thieves!"

Takahashi Minami looked at the camel driver who had caused the trouble, a hint of ruthlessness in his eyes: "Tell me the truth, are these people who were meeting you outside related to Ilhan, the governor of Suez? If you dare to utter a single falsehood, I'll bury you here as a sacrifice to the heavens!"

Takahashi Minami did not fully accept the camel driver's confession. He believed that the other party had designs on the Shanghai Han merchant caravan and drove the camel driver to steal the box containing soil samples, possibly because they were on some special mission.

The camel drivers' caravan company was originally an enterprise entrusted to a relative by the Ilkhanate, so it was not difficult for them to collude with each other.

If Ilhan has already become wary of the Haihan caravan's exploration activities, then Takahashi Minami must also be careful to avoid adding obstacles to the subsequent canal project.

After hearing the translation, the camel driver turned pale and hurriedly protested that he had not been instructed by Ilkhan, but had only stolen the chests to sell because he was blinded by greed. As for whether the local caravan was sent by Ilkhan, he knew nothing about it.

The reward found on the camel driver last night was indeed a considerable sum for an ordinary person, and the fact that the camel driver had given a warning indicated that his pursuers had ill intentions. If both sides were working for the Ilkhan, there would have been no need for this whole pretense, as the camel driver's exposure would have inevitably alerted the Haihan people. In the camel driver's view, the locals, not content with the goods they had taken from the Haihan, wanted to reclaim the reward they had been paid, and might even kill him to silence him. They were the real culprits, and he was merely an accomplice instigated by them.

However, the camel driver's crime of stealing from the owner is undeniable. Even according to local law, such behavior warrants several years in prison, and if the value of the stolen goods is too high, the death penalty would be reasonable.

Takahashi Minami was no saint. Even though the camel driver was telling the whole truth and wept bitterly in repentance, the loss to the caravan was still significant, and he could not be let off so easily.

Now that the evidence is conclusive and the man has been caught red-handed, Takahashi Minami gave the manager sent by the caravan company two options. The first option was for the caravan company to pay compensation to the camel driver. This amount would naturally be substantial, even exceeding all the compensation the caravan company could receive, but it would ensure the camel driver's survival. The second option was for the Haihan Caravan to handle the camel driver themselves, with the caravan company not concerned with his life or death and not pursuing the matter further. Of course, they would not have to bear the high compensation amount; they would only need to pay a token amount to settle the matter.

The manager of the carriage shop was at a loss for what to do with such a sudden incident. It wasn't uncommon for hired workers to steal from cargo owners, but he had never encountered such a ruthless cargo owner. It was either a matter of paying money or losing his life, and neither option was easy.

Of course, the most crucial issue is that the manager had no idea what the Haihan caravan had lost. The camel driver only said that he had stolen a box to sell, but he never opened it to see what was inside.

The only ones who knew the truth were the cargo owner, Haihan, and the local caravan that had paid to bribe the camel drivers. But those people had already fled last night and couldn't be found anytime soon.

As for the value of the lost goods, the Haihan caravan could decide whatever amount they wanted, since the camel drivers certainly couldn't afford such a large sum of compensation themselves.

The manager couldn't really refute it, because they had indeed found a large sum of money on the camel driver, which was enough to show that the contents of the box were very valuable.

In this situation, the manager weighed the pros and cons and ultimately chose to preserve the property of the carriage company, tacitly allowing the Haihan people to deal with this "traitor."

Takahashi Minami, naturally, showed no mercy to such a person and immediately announced the public execution of the treacherous thief, the camel driver. The manager of the carriage company remained silent; this group carried many firearms and was clearly a band of thugs, and he didn't want to be treated as an accomplice for speaking up for the camel driver.

To make an example of them, all the caravan workers were gathered to watch the execution. Takahashi Minami wanted to use this opportunity to show everyone that this was the only fate that awaited those who stole from their own caravan.

Before the execution, the steward publicly announced the crime. Although the camel driver begged for mercy, he could not escape death in the end, and he fell straight down on the sand as soon as the gunshot rang out.

Although the camel driver's two relatives had no connection to the incident, they were immediately expelled from the group. Their next task was to take the camel driver's body home to handle his funeral arrangements. Out of humanitarian considerations, the foreman gave them three camels and some food so they could return to Suez along the same route.

(End of this chapter)