Working as a police officer in Mexico.

Chapter 663 Gentlemen are too much trouble!
On a summer night in New Delhi, the damp evening breeze carries the "fragrance" of the Ganges River, blowing through the bustling crowds at India Gate Square.

The national television broadcast signal has reached every household, and office lights cast dappled shadows on the lawn through the blinds.

At 8 p.m. sharp, Narasimha stood in front of the podium in the Parliament building, with a huge tricolor flag behind him.

He wasn't wearing a tie as usual; the collar of his white Kurta shirt was slightly open, and his eyes held an unusual heaviness. When the camera's red light came on, he raised his hand and pressed the earpiece, his fingertips lingering on the cool metal surface for two seconds.

"Sixty years ago at midnight, when we raised this flag at the Red Fort."

His voice came through the airwaves: “More than ten million people are carrying their bags and trudging through the dust on the India-Pakistan border. My grandfather, who was a professor at the Lahore Medical College at the time, carried my aunt and hid in the cellar of the Qing Temple amidst the clash of thugs. My grandmother was left forever in that alley stained with blood.”

The council members below the stage were completely silent. The camera panned across several elderly men with white hair in the front row. Their Adam's apples bobbed under their loose skin, and one of them quietly took out a handkerchief and dabbed at the corner of his eye.

“Today, I received a letter from Singh, a farmer from Punjab.” Narasimha pulled a yellowed piece of paper from his pocket, the edges of which were worn. “He said that his father, before he died, kept talking about not the harvest in the fields, but the ancestral mango orchard that was taken away in 1947, where his mother had planted twenty fruit trees herself.”

He looked up, his gaze passing through the camera lens, as if staring at the survivors of the partition of India and Pakistan scattered around the world: "Such stories are hidden in the photo albums of every family in India, in refugee camps in Assam, in slums in Delhi, in Indian community nursing homes in London. So many people are living to this day with unhealed wounds."

The crowd in the square began to stir, and some people held up signs that read "Return Our Homeland," with fragments of old newspapers from 1947 still wrapped around the wooden poles of the signs.

“The British government always says that the partition is a legacy of history.” Narasimha’s voice suddenly rose, the tricolor flag fluttering in the night wind behind him. “But history is not a cold archive! It is the shattered Gandhara statue in the Lahore Museum, the Hindu temple stone carvings sunk to the bottom of the sea in Karachi port, the lives of more than half a million people, and the cries of 20 million displaced people!”

"so!"

"We demand compensation from the British! Compensation for everything we've suffered, from personal grievances to national honor!"

On the streets of New Delhi, someone set fire to an old map from the British colonial era, the flames dancing on the faces of the crowd.

"Today, on behalf of the Indian government, I formally demand compensation from the United Kingdom."

He slammed his fist heavily on the podium, the wooden surface making a dull thud. "We don't want them to use their North Sea oil field shares as collateral, nor do we want them to use the London Underground operating rights as a pretext."

He pulled a document from the folder, the cover of which was printed with the Indian coat of arms in gold: "We demand that the British government publicly acknowledge its inescapable responsibility for the 1947 partition plan of India and Pakistan, that they establish a special fund to compensate all the victims of the partition and their descendants; and that they return the artifacts looted from India during the colonial period, from stone fragments of the Taj Mahal to Sanskrit manuscripts in the Madras Library, totaling 37,000 items, of which we have a complete list."

"Some people will say that this is settling scores after the fact."

Narasingha's voice traveled far and wide via satellite signal to the ruins of Belfast, to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, and to the trading floor of Wall Street in New York. "But when a country doesn't even dare to acknowledge its own historical debts, what right does it have to talk about civilization and order?"

Thunderous cheers erupted in the square as people chanted in unison, "A blood debt must be repaid!" "Give us back our history!" An elderly man wearing a headscarf held up a faded family photo; the young couple in the picture were dressed in colonial-era attire, with the Lahore Fort, now belonging to Batan, in the background.

In the cabinet meeting room in London, the Chancellor of the Exchequer reached for his coffee cup but found his hand trembling.

The Prime Minister held the compensation list, which had just arrived from India, in his hand; the edges of the paper were already wrinkled from being soaked with sweat.

"Are they insane?" the Home Secretary growled. "Making such a demand now is nothing short of taking advantage of someone's misfortune!"

"Are these slaves going to rebel?"

Indeed, in his mind, India was still a slave state.

The Prime Minister did not speak, but simply stared out the window.

The neon lights of the City of London flickered in the fog, and he suddenly remembered a file in the Oxford University Library. In Lord Mountbatten's private diary in 1947, he wrote: "The divide-and-conquer scheme is like cutting a cake with a cleaver; someone will always cut their finger."

But what was cut off was not just fingers.

The live broadcast ended with a shot of the night sky over New Delhi, where countless Kongming lanterns slowly rose, each bearing a photo of refugees from 1947.

Narasinha stood on the podium, gazing at the lights drifting towards the starry sky, his voice deep and firm:
"We have been waiting for this day for sixty years."

That sounds really nice...

It's basically kicking someone when they're down!

In short: Give me the money!!
The only difference is that the goblins were kneeling back then, but now they're standing and begging.

……

The buzz surrounding the speech in New Delhi had barely died down when London's response was lukewarm.

At a press conference at 10 Downing Street, when pressed for comment, the Prime Minister's spokesperson merely raised an eyebrow: "We are aware of the Indian government's statement, but have no further comment at this stage."

Before he finished speaking, he turned and left, leaving a group of reporters holding recording pens looking at each other in bewilderment.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' phone lines were ringing off the hook. Media outlets from Delhi to New York swarmed in like sharks smelling blood. Operators repeated the same bureaucratic refrain into the receiver: "This matter involves complex historical context and requires careful consideration."

On the afternoon of the third day, a curious reporter from The Sun caught up with the Foreign Ministry official as he came out of a bar.

Slightly tipsy, the official squinted at the flashing lights, mumbled a curse, and blurted out into the microphone held to his mouth: "Compensation? They'd be better off dealing with rapists on the streets of Delhi, instead of jumping to conclusions about everything!"

These words were like a spark falling into a powder keg. Hours later, an anonymous spokesperson for the British Foreign Office, pressed for answers on a radio program, finally lost all composure: "We want money? Sure, but first we'll deal with those beasts who commit crimes on buses, and expose every unsolved rape case to the world."

He paused, then heard the director's urgent warning in his earpiece, and his smile grew even more sarcastic: "Really want compensation? Fine, let them clean up their own mess first. Otherwise, even if we pile up mountains of pounds to burn for heating, we won't give a single penny to those places that can't even guarantee basic human rights."

This recording sparked a tsunami in New Delhi.

Indian television stations zoomed in on the spokesperson's face, repeatedly emphasizing the mocking smile on his lips.

India Gate Square was packed with people again, this time with signs depicting blood-stained handcuffs and burning Union Jacks.

Narasinghe urgently summoned cabinet members to the presidential palace. In the corridor outside the meeting room, a foreign ministry official was yelling into a phone: "This is a diplomatic humiliation! A blatant provocation against a sovereign nation!"

But London didn't even offer a proper apology.

The very next day, a brief news item appeared in a corner of the British newspaper The Guardian, saying that the British Museum planned to hold a special exhibition of colonial art, including 300 artifacts collected from India.

Sky lanterns rose into the New Delhi night sky again, but this time, many of the lanterns, bearing the image of the British spokesperson, had black holes burned into them by angry mobs.

Well... raising sky lanterns is like raising the national flag in some countries; if you raise too many, you might as well hang them up yourself.

In the presidential palace office in Mexico City, a cold wind was blowing. Victor had just finished watching the replay of the speech in New Delhi and then came across the British diplomat's sarcastic response, which made him want to laugh.

“A makeshift operation, practically a makeshift operation broadcast globally.” He pointed to the television screen still showing the scene of Narasimha smashing the podium. “Look at these two, one using a wound from sixty years ago as a bargaining chip, the other using street crime as a shield, neither of them says anything serious.”

Casare chuckled. “Boss, the British certainly lost their composure, but India’s demands are quite bizarre. 37,000 artifacts? They still have Mayan stone carvings piled up in their own museums. The batch of Aztec gold artifacts we tried to reclaim last year is still stuck in customs.”

"This is where the problem lies."

Viktor got up and walked to the French windows, looking at the green, white and red tricolor flag fluttering in the distance in Constitution Square. “Every former colonial country has a messy account, but always wants others to settle their debts first. India wants the British Museum to return its things, we want the Spanish royal family to return the turquoise crowns looted by the conquerors, and African countries are eyeing the Benin bronzes in the Louvre. But who can really break down history and settle it clearly?”

His fingers tapped lightly on the windowsill, a glint in his eyes. "However, the Indians are right; seeking compensation is also a means."

He repeated the word in a low voice, as if weighing its weight, “If the Indians dare to ask the British for something, why can’t we ask the Spanish for something back? The Aztec gold that was transported to Seville Cathedral, the Mayan stone carvings hidden in the Madrid Archaeological Museum, and the manuscripts from the Tenochtitlan Library that were burned in 1521—these alone are invaluable treasures to us.”

Casare looked up from the pile of documents, his brows furrowed deeply.

He opened the drawer and threw a stack of newspaper photocopies onto the table. The headline on the top one was written in bold: "Thirteenth body of Mexican immigrant found outside Madrid."

"Boss, why don't you take a look at this?"

His voice carried a barely perceptible weariness. "Last week at Atocha train station, three Mexican students were surrounded by neo-CCP extremists and had their arms broken. Last month in Barcelona, ​​a Mexican family's restaurant was doused with gasoline; thankfully, the fire department arrived in time. Spanish police either classify these incidents as street fights or say they're investigating, but what's the reality?"

He picked up the top photocopy: "This is the third case in three months. The victims are all Mexican immigrants, and before they died, they were all marked with symbols of the Aztec solar calendar. The Madrid police haven't even caught a decent suspect, and the spokesperson for the Spanish Ministry of the Interior is still saying on television that the immigrant crime rate is high, putting all the blame back on them."

Viktor picked up the newspaper and ran his fingertips along the blurry bloodstains on the photograph.

“A serial murder case?” His eyes narrowed. “Just because they’re Mexican?”

"Our relationship with Spain... is very bad!"

Casare gave a wry smile. "The far-right parties in Spain won five more seats in last month's parliamentary elections. Their campaign slogan was to 'drive out the parasites of the Americas.' If you make claims now, they'll just use it as an excuse to attack us, saying we're trying to blackmail Europe with history. What will happen to the three million Mexican immigrants in Spain then?"

“I know it’s difficult.” He looked at the rolling statue on the ground and suddenly smiled. “But that’s never been my purpose.”

Casare's pupils suddenly contracted.

"Boss, you mean...we should support Catalan independence?"

“Support? No,” Victor chuckled, a sinister glint in his eyes. “Back when the Spanish MI6 advisors were teaching drug dealers how to assemble bombs in the jungles of Chiapas, they used the guise of ‘democracy training.’ We’re just changing the characters in their script.”

"The finance minister of the Catalan regional government will travel to Paris next week in a private capacity to attend an economic forum."

Victor pulled a manila envelope from his drawer and tossed it onto the table. "Inside are documents on three Panamanian companies and an anonymous Swiss bank account. Tell the minister that if the Catalan parliament dares to call for an independence referendum again, this money will become his overseas assets."

He got up, walked to the bookshelf, and took down an old book with a gold-embossed cover, the spine of which read "The New History of the Spanish Conquest".

"Doesn't the Spanish government like to call us 'uncivilized mixed-race'?" He slammed the book shut. "Then let them see how pathetic these so-called civilized people will be when the Catalan flag of independence flies atop the Royal Palace in Madrid."

“As for those immigrants killed in Spain,” Victor tapped his fingers lightly on the table, “send compensation to their families through the Victor Foundation, so that all of Europe can see which country truly cares about its people.”

Casare responded, saying that they could afford the money, unlike the British who were in such a sorry state.

"Only when Europe is in complete chaos will the world truly be at peace. These gentlemen will sit down and start thinking about smoking marijuana, then dealing drugs, and then destroying other countries, making them lie down and quiet down."

……

(End of this chapter)