In the empty library, Wei Ran waited for Suisui to finish the translation, and finally showed a look of surprise that he had endured for a long time, and then said, "Quickly ask, what is going on?"
Without even waiting for Suisui to translate, lawyer Carlos took the initiative to explain, "This matter specifically dates back to World War II. My client was a child who participated in the Siegfried Line reconstruction project."
"Wait a moment"
After Suisui helped translate this sentence, she asked Wei Ran in confusion, "I shouldn't have translated it wrong, but how could it be a child?" "It's normal. There was no one in Germany who could use it at that time."
Wei Ran took a sip of the coffee brought by Lola and explained, "The Siegfried Line corresponds to the Maginot Line. Before 1944, because the Maginot Line became a joke, the Germans built this line
The Siegfried Line has also become dispensable.”
This time, before Suisui could speak, Anfisa took the initiative to act as the translator and helped translate Wei Ran's explanation to lawyer Carlos, and Suisui naturally became the audience with Sui Xin and Lola.
In contrast, Korava, who was shopping in the library on a children's tricycle, and Beria, the dog following her, were not affected at all.
Waiting patiently for Anfisa to finish translating, Wei Ran continued, "But after 1944, the situation began to become a little different. As the Allies opened up new battlefields, the position of the Siegfried Line became increasingly
important.
So in August 1944, Mustache issued an order to transform this defense line. However, due to the shortage of manpower, the people who were eventually sent here were some children aged sixteen, seventeen or even younger, and those near the Siegfried Line.
Old people and even women in villages and towns.
However, the main job of these people was to dig anti-tank trenches, so they were considered competent. However, as the war progressed, this line of defense eventually lost its effectiveness under the bombing of the Allied forces, especially the Shalome.
"
After listening to Anfisa's translation, Carlos nodded, "The situation is basically the same as what my client said. He was a child sent by the German Labor Organization to dig anti-tank trenches on the Siegfried Line.
At that time, his uncle was also sent to the Siegfried Line. But at home behind them, he also had his parents, a younger brother, and his uncle's daughter."
Carlos paused and waited patiently for Anfisa to finish translating before continuing, "In February of 1945, he and his uncle, like other soldiers who had run out of ammunition and food, chose to leave the Hürtgen Forest to go to the United States.
People surrender."
"Hürtgen Forest?"
Wei Ran's heart trembled, and he waited calmly for Anfisa to finish translating, and then asked, "
Mr. Carlos, your client said that he and his uncle surrendered after walking out of the Hürtgen Forest?"
"That's true. What's wrong?" Carlos asked in confusion after listening to the translation.
"Nothing, please continue talking." After Wei Ran finished speaking, he picked up the coffee and took a sip.
The Hürtgen Forest is an absolute nightmare for American soldiers. The client Carlos talked about was able to survive until the end. It was really lucky.
"Anyway, my client and his uncle were both sent to the Rhine Camp after they surrendered." Carlos spread his hands, "Unfortunately, they were not in the same camp."
"So your client is looking for his uncle?" Suisui asked subconsciously in English.
"of course not"
Carlos shook his head, "According to my client's self-report, he lived in the Rhine Camp for about four months before being released, but from then until today, he has never seen him again.
His uncle. As for the person he is looking for, it is actually his younger brother and his uncle’s daughter.”
Still leaving enough time for Anfisa to translate, Carlos continued, "According to my client's statement, after he walked out of the Rhine Camp alive, he immediately rushed to his home, but his home had long since changed.
became ruins.
According to the information he asked at the time, his parents, he
His brother and his uncle’s daughter were taken away by American soldiers.”
"Mr. Carlos"
Wei Ran waited for Anfisa to finish translating and asked, "Did your client mention where his home was at that time and what his parents' occupations were?"
"mentioned"
Carlos nodded, also took a sip of coffee, and then replied, "My client said that at that time, his home was in the Ruhr Industrial Area. His father was a mechanical engineer and his mother was a cashier in the factory.
.”
Seeing that Wei Ran was deep in thought after listening to the translation, Carlos paused and continued, "My client suspected that his family had been taken to the United States at that time, so around 1950, he tried to find a way to smuggle there.
came to the United States and obtained American citizenship.
But it is a pity that until today, although he has never given up looking for his family, there has been no news."
"What about the will?" Suisui asked helpfully.
"He is over ninety years old and has never had a family." Carlos explained, "Now he has lost the ability to take care of himself, so he hopes to find his brother or his cousin before he dies. If
If they are gone, it’s okay to find their descendants to inherit his legacy.”
As if the temptation was not strong enough, Carlos explained with a smile, "His inheritance includes a gold mine stake in Alaska, a farm of more than 500 acres in Ontario, Massachusetts, and a 20-acre farm in Hawaii.
Acre-sized plantation.
In addition to these real estate properties, he also has tens of millions of dollars in deposits in his account, as well as equity and bonds of almost the same value."
Still leaving enough time for Anfisa to translate, Carlos continued when Wei Ran didn't speak, "According to the terms set by my client, before he dies, if anyone can find his brother
Or any descendant of the cousin can get a bounty of at least 2.7 million U.S. dollars, and that is 2.7 million U.S. dollars after paying taxes.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! If you can find the descendants of his brother and his sister, not only can you get an after-tax bounty of 6 million U.S. dollars, but you can also win by throwing dice.
Randomly get a farm in Ontario or a plantation in Hawaii."
"This is a lot of money," Suisui exclaimed first. "It is indeed a lot of money."
Wei Ran also sighed after waiting for Anfisa to finish translating. If he could find them all, the reward would be worth at least 6 million US dollars... This temptation is really too great.
"If no heir is found before he dies, all of his wealth will be donated to black people with criminal records in the United States." Carlos added with a strange expression, "Five thousand dollars each, until all donations are made.
"
"Is this revenge?"
Suisui first guessed that everyone is not stupid, even black people, and they specifically ask black people with criminal records. This is clearly to deceive black people in the United States to commit crimes in order to receive 5,000 US dollars!
"In fact, it is indeed revenge against the United States." Carlos spread his hands, "Of course, in name it is to eliminate racial discrimination."
"I'm more curious, how did your client get his current net worth?" Wei Ran asked after Anfisa finished translating.
"According to him, his first pot of gold was a lottery ticket he picked up at the door of a store on Christmas Day, the fifteenth year after he immigrated to the United States."
Carlos said with envy, "The lottery ticket he picked up bought him an after-tax bonus of US$270,000 in 1965, and it also allowed him to finally get rid of his job as a bartender in a bar."
"You're so lucky," Suisui couldn't help but sigh.
"He's really lucky"
Carlos said with emotion, "After receiving the money, he immediately changed cities and continued to work while looking for his family. During the period from 1965 to 1970, he also spent 100,000
US dollars, invested in a German-American who was going to Alaska to mine gold.
I believe you all know that I don’t need to tell you that he won the bet again. Although the gold mine was not big, it made him rich easily.
The amount increased dozens of times. Since then, he has been doing gold mining investment business."
Wei Ran thought for a while while Anfisa was translating, and then asked another irrelevant question, "You just said that he didn't start a family?"
"Yes"
Carlos spread his hands and looked at the curious girls around him with a strange expression. Finally, he subconsciously lowered his voice slightly and explained with an embarrassment, "Fate is fair. Although he has so much wealth,
He does not appear to be fertile."
"What does it mean to be infertile?"
Facing the translated question from Anfisa, who looked normal, the white-haired Carlos scratched his sparse white hair in distress, and explained with a slight embarrassment, "I once heard his personal doctor say that he seemed.
..It seems there are no balls.”
"puff--!"
Before Carlos finished speaking, Suisui spit out the coffee in her mouth, and even Wei Ran, who had been pretending not to understand English, almost spilled the beans.
After Anfisa finished translating with a calm expression, Wei Ran finally grinned, "Can I continue to ask?"
"I don't know the reason either."
Carlos once again seemed to have guessed what Wei Ran wanted to ask, so he spread his hands before Anfisa could speak, "The missing egg has nothing to do with the bounty of at least 2.7 million US dollars, what about Victor? If you have
If you're interested, try it. It's best to get ready and go with me as soon as possible. This client of mine may die soon."
"Where to go?" Wei Ran gestured to Anfisa and asked the last question.
"Honolulu, Hawaii"
Carlos replied simply, "He has been recuperating there for a long time. If you have more time, we can take his private plane and meet him at any time."
"And a private plane?" Suisui's eyes widened.
"As I said, this client of mine is a real rich man." After Carlos finished speaking, he picked up the coffee cup and waited patiently for Anfisa to finish translating. Then he put down the cup and asked, "Victor, what do you want?
Want to try it?」
"I have no reason to refuse"
After Wei Ran finished speaking, he looked at Suisui who was eager to try. After thinking for a moment, he asked in a half-joking tone, "Mr. Carlos, do you mind if I bring my assistants?"
"sure"
After listening to Anfisa's translation, Carlos nodded very happily, and even raised his finger to point to Beria, the dog who was wandering around in the library with Colava not far away, and said very seriously, "
Even if you want to bring your pet, it doesn't matter."
"Is it really okay?" Suisui asked happily.
"Of course." Carlos nodded seriously, "That private plane is big enough to seat everyone and your pets."
"What an enviable rich man..." Suisui muttered enviously, and then looked at Wei Ran.
"So which one of you wants to follow?" Wei Ran asked with a smile.
"Me! Me me me!"
Suisui was the first to say, and at the same time she did not forget to send out invitations to the girls around her, "Kamei will definitely follow. Sui Xin, Lola, do you want to go to Hawaii together?"
Hearing this, Sui Xin and Lola's faces showed excited expressions for a moment, but soon, the two bun-faced girls shook their heads in no particular order and refused in unison, "I won't go.
Gotta stay."
"Are you really not going?" Suisui asked reluctantly.
"I really won't go"
Sui Xin smiled and said, "The library will be open the day after tomorrow. I'm also curious whether anyone will buy those photo albums you bought that are so expensive."
"Korava is going to undergo rehabilitation training tomorrow, and I'm going to accompany her." Lola gave a simpler reason.
Seeing that one of the two girls was busy with career and the other was busy with life, Suisui didn't force it. However, although she couldn't bring these two little cheeks with her on this trip to Hawaii, she decided to take her three family pets out to meet them.
See the world.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Not only that, Sui Xin’s words just now also reminded me
She didn't wait for a definite reply to Carlos, so she personally fetched the largest photo album, then fetched the feather seal from Sui Xin's hand, stamped it, and gave it to Carlos as a gift.
lawyer.
"This is truly a special and precious gift."
Carlos opened the photo album with a surprised look on his face, and then found in this exquisitely crafted photo album the photos that Wei Ran had taken on the battlefield to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea, and also found photos of his father when he was young.
With the help of these photos, the signed pullover brought by Carlos, and Anfisa's translation, Wei Ran and the other party once again talked about the POW Olympics more than half a century ago.
.
At the same time, Suisui had already taken Anfiya and couldn't wait to run to the house next door and started packing for the trip to Hawaii.
At noon on April Fool's Day, lawyer Carlos stayed for a sumptuous lunch at the warm invitation of Wei Ran and Suisui. In the afternoon of the same day, he took Wei Ran, Suisui and Kajian with him.
The card sisters and three pets boarded a private business jet parked at Kazan Airport.
Compared with the fatigue caused by the long flight, Suisui, who took a private plane for the first time, set a new goal for herself when the plane was about to land.
"What did you just say?" Wei Ran, who was originally sleepy, suddenly woke up and turned to look at Suisui sitting next to him.
Seeing this, Suisui leaned into Wei Ran's ear again and said firmly, "I told you, I will also buy a private jet in the future!"
"Why did you buy such a loser?"
Wei Ran asked dumbfounded. No wonder during the first half of the flight, this girl had been asking Carlos about the selling price and maintenance costs of the private jet. She was so greedy.
"I'm not interested in such luxury goods."
A contradictory sentence came out of Suisui's mouth, and then she explained happily, "If you want to buy one, you have to buy a transport plane like Dmitri's that can pull people and cargo."
"Then what?" Wei Ran asked happily, thinking that he was accompanying the other person to have sweet dreams.
"Of course I will open a few routes of my own!"
Suisui clasped her fingers and said longingly, "Look, we take off from the Capital Airport of China, and the first route is direct to the town of Tula and Tuluhansk.
The second direct flight is to Inta. Anyway, we have our own airport in Inta. I have asked Alili a long time ago. He said that our airport can take off and land IL-76 transport aircraft. Isn’t that great!
There is also a third route. The third route is to fly to Maya's home. When it is not busy, you can also use that plane to transport and sell the local specialties of Inta and Hasa to China! Hum!
Humph! Then I will..."
"Stop"
When the plane started to taxi, Wei Ran finally interrupted the other party's sweet dream, suppressing a smile and asked, "Do you know what this is equivalent to?"
"What is equivalent to what?" Suisui, who was still dreaming, asked in confusion.
"You are like a strong man taking off a beautiful girl's newly bought hellokitty underwear on the street." Wei Ran showed a smirk on his lips, "and then took out the monkey rubber band from the underwear to make a slingshot."
"I'm done beating your glass!"
Suisui, who answered the second half of the line, rolled her eyes, and then she couldn't help but laugh. However, the girl's big crescent-shaped eyes were extremely serious and eager this time.
After a moment of waiting, the private jet finally stopped at the Honolulu Airport. When the cabin door opened, lawyer Carlos stood up unhurriedly, greeted Wei Ran and others and walked out of the cabin.
Under the leadership of the other party, they went through the immigration procedures step by step for themselves and their three pets. When they walked out of the airport, there was already a commercial vehicle waiting for them.
"Get in the car"
Carlos was the first to get in as he spoke, and at the same time he did not forget to ask, "Victor, should we go see my client first, or stay here and rest first?"
"Let's go meet first," Wei Ran said politely after Anfisa finished translating.
Upon hearing this, lawyer Carlos immediately said to the driver, "Go see Mr. Dominic first."
"OK"
The middle-aged driver in charge of driving responded calmly, then slowly stepped on the accelerator and drove the car smoothly.
After waiting for almost forty minutes while chatting about this customer, the commercial vehicle drove into a medical center with a very nice environment.
It was during this chat that Wei Ran learned that Carlos had been Mr. Dominic's personal lawyer very early on. Then he realized belatedly that Carlos, the lawyer, could actually speak German.
comminicate.
There is no doubt that this makes the communication between Wei Ran and Carlos, who nominally do not speak English, much easier.
However, what he didn't expect was that when Carlos took him upstairs and outside a ward, he found that the old man whom Carlos' lawyer called "Mr. Dominic" was sitting
Sitting on a wheelchair that looked like "Mr. Hawking's only", he silently looked at the coastline outside the floor-to-ceiling window of the ward.
He casually glanced at the urine bag and feces bag hanging on the wheelchair, and then glanced at the oxygen bottle fixed behind the wheelchair and the oxygen tube fixed at the old man's nostrils. Wei Ran sighed secretly, regardless of what was in front of him.
What has this old man experienced or how much wealth he has already possessed, but he still cannot resist the erosion of time.
But the long years have brought them far more than their increasingly inflexible bodies. Compared with these inconveniences, certain memories and regrets that still linger patiently in them are often more tormenting.
Inexplicably, Wei Ran remembered the old woman Valentina who had been waiting for her tank driver husband all her life, whom she had visited with Teacher Dalia, and the woman who spent most of her life looking for her father's bones after the war.
Mr. Noah, and the lives that were forever frozen in the blizzard cabin where his father was buried.
Of course, there is also Zhou Guochang who never gave up looking for his family after the war and successfully found his family.
For these people, innocence is not the criterion for judging them. But for them, the war, the pain of being separated from their families, and the long and aimless search are all the same.
So what about the old man in front of me? What has he experienced?
Just as Wei Ran stared blankly at the old man's back, lawyer Carlos, who was already in his sixties, cleared his throat and reminded him softly in proficient German, "Mr. Dominic, I will help you if I can."
Your person has been brought here, and he can communicate directly with you in German
After half a minute, the old man in the wheelchair slowly turned the seemingly high-end electric wheelchair in a circle.
Nian's scratched face was pointed at Wei Ran.
"Is it him?" The old man couldn't hide his disappointment in his old and frail tone.
"it's him"
While Carlos was speaking, he had already taken out the photo album Suisui had given him before departure, pointed to the black and white photos inside and said, "Look, this is my father, this is my father's friend in China. I didn't ask him for anything.
I just gave him a cap badge, but he helped me find my father’s friends in China.”
After a pause, Carlos flipped through the photo album and said, "The people in these photo albums were excavated from history by this young man. Mr. Dominic, I believe he will be able to help you find your family members who may be alive."
"how long?"
The old man raised his head, looked at Wei Ran and asked. His old and weak tone was filled with numbness, expectation, dispensable perfunctory, and a hint of condescension unique to the German Junker aristocracy in the old days. "What if?"
If you are willing to give me some trust and answer some questions for me"
Wei Ran paused deliberately when he said this, raised his voice slightly, and said with great confidence, "At least I won't let you leave too many regrets in this world."
"Since you are so confident, just stay and chat with me."
Dominic took a breath and then continued,
"But I only have ten minutes."
"That's enough." As Wei Ran spoke, he looked at lawyer Carlos who was standing aside. The latter smiled, turned around and walked out of the high-end ward, and helped close the door.
