War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 768
In the town in the hinterland of Goronid Island, Wei Ran and others are still killing time between various celebrations and stalls.Frankly speaking, apart from the fact that there are fewer people, the celebrations in this town are not much different from the annual temple fairs in rural towns in northern China.

All kinds of food, all kinds of fun, and performances organized by various villages on the island.Of course, there are also representatives of World War II veterans who must appear on major festivals, as well as tourists from various villages on the island, and even specially come from Volgograd to join in the fun.

In a small square in the center of the town, a band composed of several old people just started playing, and the surrounding crowd sang the cheerful Cossack national "You, You" together.

At the same time, several young guys and beautiful girls each wearing Soviet military uniforms or Tsarist Russian uniforms danced in groups of two and two to the cheerful singing of the crowd and the accompaniment of the old people. Cossack double sword dance.

Of course, this so-called celebration is basically an extension of the New Year celebration.Unlike the United States, Christmas in Russia is a very religious holiday, and those who really celebrate this festival are also believers with faith.

And most people, especially young people, and those who have dispensable beliefs like Alexis, even if they don’t celebrate this festival, or celebrate Christmas, they just use it as an excuse for drinking and carnival. Fasting and fasting, don't even think about it, there is no way.

After admiring the Cossack double-knife dance, Sui Sui pulled Wei Ran to a booth and played a lottery game for 300 rubles a time.

It's just that, as the colored balls were opened one by one, what the two of them gained the most was just some small commodities from a certain Ukrainian city in Huaxia.

On the contrary, the Katenka sisters won plush toys one after another at the balloon-playing booth next door, which made Lola, who was leading her sister, clap her hands excitedly, and also made the booth owner show a pained and difficult smile. .

After spending the whole day in this lively town, Professor Alexey also took the opportunity to visit the museum in the town.

It's a pity that the museum, which is only two rooms in size, didn't open its doors. If you look in through the glass windows, there are only weapons used by the guerrillas and a few blurred photos.

Not to mention disappointment, everyone spent time in the town until the sun was about to set, so they brought all the things they bought or welcomed, plus four big geese whose mouths were tied up with cloth strips, to the parking lot and drove back. home.

"It seems that Teacher Dalia and the others have arrived." Wei Ran, who was in charge of driving, pointed to the van parked at the door and said.

Before he finished speaking, the door of the room was opened, and Teacher Dalia, who was wearing an apron around his waist, greeted him from a distance.

"Happy New Year, Teacher Dalia." Wei Ran greeted respectfully after opening the car door.

"Happy New Year, Victor." Dalia and Wei Ran hugged gently, "Don't rush to turn off the engine, call Karp, he may need your help."

"What's wrong?" Wei Ran raised his eyebrows.

"We have some gifts at the pier, and we need you to drive them to bring them back. In addition, Gorman and the others are also coming over to pick them up by the way."

Dalia winked at Chaowei indiscriminately, and then warmly hugged Zhou Shujin and others and said hello.

"You go in first, I'll do a favor."

Wei Ran glanced at Teacher Anna who also came out of the room wearing an apron, leaned into Sui Sui's ear and whispered, "Remember to give them the presents we prepared in advance yesterday."

"Yeah!" He nodded vigorously while holding a big goose ear in one hand, "Leave it to me!"

Seeing this, Wei Ran didn't waste any time, and waited for everyone to untie all the things in the car and the various plush toys tied to the roof, and immediately drove to the direction of the pier.

After the woodcut house behind him was completely blocked by the forest, he slowed down, took out his mobile phone and dialed Karp's number.

After a brief communication between the two parties, Wei Ran turned the car around and drove along another road to the abandoned factory he had been to.

After driving the car into the factory and following the conspicuous ruts to the door of the innermost workshop, the first thing Wei Ran saw were three neatly parked Ural 4320 trucks side by side.

These three cars are also interesting. The one on the far left is covered with a thick canvas carport. Through the opened curtains, you can also see the cast iron stove fixed in the center of the cargo box, and the chimney through the tarpaulin top. , Even, there is still a single blue smoke from the chimney.

Although the truck in the middle was also loaded with tarpaulins, what was in the cargo box were auto repair tools including generators and air pumps.

Looking at the third car on the far right, it didn't have a tarpaulin. Instead, it was a block welded by iron pipes, and it was filled with bales of dry yellow fodder next to each other.

What kind of way is this?
Wei Ran muttered to himself, before getting out of the car, according to Karp's instructions on the phone, he carefully put on the mask and baseball cap, and then put on an extra pair of rubber gloves and cowhide gloves for work, and then opened the car door , and walked towards the concealed workshop door.

From a long distance, he saw that in the middle of the workshop, Karp and Apolly, who was supposed to run a tavern in a polar town, were sitting on a hay bale, warming themselves around an oil drum with a bonfire Chatting about racing in French.At the same time, he also saw a row of restless prisoners not far away.

It was indeed fidgeting. One of the prisoners' feet was locked by an iron chain, and the other end of the iron chain was still fixed to the gantry crane on the roof of the workshop.

Because of this, the row of captives, who were more than ten sizes long, had to try their best to lift the leg tied with the chain up like a rubber band, and at the same time put their arms around the shoulders of the people next to them.

But even so, the dozen or so captives still did not forget to swear at a young man who was tied behind his back to the load-bearing column of the gantry crane less than five meters away from them.

The description this time is also correct, it is indeed a swearing, because of needless reasons, even though the content of their swearing is extremely vicious, they dare not make too much noise at all.

"What's the situation?" Wei Ran asked in German, and then took the initiative to greet Apoli, "Mr. Ivan, it's nice to see you here, happy new year."

"Nice to meet you." Apoli and Wei Ran shook hands, "I also wish you a happy new year."

"I remember you speak Italian?"

Karp waited for the two people to say hello and asked in Italian, waited for Wei Ran to nod, and immediately continued to explain in Italian, "It was caught at your house this morning, and they wanted to steal the wreckage of the plane in your garage. "

Before he could say anything, Apoli had already handed over a tablet, "This is the torture record."

"Thank you" Wei Ran took the tablet and browsed it at the fastest speed, and the surprise on his face became more and more intense.

He didn't expect that the clue that he and Professor Alexei hadn't found in the past two days would come to his door on his own initiative.

It's quite a fate, the few strong men not far away, besides running their auto repair shop in Red Army City, go to the farm market in Chacha Town almost every Tuesday Set up a stall to do some second-hand business.

Of course, most of what they sell in their second-hand business are all kinds of stolen goods, and the most common ones are cars, all kinds of cars.

When he saw the place name of Chacha Town, Wei Ran subconsciously glanced at the tattoo on the tiger's mouth. He thought that the metal notebook was bought by Professor Alexei at the farm market in Chacha Town. Gift.

It can be said that after that, Wei Ran, whose career took off, never went to the farm market in Chacha Town again.After feeling a lot of emotion, he continued to look back, and soon found the reason why they were staring at this place in the confession.

To put it simply, these people bought a valuable GAZ 22 travel truck from a gypsy thief at a low price last summer, and when refurbishing that car, they took it out of the trunk. Found a few old photos.

According to the description in the confession, they took a lot of effort to determine the location of the shooting through those photos, and successfully found the tail wreckage that was once photographed in the photos.Of course, the gypsies who were captured before were indeed the ones they arranged.

The wreckage of the tail was the first target of these people. They even sold the wreckage of the tail to a collector at a farm fair nearly a month ago for 24 rubles. Home, even their agreed delivery time is now less than a week left.

Seeing this in the confession, there are also two more photos on the screen of the tablet that were obviously reproduced with a mobile phone.

In the first photo, a light blue GAZ 22 big-ass station wagon is parked next to the tombstone made out of the wreckage of the plane. Full of all kinds of food.

And at the front of the station wagon, there were two young men, a man and a woman, sitting on the hood hugging each other, and the moment of kissing was frozen on the photo paper.

In the second photo, it turned out to be a formula car that looks very old!Although the remake photos are not very clear, it can still be seen that under the chassis of the racing car, there is still a person standing in the repair ditch busy with something.

Not only that, but on the wall shelf next to the formula car, there are several objects that look like trophies!

Although the wall in the photo is very different from the garage of the holiday farm, Wei Ran recognized the garage at a glance.Not only that, but he also vaguely saw two wings fixed on the wall and the wreckage of the plane hanging from the roof in the photo.

Before Wei Ran could scroll down, Karp next to him said in Italian, "Gorman and Kajik have gone to the Red Army City on the south bank to find their garage, and they took these two photos back."

Hearing this, Wei Ran took a sympathetic look at the captives in the distance, even he himself saw Karp and others gathered together for the first time, these people actually chose this time to touch them, and listened to their mother-in-law The amount of cursing, it seems that the young man who seems to be underage released false news to them.

"That little guy is a gypsy"

Karp introduced with a smile on the side, "Don't look at him as an underage, he is actually married and his child is about to be born. Victor, there are so many beautiful girls around you, you should get married quickly. Just a child."

Is KGB also popular in urging marriage and urging children?

Wei Ran grinned foolishly, he didn't dare to answer this question, while continuing to browse through the confession that he hadn't finished reading, he asked casually, "How could he have a child at such a young age?"

"Many Gypsies get married at the age of [-] or [-] or even earlier," Apoli next to him explained with a smile, "The worse the life, the lower the level of knowledge, the earlier they get married."

"It's not just gypsies, many of them are like this," Wei Ran almost murmured in response, obviously focusing all his attention on the confession.

Seeing this, Karp and Apolly just smiled, took out their cigarettes and lit them, sat back on the hay bale next to the campfire and waited patiently.

Through the subsequent confession, Wei Ran also learned that the main goal of these people was to find the racing car in the photo.Because they firmly believe that it is likely to be the car of a famous Soviet-era racing driver.In other words, that undiscovered car could be worth a fortune.

Continuing to flip back, Wei Ran couldn't help shaking his head, these people can only be considered unlucky to fall into the hands of Karp and others, although I don't know how they survived this most of the day, but the content of this confession is Exceptionally complete.

Not only did they instruct the gypsies to dig the graves, but they even included a few years ago when they accidentally detonated the shells in the wreckage of the tank when they were repairing the tanks of the Wu Kelan gang, and the group was destroyed by accident. The ins and outs of smuggling to Russia to avoid disaster because of the failure of a small earth-digging party team and having to tearfully lick the belongings of that small team.

After he finished reading the full-textured confession, the sound of a car horn came from outside the workshop.

Glancing at each other with Karp, the three walked out of the workshop, and then saw an 8-wheel KAMAZ parked steadily at the door.On the flatbed trailer of this truck, there is also a car covered with car clothes parked.

At this moment, Wei Ran's cheap mentor, Kajik, had already pushed open the door of the truck's passenger cab, and nimbly climbed onto the flat bed by the car basket. After tearing off the silver tarpaulin jacket, a milk truck was revealed A white GAZ 22 station wagon.Gorman, on the other hand, controlled the flatbed trailer to slowly move backwards to fit the ground to form a slope while the car was on the ground.

He just finished the operation here, Kajik also untied the sling that fixed the car, pulled the door and opened it.

"Although those people are bastards, their craftsmanship in refurbishing the car is really good." Kajik patted the steering wheel while speaking, "The car was repaired by them as if it was new, and the current color is better than the one in the photo too much."

"At the same time, it also destroyed all possible clues." While speaking, Gorman handed the two photos to Wei Ran, "Happy New Year, this is a New Year's gift from me."

"Thank you, and I wish you a happy new year too." Wei Ran took the photo he had just seen in his statement, dumbfounded.

"Did you find anything else?" Karp asked with a smile.

"A warehouse was also found. According to the guards inside, the warehouse is full of all kinds of stolen goods stolen by the gypsies, mainly old-fashioned cars, but there are also other things. There are hundreds of laptops alone. .”

While talking, Gorman pulled out a photo for everyone to see.

"With this kind of craftsmanship, why do you need to steal it?" Apolly muttered, while opening the hood of the station wagon.

"Business without capital is addictive"

Kajik put his hand on Wei Ran's shoulder while speaking, "Victor, my good student, have you found anything?"

"How can it be so fast?" Wei Ran raised his finger and pointed to the car the other party just drove off, "Are you planning to confiscate the stolen goods?"

Gorman spread his hands, "You can't let us poor old guys who don't even have pensions work for nothing, right?"

"You are pitiful?" Wei Ran curled his lips secretly, at this moment those who are still dancing Malan Blossom 21 with iron chains in the workshop are considered to be unlucky.

"If you have anything else you want to ask, you can go inside and ask now."

Karp put his hand on Wei Ran's shoulder from the other side, "If you have nothing to ask, let the police take over the matter later."

"Really?" Wei Ran raised his finger and pointed to the station wagon next to him, "I want to know where this car was stolen from."

"Already asked"

Gorman lit a cigarette, leaned his back against the door of the station wagon, and puffed in response, "The gypsies stole it, but they don't know where it was stolen from, and they don't care at all.

In addition, the gypsy boy said that the person who stole the car was sent back to Romania before winter. "

"Stop wasting time on this thread"

Karp patted the roof of the station wagon, and said bluntly, "This car is a very good New Year gift, so we are going to give it to Mr. Nicholas later."

"It's really a very good New Year's gift." Wei Ran nodded in agreement, and at the same time couldn't help muttering secretly in his heart, "It's really a perfect clue."

After a little hesitation, Wei Ran pointed to the workshop, "Where did that gypsy boy come from? I clearly remember that the police had taken away all the gypsies a few days ago."

"Just ask yourself." Karp waved his hand. "I'll give you 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, I'll call the police."

Hearing this, Wei Ran immediately ran into the workshop to solve this last question.

In this regard, the young man did not hide anything.It turned out that on the day when Wei Ran called the police and took the police to catch those gypsies, the young man happened to ride a motorcycle to the largest town on the island to buy New Year's gifts for his little wife.When he came back, he happened to see the police leaving the abandoned factory with the trucks carrying his family.

It was also such a erratic coincidence that allowed him to escape being imprisoned.Wei Ran was really unable to comment on this, and in the end he could only say that there is something pitiful about a hateful person, and got up and walked out of this gloomy workshop.

However, after a few words, only the 8-wheel KAMAZ that was originally used to carry the station wagon and the truck full of hay bales were left at the door of the workshop. Burning business van.

As for the station wagon that was still there just now, the other two Ural trucks, Karp and others, they had already disappeared.

You are unlucky, let the gypsy use a crystal ball to give you a fortune before going out in the future
Wei Ran muttered something like a madman, got into the coming car, turned around and left the abandoned factory, joined Karp and others who were waiting by the roadside at the factory gate, and drove to A A holiday farm bought by Professor Alexey.

Almost at the same time as they drove the car into the farm, the police officers who were on vacation and carnival on the island also rushed into the abandoned factory for the second time cursing.

It's just that after seeing those people tied up so tightly, the policemen were not in a hurry, and even pulled out the forage bales that were originally used to cover up the stolen items from the truck bed at the door in twos and threes. Around the unextinguished campfire.

Immediately afterwards, a police car also drove into the workshop, opened the four doors directly, and played music from the car's own speakers.

This is not over yet, these policemen, who are originally locals, even separated a few people to buy food and drink as quickly as possible, and they just guarded the criminals who were about to cry without tears. Molecules and warm bonfires, along with the music, started an interrupted carnival!
In Red Army City at the same time, there were also two groups of police officers who surrounded a garage at the southern edge of the city at the same time, and a remote garage near the Volga River, which was located on the northernmost side of the Red Army City and was almost north and south of the garage. storehouse.

In contrast, they were not so relaxed. Among other things, the suspects who fled in all directions like frightened sparrows, and the dizzying amount of stolen goods made them very excited. .

However, no matter what the results of the police were, when Wei Ran rushed back to the holiday farm with the truck driven by Karp and others, the four big geese had already been sent to the oven, and even the center of the ceiling of the hall on the first floor was still alive. A laser light ball that is constantly shining with various colors is hung.

I glanced at Sui Sui, Teacher Daria and others who were dancing to the music under the light ball, and Anna who was playing with the accordion, and Mr. Nicholas who was singing with a microphone. Sister Katenka who taught Cossack dance.

Wei Ran, Karp and the others behind them looked at each other, each took off their heavy down jackets, pushed away the happy dog ​​who came up to him, took a glass of champagne at the table and drank it all, and joined the New Year's carnival .

(End of this chapter)