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NOTE: This is not an authorised translation, nor a particularly good one. I’ve written some notes at the end of the chapter about the struggles of the translation process.

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Have you ever heard of the ‘Bureau of Xeno-Intelligence Affairs’?

It’s no ordinary agency, which seems obvious when you consider that it was a joint venture of the navy, army and air force, yet, arriving at the entrance of this mysterious place, I couldn’t help but laugh. A government office with such a large reach, and it turned out to be just a really old, moss-covered stone house, which, by the looks of it, wasn’t even occupied. And, because of all the junk piled up at the side, you couldn’t really say it had windows either, more like two, small circular holes.

The only piece that seemed to stand out in a good way was a bronze signboard, which read: ‘Headquarters of the Municipal Authority of the Navy, Army, and Air Force.’

But that was diluted slightly by the fact that the signboard had become completely overrun by green decay…or patina as my mum called it.

Of course, I already knew in advance that this so-called Bureau of Xeno-Intelligence Affairs wasn’t a bustling government office, but I couldn’t have imagined that it would be this deserted.

Now, I should say, the reason I knew about this oddly-named agency was down to the matter with my old friend, Bato, in Hawaii.

Bato is a very interesting person, and I must introduce him, at least some of the basics. He’s around forty-four years old…yes, I say around as Bato himself doesn’t know his exact age due to his upbringing as an orphan. Discovered by a Belgian missionary in the Eastern grasslands of Inner Mongolia, he was scooped up and taken back to Beijing. In those days, things were quite chaotic in that region, yet, somehow, Bato had survived without injury, and, despite being only two years old at the time, was able to ride on a pony out of there without crying. The Belgian missionary knew just one word in Mongolian, Bato, which translated as hero, so that was the name he decided to give to this rescued child.

After that, the missionary returned home to Belgium, taking the young Bato with him. From that moment on, the boy’s life became extraordinary; he attended a seminary, travelled to the Congo [which, at that time, was under the iron rule of the Belgians], and decided to join the rebel army in support of their cause, spending over a year in the darkness of a jungle that even the natives were afraid of.

Later, when the Second World War broke out, he went straight into the Belgian and Dutch underground, becoming one of the French Resistance’s most important contacts. From there, he signed up to the regular army, got dumped in a concentration camp, led an incredible escape and, in the latter part of the war, despite his relatively young age, became perhaps the most outstanding of all the intelligence agents in service to the allies.