Chapter 21: The Sailor Squad

Wang Shi'an summoned Li Ya into his office almost every single day.

His eagerness to perform meritorious service was palpable!

Yet Li Ya had never brought him any good news. Although he knew the intelligence battlefront had always been this way, he still could not suppress his disappointment—it was clearly a gold mine, so why on earth did it never yield any gold?

Today, out of habit, he once again had Li Ya come into his office to report on his work.

Seeing Li Ya step into the station chief's office yet again, Lu Qiaoshan could not help but spit out in disdain, "Flunky!"

Vengeance burned in his heart; from now on, every time he saw their mentor, he would file a petty complaint against Li Ya, forcing the mentor to see through the true, despicable nature of this sycophant!

Watching Lu Qiaoshan's petty antics, Gong Shu and the others couldn't help but inwardly shake their heads—these two truly could not stand each other!

Yet when they thought of the mentor's deep trust in Li Ya, they could only sigh secretly. They couldn't figure out what was so remarkable about this kid Li Ya, but why was it that whether it was the mentor, the current Station Chief Wang, or the former Station Chief Chen, everyone favored him so heavily?

Even they themselves had now secretly become Li Ya's subordinates!

Li Ya was well aware that he was currently the center of attention, and truth be told, this feeling was truly exhilarating—so exhilarating that it always made one feel ready to float on air...

"Reporting!"

"Come in!"

Li Ya strode into Wang Shi'an's office. Looking at Wang Shi'an, who was sitting behind the desk with his eyes closed to rest his mind, Li Ya couldn't help thinking:

When will I be the one sitting in that chair?

"Ah, Li Ya, you're here—come, sit down! I have some fine tea here sent over by Deputy Station Chief Gu. Have a taste, the flavor is quite exceptional."

Faced with Wang Shi'an's friendliness, Li Ya expressed his gratitude cautiously, picked up the teacup, took a careful sip, and then showered it with lavish praise.

Even though he knew nothing about tea.

Wang Shi'an could tell that Li Ya didn't know the first thing about tea, but he still played along with a few polite remarks before getting down to business. "Did you make contact yesterday?"

Li Ya set down his teacup, seated himself respectfully, and reported, "Reporting to the station chief, I met with my contact yesterday."

"Tell me how it went!"

Wang Shi'an instantly sat up straight.

"After we met yesterday, he gave me a task."

Wang Shi'an's eyes lit up. "What task?"

Li Ya immediately replied, "He asked me to investigate the real reason why the Shanghai Branch of the Kuomintang Party Affairs Office suddenly mobilized its entire force the other day. I told him the truth about what I've gathered."

"Hmm? The Communists care about this too?" Wang Shi'an was momentarily stunned.

The Party Affairs Office Shanghai Branch had made a sudden, massive move a couple of days ago, only to fizzle out after just two days—according to the intelligence Wang Shi'an had gathered, the Shanghai Branch had abandoned its subsequent investigation after failing once again to extract any operational funds.

Wang Shi'an asked, "Do you have any suspicions?"

Li Ya replied with feigned uncertainty, "Could this matter have been done by the Communists?"

"The Communists?" Wang Shi'an mused thoughtfully, "Hard to say! The crucial thing is to investigate and find out..."

Just as he was speaking, a sudden knock sounded on the door. Seeing this, Li Ya sat up straight, while Wang Shi'an motioned for Li Ya to hide in the inner suite, casually covering Li Ya's teacup and setting it aside.

Only after Li Ya had tip-toed into the inner room did Wang Shi'an call out in a lazy, languid tone, "Come in!"

The person who entered was Gu Shenyan.

Wearing a sleepy, heavy-lidded expression, Wang Shi'an asked, "Deputy Station Chief Gu? Something the matter?"

Gu Shenyan stepped forward quickly with a smile, and across the desk, he said cheerfully, "Station Chief, I've bribed an employee at Global Trade and managed to get my hands on their sales records, and I've tracked down the information regarding the goods purchased by Shanxi!"

"You'll never guess what it is!"

Wang Shi'an perked up immediately, demanding, "What on earth is it? Stop keeping me in suspense!"

"A grenade production line! German-made, rumored to produce two thousand grenades a day! According to the records, converted into fiat currency, this production line is worth at least 120,000! However, because it's second-hand, Global Trade sold it very cheaply—it cost a little under fifty thousand."

A grenade production line?

Wang Shi'an's jaw dropped open in astonishment.

After a long silence, Wang Shi'an blurted out in shock, "It must have been the Communists!"

"Station Chief, that's what I was thinking too—but what I don't understand is, what do the Communists want with this thing? They can't manufacture the explosives inside it themselves; what good is a production line by itself?" Gu Shenyan said, looking puzzled.

"No! This matter must be investigated! We cannot let the Communists get their hands on it! It's only the fifth day; the Communists couldn't have shipped it away yet!"

Wang Shi'an practically jumped to his feet. Previously, he had adopted a mocking spectator's attitude toward the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army, but now that luxury was gone. If this matter eventually leaked to the higher-ups and they decided to assign blame, someone like him with zero backing would undoubtedly be made the scapegoat!

Whether this trouble was big or small depended on perspective, but if an investigation were launched, the station chief's position that he had fought so hard to secure would definitely be gone!

"I'll arrange for men to investigate right away—Station Chief, I have a piece of gossip, though I can't verify it. It came from an insider I planted in the Party Affairs Office. The Party Affairs Office seems to have gathered a lot of information, but because Shanxi cut off their subsequent funding, they've sealed the files!"

Gu Shenyan said cautiously, "I was thinking... could we perhaps get it from the Party Affairs Office..."

Wang Shi'an's eyes lit up. "Old Gu, leave this matter to you! I trust your work. Money is no object, but it must be fast! Understand?"

"Understood!"

Gu Shenyan puffed out his chest to acknowledge the order. Before stepping out of Wang Shi'an's office, his gaze swept across the teacup Li Ya had just used, and a thoughtful expression crossed his eyes as he turned around—did Li Ya and the station chief have some unspeakable business between them?

Why else would there be a need to hide?

(Gu Shenyan was unaware that Li Ya was one of "their own people." As Lu Xun once said: Underground agents meet without recognizing each other.)

After Gu Shenyan left, Li Ya emerged from the inner room.

"You heard it just now, didn't you? It's a grenade production line!" Wang Shi'an said with a solemn expression. "Li Ya, have you heard any related news?"

"No," Li Ya shook his head, but quickly added thoughtfully, "When I met with Chen today, he was in a very high mood. Could it be because of this?"

"Because of this? Doesn't that mean Chen is backed by a vast underground network of the Communists?" Wang Shi'an drooled with covetous greed. If he could wipe out this entire Communist network behind Chen, his position as station chief would be secure beyond doubt!

Who knows, the Shanghai Station might even be upgraded back to the Shanghai District!

Li Ya remained silent, but thought to himself: Since I am this important, the contact who links up with me must certainly have a massive network behind him—it might even be the Jiangsu Provincial Committee!

"Any other news?"

Li Ya said, "Oh, by the way, Station Chief, during yesterday's meeting, I inadvertently caught a glimpse of a hidden receipt Chen had. It was for a remittance of over four thousand US dollars."

"Over four thousand US dollars? That much!"

Wang Shi'an was astonished. Although US dollars weren't as rock-solid as British pounds at the time, they were still one of the primary circulating currencies. Four thousand-plus dollars was by no means a small sum!

"You must look into this, and I'll find a way to investigate it as well! This matter cannot be taken lightly. Over four thousand US dollars, and a receipt at that—this proves the underground Party has a powerful financial backer. No matter what, we must root them out!"

"Yes, sir!"

Li Ya acknowledged the order while silently pondering how to draw out the "Masses" next time.

The story about the remittance receipt was, of course, a fabrication, but the news regarding the "Masses" was real. The sole purpose of inventing the remittance receipt was to pave the way for the next topic of conversation:

The Masses.

If he had simply blurted out to Wang Shi'an that the Communists were backed by a filthy-rich benefactor code-named "Masses," he wouldn't have been able to offer a plausible explanation!

...

The "progress" on Gu Shenyan's end was likewise exceptionally smooth.

Planting moles in each other's ranks had long been standard practice between the Party Affairs Office and the Secret Service. Zhang Anping had planted moles, and he had even made Lu Qiaoshan plant moles—if he could do it, others certainly could too.

When faced with the discovery of an opposing faction's mole, whether it was the Party Affairs Office or the Secret Service, once the spy was uncovered, they would either be fired and thrown out or quietly ignored while waiting for the opportune moment to activate them.

Naturally, there was a third scenario:

A mole planted by the adversary was someone they intentionally allowed to be recruited.

The mole Gu Shenyan had planted in the Party Affairs Office fell squarely into this category.

This mole was deliberately left by the Party Affairs Office for the Secret Service to develop. Once activated by Gu Shenyan, the mole quickly retrieved the sealed files from the archives room.

A thick stack of investigative reports was handed over personally by the director of the archives room, and subsequently passed by the mole to Gu Shenyan.

Look, high-level espionage was simply this... unpretentious.

Gu Shenyan slipped five yuan to the mole.

The mole looked at Gu Shenyan in shock.

Gu Shenyan smiled faintly, "Please thank Section Chief Huang for me."

The mole wanted to play dumb, but Gu Shenyan's shrewd eyes were telling him:

Stop pretending! I knew your identity from the very beginning!

Realizing the game was up, the mole could only slink away awkwardly.

Gu Shenyan shook his head, a sense of puzzlement stirring within him: Why on earth did the Party Affairs Office deliberately suppress this case, only to hand the investigative findings over to me through their own mole?

As the saying goes, when someone offers courtesies for no reason, they either harbor a secret agenda or are up to no good.

For the Party Affairs Office to act this way, they were definitely plotting something—what on earth were they after?

Gu Shenyan's thoughts then drifted back to his own assignment: he needed to fabricate evidence linking Zhang Shihao of the Special Manufacturing Group to the Communists. This filled him with secret anxiety—Zhang Shihao's whereabouts were erratic, and his own grasp of Zhang Shihao's movements was pitifully sparse. Splashing this dirty water wasn't going to be easy!

...

Just as Gu Shenyan was fretting over how to smear Zhang Anping, an intelligence cell directly subordinate to the Jiangsu Provincial Committee received a strange order addressed to its leader, "Water" Duan Yongping.

[Expose a key contact point, but before doing so, stuff these documents into a batch of burning papers.]

The several documents in question bore severe burn marks.

Duan Yongping pulled out a document that was half-burnt and began to read.

It was a remittance statistical sheet. The upper right and lower parts were completely incinerated, and the lower left was also charred, leaving behind only a few monthly remittance figures amounting to several thousand US dollars along with some fragmented text.

Duan Yongping stared at it in curiosity for a long while, until his eyes locked onto a set of characters that made his heart leap with dread:

Masses X!

Cold sweat broke out all over Duan Yongping's body.

Although the second character was invisible, his instincts instantly supplied the word "Masses"!

"Masses"—he was extremely familiar with this code name because he had once served for a full year as a vault custodian whose sole duty was to guard a mysterious monthly remittance.

And the remitter was none other than Masses!

"Is the higher-up deliberately exposing the intelligence on 'Masses'?"

"Why?"

Duan Yongping found it completely baffling, but he knew that his superiors had their own calculations. Suppressing his curiosity, he began to ponder how to use the materials provided by his superiors to compromise a transit point.

After much deliberation, his gaze settled on the name Lin Nansheng.

The materials provided by superiors contained detailed information on Lin Nansheng, ranging from personality analysis to all sorts of personal habits.

After pondering for a long time, Duan Yongping hatched a plan.

...

On this day, Lin Nansheng was walking through the city center to familiarize himself with the surroundings when he suddenly overheard two people whispering. Faint, intermittent voices drifted into his ears:

"Propaganda... printed... tomorrow night... gather at... watch out for secret agents... stay safe..."

As these fragments reached Lin Nansheng's ears, his professional sensitivity instantly filled in the blanks:

Propaganda materials? Printed something? Gathering somewhere tomorrow night? Watch out for secret agents? Stay safe?

Lin Nansheng instantly realized that these two individuals were most likely the Communists the station had been dying to capture!

He immediately and stealthily tailed them.

After an afternoon of tracking, Lin Nansheng discovered a covert printing location. Once night fell, he sneaked in quietly and stole a single page of printed material!

Sure enough, it was crimson propaganda material!

Elated, Lin Nansheng slipped back out and rushed to the station overnight.

He had actually wanted to find Zhang Anping, but contacting Zhang Anping required going through Xu Zhongyi, and by the time Zhang Anping made his arrangements, it might be too late to act by tomorrow night.

Therefore, he ran straight to the Shanghai Station.

Just as Lin Nansheng departed, "Water" Duan Yongping quietly emerged from the shadows.

Bian Rinang stood beside Duan Yongping, looking uneasy as he said, "Old Duan, isn't this taking things a bit too much of a risk?"

"If we can't evacuate in time, many students will definitely be arrested!"

Hearing this, Duan Yongping sighed. Did he not know that?

Yet sometimes, things like this simply had to be done!

"Get ready to mobilize public opinion to rescue the students."

Duan Yongping sighed once more. Gazing off in the direction where Lin Nansheng had disappeared, he muttered inwardly to himself:

That file described you as patriotic and hot-blooded, a conscientious Chinese man. Hopefully, the suffering these students undergo will make you see through the reactionary nature of the Nationalist government.