Luring the enemy deep into the territory
Sunlight streamed in through the east gate, cut into long strips by the iron gate. What was originally a warm, sunny day was now completely devoid of heat inside the prison; only an indescribable chill crept in through the gaps in the cuffs.
Feeling rather uncomfortable, Gao Junxiao switched to carrying a cloth bag and breathed warm air into his palm. The guests in the "VIP room" had taken a nap and it was time to pay their room bills.
The interrogation room was no longer filled with the usual stench of blood, but instead with the aroma of food. Huang Xiaoxian lined up the lunchboxes in his cloth bag, opened the first one, picked up a shrimp dumpling and commented: "They're big and plump, white with a hint of pink, and you can vaguely see the shrimp inside. This skill is comparable to that of the big teahouses in Guangzhou."
"The master chef from Guangzhou was hired to work in Shanghai, and the shrimp were just caught from the East China Sea this morning, freshly killed and peeled." Gao Junxiao thoughtfully poured a small dish of vinegar.
"Hehehe, you've gone to so much trouble." Huang Xiaoxian grinned from ear to ear. "While the taste of home is good, it would be even better if there were some local specialties, like xiaolongbao..."
Before he finished speaking, Gao Junxiao had already opened the third lunchbox, and a plume of white steam rose up: "The most authentic xiaolongbao are always in the small shops at the alley entrance. Eat them while they're hot, fresh out of the oven."
Huang Xiaoxian took two deep breaths from the lunchbox, then picked up a xiaolongbao from the steam, sipped the soup, and commented with a look of fascination: "The soup in the xiaolongbao has a sweet chicken broth flavor, and paired with this Zhenjiang vinegar, it's a perfect match—fresh but not greasy. I could easily eat two in one bite."
"He's a true connoisseur, he knows his stuff. He uses chicken broth jelly to make his xiaolongbao, so it has less of the gamey smell of pork compared to other places, and the taste is much fresher," Gao Junxiao praised.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but Gao Junxiao poured hot water into the cup first: "Autumn is a time when people are prone to getting a sore throat, so drink chrysanthemum pu-erh tea. If that's not enough, we also have egg tarts and herbal jelly."
"Boss, you're amazing! I really like you." Huang Xiaoxian leaned closer with a knowing look on her face.
Gao Junxiao covered the back of his head and gave him a squeeze: "Don't get your oil on me."
The two men were exchanging barbs, making the "VIPs" on the other side swallow hard. One of them couldn't help but say, "Counselor Gao, we are all serving the Party and the country. It's one thing for you to lock us up, but why don't you even give us food?"
“Yeah, why should I buy it for you? We’re not even close.” Gao Junxiao squinted and glanced over. “My brother is from Guangdong. What’s wrong with treating him to morning tea? Don’t make a fuss.”
“Don’t be unreasonable! We’re here as guests, how can we make demands of the host?” another “distinguished guest” reprimanded sternly.
The person complaining glanced at their colleague beside them and dared not speak further.
An uninvited guest is still a guest. It seems that the one who spoke sweet words yesterday was a CC officer. Gao Junxiao asked bluntly, "You are of a higher rank than him, right? What is your name?"
"My surname is Xue, and my given name is Ying. I am the Director-General of the CC Investigation Division and the Administrative Secretary to Section Chief Zhang," Xue Ying replied in detail.
"Oh, Zhang Chong's secretary. What do you want?" Gao Junxiao immediately understood.
"Counselor Gao, please don't take it personally. We don't really have any requests, just a little food would be fine. We haven't had a drop of water since last night, we're starving." Xue Ying pleaded pitifully.
"Haha, I'm a very easy person to talk to. Since you've put it that way, I can't very well not give it to you." Gao Junxiao smiled and handed over a cloth bag. In the same lunchbox, two plump pieces of fried dough sticks lay on the white porridge, like two small boats swimming on the water.
Xue Ying swallowed hard, but then recoiled as if she'd been electrocuted: "Counselor Gao, this is too hot. Do you have a spoon?"
"Spoon? Look at my memory, Huang Xiaoxian, where did I put my spoon?" Gao Junxiao asked in a loud voice.
Huang Xiaoxian swallowed the xiaolongbao and immediately replied, "Nonsense, I just arrived last night. I was asking your adjutant."
“You’re busy every day, it’s making me dizzy. My Xiao Xian seems to have gone to interrogate Li Sheng, he won’t be back for a while. How about I put it away for you first, and I’ll find you a spoon when he comes back?” Gao Junxiao walked over with a smile, making a move to take the lunchbox away.
Xue Ying excitedly pressed Gao Junxiao's hand: "Hey, no, no, Councilor Gao, we are just following orders. If you need us to provide clues, we will definitely tell you."
Gao Junxiao slapped his forehead and smiled as he handed the lunchbox back to him: "Oh, I think I remembered I had a spare spoon. I'm so sorry I didn't prepare anything before your sudden visit."
Glancing at the hot porridge, Xue Ying said, "Counselor Gao, we have received solid information. The action team found that when Li Sheng returned to his hometown to visit relatives, there was a gap in his schedule. His mother stayed on the mountain for at least five days, enough time for him to send high-ranking Kuomintang officials back to the Soviet area."
"What kind of evidence is this? At most, you can only prove that Li Sheng was absent for five days. Couldn't he have just rested in the hotel, had some tea and read the newspaper? Why did he have to go through all this trouble, sending some damn high-ranking Communist Party official around?" Gao Junxia said disdainfully.
"Because we suspect that the person Li Sheng drove away with wasn't his mother, but that high-ranking CCP official." Xue Ying's expression was extremely serious.
“You’re contradicting yourself. One minute you say his mother stayed on the mountain for five days, the next you say she didn’t go. What, does the old lady of the Li family have some kind of supernatural ability, that she can just fly from Shanghai to a nunnery in a flash?” Gao Junxiao said half-jokingly.
Across from her, Xue Ying chuckled awkwardly, "It's probably not that bad. I guess the old lady took the train or hitched a ride back to her hometown."
According to the personnel who inspected the checkpoint at the time, Li Sheng left the checkpoint around 5 a.m. There was indeed an old woman dressed as a woman in the back seat of the car, but it was dark and her face could not be seen clearly.
All that was known was that she was a beat slow to respond to the check, squinting as if she had poor eyesight and wasn't wearing glasses. The checkpoint officer saw that she was around fifty or sixty years old, which matched her age, and she looked about 70% like her ID photo. Li Sheng was still urging them on from the front, so the checkpoint officer didn't dare offend her and let her through. But Li Sheng's mother was very energetic and never wore glasses, while the gang member was severely nearsighted.
"Anything else?" Gao Junxiao didn't argue further.
"And another thing, Li Sheng took his mother back to the old house an hour later than expected. And twenty minutes before that, a train from Shanghai happened to arrive at the station. His hometown is a small town, and it's usually a stop on the Nanjing-Shanghai line, with a stop time of no more than three minutes. Twenty minutes is about enough time for him to drive from the station to the ancestral home." Xue Ying gestured with her fingers.
The dog spy investigated quite thoroughly, and Gao Junxiao followed up by asking, "Have you checked the passenger list?"
“It’s not easy to investigate. Train tickets are all anonymous, and the train attendants only recognize the tickets, not the passengers. It’s hard for them to remember passengers who don’t give tips.” Xue Ying paused, staring intently at him. “There’s another important clue: you were actually involved.”
"Continue." Gao Junxiao blew away the floating tea leaves and took a sip of tea.
"On the same day Li Sheng returned to his hometown, you and Section Chief Zhang went to the island to arrest a member of the Communist Party named Yu Chaoyang," Xue Ying explained.
These words successfully reminded Gao Junxiao that he had almost been buried alive by He Qingcheng's trap, and his smile froze on his face: "Hmm, that person was blown into several pieces in the end. How come one piece is missing and it's not complete?"
“No need, he’s back in the Soviet area, a living, breathing person!” Xue Ying asserted. “There’s no such coincidence in the world, so it’s all a conspiracy by the Communist Party. They figured out how to use a feint to get us transferred away, while Li Sheng escorted the real Yu Chaoyang back to the Soviet area.”
After talking for so long, they still haven't found anything; it's all just guesswork. But Gao Junxiao didn't dare to let his guard down: "Intelligence in the Soviet area has always been difficult to investigate. Can you guarantee the authenticity of this information?"
“It’s absolutely true. Our agents saw him attend the meeting with their own eyes. He just changed his name and identity. If our agents hadn’t met him before, he would have fooled us,” Xue Ying said through gritted teeth.
With a twitch in his eyelids, Gao Junxiao realized that there was a big fish who had slipped through the net in the anti-espionage operation in the Soviet area. He barely opened his mouth and asked in a lazy manner, as if it were a casual greeting, "What kind of agent? Did Zhang Chong verify the authenticity of the intelligence that was sent up?"
Xue Ying blurted out, "No need, that's one of Manager Xu's people, the information is definitely authentic."
“If it were Zhang Chong’s man, I might believe him about 70%, but Xu Qiao, hehe…” Gao Junxiao hesitated, “Zhang Chong isn’t afraid that person will be infected by communism if he stays in the Soviet area for too long and spreads false information to you. At least verify it. If something goes wrong again, will Zhang Chong take the responsibility, and will I take the responsibility? Or should we just let the Kuomintang take the responsibility?”
The sound echoed throughout the room, and the atmosphere suddenly became tense.
“It’s not that Section Chief Zhang doesn’t want to review the case, he’s just been busy with things in the Northeast lately and really can’t get away.” Xue Ying leaned forward, almost knocking over her hot porridge. “Don’t worry about the information, it’s more reliable than gold. That person arrived even earlier than Section Chief Zhang and has been in direct contact with Manager Xu. His faith is very strong.”
"Alright, alright, don't get agitated. Hopefully, the next time you're this capable is when dealing with the Japanese invaders," Gao Junxiao reassured them. "I'll assume that Communist Party member escaped, but that's all fabricated evidence. Zhang Chong keeps saying he has witnesses, and now they're here. Who are they?"
Xue Ying fell silent, a strange ripple flickering in her eyes.
"Nothing to say, or you don't want to say?" Gao Junxiao still had a faint smile on his lips, but his voice carried a sharp northwest wind, which made Xue Ying lower her head.
Xue Ying hesitated for a moment before explaining, "No, there really is a witness. Li Sheng helped him dispose of something that absolutely could not be sold. Moreover, fragments of that thing appeared near the fake corpse of the G Party."
What kind of stolen goods could be brought to light? Smuggling, fragments—He Qingcheng's practiced telegraphing technique, countless fragments flashing through his mind, Gao Junxiao's mind went blank—a radio! A military radio!
"Your CC is really full of talented people. You can even restore the shrapnel from the explosion. Is there a serial number on that thing?" Gao Junxiao deliberately tried to get information out of them.
Xue Ying affirmed, "No, the serial number must have been ground off. What we got was a small half of the molten bottom shell. There were several stamped English letters on the bottom shell fragment. After comparison, we confirmed that it was made of special steel from the United States. We have only seen such solid materials in military radios provided by the United States."
It really is a military radio, this is troublesome! Selling weapons can be excused as selling to civilian armed groups, but a military radio is either for their own use or for the enemy's use, the targeting is too obvious.
And they were incredibly unlucky, managing to leave behind a fragment with letters on it. Gao Junxiao's eyelids twitched even faster. He downed the hot tea in his cup in one gulp, trying to calm the churning in his stomach: "Good heavens, reselling radios, Li Sheng is too audacious. Did your witness see Li Sheng selling radios?"
“No, that’s not the case. After checking, we found a rickshaw driver who picked up a well-dressed male customer at the West Station. The customer was carrying a very heavy suitcase and wouldn’t let us touch it. But instead of going to a hotel, he went directly to Li Sheng’s billiards room. Not long after, the customer came out and the suitcase was gone. The rickshaw driver then picked up his fare again, this time at the train station.” Xue Ying answered in detail.
"They come and go in a hurry, either on business trips or as middlemen," Gao Junxiao said definitively. "The coachman doesn't count as a witness. Your real witness is the person who traded with Li Sheng, right? Who is it? I need to report to Commander Xiong."
Xue Ying immediately grabbed the cloth in a panic, but couldn't speak. Gao Junxiao noticed his emotions; his panic stemmed from fear. He solemnly assured him, "If your analysis can be proven correct, I will personally send them both to a military court."
After a long pause, Xue Ying finally relented: "That person's background is not simple... I can't say for sure, lest I alert him."
Even CC agents wouldn't dare mess with this person, so Gao Junxiao roughly had a clue: "Okay, let me ask it another way, Chiang, Soong, Kung, Chen, whose family?"
Xue Ying trembled: "Counselor Gao, please don't ask anymore. I can only tell you that we are already working on him. With his background, he won't face too much scrutiny, as long as he is willing to turn himself in."
"It's better to die than to die, right?" According to the consistent attitude of favoritism, it's not a big deal for that person to surrender, but Li Sheng is doomed. Gao Junxiao tapped the table, rhythmically tapping it again and again.
His anxious state of mind couldn't reach the outside world, just like a cold prison cell that can never let in sunlight; if necessary, he would simply smash open the roof.
Of course, there is still a chance. Gao Junxiao casually closed the study door. The bright mahogany study in Baihu Hall looked warm and cozy.
The person he was looking for stood by the window, sunlight casting golden glints on him, giving him an indescribable sense of peace. Gao Junxiao bowed in the manner of a江湖人 (jianghu person, a person from the martial arts world): "Mr. Jiang, good day."
Jiang Yun smiled and bowed in return: "Good day, Mr. Gao. We have already made contact with the person you are looking for."
Gao Junxiao's spirits lifted: "Did he turn himself in?"
"Not yet, but he's already softened." Jiang Yun shook his head helplessly. "After all, he's a relative of the Jiang family. Even if Guo Lao came, he'd have to give him some face."
All of this was within expectations. Gao Junxiao suggested, "He may be spared the death penalty, but he can't escape punishment. If he gets a major demerit on his resume, he'll have a long wait before he gets promoted, unless he doesn't care."
“How could he not care? That’s why he kept hesitating. If he didn’t turn himself in, what if there was other evidence proving that Li Sheng was a member of the Communist Party? He would become a communist sympathizer, and the nature of his crime would change. If he turned himself in, he would definitely get a demerit, which would affect his future promotion. After all, his military ability is really not outstanding. He became a regimental commander purely through nepotism, and there are many people who are not satisfied with that.” Jiang Yun sighed.
"What if we add this?" Gao Junxiao took out a folded piece of paper from his pocket.
"This circuit diagram... he drew it himself?" Jiang Yun's eyes widened in surprise.
“That’s right, it was tucked inside an electrical engineering book in Xia’s room,” Gao Junxiao said nervously. “But don’t tell her I found it.”
"Fine, I won't say anything. Don't blame me if she finds out herself." Jiang Yun's teasing gaze swept over, "Don't go looking for her lately. The place she's in now has even stricter discipline than here."
"I don't have time to look for her, I'm too busy cleaning up her mess." Gao Junxiao felt bitter inside. If only she were here, but he still insisted, "Time is of the essence, we need to make good use of this blueprint."
Jiang Yun responded, "Yes, with this map, we can frame CC and deliberately leak some false information to Commander Zeng, making him think that CC wants to trick him into surrendering. In fact, the evidence has already been sent to the military court. It would be best if Commander Zeng would be so angry that he would completely cut off any possibility of him surrendering."
“No, let’s go even further. I’ll say that Commander Zeng is an underground party member who has been infiltrating for a long time. This meeting with Li Sheng was a rendezvous, and the buyer was something they had already agreed upon; it was just a formality.” Seeing that Jiang Yun didn’t understand, Gao Junxiao simply said, “If he eventually surrenders, given Principal Chiang’s ruthless attitude towards the Communist Party, even if they are relatives, he’s beyond saving. Unless he can prove that Li Sheng isn’t a member of the Communist Party and didn’t sell the radio, then they’ve only made the mistake that all mid-level officers make.”
Jiang Yun pondered for a moment, then suddenly slapped his thigh: "Brilliant! Let Commander Zeng find evidence to prove Li Sheng's innocence. We just need to force him into it."
Chatting with smart people is so effortless. Gao Junxiao then offered a suggestion: "Take the blueprints and quickly forge a few similar pieces of false evidence for me. They should indirectly prove that Commander Zeng provided substantial assistance to the Communist Party. Don't make them too solid, otherwise he won't be able to recant his testimony."
"How long do you need it?" Jiang Yun asked.
"The sooner the better. Xu Qiao doesn't know that Commander Zeng's information has been leaked. We only have these three days to act, and one day has already passed." Gao Junxiao's smile faded. The scales of time were still tipped in CC's favor. Commander Zeng was a ticking time bomb; once it was ignited, none of them would be in good shape.
As dusk settled, melodious tunes drifted across the Qinhuai River. Commander Zeng, sitting in his car, felt his bones soften from listening to the music, and his heart overflowed with emotion. Nanjing truly is a wonderful place!
As the car drove away from the riverbank, Commander Zeng withdrew his wandering spirit, closed his eyes to rest, knowing he would be meeting the President at the Presidential Palace tomorrow.
*Sizzle*
The immense inertia caused Commander Zeng to fall forward. Before he could even open his mouth to question him, the car door was suddenly pulled open, and the night wind blew unhindered onto his face.
He quickly recovered from his shock and demanded sharply, "Who are you? How dare you stop a military vehicle?"
Suddenly, a hand abruptly covered his mouth and nose from behind, and a pungent smell instantly hit him. Commander Zeng struggled for a few moments before falling into a coma.
Thoughts drifted aimlessly like dust floating in the void. Gradually, the dust turned into spots of light. Commander Zeng tried to lift his heavy eyelids, and the surrounding scenery gradually became clear. His hands were tied behind his back to a chair, and faint light shone through the cracks in the window, barely illuminating a small area around him.
"Commander Zeng, you're awake."
The voice came from behind him. He turned around and saw a young man in a light gray Zhongshan suit holding his shoulder. Beside him was a burly man with a fierce face who looked like a dangerous person.
Commander Zeng said nervously, "I don't know where I offended you, brother. If you need money, you can come back to the Nanjing Hotel with me to get it. I don't have much money on me."
"Hahaha," the man laughed. "Commander Zeng, you've misunderstood. I'm not interested in money. If you're not in a hurry, we can talk about your background, like when you joined the G Party?"
"Huh? I...no." Commander Zeng was stunned, his mind blank.
“It’s alright, we have plenty of time.” The young man seemed unconcerned about Commander Zeng’s silence and continued, “Then let’s start by talking about your meeting with Li Sheng, shall we?”
Upon hearing the familiar name, Commander Zeng broke out in a cold sweat and replied stiffly, "What Li Sheng? I don't know him."
"Stop pretending, we've found out. You not only made contact, but you also handed over an American military radio." The young man seemed to sense his fear. "With your powerful connections, what are you afraid of? As long as you cooperate with our investigation, we won't resort to violence."
"You, which department are you from? I want to protest. I am not a member of the Communist Party," Commander Zeng vehemently denied.
“We’re from the Party Affairs Investigation Section. You say you’re not a member of the Communist Party, but where’s your evidence? You don’t have any, do you? But we have plenty of evidence to prove you are.” The young man pulled out a booklet from his pocket, each page filled with a code name and personal information—clearly a roster.
Commander Zeng's mouth was slightly open, desperately wanting to explain but unable to utter a single syllable. Why had he ended up in such a predicament?
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