Meanwhile, in the French Concession of Shanghai, a man in a long gown entered a high-end apartment. Once inside, he took off his top hat, revealing himself to be Iwai Nosuke, an agent of the Japanese Special Higher Police.
Since being transferred to the action team as captain, Iwai nosuke has been frustrated and unfulfilled. He originally thought that solving a major case would earn him the attention of his superiors and lead to a meteoric rise in his career. However, things did not go as planned. After all his hard work, he was transferred out of the intelligence group, and his future looked bleak. He was disheartened.
Unexpectedly, the newly arrived intelligence team leader, Kitaoka Ryoko, discovered Iwai Nosuke's outstanding performance in cracking the case of the Chinese military intelligence station in Shanghai while reviewing previous case files. She immediately met with Iwai Nosuke, and after their conversation, she greatly admired his talent and quickly transferred Iwai Nosuke to her command, bringing him back into the intelligence team.
A month ago, Iwai Nosuke was sent to the Shanghai International Settlement to conduct intelligence activities, becoming the leader of an intelligence team.
After entering the French Concession, Iwai no Naoki quickly got to work and is currently investigating the whereabouts of Chinese agents.
When the Japanese agents in the room saw Iwai Nosuke enter, they quickly stood up and said, "Iwai-kun!"
Iwai nosuke nodded, sat down on the sofa, threw a stack of old newspapers on the table, sighed and said, "After going through so much trouble, we only found these few newspapers. Matsumoto, what progress have you made on your end?"
Special Higher Police agent Matsumoto Masaki quickly retrieved several old newspapers from the side and replied, "We only found a few. It's mainly because so much time has passed. We bribed the newspaper office workers to find these few in the old warehouse. Adding them to what we collected before, it's quite a lot."
Iwai no Naoki glanced at the pile of old newspapers on the table, nodded, and said, "We've been collecting for so long, it should be almost done. Let's sort them out and find all the gunmen."
Since being sent to the concession, Iwai no Naoki has gradually begun to search for the whereabouts of Chinese agents. He did his homework and consulted a lot of information, and finally focused his attention on several major assassination cases that occurred in the concession a year ago.
Among the various documents, the most valuable was the confession of Cui Guangqi, a Chinese agent he personally arrested. In this confession, Cui Guangqi clearly stated that the assassination attempt on Japanese military agent Masaki Chogawa, which occurred a year earlier in the French Concession of Shanghai, was carried out by a group of Chinese agents led by Ning Zhiheng.
Along with Masaki Hase, Chinese cotton tycoon Fu Yaozu was also assassinated. Fu Yaozu escaped by being rescued by his driver.
The assassination caused a sensation in the French Concession. The specific cause was that reporters in major newspapers in the French Concession published articles exposing the fact that cotton merchant Fu Yaozu was colluding with the Japanese, which led to the assassination.
Iwai Nosuke judged that this was a case in which Chinese agents first used public opinion to expose Fu Yaozu's traitorous behavior, and then sanctioned him, in order to serve as a warning and make an example of him.
At the time, Fu Yaozu's contact with the Japanese was kept very secret, so how did these reporters know about Fu Yaozu's treasonous behavior?
It's very simple. They must have been discovered by Chinese agents first, and then they bribed these journalists to act as hired guns, creating public opinion in major newspapers. In the whole assassination case, only these journalists had contact with these Chinese agents, so they became the only breakthrough in the whole case.
Iwai nosuke then focused his attention on these reporters. During this period, he began to collect old newspapers from major newspapers from a year ago. His agents put in a lot of effort and actually found some newspapers that exposed Fu Yaozu's treasonous behavior from the old warehouses of major newspapers.
At the time, newspapers reported extensively on Fu Yaozu's betrayal of the country and his willingness to become a traitor. Most of these reports were simply bandwagoning and attention-grabbing, but there were definitely some journalists who had been genuinely bribed by Chinese agents and became hired guns.
How to identify these journalists? Iwai Nosuke categorized the collected newspapers, sorted them by time, selected the journalists who published the earliest articles of that type, and then selected the journalists who published the most articles of that type from the subsequent newspapers.
After spending several hours, he finally discovered that four newspaper reporters had published their articles in the earliest order, and also published the most articles after that.
"Liu Deben, Shi An, Lü Mingyi, Wu Ziang!"
Iwai Nosuke wrote the names of the four men on a piece of paper and pondered for a long time. He was sure he was right. These four men must be hired guns by Chinese agents. With their publicity, other reporters followed suit and quickly stirred up a media frenzy. Even later newspapers showed that Fu Yaozu had also hired a group of guns. The two groups of guns engaged in a fierce media battle in the newspapers, and these four men's articles were the most published and the most inflammatory.
He pushed the names of the four reporters onto the table and instructed the agents around him: "Starting tomorrow, find the whereabouts of these four people, look for an opportunity to arrest them, interrogate them, and see how much they actually know about Chinese agents!"
Iwai nosuke's intelligence team has sixteen agents, which is more than enough manpower, so doing these things is not difficult.
However, one of the agents beside him hesitated for a moment before asking, "Iwai-kun, once we arrest someone, we can't let them go. After the interrogation, we have to silence them. If four reporters disappear at the same time, wouldn't that be too conspicuous? Before we entered the concession, Team Leader Kitaoka instructed us that the concession is not the city center. We must keep our movements hidden here and not expose ourselves, otherwise we will attract the attention of Chinese agents."
Iwai no Nakaji frowned immediately. He disliked his subordinates questioning his decisions, but the members of this intelligence team were all Japanese agents transferred from the North China headquarters by Kitaoka Ryoko, and could be considered Kitaoka Ryoko's old subordinates. Iwai no Nakaji couldn't be too harsh on them.
Iwai no Naoki had no choice but to suppress his displeasure and said, "We have no other way. If we just go to their door to ask, they definitely won't tell the truth. Even if we bribe them, how can we guarantee that they will tell us everything they know? Only through rigorous interrogation and repeated verification can we ensure the authenticity of their confessions. You are all well-trained agents, so you should know this basic common sense. As for whether it will alert others, the French Concession has a population of hundreds of thousands and a poor security situation. As long as we arrange things cleverly, it shouldn't attract attention. We agents need to be decisive and can't hesitate. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir!" The agents around him bowed and replied.
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