Wu Shicai had been cooped up here for the past two days and was feeling incredibly stifled. Hearing Li Zhiqun's order, he was overjoyed and quickly led his men away.
Li Zhiqun hurried back to the headquarters of Special Agent No. 76, which was just a wall away. He went to the communications department and immediately made an emergency call to the Nanjing branch. Only after receiving a response did he send an urgent telegram ordering the Nanjing branch to arrest people overnight.
As time went by, the tense night finally came to an end. On this night, many things happened in Chongqing, Shanghai, and Nanjing, the three most important metropolises in China, and the life-and-death struggle between the two sides reached a fever pitch.
In Chongqing, the Military Intelligence Bureau headquarters discovered that Wang Hanmin had defected to the enemy and that his family had disappeared without a trace. They then alerted the Shanghai station and the intelligence department.
Upon receiving the notification, the personnel at Shanghai Station seized the opportunity and decisively evacuated, successfully escaping the sight of No. 76 and temporarily escaping danger.
Meanwhile, the 76th Division also mobilized overnight to begin arresting members of the Shanghai Station intelligence network.
After receiving Li Zhiqun's telegram, the Nanjing branch also began an all-night manhunt.
The two sides are entangled in a web of espionage, searching for each other's shadows on their respective battlefields, attempting to seize an opportunity to deliver a fatal blow.
However, it was clear that the agents of the 76th Special Agent Unit had a significant advantage. The next morning, in the interrogation section of the 76th Special Agent Unit headquarters, Wu Shicai was reporting to Li Zhiqun on the results of the overnight arrests.
"Director, we were too late. Of the eleven people on the list, we only managed to capture four. The other seven are missing. We checked, and they all left in a hurry. I estimate they took almost nothing with them except weapons and cash. We also discovered that the seven who escaped all have telephones in their homes, while the other four don't."
Li Zhiqun understood immediately. The other party had notified these intelligence agents by phone on the eve of their operation. Those agents who did not have telephones installed at home were simply abandoned. Obviously, the other party could not guarantee whether these intelligence agents were under the surveillance of No. 76, so they dared not contact them directly and could only do this.
This also proves that the sudden withdrawal of the Shanghai Station from the French Concession was not due to the discovery of the Green Gang's surveillance activities, but rather because the Shanghai Station genuinely knew that its station chief, Wang Hanmin, had been arrested; otherwise, it would not have notified its intelligence network members to evacuate.
But how did the Shanghai station know about Wang Hanmin's arrest? After his arrest, Wang Hanmin was firmly controlled by the No. 76 Special Agent Headquarters. Moreover, according to Wang Hanmin, he did not notify the troops in southern Jiangsu before he went there. So how did they find out that Wang Hanmin had gone missing?
Could it be because the Japanese wiped out those two National Salvation Army battalions that Wang Hanmin was suspected? That shouldn't be the case! The scope of the leak was too wide. Any National Salvation Army officer who defected to the enemy could easily reveal their location. There's no reason to suspect Wang Hanmin, who was far away in Shanghai. This reason is too far-fetched!
Could the problem lie with me? Is there a mole within the 76th Special Agent Headquarters? That's why the news of Wang Hanmin's arrest was passed out, but the people who handled it were all my trusted confidants. Could there be a mole among them?
This reminded him of the series of events that occurred after Sun Xiangde was captured. When Sun Xiangde met with Bat, he was almost sent flying by explosives. In the end, Bat also escaped. Li Zhiqun felt dizzy and couldn't sort out his thoughts for a long time.
Finally, he decided to ignore it for the time being and said in a deep voice, "Have you gone to the telephone company to investigate the source of the call?"
Wu Shicai replied, "They all belong to the same public phone number. We investigated and found that someone broke into a shop in the middle of the night and used the public phone in the shop to warn these people. There was no way to trace it."
I knew it! The Kuomintang agents wouldn't leave themselves such an obvious flaw.
"What were the results of the interrogation of these four people?"
Wu Shicai curled his lip, gestured towards the interrogation room, and said dismissively, "They've all spoken. Even an iron man would talk once he's in the electric chair!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com