In the dead of night, beams of light occasionally crossed like scissor blades above the Songhu Garrison Command. After the Japanese invasion of Shanghai last year touched off the Shanghai War, the headquarters had hurriedly installed anti-aircraft searchlights. One had been fitted on the watchtower of the detention house as well, sweeping now and then across the high walls of the cell blocks. The powerful beam lit the interior of the cells for an instant through the narrow windows, then plunged them into darkness again just as quickly.
Liang Shichao had picked up the habit, in the army, of always looking things over from every direction whenever he arrived somewhere unfamiliar. The men’s cells were divided into three rows; the third row, where they were, faced the perimeter wall on one side, and just now it was very quiet. From the cells across the corridor came the occasional snore, and now and then someone startled awake from a dream, crying out a few times.
He looked at his comrades in the cell, feeling a knot of worry in his chest. That morning, he had left the clinic together with Dr. Qin, walking some distance behind him. Dr. Qin was a refined, composed man, walking at an unhurried pace. When they’d fled the market, Liang Shichao had worried whether Dr. Qin would manage to get away safely—as it turned out, it was he himself who hadn’t made it out, and he had no idea how the doctor was doing now.
A little over a year ago, Liang Shichao had been wounded during a Nationalist “encirclement campaign” against the Soviet areas and had come to Shanghai from the base area for treatment; Qin Chuan’an was the doctor who had treated his wound. Once he’d recovered, the organization had temporarily arranged for him to take part in local Party work, so he’d stayed on at the clinic to help out.
During the day’s interrogation, he had lied to the enemy, claiming he’d once served in the 19th Route Army, following General Weng for years, and had been badly wounded resisting the Japanese at Zhabei on January 28th, and because he was being treated at a hospital in Shanghai, hadn’t rejoined his unit when it was redeployed. That Squad Leader You had seemed half-convinced; he’d gone out, taken a turn about, come back with a cigarette between his fingers, and had the jailer take him back to his cell. Had this Squad Leader You really believed his story so easily?
For two days the enemy had taken turns interrogating them, pressing them on who had called the meeting, who all the people who’d escaped were, and why they’d gathered in that particular place. But this afternoon the questioning had changed tack—that Squad Leader You had shifted his interest from the dice to the pai gow tiles. Had the enemy gotten hold of some new information, and was deliberately trying to confuse them?
Everyone had said they’d come to gamble, but where was the money? Though Lao Fang had indeed told everyone to bring extra cash along, and they had, when they pooled together all the money on their persons, it came to little more than a hundred silver dollars. With that little money, why would they run to a secret room above the library to gamble? The Public Concession made a show of cracking down on gambling, but everyone knew even the constables themselves liked a game of chance. Liang Shichao knew full well the enemy would never believe this story. What puzzled everyone most was that Lao Fang, who had organized this meeting and told everyone to come, hadn’t shown up at the appointed time.
Lin Shi was badly hurt—he’d taken a bullet in the right leg when he was arrested, and for the past two days had spent most of his time half-conscious, which for now kept him relatively safe, since in the interrogation room he could lose consciousness at any moment, and the enemy would drag him out, only to have the jailer carry him back to the cell not long after.
Lin Shi kept turning over in his mind all the details from that morning, from before the meeting until the moment the secret agents burst in to make the arrests, while at the same time watching the other three in the cell.
The first time Chen Qianyuan was brought back from interrogation, he was covered in bruises everywhere. Lin Shi guessed the enemy might have seen he was young and figured he hadn’t been doing underground work long, that he probably didn’t know any important secrets, and so had decided to make an example of him, beating him again and again, thinking that dragging him back to the cell beaten up would frighten the others.
Though he was back in the cell, Chen Qianyuan’s emotions were still far from settled. Whenever the jailer stepped away, he would go stand by the cell door and peer out, clearly deeply worried. Lin Shi thought he must be worried about that young female comrade—likely his girlfriend—the two of them had walked into the market together and gone upstairs together. From Baiyunguan all the way to Longhua, the two of them had stayed pressed close together the whole way.
The women’s cells were near the men’s, in the first row, along another stretch of the perimeter wall—the small window there faced the men’s cells, but was separated from the men’s third row by three rows of buildings.
“What can you possibly see from there?” Liang Shichao walked to the cell door and helped Chen Qianyuan back to sit on the bunk.
Yi Junnian had likely been given the electric shock treatment—though he’d come back without a sound, there were clear burn marks on his wrists and ankles. During the first round of interrogation, that Squad Leader You had asked Lin Shi whether Yi Junnian had thrown the dice from his pocket onto the table. Lin Shi said he hadn’t seen it. The Squad Leader had then asked, and afterward did you see Yi Junnian put the dice back in his pocket? Lin Shi told the Squad Leader that he’d never seen a second pair of dice at all—the only dice he’d ever seen in that room were the ones the Squad Leader himself had produced from his own pocket.
After being brought back from interrogation, Yi Junnian had simply sat like this against the wall on a few pieces of straw matting, and Lin Shi had been watching him the whole time. When the enemy had burst in, he’d seen Yi Junnian snatch the dice off the table and put them in his pocket—so Yi Junnian definitely knew about the dice. How many people knew, exactly? The Squad Leader knew about the dice too—Lin Shi had understood right then that the organization had been infiltrated.
Originally, only Lao Fang had known about the dice, yet he hadn’t come to the meeting. Liang Shichao had said once: of all this, only Lao Fang really understands the whole picture. No one had picked up on that remark. After a long while, Yi Junnian had said that Lao Fang couldn’t possibly have a problem. Yi Junnian rarely spoke much, which wasn’t strange—experienced comrades, once inside the enemy’s prison, were usually the quiet type.
Why hadn’t Lao Fang come to the meeting? Lin Shi had thought about this a great deal, but like Yi Junnian, he was unwilling to lightly suspect any comrade.
Lin Shi went back over everyone who’d been at the meeting in his mind. There’d been one man, whom Yi Junnian had greeted as Old Wei. Before the secret agents burst into the meeting, this Old Wei had been quite anxious, urging everyone to hurry up and start the meeting. Later, during the retreat, it was he again who’d been the first out the door and had made a successful escape. He seemed to have had some foresight.
“Tell me, why do you think Lao Fang didn’t come to the meeting?” Liang Shichao asked Chen Qianyuan.
“Maybe he got word that the secret agents knew the meeting location?” Chen Qianyuan tried to explain.
“Then shouldn’t he have warned everyone else?” Liang Shichao had a thought of his own. “Do you think Lao Fang might have been arrested?”
The cell fell silent.
Lin Shi stirred, and Yi Junnian got up and went over to check on him, examining his wound again. “How are you doing? Feeling any better?”
“I’m cold all over, the wound’s gotten infected.” Yi Junnian had been concerned about his injury all along, but Lin Shi didn’t want anyone else to know just how badly he was hurt.
Yi Junnian felt his forehead. “You’re too weak—get some more sleep.” Then he took off his own padded gown and laid it over Lin Shi, and turned to the other two. “Watch what you say in here. The walls have ears.”
Lin Shi really did find it strange—the Judge Advocate’s Office had all sorts of cells, holding all kinds of prisoners—why had they put the four of them together in one cell? Was it to create an environment where they’d talk amongst themselves?
“What day did Lao Fang tell you about the meeting?” Liang Shichao asked Chen Qianyuan again.
“The afternoon before the meeting. He rushed over to make contact, said his piece, and then said he had to go right away—said there were still others to notify. He notified everyone one by one. He knew Dong Huiwen and me well, but he notified us separately too. It wasn’t until the night before the meeting, when the two of us met up, that we learned we’d both been told to go to the same place the next day.”
“Thinking about it now, why would Lao Fang have told me about the dice at all?” Liang Shichao muttered to himself.
Seeing the two of them turn to look at him, Yi Junnian said, “The day I was transferred to Shanghai, I made contact with Lao Fang, and we’ve worked together for three years since. Even if the two of you suspect him, I still trust him. He must have had his reasons for not showing up that day. The situation is very complicated—we should trust that the organization will get to the bottom of it, sooner or later. He came to notify me at my calligraphy shop directly—he knows that place well. If he really had a problem, I’d have been arrested long before now.
“But since you mention the dice, I do find it a bit odd myself. Logically, since he meant to come to the meeting himself, there’d have been no need to tell everyone else about it beforehand. But he told me that day all the same, so I think—perhaps he already suspected there might be some unexpected trouble the next day, and told everyone the contact method with the superior’s envoy in advance, in case he himself couldn’t make it to the meeting in time.”
He reconsidered. “It’s fortunate, actually, that he didn’t come, didn’t make it to the meeting on time. Otherwise, once the comrade from above had revealed his identity and announced the secret mission, if what you’re saying is true and there really is an enemy mole inside, that would have ruined everything for real.”
“We still don’t even know what assignment they meant to give us.”
Yi Junnian, once again, stopped them from continuing the discussion. In the cell, they really shouldn’t be talking about the secret work at all. He changed the subject, asking Chen Qianyuan what his profession was.
“International News Agency. I translate wire dispatches for them.”
“Know foreign languages, can translate—remarkable.” Yi Junnian praised him. “You’ll surely be able to do important work for the Party in the future.”
“I’m too young for that.” “What does age matter—plenty of young comrades already hold important leadership posts. And you?” Yi Junnian looked at Lin Shi.
“I work at a bank.”
“I used to be a soldier,” Liang Shichao added.
“Wei Dafu works the beat for a real-estate rental office, and I run a calligraphy and painting shop. Putting the four of us together—this is no ordinary assignment.”
Lin Shi thought to himself: this Yi Junnian, on the one hand telling everyone not to discuss the secret work, and on the other hand bringing the very topic up himself—his curiosity ran deep, and that in turn made Lin Shi curious about him.
“My guess is that the comrade sent by our superiors either never made it to the meeting place at all, or is among those who escaped from the scene,” Chen Qianyuan said, thinking aloud as the idea occurred to him.
The jailer walked up to the cell door and rapped on the small window with his baton. “No talking!”
Liang Shichao, for his part, had another question in mind. He himself had been wounded by gunfire before, more than once. When the Judge Advocate’s Office had called in the headquarters military doctor to change Lin Shi’s dressing, he’d leaned in to look at the wound too. The bullet had gone straight through the side of the calf and out the other side, tearing a large swath of muscle. Though the wound looked severe, it had been treated promptly enough—they’d already found a doctor while still at the police station. Liang Shichao felt the gunshot wound wasn’t actually all that serious, and touching him, he didn’t feel especially feverish either. So why was he pretending to be so much more badly hurt than he was?
And this calligraphy shop owner—why did he keep stopping them from discussing the question of Lao Fang? The shop owner himself was clearly quite interested in the topic—he was the one who’d brought it up in the first place—but then he’d quickly clammed up, and after a moment had actually urged everyone to be careful, not to talk carelessly. Doing underground work was truly exhausting on the nerves; this part of the revolutionary work really didn’t suit him at all, Liang Shichao thought.
“Of the two women comrades who were arrested, one is named Ling Wen, a well-known woman writer. Her husband died a martyr’s death in Guangzhou. I don’t know the other woman comrade.” Yi Junnian turned to look at Chen Qianyuan.
“Huiwen teaches at a primary school.”
“So many comrades died after the Guangzhou Uprising,” Liang Shichao said, then suddenly asked Yi Junnian, “Did you work in Guangzhou too?”
“How did you know that?”
“That fellow surnamed You said, while questioning me, that of everyone swept up in this net, three of us had all been to Guangzhou at some point—said there must be something to that.”
“So Lin Shi worked in Guangzhou too? And here we never even ran into each other.” Yi Junnian gave a faint smile.
Outside, the beam of the searchlight swept back and forth, and weariness pressed down alongside the ache of old wounds. Chen Qianyuan tried hard to remember whether, that morning as he left the house, he’d properly hidden the translation manuscript he’d left spread out on his desk. If he could get out of Longhua prison alive, he hoped he’d be able to finish translating the manuscript. Half in a daze, he recalled the yet-unproofread lines:
…There are no miracles in nature or in history, but every abrupt turn in history, including every revolution, brings forth such an abundance of content, produces such unexpected and peculiar combinations of the forms of struggle and the relative strength of the contending forces, that to the ordinary observer, much of it looks like nothing short of a miracle…
…