Ever since the French Concession’s Conseil Municipal built the road along the north bank of Zhaojia Creek, this old waterway through the South City had grown narrower and narrower. Especially in winter, the embankment was exposed in long stretches, garbage mixed with silt, and the water was no longer as clean as before. In spring and summer when the water ran high, the river would often be crowded with boats large and small, but at this time of year there were hardly any—they were all moored along the banks.
Just past four o’clock, cooking smoke had already begun to rise from the boat prows. Long wooden planks bridged the boats and the shore; on a few of the boats, children in New Year’s clothes ran back and forth, dashing onto the boat one moment and leaping ashore the next, entirely unaware that beneath the planks lay river water and mud.
Zhaojia Creek had many bridges; the Maochang Coal Company was near a small wooden bridge. Since the coal company did business in the foreign concession, it naturally had to be located on the north bank of the small river. But recently the area around Xujiahui Road had grown quite prosperous; the wasteland had been taken over by factories and sauce works, and even film studios had built their soundstages nearby. Maochang Coal originally had a storage yard behind its shop, but as business grew larger, the yard was no longer sufficient. After much deliberation, they bought a large plot of wasteland on the south bank of Zhaojia Creek, in the Chinese-administered area, to use as a coal yard. Fortunately, a small wooden bridge connected the two banks of the creek.
Li Han was a worker at Maochang Coal, though working in the coal yard he was somewhat different from the workers across the way at the coal shop. Over there was the commercial storefront, dealing daily with customers buying coal. Here, all one saw was coal, coal, and more coal. Because of this, Maochang’s boss used two different hiring approaches for the shop and the yard. For the shop, they hired locals—people who’d seen a bit of the world, quick-witted, able to make conversation with customers. For the yard, all that mattered was physical strength. These past two years, with flooding downriver on the Yangtze, country folk who’d heard that Shanghai could at least offer a bowl of rice had come rowing up in small boats. Many such people worked in the coal yard. With nowhere to live in Shanghai, they’d occupied the nearby wasteland and built shanties—first with wooden boards, and once they’d earned some wages, they tried to get hold of coal-slag bricks, striving to make their shacks look more like real houses. Over the years, the yard workers had all come to live clustered together in this way.
Li Han had spent the entire New Year’s Eve on duty at the coal yard, not returning to his own shack. Every New Year, the coal yard grew anxious—the whole city was setting off firecrackers, and if one caught the coal piles alight, it would be a disaster. At times like this, the accountant would always come find Li Han, knowing that among the workers, there were several who listened only to him. So the previous night, Li Han had gathered a few men, bought some wine and meat, and spent New Year’s Eve there in the coal yard.
Once it grew light, everyone else went back to their rooms to sleep, but Li Han stayed on at the yard, waiting for the comrades evacuating from the Zhonghui Trust Bank on Tianjin Road. But past four in the afternoon, they still hadn’t arrived, and Li Han was beginning to worry.
The failure to arrive at the coal yard on schedule was due to a great many unforeseen circumstances. Chen Qianli had to admit that the original plan had contained far too many risky elements. The situation had erupted suddenly, and there had simply been too little time to prepare. The greatest risk of all: if his judgment proved mistaken, and the enemy—upon discovering they’d been deceived—immediately surrounded the scene and made arrests, wouldn’t that put Comrade Lin Shi in mortal danger?
Though he had considered it thoroughly and believed that, having released their comrades from the detention house, the enemy would certainly wait for a chance to catch them “with the goods in hand”—and he had also released a great deal of false information beforehand.
The previous night, at the dinner table in the clinic, he’d told everyone that once the bank operation was complete, each of them would return to their current lodgings and await further instructions. He’d also told Cui Wentai that once he had the case, he was to drive to the rendezvous point at Laozha Bridge and hand the case to another group of people. He’d deliberately let Cui Wentai believe that the people coming to collect the gold bars were of great importance.
He knew Cui Wentai was the traitor.
The previous afternoon, coming out from Chen Qianyuan’s place, sitting on the public bus, a certain image had suddenly flashed through his mind. It was something old Lao Fang had done.
The day Lao Fang was killed, he had burst out of the barbershop pistol in hand, fired a shot toward the mouth of the lane, and then run toward the far end of the alley. Just as he was about to turn into the side lane, he had suddenly turned around and run back toward the barbershop. Chen Qianli remembered Lao Fang’s strange movement, and strained to recall his expression at that moment—Lao Fang hadn’t been looking toward the enemy at the mouth of the lane. His face had been turned toward the door of the barbershop, as if he were looking at the people behind it—at them.
It was as if he’d suddenly remembered something, desperate to tell them, but in that very instant, the bullet struck him. He must have known he could never make it back to the barbershop door. Perhaps he’d thought to shout out what he wanted to say, but he could only manage to duck behind the buildings in the side lane.
Chen Qianli switched to a tram and went directly to the lane where the barbershop was. He walked back and forth through the lane, as if searching for a house number. He carefully examined every spot Lao Fang had passed through after bursting from the barbershop, checking the ground and the corners of the walls, until, in a corner of the side lane, he found a character—written in a spot conveniently blocked from view by a drainpipe, not easily seen, and not easily washed away by rain.
That character had very likely been written by Lao Fang in blood—his own blood. It was an incomplete character for “mountain” (å±±). He understood at once: Lao Fang had been hinting at the name of the traitor. He didn’t know on what basis Lao Fang had made this judgment—he guessed that perhaps Lao Fang had suddenly remembered that the barbershop was a secret rendezvous point, and that Cui Wentai was the only one who knew of it. This was quite possible—Lao Fang had regarded Cui Wentai as family.
Even by the time he was drawing up the operational plan, Chen Qianli still had no concrete evidence that Cui Wentai was the traitor who had caused such severe damage to the organization. But on New Year’s Eve, Cui Wentai had revealed even more suspicious behavior, and by morning, when Lao Yi told Lin Shi that Cui Wentai had secretly entered the clinic in the middle of the night, the truth had become entirely clear. It was only that the enemy didn’t yet know that he had guessed Cui Wentai was the traitor. In fact, his whole plan was designed to exploit precisely this.
He’d used the café as the rendezvous point, never expecting that the enemy would also be in that lane. Any operation required an on-the-ground reconnaissance—paper planning alone couldn’t be trusted—but he’d had no time. In truth, he had exposed Yi Junnian’s position. Lao Yi had only just been released from the detention house a few days earlier; the plainclothes detectives were entirely capable of recognizing him. He should have found a more concealed location.
No one had expected that Cui Wentai would take the case and flee. Watching that scene unfold, Chen Qianli had found it almost darkly funny. He watched Cui Wentai’s car drive back onto Tianjin Road; watched two men run out from the lane, ready to receive the delivery; watched the car suddenly floor the accelerator and shoot through the lane; watched the two men stand there in the road, dumbfounded for a long while. Cui Wentai’s flight had turned a carefully planned chess match into a farce.
Had he himself foreseen this outcome? Certainly not. But he had made sure Lin Shi told everyone that there were five gold bars in the bank. Perhaps it was some kind of instinct—it didn’t quite conform to underground work principles—but he had a vague sense that if you let certain people know they held many gold bars in their hands, their actions would become erratic, deviating from the norm.
Standing on the bank rooftop, Chen Qianli had been anxious the whole time. He didn’t know whether the enemy might suddenly go mad and order everyone arrested. It wasn’t until he saw Ye Qinian that he finally felt himself relax. Even at that distance, he could recognize the man at a glance—he didn’t even need to take out the small telescope in his fur robe pocket. Ye Qinian sat in his car; by then Cui Wentai had long since fled, and Lin Shi and the others had already left the café. For some reason, Chen Qianli had felt an urge to stand on the rooftop and observe a while longer.
He watched Ye Qinian’s car slowly pull out of the lane and stop at the intersection; someone came up to speak with him; he rolled down the window, said a few words, then pushed open the door and got out, standing beside the car looking left and right down the street, then staring at the bank for a while, slowly tilting his head back as if surveying the bank building floor by floor. It was only then that Chen Qianli felt certain the enemy would not immediately surround their comrades’ lodgings and carry out mass arrests. The moment he laid eyes on Ye Qinian, he understood—he knew this chief of secret agents would never lose his composure, not even when he had lost his own daughter.
They waited for him in a house near Gujiazhai Park, the key to which Wei Dafu had obtained from the estate management office.
Yi Junnian told Chen Qianli: “The moment we passed through the gates into the French Concession, we got out of the car and switched to rickshaws to get here.” Then he asked: “What took you so long? We were starting to worry you couldn’t get away.”
“I had to go return that outfit to the secondhand clothing shop,” Chen Qianli said, smiling.
“Did Cui Wentai deliver the gold bars?” Yi Junnian asked.
“Cui Wentai never showed up at the agreed rendezvous point. He took the case and ran.” Chen Qianli told them what had happened, his expression as calm as ever.
“So—there were no gold bars in the case?” Yi Junnian suddenly understood.
It seemed Ling Wen hadn’t told Yi Junnian about switching the case, Chen Qianli thought to himself—perhaps she hadn’t had the chance yet, or perhaps—Ling Wen truly was a comrade who strictly observed underground work discipline.
“I understand now. There were no gold bars at all—you designed a scheme to make Cui Wentai expose himself,” Yi Junnian said.
He had indeed exposed his true face on his own. Chen Qianli told them that, by his judgment, Cui Wentai had betrayed the revolution long ago. The secret meeting at the market, and the matter of Lao Fang’s son’s barbershop—both had very likely been reported by him to the enemy. “We’ve long suspected there was a mole among us. This traitor is most likely him.” Having said this, Chen Qianli thought to himself: in truth, Lao Fang had already identified him before he died.
Chen Qianli had undergone rigorous training, always required to eliminate unnecessary movements. But in that moment of life and death, Lao Fang had suddenly made a movement that was difficult to understand—why had he suddenly turned and run back? It wasn’t until this question entered Chen Qianli’s mind that he knew what he had to do.
“I didn’t tell everyone beforehand,” Chen Qianli said with a smile, “because I was worried that if you all knew in advance, the performance wouldn’t have looked convincing.”
Among the members of the small group who had attended that secret meeting, only Li Han had never entered the enemy’s field of vision. He hadn’t been captured, and after leaving the market, he hadn’t contacted anyone else. Maochang’s coal yard sat by Zhaojia Creek, which divided the concession from the Chinese-administered territory—each side under the jurisdiction of the concession police and the Nationalist public security bureau respectively. Around the coal yard lay a great expanse of wasteland; many of the residents there were refugees who’d fled to Shanghai, and the police rarely paid attention to the place. Chen Qianli planned to have Lin Shi hide temporarily in the coal yard. Li Han said there would be no problem—just one word from him, and all the brothers at the coal yard would help.
Ling Wen and the others had ridden in the South City Police car; the driver was an intelligence contact Yi Junnian had cultivated within the Nationalist public security bureau. Though Yi Junnian assured everyone that this man was absolutely reliable, he wasn’t a member of the temporary action group, so they’d chosen to get out near Gujiazhai Park, and only after the car had left did Wei Dafu bring them to this house.
Close to four o’clock, Wei Dafu went out to the street and hailed two rickshaws, and they set off. Lin Shi and Ling Wen each took a rickshaw, having the drivers take them to the small wooden bridge over Zhaojia Creek, while the others went their separate ways. Chen Qianli and Yi Junnian, one carrying several packages of preserved meat, the other holding two bottles of wine, looked as though they were on their way to add some dishes and drinks to someone’s dinner table.
“I don’t quite understand,” Yi Junnian said as they turned from Jinshenfu Road onto Xujiahui Road, “after Cui Wentai got the case, why didn’t they arrest anyone right away?”
“It really doesn’t match the detective corps’ usual way of doing things. They’re in no hurry to make arrests or claim credit. These enemies seem to have a great deal of patience.”
Yi Junnian laughed. “You’ve only just arrived in Shanghai, yet you talk as if you’ve dealt with the detective corps for years.”
Chen Qianli looked a bit embarrassed at this, and laughed too: “Well then, who do you think our opponent really is this time?”
“I’ve had people ask around about this You Tianxiao these past couple of days. Some say he’s actually an agent of the Special Services Headquarters.”
“They don’t want to simply arrest a few Communists—they want to play the long game and catch the big fish. Judging by their methods, this really does look more like the work of that anti-Communist vanguard organization.” Yi Junnian looked thoughtful. “I hear that within this Special Services Headquarters, there are several experts specifically dedicated to investigating the underground Party. They’ve spent enormous effort studying our working methods. When they crack an underground Party organization, they’re not in a hurry to kill people either—they investigate every detail of the case thoroughly, compile it into training materials, and use it to train their agents. These past two years, the underground Party’s situation in Shanghai has grown increasingly difficult. Lao Fang told me that quite a few of the Central Committee’s leaders in Shanghai have already withdrawn to the Soviet base areas.”
By evening, the sky had suddenly clouded over, and snowflakes began drifting down. They quickened their pace, and after crossing the bridge, a great expanse of wasteland opened up before them, with a scattering of shanties built along the riverbank. The coal yard was easy to find—the coal was piled up like small mountains, enclosed on all sides by a crude fence of wire and wooden boards cobbled together.
Along the riverside wasteland ran a small path paved with coal cinders; tall weeds grew thick on either side, all withered now in winter but still knee-high. The snow fell harder and harder, and before long it had settled in a layer over the black coal heaps, gleaming faintly in the twilight. Sensing strangers approaching, the watchdogs of the coal yard began barking, and Li Han came running toward the sound. The other comrades had already arrived.
A few single-story rooms stood clustered amid the coal piles, completely invisible from outside—these were the coal yard’s duty room and tool shed. Five or six rooms connected together; ordinarily the workers came and went here, but now they had all gone home for the New Year, and no one would come out here without cause. But these few visitors, in their manner and bearing, didn’t look like the kind of people who typically wandered into a coal yard—being seen would easily arouse suspicion. Li Han was especially careful, having let the dogs out of their kennels early to be safe. If any stranger tried to slip in, the dogs would start barking before they could get close.
They sat in the innermost room, a kettle steaming on the stove, frost condensing on the windows. Only a single lightbulb lit the room; the sky grew darker and darker outside, and with wasteland all around, if any house here had a bright light on, it could be seen from across Zhaojia Creek.
The tabletop looked like it might once have been a door panel—thick, unplaned, pitted with irregularities on the surface—though the legs were sturdy, an iron-and-steel-bar frame welded together, with the door panel simply set on top.
On the table were wine, preserved meat, steamed buns, and a large pile of peanuts Li Han had brought.
“Right now, our Party is holding to the revolutionary path under extraordinarily difficult circumstances nationwide.” Lin Shi popped a peanut into his mouth and spoke slowly. “After the counterrevolutionary governments of Ningjing and Ningyue merged together, Nanjing has gained the superficial appearance of national unification. Chiang Kai-shek has declared that the Nationalist Government has entered the period of political tutelage, throwing his main energy into vigorously developing the military police and secret agents, focused with a maniacal intensity on ‘suppressing the Communists.’ Our Party has responded in kind—as early as the August Seventh Conference, we put forward the principle of meeting the barrel of the gun with the barrel of the gun, and of mobilizing the vast peasantry of China’s interior to rise in resistance, launching the land revolution.”
He announced to everyone: the secret operation was now formally beginning—something that should have been completed half a month ago, delayed by unexpected events—
“Time is truly pressing,” Lin Shi said finally. “And the longer this drags on, the harder it becomes to keep the plan secret. The enemy is doing everything in its power to probe and undermine the underground Party organization. Cases like Cui Wentai’s have been occurring frequently of late. Comrade Qianli and I share the view that the enemy may have already guessed that the Central Committee is planning something major. This time, releasing us from the detention house wasn’t a matter of enemy stupidity—it’s more likely their own scheme.”
“Cui Wentai—one look at that face and you can tell he’s no good, rebellious bone right at the back of his skull.” Wei Dafu jabbed a finger at his own jawbone, his tone full of resentment. “That jaw of his has already gone square. Put that face at the edge of the table, knock over a bowl, and not a drop of soup would spill onto the floor. Lao Fang really shouldn’t have trusted him so much.”
“What’s our group going to do next?” Yi Junnian took out his cigarette case and lit one.
Lin Shi glanced over at Liang Shichao, sitting by the window, who kept wiping the frost off the glass with his finger, peering outside. Liang Shichao felt uneasy every time he thought about having fallen for Cui Wentai’s trick.
Lin Shi didn’t tell everyone that the Central Committee had, in fact, reorganized the Communications Bureau because of this. Aside from Chen Qianli, he told no one else that the true goal of the “Map of a Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains” plan was to accomplish the strategic transfer of the Central organs. Beyond what absolutely needed to be conveyed, everything else had to remain secret—this was the principle. His own code name was “Old K”—the thirteenth card in a deck of playing cards.