Chapter 56: The Story Behind

Chapter 56: The Story Behind the Scenes

"What you said crossed my mind, too, but the situation inside and outside the Great Wall is different. The police system falls squarely within the jurisdiction of the Gendarmerie. If Li Shiqun wants to meddle in the Special Service Branch, it will be nominal supervision at best, while substantive power still rests firmly in the hands of the Gendarmerie."

"Judging by what you say, within this special service organization, Li Shiqun holds more weight as the deputy director than Ding Mocun does as the director. The deputy actually overshadowing the chief—now that is quite interesting," Xu Ruiyang said with a smile.

"Mr. Xu has only been in Shanghai for a few days, so naturally, you don't know the ropes here. There's no need to fish for information from me, but I'll put it this way: if Li Shiqun hadn't intentionally chosen to stay in the background, Ding Mocun would never have become the director."

"It's just that Li Shiqun's highest rank back in the Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics was merely head of a special service room, which isn't nearly enough to keep the Central Bureau's defectors within the special service organ in line. For now, he has to let Ding Mocun play the boss, since the man was once a big shot in his own right."

"However, once the new organization is established, he won't let this state of affairs persist for long. Two tigers cannot share the same mountain, so Mr. Xu had better be careful when choosing a side!" Liu Nina said with a smile.

Through her remarks, Xu Ruiyang gleaned some inner workings, giving him a relatively clear understanding of both Ding Mocun and Li Shiqun.

Li Shiqun was among the first to turn traitor and become a Japanese collaborator. In his early youth, he joined the underground party and even received training in the Soviet Union. In the twenty-first year of the Republic, he was arrested by the Shanghai District Investigation Office of the Central Party Headquarters of the Nationalist Government in Chongqing. He immediately defected and surrendered to the Central Party Headquarters, where he was appointed as a direct intelligence agent. Operating within the Shanghai International Settlement, he fell under the command of Ding Mocun and Tang Huimin, editing a publication for the Central Party Headquarters.

In his quest to obtain intelligence on the underground party, Li Shiqun concealed his treason from the organization. To test his loyalty, the underground party ordered him to assassinate Ding Mocun—who was himself a defector from the underground party, having joined the Nationalist Central Party Headquarters in Shanghai in the thirteenth year of the Republic.

After discussing the matter, Li Shiqun and Ding Mocun cooked up a ruse: they assassinated Ma Shaowu, the head of the Shanghai District of the Central Party Headquarters Investigation Office, while Ding Mocun feigned injury.

Following an investigation, the Central Party Headquarters Investigation Office detained both Ding Mocun and Li Shiqun. While Ding Mocun managed to secure his release thanks to his connections with a powerful Nationalist bigwig serving as Shanghai's Commissioner of Social Affairs, Li Shiqun was not so fortunate; he was escorted to the Nanjing headquarters to stand trial.

To save him, Li Shiqun's wife, Ye Jiqing, sold off their family property, gathered gold and silver jewelry, and traveled to Nanjing. She bribed Investigation Section Chief Ma Xiaotian and Operations Section Chief Su Chengde, and even managed to secure an audience with Investigation Section Chief Xu Enzeng. No one quite knows what transpired during their talk, but shortly after this meeting, Li Shiqun was transferred to serve as an intelligence agent under Ma Xiaotian.

Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the fall of Shanghai, Li Shiqun, Shi Linsen, Xia Zhongming, and other secret agents were ordered to go underground, and he eventually served as the director of the Zhuzhou-Pingxiang Railway Special Service Room. Convinced that the Japanese were bound to achieve ultimate victory, Li Shiqun secretly fled to Hong Kong and defected to Nakamura Toyoichi, the Japanese Consul General in Hong Kong, who subsequently introduced him to Shimizu Tomozaburo, a secretary at the Japanese Embassy in Shanghai.

Upon accepting assignments from the Japanese Embassy, Li Shiqun returned to his underground post at the Zhuzhou-Pingxiang Railway Special Service Branch. During this period, he crossed paths with the infamous master spy Kawashima Yoshiko, catching the attention of Doihara Kenji for the first time.

After the conclusion of the Battle of Wuhan, he secretly traveled to Shanghai, where Shimizu Tomozaburo introduced him to Doihara Kenji. This led to an introduction to Harukazu Hata, and he was eventually attached to the Western Shanghai Gendarmerie as a reconnaissance captain.

At the dawn of his "entrepreneurial" venture, Li Shiqun brought along a few defectors from the Central Bureau, but with virtually no assistance from the Japanese, he struggled to gain any traction.

Leveraging his connections with the Western Shanghai Gendarmerie, he first paid formal respects to Ji Yunqing, a major Green Gang boss and traitor in Shanghai, thereby joining the Green Gang. Ji Yunqing then introduced him to a group of local ruffians and gangsters, among whom were his goddaughter She Aizhen and godson Wu Sibao.

Feeling that his seniority in the Central Bureau was too shallow to command sufficient respect, Li Shiqun invited his former superior, Ding Mocun, to step out of retirement and take the helm as the head of the reconnaissance squad. Ding had once stood on equal footing with Dai Li and Xu Enzeng and held the rank of a Nationalist major general; naturally, his influence was far greater.

Ding Mocun had once been a prominent figure within the Nationalist intelligence system, but due to internal factional infighting when the Central Bureau and the Military Statistics Bureau split, he failed to reap any benefits. Left with merely a nominal post as a major general counselor, he even struggled to cover his daily living expenses.

More importantly, he harbored a deep pessimism regarding the Nationalist government's future and had long intended to defect to the Japanese. Upon receiving Li Shiqun's invitation, he readily agreed to join the reconnaissance squad, the two men hitting it off immediately due to their shared moral corruption.

"I wasn't trying to pry, but I knew absolutely nothing about the reconnaissance squad of Ding Mocun and Li Shiqun. Ding Mocun's wife doesn't work in the squad, yet Li Shiqun's wife, Ye Jiqing, does. How did that come to be?" Xu Ruiyang asked with a smile.

"Ding Mocun's wife is just an ordinary homemaker who quietly plays the role of a traditional wife at home and doesn't meddle in the affairs of the reconnaissance squad. Ye Jiqing is entirely different. She is Li Shiqun's strategist and the only person capable of influencing him. When it comes to venomous ruthlessness, Li Shiqun doesn't even hold a candle to her!"

"Some say that the reason Ye Jiqing turned out this way stems from the night she spent with Xu Enzeng in exchange for saving Li Shiqun's life. Because of that, Li Shiqun cherishes her deeply and obeys her every whim. You can afford to offend Li Shiqun while in the reconnaissance squad, but you must never cross Ye Jiqing," Liu Nina said.

Xu Ruiyang was truly unaware of this backstory. To think that a dignified deputy director of the Central Bureau—formerly known as the Chief of Party Affairs Investigation and one of the leaders of the Nationalist government's two major secret service organs—had actually slept with a subordinate's wife. With leaders of such moral caliber, it was little wonder the Central Bureau accomplished so little.

"Just now at the Shigemitsu Hall, I heard Lieutenant Colonel Harukazu say that Colonel Kagesada has already left for Hanoi to fetch Mr. Wang. Judging by that, the establishment of the new government probably won't be far off," Xu Ruiyang said with a smile.

This was the genuine probing. He intended to use the tidbit leaked by Harukazu to test Liu Nina, as he continually suspected that this woman's identity was far from simple.

Neither Ding Mocun nor Li Shiqun ever ordered her around to pour tea or handle trivial chores at the inspection team; viewed in that light, Liu Nina was definitively no mere secretary.

"Lieutenant Colonel Harukazu really does place immense trust in you to share such vital secrets with you. It is indeed true. Colonel Kagesada Sadaki departed for Japan on the fourth. After rendezvousing with representatives from the Navy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Asia Development Board, he set sail from Miike Port to Hanoi to bring back Mr. Wang."

"On the sixteenth, using the radio station of the Japanese Embassy in Vietnam, he transmitted his itinerary to Harukazu. He is expected to return to Shanghai sometime before the end of the month," Liu Nina said.

She had not anticipated that Xu Ruiyang had no prior knowledge of the matter and was merely testing her waters, causing her to blurt out top-secret information without a second thought.

Xu Ruiyang's suspicions were confirmed: Liu Nina was undoubtedly in league with Kagesada Sadaki, and her presence in the reconnaissance squad was likely intended to keep Ding Mocun and Li Shiqun under surveillance.