"The Devil Knows Them"

"What, what's the matter?" The operator asked.

Li Guangyuan snorted and shook his head.

"You know what," he said slowly, "I've been given an assignment," he snorted again, "I should be careful to see who among the officials at the highest level is ready to negotiate with the West and Japan alone." That refers to people in the top leadership of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing.

How do you feel about this task? It's lighthearted, right? It seems that since I haven't fallen in 20 years, it proves that I can do anything. It would be better if I could be Mr. Wang's deputy. Or just become president, right? You see, I'm going to be a nag."

"'Nagging ghosts' are a good fit for you," replied the operator.

"Little girl, what are you going to do?" When the operator stopped, Li Guangyuan asked her.

"I don't think the new method has been invented yet," the operator smiled.

"I was chatting with an obstetrician the day before yesterday, and I don't want to scare you," he approached the operator and pleaded, "Hit, kid, play." I don't want to scare you, even though I'm scared myself. The old doctor told me that he could determine the place of birth of any woman at the time of delivery."

"I don't understand, how to judge," said the operator.

The sound of the playing stopped abruptly.

"Don't be afraid. Listen to what I've to say, and then we'll think about how to get through this. You know that women scream during childbirth."

"Thank you for the advice," replied the operator, "I thought they were going to sing."

Li Guangyuan shook his head and sighed again.

"You know, they shout in the local dialect.

Shout in the words spoken in the place of their birth. That is to say, when the time comes, you will shout 'Mom' in the Chengdu dialect."

The operator continued to play the piano, but Li Guangyuan saw that her eyes were suddenly full of tears.

"So what do we do?" Another asked.

"What if I send you to Yan'an? I guess I can do that."

"Isn't there even the last contact radio station left," the operator asked.

"I'll stay here," said the pregnant one.

Li Guangyuan shook his head and objected. He told them: "They will not let you go alone, they can only go with him, he is a disabled soldier and needs to be treated in a sanatorium." And they won't let you leave alone at the invitation of your relatives, because your uncle is a party member, and your uncle is not."

"We all stayed," the operator said, "nothing remarkable. ”

"You can add a few curses, but you must have a Shanghai accent," Li Guangyuan joked, "We will decide this matter tomorrow, or we should think about it in a hurry, and we can go without the slightest heroic passion." It's time to get in touch. Based on the reply given to me tomorrow, we'll make a decision."

Five minutes later, they came out of their room. Li Guangyuan carried a suitcase with a radio station in his hand. Their car drove about 15 kilometers in the direction of Pudong, and Li Guangyuan turned off the motor. There are planes hovering in the sky. The operator looked at his watch and said, "To start?" ”

Start

Number One: I still firmly believe that no one among the important politicians in Western countries will negotiate with the Kuomintang. However, since I have received the task, I will definitely complete it.

I think that if I report some of the information I got from you to Zhan Guoqiang, the mission will be possible. Relying on his support, I can further directly monitor the whereabouts of those you think are exploring negotiating channels. My "whistleblowing" to Zhan will help me to provide you with all the information that affirms your speculations and disproves them. I can't find any other avenues at the moment. If you agree, please use the channel here to convey "Agree".

The report shocked the border as if a bomb had exploded.

"He is on the verge of collapse," said one of the leaders of the intelligence center, "and if he deals directly with Zhan Guoqiang, he will be exposed immediately, and nothing can save him." Even if it is assumed that Zhan Guoqiang wants to play tricks on him, Zhan Guoqiang may not do that, because he is not a big pawn on the commander's chessboard. Please send him a report tomorrow morning and tell him to stop immediately and tell him that we firmly forbid him to do so"

In recent months, the intelligence center has collected some new information and gained an unexpected new understanding of Zhan Guoqiang, so it is impossible for Li Guangyuan to know the information that the intelligence center has learned.

He woke up suddenly, as if someone had pushed him on the shoulder. He sat on the bed and looked around. The room was silent. The glow-in-the-dark hand of the small alarm clock is pointed exactly at five o'clock.

"It's still early," Zhan Guoqiang thought to himself, "I should sleep for another hour"

He yawned and lay down facing the wall again. Lin Tao's roar came from outside the small ventilation window. It snowed since the evening, and Zhan Guoqiang's mind conjured up a quiet and empty winter forest. Suddenly it occurred to him that if he went out into the forest alone, he would be as scary as he had been when he was a child.

Zhan Guoqiang got up from the bed, put on his pajamas, and walked to the table. He sat down on the edge of a wooden chair without turning on the light and put one hand on the microphone of the black telephone.

"I should call my daughter," he thought, "and the child must be very happy." Her joy was greatly reduced."

There is a large photograph under the glass pane of the desk: two boys smiling playfully and carefree.

Suddenly, a clear figure of Ding Mocun appeared in Zhan Guoqiang's mind. Zhan Guoqiang thought that he was to blame for this villain, he couldn't call his daughter now, and said to her: "Hello wow, little mouse, it was Dad who called you." What dreams did you just have, dear? "You can't talk on the phone with two boys because they weren't legally born out of wedlock. Zhan Guoqiang remembers that in 1934 he asked for 80,000 fiat money from the party's coffers to build a small villa on the edge of Hangzhou's West Lake, Ma Manli, on the edge of Hangzhou's West Lake, far from the often bombed area. But later, Chang Kaishen told him about it from others, and when he was eating at the base camp several times in a row, the president looked him up and down, left and right inexplicably. As a result, he was unable to divorce his wife, even though he had been away from home for six years.

"It's not about Dingmo Village," Zhan continued, "it's all my fault, this unfortunate thing has nothing to do with that fat pig." I can endure all the humiliation caused by the divorce of the country, and I can ignore the badge of the guard against the breakdown of the family and the divorce of the wife. However, I must not let my daughter get mentally stimulated under any circumstances.

Zhan Guoqiang smiled slightly, he remembered the first years, when he was hungry and cold, and lived with his wife in a small and cold house in Osaka. That was eighteen years ago. At that time, he was the secretary of his "brother" Chang Kaishen, who was hiding in Chongqing. He traveled around Japan to establish ties between the various party organizations, often sleeping at train stations, nibbling on dry bread and drinking something called hot tea, which was actually made of barley. In 1927, when he did not understand that Nanking could already produce a guard force, the National Guard

He thought it because the struggle against the Communist Party had begun. Zhan also believed at the time that the Guards had been created to protect the party leaders from being killed by the Red Elements. He truly believed that the main task of the Red elements was to eliminate the great leader, the only way out for the Chinese working people. He hung a large portrait of Wang Wei on the wall next to the table. Once, Wang Wei looked for him for something and saw a thin, freckled young man standing under a large portrait of himself. He said: "Is it worth it to elevate one of the party leaders so high above other members of the National Revolutionary Party?" ”

Zhan Guoqiang replied: "I am a party member, and our party has a leader, not a leader."

Wang Wei remembered the incident.

It was recommended to the Führer that Zhan Guoqiang be appointed commander of the reorganized Guards. He had hoped that the Guards would be the first to serve the Nanking government in the struggle against Luo Hansheng and for greater influence on the Party and himself. The first 200 SS members were all under his leadership. Although there were only 200 men, there would have been no victory in 1933 without the SS, and Zhan Guoqiang was very clear about this. However, after the victory, Wang Wei only appointed him as the head of the criminal police of No. 76. One day, Zhan Guoqiang came to Zhan Guoqiang when he was introduced to the party, the person who put forward the idea of establishing an armed contingent of guards, and the party theoretician and thinker Mei Sipin. At this time, Wang Wei was already in opposition to Chang Kaishen, and he openly told some old party members that Chang Kaishen had sold himself to the rich giants in the heavy industry and to some blood-sucking capitalists: "The reason why the people support us is because we have declared that we will wage a sacred war against the rich and powerful, whether they are capitalists or the landlord class." But Chang Kaishen colluded with them. He won't end well."

At that time, Boss Dai said to Zhan Guoqiang, "Director, the Guards can become a more powerful force and bring our movement back to the glorious and noble direction it was at the beginning, it's up to you."

But Zhan Guoqiang interrupted him and told him that loyalty to the motherland was the duty of every party member of the National Revolution.

"You can raise your suspicions to the Congress, but you have no right to use your prestige to carry out activities that are detrimental to the Party, because this is extremely harmful to the sacred unity of the Party"

Zhan Guoqiang carefully observed everything that happened in the Party Central Committee. He saw that the mood of getting carried away by the victory had pushed the actual work to a very unimportant position to a certain extent, and he saw that the leaders of the Kuomintang were giving speeches everywhere, entertaining at diplomatic receptions all night, in a word, enjoying the sweet fruits of national victory, and Zhan Guoqiang believed that all this was premature. And it took him less than a month to build the first model prison in Shanghai.

"It's a good place to educate people who voted for the Communist Party and train them to raise the consciousness of true Chinese citizens," Himmler said. It's ridiculous to put all these people in prison. First of all, create an atmosphere of terror, and then gradually release some of the tortured people from prison. These released persons will become excellent propagandists of specific national policies. They can admonish their relatives, friends, and children to be as faithful to our political system as they are to religion. ”

Li Shiqun sent a personal representative to inspect No. 76 for several hours, after which he asked Zhan Guoqiang: "Don't you think that such a place will arouse strong condemnation in Europe and America?" At the very least, it's illegal."

"Why do you think it is unconstitutional to arrest elements hostile to our polity?"

"Because most of the people you have arrested have not even entered the courtroom. There is no indictment, and there is no shadow of the rule of law."

Zhan Guoqiang promised to reconsider the issue. As soon as Li Shiqun's representative left, Zhan Guoqiang immediately wrote a private letter to Wang Wei, in which he argued the necessity of arresting people and putting them in prison without trial and interrogation. He wrote to Wang Wei: "This is nothing more than a humanitarian way to save the hostile elements of National Socialism from arousing public indignation. If we don't put the enemies of these countries in prison, we can't be responsible for their lives, because the people will lynch them."

On the same day, Zhan Guoqiang convened a mass meeting, at which he repeated these words word for word. The second husband, his speech was published in all the newspapers.

At the end of 1933, a scandal of corruption and bribery occurred in the Shanghai Police Department, which was directly under the leadership of Li Shiqun. That night, Zhan Guoqiang left Shanghai and met Wang Wei.

He asked that the "policemen who sold their souls, under the old system" be handed over to the secret agents of "the good sons of the people" No. 76 to control.

Wang Wei was unwilling to offend Li Shiqun. He just shook Zhan Guoqiang's hand tightly, sent him to the door of the office, looked at Zhan Guoqiang's eyes face to face, suddenly smiled happily, and said: "In the future, please send your brilliant advice as soon as possible, I mean: the letter you gave me and your speech with the same content at the mass meeting."

Zhan Guoqiang left Berlin in a very bad mood. However, a month later, Nanjing appointed him as the head of the political police in the Husong region without being summoned, and another month later, on 20 December, he became the head of the political police in Zhejiang, and on the 21st, 24th, 25th, and 27th of the same month, he was appointed the head of the political police in Anhui, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei, and other places. Within a week, he became the police chief of all of China, with the exception of Nanjing, which was still part of Jiangsu.

One husband, Wang Wei proposed a compromise plan to Li Shiqun: appoint Zhan Guoqiang as the head of the national secret police, but under Li Shiqun's command. Li Shiqun accepted the compromise proposal. He instructed his Secretariat staff, through the Executive Office, to make a decision to grant Zhan the titles of Deputy Minister of the Interior and Chief of the Secret Police, with the right to participate in cabinet meetings to discuss matters related to the police. But he crossed out the original phrase "and security" on the decision. Because this is too dry, Zhan Guoqiang is strong.

As soon as this decision appeared in the newspaper, Zhan Guoqiang immediately asked the person in charge of the newspaper to comment on his appointment in another way. Li Shiqun made a serious mistake when agreeing to a compromise by forgetting that no one had yet revoked Zhan Guoqiang's main title, Commander of the Guards. The next day, every newspaper in the capital published a commentary, saying: "The centralized and unified control of the criminal police, the political police, the political department, and the gendarmerie by Zhan Guoqiang, the commander-in-chief of the emperor, is a great victory for the attention of the state, and a warning to all enemies of the nation: the iron fist of nationalist punishment has been raised on the head of every opposition, every enemy, whether they are domestic or foreign."

Later, he moved to Shanghai, where he lived in a small and spacious villa near Chang Kaishen's son's house. Just as everyone continued to be elated about the victory over the Communist Party, Zhan Guoqiang and his assistant Wu Sibao had already begun to collect and sort out the project materials. Zhan Guoqiang personally sorted out the project materials of his former superior, Zhang Xiaolin. He knew very well that only by killing his teacher, the first mentor Zhang Xiaolin, could he win a complete victory. Therefore, he was extremely careful, collecting materials bit by bit that could put Zhang Xiaolin to death.

In June 1934, Chang Kaishen summoned Zhan Guoqiang to discuss with him the imminent suppression of the Communist Party. Zhan Guoqiang is waiting for this day to come. He knew that the suppression of the Communist Party was only an excuse to eliminate all those who went with him on the Northern Expedition, and in the eyes of those who fought with him, he was a man, a brother in their party, and now, Chang Kaishen should become the leader of the Chinese, their god. In this way, the party elders became a burden to him.

After Zhan Guoqiang heard Chang Kaishen's anger at the "handful" of "veterans" who were influenced by the enemy's propaganda, his heart became clearer. You can't tell anyone, even your closest friends, all your true feelings. Zhan Guoqiang also understood this, and he helped the president: he put on the table the project materials of 4,000 veteran soldiers, in fact, all the veteran party members who founded the Guoming Party with Chang Kaishen. He confidently estimated that Chang Kaishen would never forget this great credit to him, because helping a person justify his atrocities was the most cherished.

However, Zhan Guoqiang did not stop there, and after understanding Chang Kaishen's intentions, he made up his mind to become a very needed, even indispensable, person at the president's side, so that similar actions could only be taken in the future according to his initiative.

Therefore, once when accompanying Chang Kaishen to his villa, Zhan Guoqiang played a good show: let a guy who was a spy put on a Communist Party uniform and fired a shot at his convertible car, Zhan Guoqiang covered Chang Kaishen with his body, and at the same time shouted the first time he heard the title of Chang Kaishen in the party: "My president, I feel very happy to be able to give my own blood for your life"

No one had ever used the term "my president" before. Zhan Guoqiang is the first person to use this title for "God" and "his own God".

"From now on, Guoqiang, you are my own brother," Chang Kaishen said to Zhan Guoqiang at that time. His words, those standing around heard it.

After Zhan Guoqiang suppressed Zhang Xiaolin, and after his teacher and 4,000 party veterans were purged, some shoddy writers quickly concocted the myth that it was Zhan Guoqiang who stood with Chang Kaishen from the beginning of the movement.

Later, at the "dinner party" that only Chang Kaishen's closest comrades-in-arms could attend, Zhan Guoqiang shook hands cordially with Li Shiqun, Ding Mocun and Mei Sipin, but he did not stop collecting project materials for "his comrades-in-arms" for a moment.

Li Guangyuan sent the operator home. He gets tired after every contact with the intelligence center, so the speed is slow.

The car followed the road through a wooded field. By this time the wind had stopped, and the starry sky was cloudless.

"However," Li Guangyuan continued to think, "Yan'an was right to estimate the possibility of negotiations. Even if they don't have specific information yet. But this scenario is possible, because it is logical. Yan'an knows very well about the intrigues and intrigues between the people around Wang Wei now, and the open and secret battles. In the past, the goal of this kind of struggle was very clear, that is, to get close to Wang Wei. Now I'm afraid it's the opposite. Whether it is Li Shiqun, Ding Mocun, Mei Sipin, and now they are concerned about how to maintain their status. For each of them, whoever occupies a high position means that he has saved his own life.

Each of them is worried about himself, and by no means worried about the fate of the Chinese nation and the Chinese. In this case, the 40,000,000 compatriots are nothing more than cards used by these few people to gamble for themselves. As long as they have the army, the police, and the spies in their hands, they can manipulate the direction of the nation's destiny at will, hoping only to obtain the protection of their personal inviolability."

Suddenly, a dazzling light shook Li Guangyuan's eyes. He narrowed his eyes and involuntarily stepped on the brakes, braking the car. Two military and police motorcycles drove out from behind the bushes and straddled the middle of the road. A motorcyclist pointed an automatic rifle at Li Guangyuan's car.

"Get out your papers," said the motorcyclist.

Li Guangyuan handed him the document and asked, "What's wrong?" ”

The motorcyclist looked at his documents, saluted Li Guangyuan, and replied: "Hearing the alarm, we urgently gathered to search for the radio operator."

"How's the search going?" Li Guangyuan put the documents back in his pocket and asked, "Haven't you found anything yet?" ”

"Your car was the first one we encountered"

"Do you want to check the trunk of the car?" Li Guangyuan smiled.

The two motorcyclists laughed.

"There are two craters ahead, please be careful, Mr. Wing Commander"

"Thank you," Li Guangyuan replied, "I have always been very cautious."

"This was after the report just now," Li Guangyuan understood.

"They blocked the roads to the east and south. Overall, it's ridiculously naïve, but of course if they're dealing with someone who doesn't know much about the situation, it's still right in principle."

He went around the crater. It was a freshly blown crater, and a strong smell of burnt smell was blowing from the front window as the car walked by.

"Now let's go back and think about our rams."