Chapter 133: Train, Café, Opera House

Ma Xiwen changed into a clean long gown and mandarin jacket.

These were new clothes his wife Xu Mengyun had personally made for him the previous year, and he was usually reluctant to wear them.

Taking one more look at the city where he had lived for several years, Ma Xiwen felt a sting in his nose.

Goodbye, Hangzhou, goodbye, Mengyun.

“Let’s go, little sister.”

As Ma Xiwen spoke to the mother and child beside him, he bent down and picked up Douzai, who was already fast asleep.

Yes, the organization had arranged for Sanni and the child to leave Hangzhou together with Ma Xiwen.

Butterfly Flower was a priority target being hunted by enemy agents.

Sanni and the child were also being searched for by the Party Affairs Investigation Department.

For safety’s sake, the arrangement was for the two adults and one child to travel to Shanghai together.

With two adults and a child, they could pose as a family, making concealment easier.

The organization was desperately poor.

Had Ma Xiwen not previously received a reward from Cheng Qianfan, it would have been difficult even to scrape together the train fare.

They bought third-class tickets.

The carriage was packed shoulder to shoulder.

With one arm holding the child, Ma Xiwen used his not particularly strong body to shield Sanni as best he could, and only with great difficulty managed to squeeze aboard.

The carriage was filled with the mingled smells of strong tobacco, stinking feet, chicken droppings, and rancid hair oil.

Hawking cries, noisy conversations, the sounds of people smacking their lips while eating, farting, and children suffering from diarrhea all merged together and assaulted the ears.

Not long after departure, a child began crying.

The crying went on endlessly.

The mother scolded the child, and the crying became even louder.

The mother then hit the child, and the child burst into loud sobs.

Helpless, the mother fished out half a steamed bun from her clothing.

The child stopped crying.

He had simply been starving.

The child took a bite, then looked at the half piece of coarse dark-flour bun in his hand.

After hesitating for quite a while, he held it out toward his mother’s mouth.

The mother’s teeth lightly touched the bun, indicating that she had already eaten.

Looking at the red face of the child she had struck, the mother turned her head and wiped the corners of her eyes.

Watching all this, Ma Xiwen’s eyes became moist.

This poor and backward China, its people struggling for so long amid hunger and cold, this was precisely why people like them had to rise up and fight, even willingly sacrificing their own lives!

Lowering his head to look at the deeply sleeping Douzai, this child who had lost his father, tenderness welled up in his heart.

If Mengyun had not sacrificed herself, she would certainly have liked Douzai as well.

Douzai looked remarkably like the child he and Mengyun would have had.

“My little Mu would have been seven years older than Douzai. If he had lived this long, he would already be a half-grown boy.”

Ma Xiwen said.

Beside him, Sanni did not reply.

She was lost in thought.

She dared not close her eyes.

Whenever she did, she saw her husband Meng Qiang and the lonely grave outside Hangzhou.

Diagonally across from the north side of the Shen Bao Building stood a café.

Because it was close to the Shen Bao Building, business at the café was usually fairly good.

Although most editors and workers could not afford coffee, journalists pursuing a Western lifestyle, as well as celebrities, wealthy young gentlemen, and fashionable young ladies who came there for interviews, were quite fond of this stylishly decorated establishment.

On the second floor of the café, in a small private room by the window.

Wang Kangnian held a newspaper in his hands, yet his eyes never left the main entrance of the Shen Bao Building.

At the same time, his mind was rapidly processing, digesting, and analyzing the large amount of intelligence he had gathered.

Previously, when Fang Muheng had been released by the police station, Wang Kangnian had said that the bait had been released.

That bait referred to Zhuang Ze.

Events had developed exactly as he had predicted.

Fang Muheng had shouted and campaigned on behalf of Zhuang Ze, and the Communists had indeed taken the bait, ultimately rescuing Zhuang Ze, who had been using the alias Zhu Yuan.

At the time, Wang Kangnian had been extremely excited.

He had felt that he was very close to wiping out the senior leadership of the Shanghai underground Communist organization in one stroke.

Yet he had never imagined that the Shanghai Communists would receive information from the Manchukuo Communist organization that Zhuang Ze had once defected and collaborated with the Japanese.

In the end, they had executed Zhuang Ze.

This outcome had driven Wang Kangnian into a furious rage.

Part of his anger stemmed from the fact that he had been only one final step away from capturing the senior Communist leadership in Shanghai.

Success had been right before his eyes!

Another reason was that Zhuang Ze had actually surrendered to the Japanese?

Wang Kangnian had personally interrogated Zhuang Ze.

Yet Zhuang Ze had never confessed such a thing.

That left Wang Kangnian feeling somewhat frustrated.

Of course, Wang Kangnian had not completely believed the information leaked from the Communist side.

There was another possibility.

Perhaps Zhuang Ze had never surrendered to the Japanese at all, and the Shanghai Communists had deliberately released that information.

Why deliberately release such a smokescreen?

The most likely reason was concealment.

Concealment of what?

That the Communists had discovered Zhuang Ze had defected to the Party Affairs Investigation Department?

And that this was the true reason they executed him?

That, in turn, was precisely what they wanted to conceal.

Were they concealing the source of that intelligence?

If that were true, what would it mean?

It would mean that there was an undercover Communist agent within the Party Affairs Investigation Department!

At one point, Wang Kangnian had even startled himself with this speculation.

He was the sort of person who habitually interpreted matters through the lens of the worst possible motives and conspiracy theories.

Although he possessed no evidence supporting this hypothesis, Wang Kangnian nevertheless began quietly observing the Party Affairs Investigation Department from within, investigating whether a Communist mole truly existed there.

He was not in a hurry.

He believed that no matter how cunning the fox, it could never escape a skilled hunter’s gun.

Just as he had shown great patience with Fang Muheng, another bait.

Yes, Zhuang Ze had been bait.

There was another piece of bait as well.

Fang Muheng himself was bait.

Wang Kangnian had conducted an in-depth study of how the Communists “bewitched people’s hearts” and expanded their influence.

Passionate patriotic youths like Fang Muheng were exactly the sort of people who appealed to the Communists.

Furthermore, Fang Muheng was a returned overseas student from a wealthy family with a respectable background.

He was educated, passionate, well-connected, and politically clean.

Such a hot-blooded young man possessed even greater value.

Wang Kangnian was convinced the Communists would never let a promising prospect like Fang Muheng slip away.

Therefore, he had secretly assigned a subordinate to keep Fang Muheng under constant surveillance.

More than a month had passed without progress.

But Wang Kangnian was not impatient.

Investigating the Communists was tedious and monotonous work.

It required patience, and it also required luck.

Wang Kangnian did not lack patience.

He believed that as long as one could endure the boredom and persist long enough, fortune would eventually smile upon them.

No one could withstand such prolonged surveillance forever.

If there was a problem, sooner or later a clue would emerge.

Sure enough, early this morning, the subordinate who had been tailing Fang Muheng delivered urgent intelligence.

The man had overheard some important information.

Wang Kangnian was extremely surprised that the police officers He Guan and Liu Bo had dared to kill a Japanese man.

Alongside his surprise was a measure of admiration.

What concerned him now, however, was whether this had been a personal act by the two men.

Or did they have some hidden backing?

Were they Communists?

Or did they possess some other identity?

Furthermore, Fang Muheng’s claim that he knew who had killed the traitor Old Mo immediately put Wang Kangnian on even higher alert.

One could even say he was exhilarated.

Old Mo had not been eliminated by a National Government intelligence organization.

The Party Affairs Investigation Department had not acted.

Moreover, as far as Wang Kangnian knew, neither had the Special Service Office.

Neither the Party Affairs Investigation Department nor the Special Service Office would ordinarily move against a police officer.

This was part of their tacit understanding with the authorities of the French Concession.

Of course, if that police officer was involved with the Communists, that would be another matter entirely.

Since it had not been the National Government side, then the prime suspect in Old Mo’s killing was the Communists.

Wang Kangnian was overjoyed.

The bait called Fang Muheng had finally hooked a big fish.

What he most urgently wanted to know now was whom Fang Muheng met today, what he did, and whether there was anything suspicious.

Now he waited.

He was waiting for the informant planted by the Party Affairs Investigation Department inside the Shen Bao newspaper to report in.

French Concession, Pétain District, Xiagu Lane.

This was an opera house.

Above the entrance were the four large characters: Universal Celebration.

Although evening had already fallen, bright electric lights illuminated the opera house as though it were broad daylight.

The clash of gongs and drums rang out.

On stage, Mu Guiying and Yang Zongbao were locked in fierce combat, and the audience watched in utter fascination.

From the distance came an exceptionally upright and handsome young man.

He wore a white shirt beneath a dark navy vest.

Below were sharply pressed trousers and a necktie.

A shoulder holster hung from one shoulder.

As he walked, the holster swung listlessly with each step.

An unlit cigarette hung from his mouth.

Citizens who saw him along the way either stepped aside or hurriedly greeted him.

“Officer Cheng, hello.”

Officer Cheng merely nodded faintly without comment.

More than ten steps away from the opera house, Cheng Qianfan stopped.

Taking out the lighter he had swiped from Pete, he flicked it with a click, lit the cigarette, took a drag, exhaled a ring of smoke, and narrowed his eyes as he looked at the opera house.