Spying

19 Companion

Successfully leaving the Ministry of Defense did not mean they had escaped pursuit.

Ren Shaobai’s strategy of misleading everyone into believing Han Guizhang had disguised himself as a maintenance worker to flee became ineffective once the real maintenance worker was found at the Joint Logistics Headquarters.

After settling Han Guizhang, the news Ren Shaobai brought back from Honggongci disappointed Li Helin: since the last successful crackdown on the CCP’s underground intelligence stations, the Confidentiality Bureau had detected no new activity. “Neither the Southern Bureau nor the Jiangsu Provincial Committee could rebuild their networks so quickly”—these were Lu Peng’s exact words.

But to Li Helin, this essentially meant that if someone had indeed been waiting outside to assist Han Guizhang, the Confidentiality Bureau had no clue who it could be.

Counterintelligence agents from the Sixth Division of the Second Department attempted to extract some leads from representatives of the Northwest Military and Political Office, but all of them, led by their superior Zhang Zhizhong, claimed complete ignorance—and their “ignorance” carried a hint of hostility. When this situation was reported to the department head, he could only sigh helplessly, lamenting how someone like Han Guizhang, with such deep roots in the party and so many comrades-in-arms, could defect to the enemy so abruptly.

Unlike the department head, who was still fixated on the reasons behind Han Guizhang’s defection, Li Helin demonstrated a more pragmatic approach to solving the problem. He reasoned that a living person couldn’t simply vanish into thin air. If Han hadn’t disguised himself as a maintenance worker, he likely exploited a time gap—hiding somewhere in the Ministry of Defense while everyone assumed he had already escaped, then blending in with the security personnel sent to pursue him.

Admittedly, his analysis was remarkably accurate.

Realizing this quickly, Li Helin believed their citywide manhunt still had a high chance of success.

“There’s another critical factor to consider—how was the news of his arrest leaked?” To Li Helin, this was even more serious than Han Guizhang’s escape itself, as it implied he had an accomplice inside the Ministry of Defense.

“Although the secrecy level of this operation was high, the number of people with access wasn’t insignificant,” Ren Shaobai analyzed. “In theory, only top officials in the Ministry of Defense were privy to it, but each of them has aides and secretaries, which expands the circle. Add to that the Confidentiality Bureau personnel involved in the operation, and the number grows. Oh, and the Sixth Division had to coordinate with the General Affairs Office to prepare the safe house, so the scope isn’t small.”

Li Helin sighed. “This is the flaw in our operational system.”

Ren Shaobai didn’t dare agree outright but added, “Could it also be that there isn’t an accomplice per se? Just like how the Northwest Office clearly shielded him, there might be old friends of his in our ministry—or even the Presidential Office—who simply wanted to help?”

“Help?” Li Helin said coldly. “Handing a high-ranking officer to the Communists out of so-called camaraderie? If that’s the case, then we must dig out this muddle-headed fool even more urgently.”

This was the situation on the evening of August 7.

But by the next morning, new developments escalated the severity of the entire affair.The fugitive wanted by the Minister of National Defense had escaped, and with the Confidentiality Bureau chief away in Beiping, Yang Kaizhi from the bureau's first division enlisted help from the Capital Police Department for the manhunt. He personally led the operation, dispersing teams across various districts of the city. Yet mere hours later, his body was discovered near a shantytown in the southwestern part of the city.

Word had already spread within the Confidentiality Bureau—it must have been an Action team sent by the Communist Party. While extracting Han Guizhang, they had engaged in a firefight with the isolated Yang Kaizhi.

The reason it couldn't have been Han Guizhang himself was that, according to the Northwestern Army's equipment records, the bullets used in his sidearm didn’t match the one that had struck Yang Kaizhi in the chest.

Li Helin studied the ballistic trajectory analysis secretly provided by the police with a grave expression: the victim had been shot at close range from the front, and the bullet had an unusual structure...

It was also because of Yang Kaizhi’s death that the previously uninvolved Confidentiality Bureau was dragged into the mess—how could a team of Communist agents slip into the capital unnoticed during an important military conference? Had the bureau grown complacent, or were they simply incompetent?

Lu Peng, who had maintained a detached attitude the day before while meeting Ren Shaobai, could no longer sit back. It was the National Defense Ministry’s people who had let Han Guizhang slip right under their noses, and now they were trying to shift the blame onto the bureau? Still, Lu Peng decided to step in, joining the Second Department and the Confidentiality Bureau in tracking down Han Guizhang and his Communist accomplices—not out of rivalry or self-justification, but because the slain Yang Kaizhi had once been the one who recruited him into the Military Intelligence Section.

Thus, a temporary task force dedicated to capturing Han Guizhang was officially formed, comprising police and security forces under the Confidentiality Bureau, the intelligence-focused Second Department of National Defense, and the Confidentiality Bureau itself. Unless Han Guizhang had the ability to vanish into thin air, there was no way he could escape Nanjing.

So where was Han Guizhang at this moment?

A day earlier, before Ren Shaobai went to pull the air conditioning unit’s cables, he had made a call to the assistant manager’s office at Xingye Bank, claiming that he had a fixed-term deposit nearing maturity but couldn’t make it to the counter in person.

The person on the other end offered to send a clerk to his home to collect the documents and personal seal.

This was his backup plan with Peng Yongcheng—if they needed to meet outside their originally agreed time, this was how they would arrange it.

And the meeting place? It was in one of the rental properties owned by Ren Shaobai’s maternal grandfather in Xijiadatang.

Adjacent to the ancient city wall, Xijiadatang was essentially a corner of Black Tortoise Lake. Legend had it that when Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang established the capital, he carved out a section of Black Tortoise Lake within the city walls. Later, during the Wanli era, a provincial graduate named Xu Zixiu took a liking to the area, planting lotuses and chrysanthemums to create a scenic spot that attracted visitors, known as "Xujiadatang." But because Nanjing locals spoke quickly and carelessly with their pronunciation, by the time Nationalist elder Ye Chucang compiled The Capital Gazetteer , it was recorded as "Xijiadatang."

Ren Shaobai’s grandfather had decided to invest in the capital’s real estate a few years before The Capital Gazetteer was published. Following the new residential zones outlined in The Capital Plan , many well-connected individuals bought land and built houses in areas like Gaoyunling and Fuhougang. But Ren Shaobai’s grandfather had set his sights on the surroundings of Xijiadatang.The houses built here weren't like those Western-style villas in the embassy district, but rather simple row houses rented to newcomers to the capital. Ren Shaobai, who had come from his hometown in Shaoxing to study in Nanjing as a teenager, had once lived in one of these houses and even been neighbors with a woman who later became a movie star in Shanghai—certainly not Shangguan Yunzhu, or else he would have bragged about it for the rest of his life.

And now, hidden among these longtime residents who had developed an authentic Nanjing dialect, was Han Guizhang.

"This place is safe. All the neighbors are old acquaintances of my family. I told them you're a new tenant, so no one will suspect anything," Ren Shaobai said as he settled Han Guizhang into a house still containing the previous tenant's belongings, which would suffice for basic living needs for a few days. On the first night, he instructed, "But the Ministry of National Defense is looking for you, so it's best not to go outside. Aunt Qiao from the first house to the east will bring you meals every day. She grew up serving my mother, so you don’t need to worry—she definitely won’t talk."

After receiving the news, Peng Yongcheng also came to Xijiadatang. He didn’t blame Ren Shaobai for acting first and reporting later, because he agreed that organizing a rescue afterward would have faced greater resistance. However, by the next day, with Yang Kaizhi’s death, getting Han Guizhang out of Nanjing under such tight surveillance was another matter entirely.

"Are you sure Yang Kaizhi wasn’t killed by your people?" When Ren Shaobai met Peng Yongcheng again, his tone was impatient.

"According to what you said, he died at dusk yesterday. At that time, we hadn’t even begun planning our operation."

Ren Shaobai wasn’t sure if Peng had emphasized the word "we" more than the others. But he immediately realized he had misspoken and lowered his head, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose to hide his embarrassment.

Peng Yongcheng looked at him and sighed.

"I told you yesterday that from now on, leave Han’s transfer to me. You’ve already done enough."

Peng Yongcheng thought that, given the Ministry of National Defense’s aggressive stance—not only hunting Han Guizhang but likely conducting internal investigations—Ren Shaobai would be at risk of exposure if he took further action. However, his words struck Ren Shaobai differently.

"Are you trying to cut me out of the operation? Do you think I’d leak the escape route you arranged?"

Peng Yongcheng hadn’t expected such a question and couldn’t help but flare up in return. "What’s wrong with you today? First, you suspect me of killing Yang Kaizhi, then accuse me of excluding you from the operation. Do you have some kind of trust issue with me?"

"It’s not me—it’s you. You don’t trust me," Ren Shaobai blurted out, though he regretted it the moment the words left his mouth.

Peng Yongcheng stared in astonishment at this young man he had only recently met, suddenly realizing a question he had never considered before.

The Central Committee had sent him to Nanjing to replace the previous Silkworm Keeper and reawaken Agent 1207 from dormancy. Before departing, he had asked his superior: To 1207, was he a handler, a supervisor, or something else?

A comrade, his superior had told him.Peng Yongcheng didn’t press further, because to him, this was only natural. As an undercover operative, he had worked in Shanghai, Beiping, Wuhan… sometimes as a temporary liaison, other times leading long-term operations. In all those missions, every underground comrade who fought alongside him was a companion—someone he could entrust with his life and everything he had.

But the word "companion" didn’t come so naturally to Ren Shaobai before him.

Perhaps it was because he had been disconnected from the organization for too long, or perhaps he had never truly operated as part of a team and couldn’t grasp that unconditional trust between links in the same chain.

In Ren Shaobai’s mind, even with shared political convictions, even when following orders to carry out secret and dangerous missions together, trust in a companion was conditional. He thought this way and assumed the other person did too—that the promised trust during their first meeting was just lip service, without real meaning.

“I see,” Peng Yongcheng said after realizing this. “Whether it was the batch of arms delivered to the liberated areas last time or the rescue of General Han this time, you treated them as Certificates of Allegiance.”

Ren Shaobai stiffened.

This had been his unspoken worry ever since awakening from dormancy—that he hadn’t done enough to prove himself to the organization, that they might still see him as a double agent after years embedded in the Nationalist apparatus. He feared an unspoken barrier existed between them. So, he sought to prove himself, again and again, through his actions.

He was insecure, Peng Yongcheng suddenly realized.

“It’s good you said it. Otherwise, every time I saw you, you seemed so composed—I had no idea this was what you were thinking.” Peng Yongcheng thought of his younger brother, who would have been around Ren Shaobai’s age if he hadn’t been lost during the refugee exodus in ’37. The thought made him patient beyond mere understanding.

“You don’t have to treat every mission as a Certificate of Allegiance. You don’t need to submit one. I don’t know how you and your former Silkworm Keeper reached an understanding on this, but it’s fine—we’ll take it slow. Still, I hope one day you’ll see me as a companion you can truly trust. And by trust, I don’t just mean not suspecting me of acting behind your back, but not doubting my unconditional faith in you. A bit convoluted, isn’t it? But that’s the idea. I think you’ll understand—consider it part of building relationships, especially in our line of work.”

Listening to Peng Yongcheng’s words, Ren Shaobai’s restless urgency gradually settled. After a moment of silence, he murmured, “I understand.”

Peng Yongcheng smiled like an indulgent elder brother. “Also, when I said I’d handle General Han’s next steps without you, it wasn’t to exclude you. Your absence is part of my plan.”