Spying

05 Confidentiality Bureau

"Oh wait, should we take down this calligraphy piece?" Lan Youyin said in the General Affairs Office.

Ren Shaobai was still frozen in shock, but the deputy director who had initially brought up the topic quickly reacted, "Ah! It must be that Section Chief Lan handled your personnel file and gave you the good news in advance. Congratulations, Brother Ren. You’ll have to treat Section Chief Lan to a meal later."

Ren Shaobai stared at him, wide-eyed, at his ingratiating expression, then turned to Lan Youyin, wanting to explain that he hadn’t meant to gossip about her behind her back—but he was left speechless, like a mute swallowing bitter herbs.

At the same time, however, he felt a faint sense of relief. If Lan Youyin could stand here so casually, then Qiao Mingyu probably wasn’t a Communist spy. After all, given the Confidentiality Bureau’s usual methods, they wouldn’t arrest the husband and spare the wife… The rumors about Communist spies must have been baseless hearsay, blown out of proportion and spread around like big news—Ren Shaobai decided the first thing he’d do upon returning to his office was to assert his authority as a leader and put a stop to this habit of spreading unfounded gossip.

Lan Youyin didn’t spare Ren Shaobai another glance. She had come to the General Affairs Office to follow up on their procurement of office supplies, and when Ren Shaobai bid her farewell with an apologetic, ingratiating smile, she only gave a perfunctory "Hmm" in response.

Ren Shaobai played the part of someone caught gossiping to perfection, shrinking in embarrassment before fleeing the scene—though he didn’t forget to take the electric fan he had come to collect, clutching it to his chest.

This was how he had survived in the Ministry of Defense these past few years—flexible and adaptable, immediately humbling himself when he misspoke. No one would suspect that he was anything more than a minor figure just trying to coast through government work. At 30, he had climbed to the rank of section chief and harbored no greater ambitions. Even he sometimes forgot what Ren Shaobai had been like before this.

The promotion order finally came through before the weather grew even hotter.

It wasn’t exactly a big deal. The position of full section chief had been vacant for some time, and his colleagues had long hinted that he should make an effort to secure the promotion. Unfortunately, in the eyes of the directors, department heads, and bureau chiefs, Ren Shaobai had always been seen as lacking ambition—otherwise, he wouldn’t have had to wait until now, barely scraping by on the merits of an investigation into an unfounded corruption case, to finally be promoted.

Still, his close colleagues insisted on celebrating, and so the group chose the following Sunday to visit the International Recreation Club on Zhongshan North Road.

The Recreation Club was an entertainment venue under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, combining a restaurant, dance hall, and auditorium, with newly added billiards and card rooms last year. Even on weeknights, the place was alive with clinking glasses and raucous music, let alone on weekends.

Officers and civil servants of all ranks from the Nationalist government flitted between fine liquor, jazz, and the shimmering light of crystal chandeliers, losing track of day and night. Here, no one cared how far the Communist army had advanced—they only paid attention to the mingling men and women on the dance floor, whose fingers brushed whose waist, whose arm grazed whose shoulder.

Ren Shaobai sipped a glass of red wine at the bar, feeling somewhat listless, while Wei Ningsheng and the others who had come with him had long since disappeared into some corner of the club. Just then, the conversation of the person beside him drifted into his ears.The man had clearly already had quite a bit to drink. The bartender, who seemed familiar with him, was advising him to take it easy: "You still have to take care of your mother when you get back. Reeking of alcohol won't do."

Ren Shaobai glanced curiously at the neighboring seat and saw a relatively young man leaning heavily against the bar, insisting the bartender pour him another drink. Both men spoke in Mandarin with a Hunanese accent.

"What's the matter? Work not going well?"

"Don't even mention it. I've finally figured it out—work is just big fish eating little fish, and little fish eating shrimp. And me? I'm just a tiny shrimp. Had I known it'd be this frustrating now, I should've just taken my cut and quit after returning from Chongqing."

"Don't say that. Outsiders would envy your position."

"Envy? Maybe I had that confidence when the Boss was still around. Now anyone can step all over me."

Ren Shaobai noted his choice of words and immediately recognized him as someone from the Confidentiality Bureau. After all, within government agencies, the only one ever referred to as "the Boss" was Dai Li, the former head of the Military Intelligence Bureau. He turned away, silently agreeing with the bartender's sentiment: the Confidentiality Bureau was already the most lucrative post in the entire system—what more could he want?

"You've been quite busy lately?"

"Busy for nothing. Just wasted effort. No credit at all. The higher-ups made a mistake that got someone killed, and we underlings had to take the fall. I even wrote—no, fabricated—that interrogation accident report."

Ren Shaobai felt as if a thunderbolt had exploded in his mind.

In those brief seconds, fragments of facts came rushing at him from all directions—Lu Changhai's words to him, the rumors Wei Ningsheng had heard, the trivial matters the General Affairs Department had handled these past few days, and Lan Youyin's attitude toward her... The information was chaotic but faintly pointed in the same direction.

A small commotion arose around him as people turned toward the bar.

Only then did Ren Shaobai realize it wasn't thunder—it was the glass in his hand that had shattered. Somehow, the wine glass had slipped through his fingers, the dark red wine spilling across the floor in a crash.

"Ha, now that's really too much..." He staggered back a step, pressing his fingers to his temples and blinking hard, as if struggling to regain his composure.

The bartender quickly called a waiter to clean up the mess, while the Confidentiality Bureau man, startled awake by the noise, pushed his nearly empty whiskey glass aside and eyed the even more disheveled drinker beside him with slight wariness. He'd said too much in his drunken state—the director had specifically warned him about loose lips after drinking.

With several colleagues supporting him, Ren Shaobai stumbled out of the clubhouse door, eyes bleary with intoxication.

Under the porch, rain had begun to fall unnoticed. It wasn't heavy, but the air already carried the familiar dampness.

Wei Ningsheng remarked, "The rainy season's coming."

Ren Shaobai declined a rickshaw and walked alone toward home. As the fine rain curtain fell around him, his gaze gradually cleared.

The plane trees rustled overhead, wind and rain making the mottled shadows on the ground appear eerie and unsettling.Not far from the International Club, in a unit of the old-style Shikumen alleyway houses of Peach Blossom Village, Lan Youyin, who had just fallen asleep, suddenly opened her eyes. For several seconds or longer, she remained frozen in her waking position, not daring to move, as if her consciousness had returned to reality but her body was still trapped in the terrifying dream.

When she finally managed to sit up, her first action was to reach into the bedside drawer for a medicine bottle, pour out two pills into her hand, and swallow them dry without water. After a while, she felt the dreams receding from her. In the darkness, she slowly stood up and walked to the window, peering out through a gap in the curtains.

The black Ford sedan that had occupied the spot under the streetlight for the past few days was still there.

Lan Youyin recalled the training materials she had encountered at the Sino-American Cooperative Organization for cultivating special agents: surveillance was usually conducted by a team of two, with the aim of secretly monitoring the target, mapping out their movements, the places they visited, and the people they met. They would also coordinate with colleagues responsible for searches, facilitating entry into homes for planting listening devices or conducting searches.

But the training materials also emphasized: never attempt to shake off surveillance unless absolutely necessary. You don’t want the other party to know you’ve spotted them, as that would only serve as a warning, placing yourself in an even more suspicious position.

From the very beginning, Lan Youyin knew she would be under surveillance. She had prepared herself for the possibility of listening devices hidden in the ceiling lamp, beneath her mattress, or in the crevices of the living room sofa. Yet, after several days, she hadn’t noticed any suddenly locked doors in her neighborhood or new neighbors moving in.

It was almost laughable—government housing was in such high demand. In the six residential buildings of Peach Blossom Village, every unit was occupied, with no spare rooms available for surveillance operations.

So, the only option left for them was the most labor-intensive method: keeping a small car parked where they could observe her home, stationed there around the clock.

Lan Youyin almost felt a pang of sympathy for the poor soul stuck in that car, enduring who knows how long.

She lay back down on the bed and closed her eyes again. When dawn arrived, she would, as she had every day before, pull open the curtains as if nothing were amiss, step out of the alleyway punctually, unfurl a damp umbrella, and head to work under the watchful eyes of another shift of surveillance.

Lan Youyin had always been a model employee at the bureau, never missing a day.

Even though just the day before, she had single-handedly arranged her husband’s funeral.

In truth, there had been no ceremony to speak of. Not a single person from the Ministry of National Defense came to pay their respects. Only the Confidentiality Bureau’s surveillance team watched from afar as she hired help to transport the coffin from the central hospital in the city to the private cemetery outside, overseeing the burial. The watchers couldn’t tell if Lan Youyin had shed any tears, but one of them couldn’t help but sigh inwardly—if this Qiao fellow hadn’t defected to the enemy, he might have been buried in the Army Martyrs’ Cemetery. What a shame.

He didn’t realize how peculiar his thoughts were—sympathizing not with the young widow but with the traitor who had betrayed his organization. It seemed that, compared to the Communists, a widow who didn’t conform to the expected image of a grief-stricken mourner was even more deserving of disdain.Lan Youyin settled the wages with the laborers. The leader hesitated for a moment before saying to her, "Let me offer some incense too."

She glanced at him but said nothing, simply lighting a stick of incense for him before stepping back to watch as he bowed with clasped hands, closing his eyes and silently praying before the tombstone for a few seconds.

The surveillance operative sitting in the car thought to himself that this complete stranger, who had never even known the deceased, appeared far more reverent and respectful than the bereaved herself.

Later, after following Lan Youyin back to the city, he even remarked disdainfully to his colleague during the shift change that evening, "Given all the things she's done before, I wonder if she can still inscribe 'wife' as the title on Qiao Mingyu's tombstone."

His indignation had completely overshadowed his original duty—to monitor everyone who came into contact with the surveillance target.