Chapter Fifty-Three New Beginning

  I was first locked in a collective cell, where all kinds of people were mixed together. Three days later, I was taken to a closed single-person cell.

  "I've done nothing wrong, call your superior!" I shouted this more than once. In the communal cell, a prison guard would come up and hit me with his baton, telling me to shut up while they investigated my background. But since being transferred to solitary confinement, except for three meals a day, no one has come to bother me again.

  I paced back and forth in the cell of less than five square meters, feeling extremely annoyed. At this moment, I wanted to take a puff of Meili cigarette, but now it's not just cigarettes, all personal items on my body including that broken film disc and the Japanese notebook were confiscated. I sat down on the damp short bed with a thud, raised my legs, and hummed a tune to vent my frustration.

  Thinking carefully, my current situation is not optimistic. The sailors of Changxing No. 1 and the surviving nearly three hundred passengers will all tell what happened on the Jinhua ship, what they experienced, one by one. And the focus of their testimony must be me, who dominated the scene in the later period.

  The gold was stolen, the sailors rebelled, the Japanese intervened, and the top-secret files were lost. With such a huge mistake, as a secret agent of the Security Bureau, I am to blame.

  I guess I was placed in this cell alone, it's very likely that the secret police have intervened in my case.

  "Sheng Li returns, haha, Sheng Chu Chang, you dug such a big hole for me, won't you save me?" I muttered to myself, now only he can save me. This guy is more hidden than Tian Wenliang, and has been involved in the entire operation on the Jin Hua ship, knowing almost all the inside information. Moreover, the appearance of this level of super agent once again confirms that the mission to escort the Jin Hua ship to Taiwan is extremely rare and of high level. And he is powerful and authoritative, logically speaking, he should also bear inescapable responsibility for this incident.

  I'm especially worried that Gui Ye will shift all the responsibility for the failed mission onto me, letting this low-ranking special agent take the fall. The fourth rule of the Military Intelligence Bureau's survival code is "Push the black pot down, pile the honors up." It's not just the Secret Service, but the entire Nationalist Party has this unwritten rule.

  If it's really like that, I'm afraid my head won't be able to withstand it.

  In gloom and anxiety, I struggled through seven days.

  Just as I was about to suffocate, a young man in a suit and tie with a handsome gentlemanly demeanor finally arrived.

  He pulled open the gate and smiled as he said, "Mr. Hong, you are free."

  I didn't react for three seconds, and the man in the suit repeated himself. Only then did I let out a long sigh of relief.

  The man in the suit gestured for the prison guard to return my personal belongings that had been confiscated.

  I patted my butt and stood up.

  The man in a suit handed me a blue certificate, I took it with suspicion, opened it and looked at it, and suddenly my eyes lit up.

  This is a letter of attorney!

  "Congratulations, Mr. Hong! You're a lieutenant intelligence officer at such a young age. Haha, your future is boundless!" The man in the suit bowed his hands to congratulate me.

  I held the letter of appointment in my hand, which was slightly trembling. This is what I got with my life! After taking a deep breath and calming down my emotions, I smiled at the man in suit: "Thank Director Sheng for me."

  The man in the suit was taken aback, touched his hair, and asked strangely: "Which Sheng Chuzhang?"

  "It's Sheng Li Gui, Special Operations Division of the Confidential Bureau!" I hastily replied, but as soon as the words left my mouth, my heart skipped a beat with an ominous premonition.

  Sure, here is the translation:

  "As expected, the man in the suit immediately said: 'There's no such person!'"

  I was stunned for a moment, then reacted and stomped my feet fiercely, cursing: "Damn it, I'm really fucked!"

  The man in the suit gave a glance, dismissed all the guards and began to tell me some secrets about the Bureau of Investigation: "Since you are from the Bureau of Investigation and have been promoted to captain, I won't keep it from you. The publicly known office of the Bureau of Investigation does not have a Special Operations Division, but for officers of a certain rank, this is no big secret. The Special Operations Division is specifically responsible for some extremely important events, and the Chinese Anti-Communist League established by Dai Li in the past was also specifically managed by the Special Operations Division."

  The man in the suit spoke fluently and told me only what I was authorized to know at my level, as for the parts that exceeded my authority, I didn't dare ask.

  "The head of the Special Action Division is now surnamed Zhang, not Sheng Liguang as you said." The man in the suit smiled and asked: "How, were you deceived?"

  I spat out phlegm and let out a bitter laugh, resentfully saying: "I'm too damn naive, being cheated by a broken certificate, damn it."

  I'm screaming in my heart, no wonder that ghostly night demon hasn't come to rescue me for so long. He's not a high-ranking official of the Secret Bureau at all, but a complete scammer! I reckon he got rid of that foolish Captain Wei Lianlong a long time ago and is now enjoying himself somewhere else. I feel extremely ashamed again, I'm familiar with the organizational structure of the Secret Bureau, on the surface there's no special action department, but the problem lies in Tian Wenliang telling me about the existence of this mysterious department before, that's why I believed Ghost Night Demon's fake identity. No need to think, Wei Lianlong must also know the name of the Special Action Department, but like me, he doesn't know the name of the department head.

  The man in the suit shrugged and said with a serious tone, "For those who do special agent work, the first element is to deceive people, and the second is to see through lies. Alright, be more careful from now on. I have a letter here from Tian Wenliang, you can open it after you leave. First, I'll send you to a safe place to rest for a while, and then arrange your specific work later."

  As he spoke, he pulled out a small envelope from his briefcase and handed it over to me.

  I looked at the handwriting on top "Hong Xingdong, received", it was indeed Tian Wenliang's, he had not died after all and had returned safely to Taiwan.

  "Was it him who drove me out?" I asked naturally.

  "The man in the suit smiled mysteriously: 'He is one of the reasons, haha, but I won't hold you responsible for failing your mission, thanks to a sentence from a big shot.'"

  "Who?" I asked in confusion, when did I get to know some big shot?

  The man in the suit shook his head and remained silent, hinting that I might have a chance to meet the big shot he mentioned in person someday.

  With doubts, I was pushed into a black Mercedes-Benz.

  The roads in Taiwan are bumpy, with endless desolate land all around, as well as scattered farmland and scattered houses, like a big village. The current Taiwan is still far from being built, and it's simply worlds apart compared to Shanghai. I quickly got tired of the scenery. We drove for about six or seven hours, until dusk, when we arrived at the foot of a mountain in a mountainous area.

  "Where is this?" I asked.

  The man in the suit said: "This is Grass Mountain."

  I sighed, and the name "Luo Cao Wei Kou" indeed fits the current situation of the KMT. Later, Chiang Kai-shek came here and thought the name was unlucky, so he changed it to Yangming Mountain, named after Wang Yangming, a sage.

  The man in the suit led me into a mountain village, to one of the most "luxurious" farmhouses. A middle-aged old woman walked over and said in a thick accent: "Is this the tall guy?"

  The man in the suit nodded and said to me, "Her name is Chen Apo, she's the village head's mother. You'll stay here for a few days to recover from your injuries, don't go out unnecessarily." He paused, then whispered quietly into my ear, "Be careful, there are some indigenous people in the mountains, if you can't speak their language, they'll kill you and sell your body as a human specimen! I don't want to see you on display at the market when I'm shopping, got it?"

  I nodded nonchalantly, thinking he was just trying to scare me. It wasn't until later that I realized the man in the suit wasn't exaggerating - the indigenous people really did like to slaughter outsiders.

  The man in the suit gave two silver dollars to Old Lady Chen, and her old face immediately bloomed with a smile, with wrinkles that could squeeze a fly to death.

  The man in the suit bid farewell, and I curiously asked him: "I still don't know your name?"

  The man in the suit replied faintly: "Code name Special 0804."

  I stood still, another legendary "special" agent with a special head, just like Tian Wenliang.

  After the man in the suit left, Old Lady Chen warmly led me to a cozy little room that had been specially prepared for me. The bedding was all new and the furniture, although simple, was very clean. On the bed were also laid out several cheap white shirts, which I, not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, was quite grateful for.

  Old Mrs. Chen told me a lot in dialect, I could barely understand some of it, meaning that this village is not big, many people are from other provinces, recently allocated here by the government, and there is a sharp conflict with the locals who originally lived in the village.

  I was shocked to hear that, and thought to myself that since I had come from afar, why not get along well with the local people? Old Mrs. Chen, a rural old lady, couldn't explain it clearly, sentence by sentence, and I wasted a lot of effort before gradually understanding the reason behind it.

  It turned out that Chen Cheng was operating a system here in Taiwan, where he would "buy" land from local Taiwanese people and distribute it to outsiders who followed Chiang Kai-shek. He would casually point to a piece of land and claim it was unoccupied wasteland, only to give it to outsiders. In reality, these were lands that local Taiwanese people had worked hard to cultivate, their livelihood depending on them. It's no wonder that there were frequent cases of outsiders being attacked and killed by local Taiwanese people.

  After listening, I let out a long sigh. Chiang Kai-shek could only sacrifice the interests of the local people in order to quickly take root in Taiwan and stabilize the situation. After all, it was this batch of people who followed us to Taiwan that were his foundation for counterattacking the mainland. Of course, the local people are also Han Chinese, as for the true indigenous high mountain tribes, they had long been driven into the mountains.

  Chen Ah Po anxiously went to cook soup for me.

  I lay on the bedhead, rested for a moment, picked up Tian Wenliang's letter and opened it to take a look.

  "Dear Xing Dong,

  Thank you for your efforts on the Jin Hua ship. Although we ultimately suffered a loss, it was due to underestimating the danger and too many variables, which no one person could have changed.

  This time when I returned to Taiwan, I went through nine deaths and one life, and after barely surviving, I also spoke up for you to Director Mao, explaining our difficulties. He decided to show mercy and not pursue the crime of dereliction of duty against us. We should be grateful and make amends by achieving merit.

  Take good care of your illness, and when I visit you in the future, it will be to express my gratitude. As for subsequent tasks, we'll follow the arrangements made by the organization.

  Sincerely,

  Tian Wen Liang"

  I read the letter again and finally put it under the pillow. I fell head-first onto the bed, with a thousand thoughts swirling in my mind. It seems that leisurely days are no longer many.