Pear Garden

"Wait a moment," Zhang Jiaju told Cao Anmin. "Just stand right there. Don't wander off." "Yes, sir!" Zhang Jiaju stepped out of the office and returned shortly afterward, his hair damp from washing his face. Lighting a cigarette, he took two deep drags. Cleared of fatigue and newly energized, he held the cigarette between two fingers. "Go on." "Zou Deben, a lathe operator in Workshop Three of the Jinling Bearing Factory," Cao Anmin said. He continued, "Zou Deben had someone cover his shift on August seventeenth. From what I uncovered, he caught a cold and told outsiders he was going to a pharmacy to see a doctor and pick up medicine." "Most importantly, this Zou Deben smokes Caifeng cigarettes," Cao Anmin added eagerly. "Give me more details on him." Zhang Jiaju tapped off the ash, turning it over in his mind. "Yes, sir." Cao Anmin pulled a crumpled little notebook from his pocket, squinting at the writing. "Zou Deben, born in the twenty-ninth year of Guangxu under the late Qing... native of Doucheng, Huang-huang..." *Doucheng?* "Huang what?" Zhang Jiaju glared at him. "I told you to learn some characters and write things down if you couldn't remember them. Look at you—did you get Xia Yu to take notes for you again?" "Give me that!" He snatched the notebook from Cao Anmin's hands. He saw that Cao Anmin had misread *Pengcheng* as *Doucheng*, and when it came to *Huangcangyu*, he couldn't even read *cang* and could only stammer *Huang-huang* over and over. "That's Pengcheng! Pengcheng is Xuzhou! And it's Huangcangyu—Huangcangyu!" Zhang Jiaju couldn't help snapping. "If you can't read and write, fine, someone wrote it down for you, but look at what you're reciting! Who taught you to read like that?" "If it's Xuzhou, then just say Xuzhou. I was wondering why that bastard Xia Yu didn't write Xuzhou instead of Pengcheng," Cao Anmin grumbled, convinced this wasn't his fault, but that kid Xia Yu's. "Shut your mouth!" Zhang Jiaju shot him a look of disgust. Still, he made a mental note of it. Why had Xia Yu written *Pengcheng* instead of *Xuzhou*? Was it a natural habit, or intentional? Then again, *Peng* wasn't a particularly difficult character to recognize, was it? He glanced at Cao Anmin again and shook his head. Truth be told, the man was simply thick. "'Zou Deben, born in the twenty-ninth year of Guangxu, native of Huangcangyu, Pengcheng...' "'Addicted to gambling. Formerly married. Years ago, when his wife fell ill, he racked up gambling debts and stole the money meant for her medicine, losing every copper. In despair, his wife hanged herself...' Reading this far, Zhang Jiaju frowned. If the notes were accurate, the likelihood of this Zou Deben being an underground Communist plummeted. Not because there were no gamblers among the Reds—after all, 'Dawn,' the Communist operative who had defected to the Party-State, had once been reviled within their ranks as a man steeped in every conceivable vice. Rather, 'Great Sage' could not possibly be a gambling addict. A gambling vice was no less insidious than an opium habit. An ace sleeper who had remained undercover for so many years could never be a degenerate gambler who hounded his own wife to death. "According to what's written here, how likely do you think a gambler like Zou Deben is to be the Red operative 'Great Sage'?" Zhang Jiaju looked at Cao Anmin. "Zou Deben smokes Caifeng cigarettes, and his time off matches the timeline," Cao Anmin replied. Zhang Jiaju gave a slight nod. "Go on." "That's all," Cao Anmin said. "That's all?" Zhang Jiaju stared at him. "Are you deaf? I said he's a gambler. Do you really think a gambler..." "Xia Yu said it might be a cover," Cao Anmin interjected. "Go call Xia Yu in here." Zhang Jiaju shook his head, gave Cao Anmin a disdainful glance, and waved his hand. "Understood." ... Cao Anmin opened the door and called in Xia Yu, who was waiting out in the hallway. Zhang Jiaju gave the young subordinate a searching look. Beyond that, he wondered where the kid had been hiding just now; he hadn't seen Xia Yu in the corridor when he stepped out to wash his face. "Section Chief, regarding the matter of Zou Deben stealing his wife's medicine money to gamble, losing it all, and driving her to hang herself—it happened so long ago that it's actually just a rumor. No one saw it firsthand," Xia Yu reported. "I looked into it thoroughly. Even though many people in the factory know the story, not a single one witnessed it themselves. It's all secondhand talk." He paused, then continued, "I suspect the person who spread the rumor about Zou Deben's gambling driving his wife to death was actually Zou Deben himself. He circulated the story to provide cover for his Communist identity." "Meaning he doesn't gamble now," Zhang Jiaju asked, "and the tragedy of driving his wife to death serves as his excuse for why he stopped?" "Yes, sir," Xia Yu nodded. "Which makes it even more suspicious in my eyes." Zhang Jiaju looked back at Cao Anmin. "Xia Yu has a point," Cao Anmin piped up at once. "That's what I was thinking too." Zhang Jiaju rose to his feet and began pacing back and forth. "Is Zou Deben at the bearing factory right now?" he asked. Xia Yu remained silent. With Cao Anmin present as his superior, it was not his place to answer. "He is," Cao Anmin nodded. "He only had someone cover for him on the seventeenth. He's been on shift these past two days." "Has his cold cleared up?" Zhang Jiaju asked abruptly. Cao Anmin blinked in surprise, then looked toward Xia Yu. "Not completely," Xia Yu answered. "His coworkers said he's still coughing." "To the Jinling Bearing Factory," Zhang Jiaju said in a low voice. "I want to see this man with my own eyes." ... At the Dazhong Inn. Jiang Wendao eyed the three bound and gagged prisoners with keen interest. "This one is Ji Mingshuo?" He pointed at a man whose body bore bruises, yet was tied up the tightest of them all. "That's him," Chen Xiuqi replied. "Once we uncovered the radio, he knew the game was up and started cursing in Japanese." Jiang Wendao gave a slight nod. Walking over to the table, he picked up the radio with both hands and examined it carefully. A look of sheer delight shone in his eyes, as though he were admiring a gorgeous, alluring woman. "Escort the prisoners and the evidence." He set down the radio and straightened his expression into grim formality. "Into the truck. To the Pear Garden." The Pear Garden was the site of the interrogation facility belonging to the Capital Police Department's Special Operations Branch. Jiang Xingzhi had already been waiting in the courtyard of the Pear Garden for quite some time. When he saw the military truck pull in, he stubbed out his cigarette on the ground and hurried over. "Brother-in-law, I've got pressing official duties on my plate over there," he said to Jiang Wendao. "With that one phone call of yours..." Then Jiang Xingzhi watched as officers brought down three hooded prisoners from the truck bed, followed by an officer who casually leapt down holding what was unmistakably a radio transmitter. "Sweet mother of mercy!" Jiang Xingzhi's eyes nearly popped out of his head. He darted forward and caught the radio with steady hands. "You clumsy fool! If you break this thing, executing you ten times over wouldn't pay for it!" "Little Six," Jiang Wendao said, watching his brother-in-law stroke and inspect the radio with sparkling eyes. "I told you it was a good thing. Still complaining?" "Who's complaining? You misheard me, brother-in-law! This is... practically new, ninety percent new! A Showa 10 model radio—these are rare as hen's teeth!" Jiang Xingzhi said in sheer excitement. "Where did you get it?" Even as he asked, his gaze had already drifted toward the three men in black cloth hoods, his eyes brimming with eager anticipation. "Japs?"