The eight suspects brought back from the dance hall couldn’t withstand the brutal torture and all confessed to being the contact person. This gave Bi Zhong Liang a massive headache. Personally, with Chen Shen, he led a group to escort the eight suspects to a small wooded area at the intersection of Magen Road and North Zhongshan Road, where they handed them over to Li Shiqun at headquarters. On that misty morning, Chen Shen saw An Liu San. An Liu San was dressed in a suit, his face still swollen, with scabs on his forehead and the corners of his mouth. His trousers were new, but clearly too short, hanging awkwardly above his ankles. When he saw Chen Shen, he gave a fawning smile. Chen Shen took a swig of kvass and squinted back at him, saying, “Welcome to the winning side.”
That day, all eight suspects were executed, each one writhing under the gunfire before collapsing beneath the trees. With every gunshot, An Liu San flinched and tightly shut his eyes. After the eighth shot, he opened them again and stared blankly at the eight corpses on the ground, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. Carefully, he wiped his brow with a checkered handkerchief. Chen Shen remarked, “Looks like your pant legs are a bit short.”
Nervously, An Liu San glanced down at his trousers, noticing the mud now staining his new leather shoes. As he anxiously looked up again, another gunshot rang out, and a small hole appeared in his forehead. He fell backward, eyes wide open, dead before he hit the ground. Bi Zhong Liang handed the gun back to his subordinate, Bian Tou, then crouched down and unbuttoned An Liu San’s coat. Inside his pocket lay a wad of cash—the bounty for betraying the Prime Minister. Bi Zhong Liang tossed the money to Chen Shen.
“Go gamble,” Bi Zhong Liang said. “If you win, come back and treat us.”
Chen Shen squinted and smiled. “Why did you kill him?”
“What use would he be alive?” Bi Zhong Liang replied. “He only had one piece of information—that the Prime Minister was meeting someone.”
Chen Shen threw the wad of cash into the air. The money scattered like snow, fluttering down in all directions. “This money’s cursed,” he said.
Later that day, after Chen Shen and Bi Zhong Liang left the woods, the agents dug a pit and buried the eight bodies. As Chen Shen walked, his feet crunched over the already withered grass, with patches of unmelted snow clinging to the black earth in places, thin and pale. A feeling of desolation crept into his heart. He thought of himself as nothing more than a lone blade of grass growing in the wasteland of Shanghai. Bi Zhong Liang walked ahead of him, his face grim and silent as usual, his hands shoved into his coat pockets. A cold breeze stirred, and the scalp where Bi Zhong Liang had once been hit by shrapnel tingled. A nagging doubt gnawed at him—he was convinced that none of the eight people were real Communist underground agents. But without killing them, he couldn’t report back to headquarters. So who was the real contact that slipped through the net? And why had Chen Shen just happened to be at the dance hall?
That night, the moonlight was as bright as another snowfall. Chen Shen, wearing a high-collared wool coat, stood silently in front of the solitary mailbox on Doule Road. He suddenly felt as if the dark green mailbox were a long-lost relative.
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