Chapter 18 "Looking for a Backer"

In the winter of that year, Dai Li went to Nanjing and barely made ends meet in the Taiping Bridge area of ​​the capital.He never finished Whampoa's courses, so he never graduated formally.Although no one knows exactly how he got to Nanking, most accounts of Dai Li's strange ascent emphasize the fact that he quickly secured a position with Hu Zongnan. In 1928, the Northern Expedition reorganized its forces, and Hu Zongnan served as the commander of the second column of the first division. After Dai Li defected to his old friend Hu Zongnan in Hangzhou, he became a small security officer under him.Later, Hu recommended Dai Li to work in the Graduate Student Investigation Office of the Whampoa Alumni Association.The predecessor of the Huangpu Alumni Association was the Sun Wenism Research Association. On the eve of the Northern Expedition in June 1926, it had 300 members.When the society was dissolved during the military activities of 1926-1927, Chiang Kai-shek was nominally the chairman of the alumni association.After Chiang broke with the left wing of the united front, only the anticommunists remained.

The Investigation Office of the Whampoa Alumni Association became a core part of the later Investigation Office of Graduates of the Central Military Schools, which itself was dissolved in 1930.This organization was once the security agency in Chiang Kai-shek's military training system.The system eventually included the Central Army Academy, the Air Force Academy, the Artillery Academy, the Cavalry Academy, the Engineering Academy, the Light and Heavy Academy, the Naval Academy, and the Central Police Academy, plus various training courses for officers and cadres.By 1935, there were more than 100 training classes.To reassure Jiang, it seemed necessary from the outset to track the whereabouts of these graduates under the pretext of registering and investigating their diplomas.

By working in the investigation office of the Whampoa Alumni Association (which later became the frontier of the Chinese Revolutionary Comrades Association, which was a key part of the "Blue Shirts Society"), Dai Li naturally came into contact with a group of unemployed Whampoa graduates .As long as they could find money to pay for their activities, they were happy to join a special intelligence-gathering agency he formed.It was also during the work of the investigation office that Dai Li asked Hu Jing'an, the commander-in-chief's adjutant at the time, to recommend him to Chiang Kai-shek as a candidate for a senior guard of the guard.Later he got the seat as he wished.Using his network of unemployed Whampoa graduates, Dai Li began gathering information about the suspected illegal political activities.He often used deliberately provocative methods, such as spreading rumors about Chiang, to induce criticism of the commander-in-chief's leadership of the government.At first he had no formal channel to deliver these reports to his superiors.It is said that Dai Li had to use the method of sending intelligence summaries to Chiang's desk or car, that is, to use his position as the guard at the gate of Chiang Kai-shek's headquarters to hand over these slips of paper with secret reports every time the leader passed through.Chiang was said to have relied more and more on the new bodyguard for such information, and soon the commander-in-chief would pull up at the gate whenever he saw Dai standing there waiting for him.

Another, somewhat disparaging version of Dai Li is that the future chief of the secret police was running errands for Commander-in-Chief Chiang in the guard.Mao Qingxiang, Jiang's confidential secretary, later recalled that Dai Li would go to the back door of the canteen of the security department every three days to deliver information through the chef or duty officer.Dai Li dared not ask about the reaction to the intelligence, and Mao Qingxiang refused to send it to the commander-in-chief at first.But after a while, Mao found some particularly interesting content worthy of attention, so he began to send these reports to Chiang Kai-shek.Jiang, on the other hand, expressed appreciation for the richness of the information, and ordered Dai Li to become an intelligence officer in Hu Jingan's bodyguard "intelligence team".With this funding, Dai Li was able to hire more intelligence personnel, and gradually formed around himself the famous "Ten-men Group", a special secret service composed of himself and other young officials and military officers. organize.Some people say that Chiang Kai-shek turned to Dai Li over everyone because Hu Jing'an's fierce and uncontrollable temper made Chiang lose confidence in him.A few years later, when Dai Li became Chiang Kai-shek's most authoritative spy chief, the military command held a banquet for senior cadres, and Hu Jing'an was not invited.Hu rushed into the banquet and cursed loudly, causing the people who attended the banquet to break up unhappy.He scolded:

This may have been a reason, but at the same time when Chiang confronted his opponents (for example, in 1930, Chiang found himself facing a united front composed of reformists in the south and warlords such as Yan Xishan who "came out of the cage and rode the tiger" in the north), he Confidence in Dai's abilities grew.On February 10 of that year, Yan sent Jiang a telegram urging him to retire, and then sent him a series of cables accusing him of corruption and incompetence.The following month, all provincial institutions of the Nanjing government under Yan's control were besieged by his men. In early April, after Yan's Shanxi army occupied Peiping, Yan declared himself commander-in-chief against Chiang, with Feng Yuxiang as deputy commander.

When Feng and Chiang Kai-shek's armies fought factional battles in Henan, Yan sent a detachment of light cavalry commanded by Sun Lianzhong to attack Chiang's headquarters at the Yejigang railway station.Without Dai Li's military intelligence, Sun might have wiped out Chiang Kai-shek and his entourage, but Dai moved his superior and his men to a safe place at the last minute. If Chiang hadn't allowed Dai Li to get close to him, no matter how useful Dai Li was to Chiang in the Battle of Pingyuan, he would never have gained the secret power that he finally got.Dai Li is naturally very capable, but what Jiang values ​​more is his credibility and reliability.Jiang once used his character "Yunong" to refer to Dai Li: "As long as Yunong intervenes, I will feel at ease." The meaning of these words may not even be realized by Jiang himself.For Dai Li seemed to be able to relax his master in different ways and bring out Chiang Kai-shek's relaxed side.Interestingly, other officials had to be very careful about their words and demeanor when meeting Chiang Kai-shek.Even a spot on a general's white gloves could get him thrown out or reprimanded.Yet somehow Dai Li was spared such wanton treatment.Of course, Dai Li could immediately understand his superior's mood and satisfy his arbitrary demands.For example, if Chiang Kai-shek praised Confucius and Mencius in front of him, Dai Li would immediately parrot and start talking about Confucius' "benevolence, righteousness and morality".Personally, however, he was often wrinkled, poorly dressed, unshaven, and even sloppy.This gives the impression that Dai Li's nonchalant demeanor somehow fits perfectly with another aspect of Chiang Kai-shek—perhaps an inner, loose realm of his—that a entourage such as Cao Shengfen would never allow see.

With the opportunity to be so close to the leader, Dai Li was able to overcome the lack of seniority that worried him-he once told Wen Qiang that he regretted why he had not joined Chiang Kai-shek earlier.In the final analysis, his decision to "go for refuge" made up for his shortcomings compared with the veterans of the Kuomintang and the Huangpu elite. In 1939, when Dai Li was appointed by Chiang Kai-shek as the head of the security team of the Kuomintang Central Training Corps, the commander-in-chief discovered that not only did his apprentice not graduate from Whampoa, but he was not even an official member of the Kuomintang!Soon, with a swipe of the commander-in-chief, Dai Li became a graduate of the sixth class of the former Whampoa Military Academy. At the same time, "Yunong" was also introduced as a party member by the Kuomintang leader himself as a sponsor.So far, Dai Li has become the master and conductor of his own secret world.