Intoxicated, 1932
The Nanshi Group is located on Penglai Road in the south center of the city, and its main task is to supervise its business in the old city.The little boss, Chen Zhiqiang, used his illegal connections and his connections with the police and the government to carry out espionage activities and protect other gangsters who were involved in drug trafficking and caused trouble.He himself apparently made extra money dealing drugs, since he had his own private car, and his standard of living was clearly much higher than his covert agent status allowed.Dai Li was aware of this situation, but he did not have enough specific evidence of Chen's wrongdoing to punish him.Perhaps more importantly, Dai Li was very pleased with the information sent by the Nanshi group about that area.Because, apart from the gang, Chen Zhiqiang has a special relationship with the Chinese police in the city, and among his agents are the chief of the municipal police branch and detectives from the detective team.
Shen Zui, who became the leader of the second group in 1933, joined Dai Li's Shanghai Station in 1932.He had just left school at the time and was 18 years old.He was introduced by his cousin Yu Lexing (of course, guaranteed).Shen Zui also introduced his three brothers and two cousins.
Shen Zui was initially assigned to the communication team. One of his tasks as a small leader was to be in charge of the traffic between the secret service station and the correspondents.Shen was ordered not to talk to the correspondents when accepting information trapped in newspapers or novels and when submitting activity fees.But when he met intelligence agents, probably in their 30s and 40s, at teahouses or restaurants, they treated him like a younger brother, bought him food and drink, and taught him how to take care of himself in difficult times.
After Shen Zui was appointed as the leader of the second group, he was still in charge of the communication group for a period of time.There are more than 20 regular agents working under him, and each of them has their own "eyeliner" (assistant) of several to dozens of people.Later, another agent was added to the intelligence team under Liu Guoqing (a graduate of the spy training class in Hangzhou, who came to Shanghai to receive field agent training and developed his own work network as a result).There was also a group of hooligans and gangsters, led by Ruan Yacheng.After Shen Zui became the first group leader of the reconnaissance brigade of the Garrison Command in 1935, all these personnel were handed over to Su Yeguang by him.So Shen Zui got rid of the task of leading the intelligence activities of the second group, and also took on the task of leading "operations" under the cloak of military police.
Although the task of the third group was to collect intelligence in the International Concession, its leader Wang Changyu had been living in the French Concession because he thought the area ruled by the British was too chaotic.But he eventually moved into the International Concession.When he met his former Huangpu classmates there, he pretended to be an open opponent of Chiang Kai-shek, and his typical complaint was that he could not find a job.His Whampoa alumni thought he was bored, and either tried to find him a job, or lent him a few dollars to support the predicament.Quite a few Whampoa alumni were impressed by his situation, so Wang Changyu was able to make some interesting contacts in the anti-Chiang circles, who would bring him useful information on Dai Li's personnel control.Wang also developed an extremely active network of contacts for the Cantonese spies.Most of these people lived in Hongkou, and some of them established close relations with warlords in Guangdong, the "New Nationalist Party" and even the "Democratic Party".And Wang Changyu's "eyeliner" or intelligence personnel are still working as receptionists in the three major Cantonese restaurants in Shanghai, and as clerks in large department stores (Xinshi and Wing On) run by Cantonese.Dai Li was very satisfied with Wang's intelligence network, so he put him in charge of activities in the international concession until the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War.
Zhang Renyou's Fourth Group is located in the area of Jing'an Temple on Seymour Road. It is in charge of Zhabei, Hongkou and Huxi in name, but it is definitely not as active as the third group.Zhang himself was a spy, having graduated from the secret agent training class of the Hangzhou Police Academy, and had no good connections in Shanghai.
This phenomenon of lack of practical experience and public relations network is a common feature of many Hangzhou training class graduates.Beyond that, the Hangzhou training class marked a huge turning point in Dai Li's recruitment process.However, although the Hangzhou Spy Training Class gave Dai Li an opportunity to develop cadres and turn his informal "spies" organization into a real intelligence agency, it failed to produce high-level spies.Since most of Dai Li's spies were students in the Hangzhou training class, their activities in Shanghai were more in the nature of internship than espionage.The best they occasionally do is social investigation and surveillance.Zhang Renyou's four groups ended up with two elite spies with connections to the working class.One is Cheng Muyi, a student of the Hangzhou School. He is able to endure hardships. He once lived in a worker's area in western Shanghai and collected considerable information on the front organizations of the Communist Party.Another outstanding agent was Tao Yishan, a graduate of the Central Military Academy and a former instructor at the Wusong Merchant Marine Academy.Tao had very good connections throughout the Wusong area, and his reports on the social situation there and the situation in the Merchant Marine School were highly appreciated by Dai Li.Later, after Zhang Renyou was dismissed by Dai Li for borrowing money from Yang Hu and squandering it, Cheng Muyi took over as the leader of the fourth group. In 1935, the four groups killed several leading members of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the Communist Party.
With the expansion of Shanghai station activities, the activities of each group can no longer be limited to the original area.Because their targets often travel between various areas of the city.Thus, the only division of labor is in surveillance.
For example, the second group of intoxication, its task is to monitor suspected communists, people from democratic parties and anti-Chiang organizations, because most of these people and activities seek refuge in the French Concession that the second group is responsible for.
Needless to say, those suspects certainly did not confine their activities to the French Concession.As a result, the second group often operated in other areas of Shanghai City, and the boundaries between various regions and their control areas were completely confused in their eyes.For the agents of the Secret Service, it is commonplace to act as a "perpetrator" with the appearance of a progressive.Because in this way, they can easily attract the attention of other secret service organizations in the city, so as to deal with progressives or communists.But because the spies on both sides used pseudonyms unknown to the other side, and both pretended to be pro-Communists, the two sides started a secret war against their own people invisibly.Many times, the second group was informed by the district department before the kidnapping that the target of the kidnapping turned out to be their own people who worked for other groups.
