Chapter 62 The Social Origins of Secret Agents

Secret service organizations, especially in Shanghai in the early 1930s, were a hodgepodge.Among them are lawyers, professors, bank clerks, journalists, jobless hooligans, and even gang leaders.Many of them joined the Secret Service because of family ties.As we have seen Shen Zui, in 1932 he had just come out of the Zhejiang countryside, and he got hooked up with secret agents through his brother-in-law, Yu Lexing, a member of Shanghai Station.Others were as naive as Shen Zui, and small, informal operatives of them were often no match for sophisticated and resourceful Communist opponents: led by cadres like Zhou Enlai, they could easily defeat these gun-toting youths .Indeed, despite the white terror the secret police created, they were often very botched.Occasionally, when they hunted down easily escaped "subversive elements" on the roads of Shanghai, or sat in a dilapidated Studebaker car, and chased at gunpoint a new, fast car that could easily overtake them, it was like something out of a silent movie. Clown cops are that funny.

Dai Li deliberately lowered the expenses of Shanghai agents: they only had 30 to 100 yuan per month, plus bonuses and subsidies.Although a team leader can have a special fee of 100 yuan per month, it is still not enough to make ends meet, so everyone tries to get the bonus.Whenever Shen Zui complained to Dai Li about the low income of the secret service personnel, Dai Li always said solemnly: "We are doing revolutionary work, we can't talk about enjoyment, we should work harder."But once Dai Li lost his temper and told Shen Zui very bluntly: He deliberately lowered the wages of the secret agents so that they could work hard to compete for bonuses, which became an incentive system to improve efficiency.

Naturally, low wages also lead to corruption.At first few spies were able to earn extra money because most did not have extra money in public employment.At that time, except for a very small number of people who had the identity of the military committee or the staff department, the special agents at the Shanghai station did not have the appropriate certificates to allow them to arrest suspicious elements, so they could not extort money.Therefore, one of the greatest wishes of young spies is to have a public office, whether it is a cover or a regular job, so that they can have extra income and have the opportunity to blackmail.On the first day of working in the detective brigade of the police headquarters, Shenzui found a "red envelope" in a drawer with the words "please accept it", and there was 200 yuan in cash in it.He felt strange, so he asked Weng Guanghui, the captain of the detective team, what was going on.Weng smiled and said he didn't know.Since then, there have been no red envelopes in the intoxicated drawer.But Shen Zui discovered that Lin Zhijiang, who was at the same desk in the office, often had a smile on his face after opening the drawer, and then took something out of it and put it in his pocket.

Without the powers and cover of the police, Dai Li's men often pretended to be reporters so they could have plausible reasons to ask questions and take pictures.For example, Zhang Renyou pretended to be the director of the Shanghai office of Wenzhou Daily.There are also many agents who are indeed journalists and even publish newspapers and magazines.Agent Mao Fangmei of the second group, a photojournalist for Shanghai's major newspaper Morning Post, used the reporter's camera equipment to capture documents stolen from progressives by "eyeliners" in Democratic circles (who were also officially hired reporters) .Gao Gongbai, another Morning Post photojournalist (he was very active in the student movement and cultural activities), was an agent of the Secret Service, as was Cui Wanqiu, the editor-in-chief of Torch.

Shen Zui also used the aliases of Chen Geng and Chen Cang under the guise of a reporter from Hunan Xiangguang News Agency.He also opened a women's bookstore opposite the Paris Cinema on Joffre Road in the French Concession, and published a magazine called "Women's Monthly" there, which was distributed in Nanyang and Minguang.He has been using this publication as a cover to deceive many reporters, who all believe it is true, even after he has become the captain of the police detective team, and he is often engaged in kidnapping and murder.