In the Dark

PRELUDE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

WIND LISTENERS

Blind Abing

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

WIND READERS

An Angel with Problems

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

THE SHADOW OF CHEN ERHU

Diary Excerpts: 25 March 1987

26 March

27 March

28 March

2 April

The Letter: Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Day Six

Day Seven

Two Old Letters

WIND-CATCHERS

A Vietnamese Ghost Story

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Follow Penguin

By 1987, Old Chen Erhu was no longer a healthy man; he’d die in the spring of that same year – seventeen years ago now. Most Unit 701 operatives’ personal files would have been declassified long ago. But Old Chen was no ordinary agent: he was a witness. A witness to what, you may ask. Well, to everything. Nothing that went on in Unit 701 escaped his watchful eye, no matter how small and insignificant. He was privy to all the inner workings of the cryptography division, privy to a vast storehouse of still top-secret information. Without exaggerating, making his personal file public would mean that half the secrets of the cryptography division would be revealed to the world. Perhaps that was the reason his repeated entreaties for the declassification of his own documents met with no success. It was also the reason, I imagine, why my efforts to get to the bottom of the matter had hit an impasse.

On 25 October 2002 I was witness to the very peculiar way in which information was released on Declassification Day. Beginning at 08.30 and continuing throughout the day, people walked up to the record clerk’s office counter, produced a notification form, accepted a file folder from the clerk, and left. It was just like the workings of a post office, except that the exchange between the clerk and the person requesting such-and-such a file revealed much more good will, friendliness even – something you don’t often see in a post office. At any rate, during the comings and goings of these people, I did notice one particular man amble in, supporting himself on a cane. He didn’t seem all that old, actually, perhaps around fifty or so; the age of an administrator of some sort or other. However, two years before I met the man, he had been unlucky enough to contract a serious eye infection that gradually destroyed his eyesight. No matter what the doctors attempted, nothing seemed to work. The world now appeared to him as completely blank, forcing him to use a cane to get around. Of course, work was out of the question, and his blindness was the main reason he had left active duty at Unit 701. Well, leaving doesn’t really describe his retirement. After all, when he ‘left’ Unit 701, he was, in a sense, abandoning his youth, his skills, his friends, his comrades, his correspondence over the twelve years of his service, his diaries, and all sorts of other papers and notes – everything; his whole life. All of it remained within the compound’s walls. Some of these things he would never see again. But some other items, namely his letters and diaries, he could take home with him today. His file had been declassified.

Later, I learnt that he was in fact Chen Erhu’s former aide and confidant, a man by the name of Shi Guoguang. What made me even more excited about meeting him was the fact that in the declassified documents which were handed over that day, there were many letters and diaries that dealt directly with Chen Erhu. This discovery raised my hopes that one day soon Old Chen’s personal file would be made public. But until that day, all I can use to reconstruct and put together the pieces of the life of Old Chen are these letters and notes made by Shi Guoguang.

I do not need to tell you that the depiction of Chen Erhu that you read here is nothing approaching a complete picture of the individual; it’s just a shadow of the man. That’s what I meant by the title of this section: ‘The Shadow of Chen Erhu’. I couldn’t have got this far without the help of his disciple, Shi Guoguang, so I’m very grateful to him and wish him all the best with his recovery.

Even though I have only this ‘shadow’ of the man, as it were, what’s plain to see and understand from reading through Shi’s notes is that whilst Old Chen was a very unusual character, he was still a man full of life. The puzzling thing is, the image painted by Shi contrasts greatly with the description given by Director An. Indeed, in Director An’s portrayal of Chen Erhu, Old Chen was an obscure and dark figure, someone who operated in the shadows, and was a shadow himself. Perhaps this was because Director An wanted to give all the credit to Huang Yiyi and so felt the need to dull Old Chen’s lustre; or perhaps there was another reason – I simply don’t know. But one thing is clear: once I had read through Shi Guoguang’s letters and diaries, my respect for Chen Erhu grew.

What follows are Shi Guoguang’s papers: enjoy …

2

My encounter was kind of interesting.

This all happened twelve years ago. In those days I was a young man, not even thirty years of age, and I was doing a very ordinary job at my work unit, whereby when I went on business trips I didn’t even get to fly. However, there was this one time when my boss went to Beijing to report to his senior managers. The report we had produced was nicely printed out and when my boss leafed through it he must have decided that I did not need to go in person. But then all of a sudden the senior managers changed their minds about what they wanted a report on and my boss started to panic; he demanded that I fly to Beijing immediately to produce a new report on the spot. That was how I got to fly for the first time in my life. Just as the poet says, ‘Availing myself of the possibilities of space’, I arrived in Beijing in less than two hours. My boss was only a junior manager so when he came to the airport to pick me up it was not just a matter of politeness; he also wanted me to ‘hit the ground running’. However, having just made my way out of the airport and said hello to the boss, two policemen walked across and stood between us. They didn’t ask any questions but demanded that I go with them. I asked why, and they said that I would find out when I went with them. They then started to drag me off. My wretched boss was in an even worse state than I was! He asked me what on earth was going on, but how was I to know? I was sure that them taking me away was some sort of mistake. The two policemen asked me my name, and I told them it was Mai Jia. My parents picked this name for me partly because they were not educated and partly out of humility; perhaps they were hoping that I would be a humble person. Mai Jia is a peasant’s name, really ordinary and everyday.

To return to my story, when the policemen heard my name they announced that it was indeed me that they wanted. This might seem completely unreasonable but in fact was not so, because someone had pointed me out to them and told them to arrest me. From that point of view they had made no mistake. Actually there were two men who had instructed the police to pick me up, and they had been sitting in the same row as me on the aeroplane. Hearing their private conversation I had realized that they came from the same town as me, and I felt as though I had suddenly arrived back at my far-distant home. Having noticed their familiar accents I started chatting to them. I had no idea that this short conversation would bring disaster down upon me, would bring these two policemen into my life, and would see me being arrested like a criminal.

The police were part of the airport security team and I actually have no idea whether or not they did have the right to arrest me. At the time the issue of jurisdiction did not seem all that important; what was much more crucial was how I was going to get out of this! The policemen took my boss and me into their office. This consisted of an inner and an outer room. The outer office wasn’t very big and when the four of us entered, it seemed even smaller. Once we had all sat down the policemen started questioning me: name, work unit, family, political persuasion, social position, and so on and so forth, as if all of a sudden I had become a suspect. Fortunately my boss was present and he kept reiterating that I was not some kind of criminal but a perfectly respectable Party cadre. As a result the interrogation really wasn’t too bad.

After that the police changed tack and started to ask me about what I had observed on board the plane. I really had no idea what to say. This was the very first time in my life that I had been on a plane, and my observations had been so many and various, so complex and confused that I did not know where to start. When I asked them what kind of thing they meant, the two policemen started interrogating me with a particular aim in mind; in fact the whole thing boiled down to a single question: What had I heard of the private conversation between the two men from my home town? Just at that moment I realized that the two men I had sat next to were no ordinary passengers and my current predicament had come about because I had overheard – or rather could understand – their discussion. They thought if they jabbered away in their thick regional dialect no one would understand a word they said, and so they had been discussing something secret as if there were no other people around them – in fact walls have ears and everything they said could have been noted down.

No wonder they were so worried.

No wonder this stray sheep had been rounded up.

To tell you the truth, I hadn’t heard them say anything special. To begin with they had not been speaking in my regional dialect and I am not the kind of person who is driven to chat to passing strangers, besides which this was the first time I had ever been on a plane and I was really excited until I discovered that there was nothing special about it. Once the plane had actually taken off, I felt that there was nothing to it and just sat there, watching the television with the earphones on. It was only when I took the earphones off that I noticed they had switched to speaking in my regional dialect and once I had heard that, I felt like I had been joined by my family and immediately started chatting to them. I had absolutely no idea what they had been talking about before. I dare say this all sounded as though I was making it up, but I swear that I am telling the truth.

Actually, if you think about it, if I was up to something why would I have told them that we all came from the same place? And another thing, given that I was going to draw attention to myself in this way, why would I wait until they had been speaking for ages and then give myself away? Besides which, given that I introduced myself the moment that I noticed that they were speaking my dialect, is it likely that I would have heard anything important? Although there was no proof one way or the other, my assertion that I hadn’t heard what they were talking about won the day. My patient explanations and my boss’s praise resulted in the two policemen agreeing to let me go. However, they demanded that I swear that I would never tell anyone under any circumstances about what I had overheard, for it touched on issues of national security. Any failure to do so would have severe consequences. Of course I swore the oath, and that was the end of the matter.

3

How could that be the end of the matter?

Over the next few days, these events kept twisting through my mind like a snake, to the point where I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising. I could not imagine who those two men could be to possess such amazing powers and secrets that I was not allowed to hear even one word of their conversation. I knew something about the world, but this was a facet that I had never come across before, and, truth be told, it was more than a little scary. When I left the policemen’s office, the very first thing I did was to take the name cards that the two men had given me out of my pocket and tear them to bits; then I threw them in the bin. The first bin I found at the airport. Given that every bit of information printed on those name cards was wrong, you could say that they were rubbish right from the start. The reason I wanted to get rid of them so quickly was not just because it was pointless to keep them, but because I was hoping that by destroying them, I would also be preventing the two men from causing me any further trouble and the pair of them could go to hell! That was very important to me, because as an ordinary member of the public the last thing you want is to get into trouble with the authorities.

But I had a feeling that they would come and find me.

Sure enough, shortly after I got back from Beijing, they phoned me up (the address and telephone number that I had given them being perfectly genuine) and took turns in explaining themselves, asking about what had happened to me, apologizing and trying to cheer me up. They also very politely asked me if I would like to visit them. They said that their work unit was located not far from the county town, somewhere in the mountains. I had heard tell that there was a large work unit out in the valleys there, very mysterious, and that after they moved in no one from the town had ever been allowed to set foot in those mountains again and the original inhabitants had all been forced to move out. Given the circumstances, no one had a clue who these people could be. There were lots of stories though: some people said they were working on atomic weapons, some said it was a holiday residence for the members of the Central Committee of the CCP, some said the place belonged to the Ministry of National Security, and so on. If someone asks you to come and have a look at a top-secret work unit like that, most people would leap at the chance. However, since I was worried about the whole thing, there was no way that I was going to get involved lightly. It was because I had so many mental reservations that I kept stalling.

On the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, someone came to my house to find me and said that I was invited to dinner. I asked who it was, and the man said it was the director of his work unit. I asked again who that might be, and he said I would find out when I got there. Given that this was more or less what the police at the airport had said to me, I immediately realized that this must have something to do with the two mysterious men. When I got there, I found that I was right, but there were a number of other people present who also spoke my home dialect, some male and some female, some old and some young – about seven or eight in total. I discovered that this was a kind of reunion for people from my home town and that they had held such an event annually for the last five or six years, the only difference being that this time I had been invited along.

You could say that that was the origin of this book, and that afterwards one thing followed on smoothly from the next.

4

This book tells the story of Special Unit 701.

Seven is a strange number; it seems to have a black aura about it. Black is not the most beautiful of colours, but it is certainly not vulgar. It can be serious, secretive, brutal, aggressive, independent, mysterious, even mystical. To my knowledge there are many countries in the world whose national security organizations are connected with the number seven; Britain’s MI7 in the First World War, the seven main administrations of the Stasi in former East Germany, the seven intelligence agencies that advise the President of France, the seven directorates of the KGB in the former Soviet Union, the Japanese Unit 731, the United States Seventh Fleet, and so on. In China there was Special Unit 701, an intelligence-gathering organization modelled upon the seven directorates of the KGB, which was ‘special’ both in terms of its organization and its remit. In particular, it had three main divisions:

Intercepts

Cryptography

Covert Operations

The intercepts division was primarily responsible for detecting enemy communications, the cryptography division was in charge of decrypting ciphers, while the covert operations division was of course about undertaking operations in the field – that is, going out and spying upon people. Interception involves listening to unearthly sounds, to noiseless sounds, to secret sounds. Cryptography involves cracking codes, whereby you have to read runes and understand hieroglyphs. In covert operations you set off in disguise to venture into the tiger’s den, standing firm against the storm. Within the unit, everyone called the people working on intercepts ‘Wind Listeners’, while those working in cryptography were called ‘Wind Readers’, and the spies were called ‘Wind Catchers’. When you get right down to it, people who work in intelligence have to have a sense for which way the wind is blowing; it is just that the different divisions go about it in a different way.

Of the two mysterious men from my old home town, one was then the head of Unit 701, and his surname was Qian. To his face people called him Director Qian, but behind his back he was known as the Big Boss. The other man was a very experienced spy from the covert operations division, a man named Lü, who many years before had been part of the Communist Party underground in Nanjing. People called him ‘Old Potato’, meaning that he had been in the underground. Both had joined the Revolution before the Liberation, and with the passing of the years they were now the only ones of their generation left in Unit 701. Later on I got to know both of these men well, to the point where gradually I was able to become a special visitor to the Unit, and was allowed to wander round the mountain.

It was called Five Fingers Mountain, and from the name you can imagine how it was shaped – like the five fingers of a hand standing up from the plain. In between the peaks there were four valleys. The first valley was the nearest to the county seat, which was maybe only two or three kilometres from the mountain. There was a little village here, the houses clustered along the mountainside. Given that this valley was the broadest, the housing compounds for Unit 701 had been constructed here, together with a hospital, school, shops, restaurants, guest house, playing field and so on. It was a complete little community, and although getting to meet the people there was a bit more complicated than usual, it was not that difficult to be able to come and go. Later on, when I was writing this book, I came to visit quite regularly and would stay at the guest house for days at a time. After a few such visits lots of people recognized me and since I always wore sunglasses (since the age of twenty-three, thanks to a condition that makes my right eye unusually sensitive to sunlight, I have always worn sunglasses when I am out of doors), everyone called me Specs.

The remaining three mountain valleys were much narrower and the difficulties of getting in increased the further you went. I was lucky enough to be able to visit the second valley three times and the third valley twice. The fourth and furthest valley I was never allowed to set foot in. My understanding is that this valley is where the cryptography unit was situated and that was the most security-sensitive area in the whole mountain. The covert operations division was based on the right-hand side of the second valley, with the training centre on the left; the bosses of both work units held the rank of deputy bureau chief. These two work units spread across the valley like a pair of wings, but the left-hand side was clearly much bigger than the right. Usually there were not many people from the covert operations division in residence, since they were all out in the field.

There were also two work units in the second valley: one was the intercepts division and the other the head office of Unit 701. The layout of these two work units was different from that of the covert operations division and the training centre, which had been built face-to-face, in that they had been built in a row – the head office of Unit 701 came first, then the intercepts division. The two work units shared the space between them, where they had put in a soccer pitch, a dining hall, a little clinic and so on.

Since no one now lived on the mountain, it had been left untouched by humans for so many years that the trees were completely overgrown and birds and animals lived there undisturbed. When driving on the single road leading through the valleys it was not uncommon to see birds flying about or animals walking across before they vanished into the wilderness. The road that wound its way through the mountain had a nice tarmacked surface, but it was very narrow with many hairpin bends, really testing the skills of the driver. I was told that there was a tunnel cut right through the mountain, to allow people to get from one work unit to another at top speed. The second time I visited the intercepts division, I asked Director Qian if it would be possible for me to see the tunnel. The old man glared at me and ignored what I had said, as if it were a completely unreasonable request.

Perhaps it was.

To tell you the truth, in my dealings with people at Unit 701, including the Director, I could clearly sense that their attitude to me was somewhat complex: they appeared to be worried about having anything to do with me, but in actual fact they were hoping that I would talk to them. If they had really been too scared to get involved, how could this book ever have been written? It would have been impossible.

Thank God for that hope.

And of course, thank God for the annual ‘Declassification Day’, that very special occasion.

5

I can tell you that being a special unit, the unique features of Unit 701 were everywhere to be seen, but some of them you probably cannot imagine. One example of this was the annual special day that everyone who worked there called Declassification Day.

The people who worked for Unit 701 placed national security above all other considerations, and the strict secrecy that their profession demanded resulted in them losing even the most basic of personal freedoms: they did not even have the right to send mail. It was only after being thoroughly investigated that a decision would be made as to whether the letter should be delivered to the intended recipient. If you wrote a letter to them, whether or not the person you posted it to would be able to read it would depend entirely on what you had written; if it aroused the slightest suspicion, there was no chance of them being able to look at it. Even if they were lucky enough to be able to get the letter, they would only be allowed to read it once, after that it would be returned to the archives, for the individual concerned had no right to keep it. If you go back twenty years, supposing that you were so fortunate as to receive a letter from one of them (and that possibility was very remote unless you were a close relative) you might have wondered why the letter was always a carbon copy. The fact is that there was nothing to be surprised at in this, because the original of any letter that they sent would have to go to the Party. In the days before photocopying machines, the best way to make multiple copies was to use carbon paper. An even more unimaginable intrusion into their lives was that when they left the unit, they would have to hand over all written material, including such things as private diaries, to be kept by the archives department, until the day when their contents were no longer deemed to compromise national security, at which point they could go back to their original owner.

That day was their Declassification Day.

That day, old secrets finally came out into the open.

Originally there had been no such thing: it started in 1994, three years after I first bumped into the two men from my old home town. That was the year that Director Qian finally retired, and I first got the idea of writing this book. As I am sure you understand, I wrote this book not because I got to know the two men from the plane, but because they held the first ever Declassification Day in the history of Unit 701. Because of that Declassification Day, I had the right to go to the mountain and walk round the valleys, seeing what there was to see. Thanks to Declassification Day people from Unit 701, or rather it would be more correct to say people who were no longer deemed to hold secrets vital to the nation’s interests, were allowed to be interviewed by me.

You do not need to be told that without Declassification Day, this book could never have been written.

6

Who I am isn’t important; like I say, the people here all call me Specs. My name is Mai Jia, as I have already told you. I have also mentioned that it is a perfectly normal thing to bump into someone unexpected or to have some unusual experience. In my opinion some of these encounters are a regular part of life, an experience that adds a bit of spice to things; they do not change your life in any meaningful way. Some encounters on the other hand change you root and branch. I am sad to say that my meeting with the two men from my home town belongs to the second kind, and changed me enormously. Writing has now become my greatest pleasure. I am proud of my work but I also suffer for it; writing is everything to me. I don’t think this is a good thing, but there is nothing that I can do about it. That is my fate and I cannot change it.

As for this book, I really think that it is not at all bad. Mystery, suspense, sex, unfamiliarity; it describes classic emotions in a contemporary context. You also get to feel something of the bitterness and helplessness that these people felt in the face of their destiny. My only regret is that Director Qian, the biggest supporter of my writing project, died before it went to press. His death made me realize how insubstantial life can be: just like love, it is here today and gone tomorrow. Once it is gone, it is gone – life becomes death, love becomes hatred, the things that you have are the things that you will lose. It is my greatest wish that the publication of this book should allow his soul to rest in peace.

This book is dedicated to Director Qian and all the other members of Unit 701.

Blind Abing

I first learnt of Abing’s story from Director Qian. It was the first story, in fact, that I ever heard about Unit 701. When I was told the tale, Qian was still the man in charge; still in the service; still a ‘man in the know’. He actually related the story to me before official declassification, and even now it is still classified. According to conventional practice, declassification of Unit 701 documents normally takes place about ten years after the agents in question have officially retired. If I were to calculate according to this practice, the story I am about to tell you would probably have to wait until next year before finally coming to light. As a result, I do not know all of the specific details. I must therefore be very careful not to speculate about what happened and most definitely not to engage in flights of fancy. This hasn’t got anything to do with being brave or cowardly of course; it’s just common sense, really. Those who make mistakes in the face of common sense aren’t brave, they’re just stupid.

Well, how is it then that Director Qian dared to tell me this very story about Abing before it was declassified? I’ve thought about that for quite some time. Probably it was because he knew that official declassification was imminent and that Abing’s files would be amongst the first batch of released documents (which has turned out to be true). You could perhaps say that Director Qian possessed a certain boldness, a certain foresight. He was audacious. Since at that time he was in charge of everyone else at Unit 701, it is natural that he would usually be the first to know what was going on. But to my mind, this wasn’t the main reason for him to tell me this story in advance. To be honest with you, there is perhaps no concrete reason for him to have told me, only possible ones. First, he was the primary person involved in it, the sole authority. Secondly, I suspect that he had misgivings about his future. When we spoke, he seemed overly preoccupied with the very real possibility that in the very near future, on any given day, he might find himself summarily dismissed from his post. I guess he thought that telling me in advance was his best option. Later, as he expected, he was indeed retired with very little advance notice. On that night then, it must have seemed to be best to telephone me, to speak of the past; perhaps he felt that to sleep would mean to never wake up. I shall relate to you the story that he told me, serving as his medium, as it were; his voice.

What follows is the old man’s verbal record …

1

My long-dead parents, my wife, my three daughters and my son-in-law knew nothing of my life as an operative of Unit 701. It was my secret. But first and foremost, it was a national secret. Of course, every country has its secrets, its clandestine organizations, classified weaponry, covert agents, secret … there is really no end to the numbers of secrets kept by a nation. It’s hard to imagine a country with no secrets. I wonder what such a nation would be like. But perhaps that’s just fantasy; such a country cannot exist, just like an iceberg would cease to be without its hidden mass lurking beneath the waves. Indeed, how can things exist independently of what is concealed beneath the surface? Sometimes I think that such secrets are terribly unfair, especially to those closest to the person keeping them. But if things weren’t like this, quite possibly the country I call home would have long since disappeared, or at least be under threat. You just have to let this unfairness continue to be unfair.

But having secrets does not mean one is some kind of criminal. Throughout the whole of my secretive life, I’ve never done anything I am ashamed of. You know my position: I wasn’t part of some frightening organization, I was part of a very important information-gathering agency, tasked with listening to the airwaves and decrypting ciphers. This type of agency exists in every country’s armed forces; so we can perhaps say that the existence of all these secrets is, in fact, an open secret. The real secrets are those surrounding the location of these agencies, the operatives who staff them, their methods, their frustrations and results – these types of things are what I would not tell you even if you beat me to death. These are the things that are more important than my life.

In Unit 701, people like Abing who intercepted communications across the airwaves are called ‘Wind Listeners’. Their ears put food on their plates; they serve as their weapons and their rice bowls; they are also the source of their stories. It goes without saying that to engage in the surveillance profession Unit 701 requires persons of singular auditory abilities. They must be able to hear that which the rest of us cannot, as well as distinguish between minute auditory inflections that pass beyond the notice of common folk. This is why most people hail them as having ‘preternaturally good hearing’. Such ears are said to go with the wind. Wherever the wind blows, their ears follow; there is nothing they do not hear, nothing they are unaware of. However, in that one year, in that single moment, all of us Wind Listeners were rendered silent by our enemies, for we all went completely deaf.

This is how it happened. In the spring of that year, the military chatter of X Country that we were responsible for monitoring simply stopped broadcasting for a total of fifty-two hours. Across its entire broadcast range, every radio station, without exception, went silent. In the history of covert radio communications there had been no record of anything like this happening before. If you were to say that this silence came about because of a tactical military need, then this would have to be considered an unprecedented strategy. To tell you the truth, it would be no strategy at all, it would be madness. Think about it: in those fifty-two hours, how many world-altering events could have occurred? In truth, anything could have happened! Our enemy’s actions were downright insane.

Yet, despite their lunacy, they were victorious. Over the course of those fifty-two hours, nothing at all happened. That was their first triumph. You could say that was a piece of luck. As for their second victory, it was the amount of energy we expended in trying to find them; they forced us to work incredibly hard. During those fifty-two hours our enemy was able to change everything – their equipment, radio stations, radio times, call signals, all of it. What does this mean? It means that over the course of those fifty-two hours, all of the listening we had carried out for the previous ten years, all the sweat and toil, the accumulated intelligence, the experience, the tricks of the trade we had learnt, the techniques, everything, was wiped clean: we were back to zero. That was how they left us far behind them. In that moment, all of our agents, our technology, our equipment, the whole lot, was useless. In the language of the trade, Unit 701 had been blinded.

Thinking back: in those chaotic years when war could have broken out at any moment, it was completely terrifying.

2

News of the situation soon reached the upper levels of command, which resulted in a terse response: we do not relish the prospect of war, but we like being beaten by the enemy even less.

The meaning was plain: this situation had to be remedied, and fast.

Yet it would be impossible for Unit 701 to overcome this situation in a short period of time. Perhaps with a view to setting up a future scapegoat, headquarters hastily promoted a former lower-level agent to handle the operation. Of course, this entailed a huge amount of risk, and the amount of intelligence that could be gathered in this way was strictly limited, so it could only be an interim solution. We needed to fix things, but except for getting our intercept agents to scour the airwaves for traces of the enemy stations, we had no other option. In our efforts to quickly identify the enemy frequencies we had lost, Unit 701 was temporarily transformed into a recruitment station with agents scurrying about in all directions, trying to find new talent. We were put under the direct command of Bureau Chief An Zaitian, with Radio Surveillance Chief Wu giving orders. Below these two men were seven other agents. I was the first of those seven, the assistant chief.

With the help of headquarters, we managed to get an additional twenty-eight agents from other branches of the intelligence service to assist in our task. We became a ‘special operations group’. Every day, relentlessly, we combed the airwaves in search of the enemy broadcast stations. We redoubled our efforts, but our reward was not forthcoming. Our concern grew, but things only went from bad to worse. In our special operations group, in spite of all those agents being added to our regular staff and despite everyone being hard at work twenty-four hours a day, at the end of one week, all we had to show for our work was merely fleeting snippets of broken signals scattered across forty-five different frequencies.

You have to understand that military usage of the airwaves is entirely different from civilian use. Civilians do not change frequencies. The military, on the other hand, shift frequencies at least three times a day: once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and then once more at night; three days equals one cycle. This means that the lowest-density military broadcast station has nine sets of different frequencies (three frequencies times three days). Generally, these radio stations have anywhere from fifteen to twenty-one sets of frequencies, but certain special stations’ cycles could be as long as a month, or even a year. Some do not even have cycles, meaning that they never use the same frequency twice.

To our certain knowledge the opposition had at least a hundred broadcast stations in active use. In other words, we needed to identify a hundred different stations before we could even begin to grasp the situation in the enemy’s camp, and before we could accurately deploy strategic countermeasures. If one station on average had eighteen sets of frequencies, then 100 × 18 = 1,800 sets of radio frequencies. After one week, we had identified only forty-five frequencies, about 2.5 per cent of the total. At that rate, we would need an additional thirty-five weeks before we could identify all of the enemy frequencies: about nine months before we could implement a new systematic surveillance plan. The problem was that headquarters had given us only three months to complete the mission.

It was quite obvious that we were in dire straits.

3

Strangely, even though we worked in the same building – he was the officer in charge and I his immediate subordinate – we never really worked closely together, despite the fact that we should have. It was really odd. His name was Tie, Chief Director Tie. Of course we had met briefly once or twice; we had exchanged nods, looks of recognition. But the impression I took away from these encounters was that his position was much above mine. His physique was imposing. He was quite handsome, but emotionally detached. He had the face of a leader: stern; like a guerrilla fighter materializing out of the jungle. Almost everyone in Unit 701 feared him, wary that at any moment he would break the silence with an explosion. It was for this reason that he earned the nickname ‘Landmine’, meaning that he was someone you wanted to leave well alone. On that day, while I was on the telephone, he suddenly burst into my office. Without saying a word he was standing there in front of me. He grabbed the receiver from my hand and slammed it down. Then he cursed. ‘I’ve been trying to call you for over half an hour, but the line has been busy. Tell me, what have you been nattering about? If it wasn’t about work, I am going to fire you on the spot.’

Luckily Chief Wu was there to bear witness. I was indeed on the phone for work reasons, talking to other agents working on intercepts: nothing he could criticize me for. If I hadn’t been, I would have been on my way out. It was quite clear that he had earned his nickname of ‘Landmine’.

Once things had settled down, Director Tie criticized our efforts to recruit new talent. He felt that we were beating about the same old bushes. He believed that at best all we had accomplished was to enlist a number of high-quality intercept agents, and that was it. But Unit 701’s surveillance division needed something more than this. At this juncture, we needed people of unusual abilities – prodigies, maybe even geniuses. The only advice he proffered was for us to break through the circle we had been trapped in and to strike out on a new path. He suggested we make our way into society, into the masses, to find that person of sublime listening talent.

The only problem was, where on earth were we to begin looking for such a person?

Whatever way you looked at it, searching for such a person was perhaps more difficult than identifying the enemy’s radio stations.

The Director’s unreasonable demand made many think that he had lost some of his marbles. But such was not the case. In fact, he already located such a person: a man by the name of Luo. This man had once been the specialist tuner for the instruments in the KMT’s national orchestra and had even played piano for Madame Soong Mei-ling. She had so admired his ability that she gave him the name Luo ‘Three Ears’. Before Liberation, the name Luo ‘Three Ears’ was inseparable from that of Madame Soong’s in Nanjing. This even led some to gossip about a possible romance. After Liberation, he changed his name to Luo Shan and moved to Shanghai, taking up a position at the Shanghai Conservatoire. Before we headed out to meet this Luo Shan, Director Tie told us how to make contact with him. He also presented us with a personal summons for Luo, handwritten by a well-known Party cadre. Our orders were to contact him with all due haste and ‘request’ that he accompany us back to Unit 701.

As I had worked in Shanghai several years before, I was quite familiar with the city. Perhaps that is why Director Tie thrust this responsibility onto my shoulders.

4

Thanks to the special permit I had received from the Director, not only was I received with courtesy and politeness on my secret mission, but I enjoyed unprecedented support and everybody looked at me with new eyes. Only one thing escaped me, and that was ordinary, everyday luck. I may have had a special permit, but that didn’t make me lucky. Barely a couple of weeks before I arrived in Shanghai, the man I was in search of, Luo Shan, or Luo ‘Three Ears’, had been thrown in jail. The bastard had gone and got the daughter of a prominent member of the Shanghai arts community pregnant.

I thought that if this was how it was, then perhaps my special pass could help in securing his release. Little did I know, however, that the web of misfortune poor old Luo ‘Three Ears’ had got caught up in would not so easily let him go. The problems of the past were now added to the problems of the present. His only solution, it seemed, was suicide. So the moment he got the opportunity he threw himself from the third storey of the prison.

Perhaps because he simply wasn’t destined to die on this occasion he survived. However, he might as well have been dead. When I went to see him in hospital, except for his mouth which stuck out from between layers of bandage, he was a broken shell of a man. His legs were crushed, and from the fact that he was completely incontinent, I reckon that his spinal cord had been broken.

I sat by his bed for about half an hour and told him two things: the first thing was I could have changed his fate, but that now it was impossible because his shattered body was of little use to us – we simply didn’t have the time to wait for him to recuperate. Then I asked him if he knew of anyone, anyone at all, with ears as good as his own.

He listened in silence to what I had to say. He did not move, he uttered no sound. He seemed much like a corpse. Then, just as I was about to take my leave, he suddenly called out to me: ‘Director!’, and proceeded to tell me the following:

‘Crossing the Huangpu River, you’ll see an oil refinery. Next to it there is a small tributary of the Huangpu. If you walk along this tributary for about five li, there is a small hamlet called Lujiayan. There you will find the person you are looking for.’

I asked what this person’s name was, and if the person was male or female.

He told me the person in question was a boy, but he did not know his name. He explained, ‘It doesn’t matter, because once you get there, all you need do is ask any villager about this boy; everyone knows him.’

Mai Jia

IN THE DARK

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

IN THE DARK

THE BEGINNING

PRELUDE

1

2

3

4

5

6

WIND LISTENERS

Blind Abing

1

2

3

4