1905: Beer Hall Speaker

Page 136

"I don't want to keep Zifu? This isn't a matter of father-son affection, nor is it a family issue."

"This is a difference in ideology. Don't even mention me, your master, you couldn't keep me here, not even your own mother!"

Wu Xia said angrily, "If you're disgusted with us, just say so. Don't make excuses that I don't understand. I'm taking the child back to Guangzhou, and you can't even protect your own family. What kind of man are you?"

"Don't go!" Zhao Yan reached out and grabbed Wu Xia, as if pleading, "You can't leave. If you leave, I'll really be all alone."

"I don't want this. I'm a living, breathing human being. Don't force me to become a god. I don't want to be a god!"

Zhao Yan hugged Wu Xia tightly, burying his head in her arms while talking to her.

"Why is everyone pressuring me? Why is everyone counting on me? They all want to find answers from me, but who can I turn to for answers?"

"I'm a human being too, why do you all treat me like I'm omnipotent!"

"I'm so tired, so very tired."

Wu Xia, who was still feeling resentful, was now frightened by Zhao Yan. She was just thinking of seeking comfort from Zhao Yan, but instead, Zhao Yan rushed into her arms.

This was the first time Wu Xia had ever seen Zhao Yan so helpless. In the past, he was the pillar of support, whether at home or outside, he was the pillar that everyone relied on.

Over time, everyone got used to it and forgot that Zhao Yan might also have moments of helplessness.

“I won’t go, I won’t go, the children won’t go either, we’ll all stay with you.” Wu Xia gently stroked her husband’s head, comforting him.

It was only then that Wu Xia noticed how much gray hair Zhao Yan had, how bald he was, and how much more noticeable the wrinkles on his face were.

When we first met three years ago, Zhao Yan was still quite dashing even though he had just recovered from a serious illness. But now, Zhao Yan looks more and more like an old man.

After a final banquet, the Republic continued to operate as usual, seemingly unchanged, but unnoticed by anyone, some things had begun to subtly change.

On January 19, 1911, Singapore secretly held its first core high-level meeting after the founding of the Comintern, which Wu Zifu attended.

At the same time, the international community generally considers the Comintern to be an illegal organization, and has issued arrest warrants for Wu Zifu and Jean Sinoll and other high-ranking officials. At the League of Nations headquarters in Paris, representatives from countries such as Britain, France, Russia and the United States strongly suggested that the Comintern be included in the category of extreme terrorist organizations, but this was strongly opposed by the Chinese representative and came to nothing.

After the Comintern gained its core leader, it began to plan frequent proletarian revolutionary movements around the world, with waves sweeping across Europe and North America.

Even within China, numerous workers' movements emerged, and various communist organizations began to appear, each with its own objectives and program.

After the central government of the Republic concluded its year-end decision-making meeting, a large number of members of the Unity Party began to head to Xinjiang. Under the call of party leader Wang Dingyun, the Unity Party also began to create momentum throughout the country, setting off a westward gold rush, with all propaganda carrying a strong flavor of extreme nationalism.

Large numbers of lawless thugs and unstable elements from within the Great Wall began to flock to the Northwest. A wave of nationalism, driven by Wang Dingyun, is about to sweep across the Northwest and even Central Asia!

The central leadership could only turn a blind eye to these matters; no one dared to complain to Zhao Yan, and the local workers' movement dared not directly suppress it, since it was not large in scale and its impact was not severe.

Chinese workers are generally quite honest. As long as they have a job and the income is higher than that of farmers, they are satisfied and can accept it even if it is tiring and hard.

Communist International members wanted to launch a movement in the countryside, but failed because the official government had already decentralized power to the township level, and the Republic had been levying light taxes and levies on rural areas. The peasants were not stupid and did not join in the unrest.

The city governments were particularly troubled by the workers' movement. The leaders of the movement were all from the Revival Party, and some even came from the SS. No one dared to call for war because their connections were so powerful.

The government could only transform these originally illegal communist organizations into legal trade unions. These people initially operated in an underground style, but the government negotiated with them and even proactively provided them with official licenses, turning them into legitimate trade unions in the open.

Trade unions represented the working class, and farmers' associations began to appear in rural areas as well. The authorities negotiated with them, telling them not to launch any movements, that everything could be discussed, and that everyone could make money peacefully.

The communist movement, which is illegal or even wanted and suppressed in other countries and regions, is legal and protected in China. This is because they have a founding father named Zhao Yan. Otherwise, with the influence of foreigners Marx and Engels alone, the government would have crushed them in no time.

However, not everyone was so polite to the members of the Comintern. The Unity Party considered these people to be traitors, and they would call for their deaths whenever they saw them. If you saw a group of people fighting in the streets and alleys, with one side wearing a black armband and the other a red armband, you didn't need to guess that it was a fight between the Comintern and the Unity Party.

Before parting ways in the capital, Wu Zifu and Wang Dingyun made some nice remarks, but in reality, they started plotting against each other behind each other's backs, each wanting to outdo the other and prove to Zhao Yan that they were right.

If they knew that in another country in another time and space, "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" coexisted, I don't know what they would think.

The master of these two men, Zhao Yan, has also changed a lot. He always has a gloomy face and looks at everyone with a strange gaze, making the central government officials live in constant fear.

Chapter 226 National Security Intelligence Agency

February 8, 1911, Tianjin, branch of the National Security Intelligence Bureau.

Brigadier General Qiu Xingxun secretly arrived at the branch building without the knowledge of local military and political officials.

Under normal circumstances, let alone a brigadier general, even if a senior colonel or colonel from the National Defense Army came to a local area from the capital, the local government and the military would know very quickly, or even in advance.

But Qiu Xingxun was a special case. No one knew where he went, and he would not notify anyone. The only person he could report to was the one in the Imperial Study.

The National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) was originally the intelligence department of the Revival Party, and was continuously reorganized and expanded. It is not under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense or the Prime Minister's Office, but only accepts orders from the Head of State and is responsible only to the Head of State.

Qiu Xingxun's rank of brigadier general was specially created by Zhao Yan, which shows his special status.

Chiu Hsing-hsun was the most unique among the five tigers of the Fuxing Party, but he was the most inconspicuous and had the weakest presence.

From the revolutionary uprising to the founding of the People's Republic of China, Qiu Xingxun's name was rarely mentioned. In fact, if Zhao Yan hadn't occasionally brought it up, the top leaders in the central government would have almost forgotten that such a person existed.

However, a lack of strong presence does not mean a lack of importance. The intelligence agency headed by Qiu Xingxun had already played a role when Zhao Yan was still being hunted down by the Manchu government. After the Changsha Uprising, the Northern Expeditionary Army's series of military operations were also supported by intelligence provided by Qiu Xingxun.

At that time, Qiu Xingxun obtained intelligence about the deployment of the Beiyang Army and the contradictions and disputes within the Qing court. This gave Zhao Yan the confidence to launch the Northern Expedition.

After the Republic government moved into the capital, Zhao Yan began planning the war in the Far East. Qiu Xingxun was in charge of the specific operations for various strategic deceptions and the deliberate leaking of intelligence.

The traitors arrested on the bloody New Year's Eve were also Qiu Xingxun's doing.

The Security Intelligence Bureau and Qiu Xingxun were behind all sorts of intelligence work during the war, and even the revolutionary movement in the Russian Far East and the domestic uprisings in Japan.

Qiu Xingxun's trip to Tianjin this time was for a major mission. Ordinary intelligence missions would not require Qiu Xingxun to personally take charge; only core and important matters would require his personal involvement.

"Director, you've come all this way, you must be tired!"

"Stop talking nonsense, is everyone here?"

"Everyone has arrived and is assembling on the playground, awaiting your instructions."

"Then let's go, and hurry up! Don't make a fuss, and keep a low profile."

"Yes, I've arranged for them all to be reviewed in the indoor venue!"

"Ok!"

Qiu Xingxun took off his cloak, handed it to his attendant, and then followed the branch manager directly to the indoor meeting room.

Upon entering the venue, more than 500 children were already sitting there obediently, waiting for Qiu Xingxun's inspection.

The 554 children in the venue were all between 6 and 12 years old, but their faces and hair color were strange. Seventy percent of the children could be identified at a glance as not being Han Chinese.

The majority of the children were white, followed by Asian, with no Black children among them.

The branch manager explained the origins of these children. The yellow-skinned children were selected from domestic orphanages, mainly from extremely poor families whose parents either starved or died of illness. They were then taken in by official orphanages and later selected by the Security Bureau.

Some of the white children were selected from Xinjiang, but most were secretly brought from Russian territory and white colonies in Southeast Asia.

Bringing so many children here, especially from an intelligence agency, Qiu Xingxun's intentions are obvious.

The Security Intelligence Agency (SIA) incurred significant costs to acquire so many children, and for their subsequent training, it also had to construct a secret base deep within the Greater Khingan Mountains in Northeast China.

Qiu Xingxun came here not to review Gao's speech, but because they are just a bunch of kids. Trying to talk to them and give them a pep talk is like casting pearls before swine.

Qiu Xingxun mainly wanted to see for himself and make sure he was properly informed, since this matter concerned the future global strategic layout of the Security Bureau. These children were future agents, and he absolutely could not treat it lightly.

He personally walked to the row of seats, scrutinizing each child's face against the file forms, examining each one carefully, and then checking their file information.

The files record where these children came from, and even the information on their deceased parents. None of them are vaguely recorded. Children with vague records and no background, even if they are orphans, will not be taken by the Security Bureau.

When intelligence agencies train agents, their primary task is to thoroughly understand the background of the trainees and absolutely prevent anyone of unknown origin from infiltrating the ranks.

Even if it's a child, you have to find out where they came from.

None of the children are only children; they all have at least one or more siblings. The Security Bureau will not accept all of them for training; it will only select one for training. Meanwhile, the siblings will be funded by the Security Bureau and placed in well-equipped welfare institutions to live normal lives.

After carefully reviewing them all, Qiu Xingxun expressed his satisfaction. All the children were of the ordinary type, with nothing special about them. They had ordinary appearances, ordinary behavior, and no obvious physical characteristics.

Moreover, they are all boys, healthy, and without any intellectual disabilities. At most, they suffer from malnutrition. They have just arrived in Tianjin and are a little scared and timid, but these are all normal behaviors.

Qiu Xingxun prefers intelligence agents to be as ordinary as possible; he himself is the kind of person who would disappear into a crowd, and he expects the same from his subordinates.

Even if you exhausted all the agents like James Bond, Qiu Xingxun wouldn't accept a dozen of them, even if they were free to fly and dive.

Intelligence personnel are not special forces soldiers, so they don't need a lot of fancy equipment, nor do they need to have a handsome image. Especially for spies, the more ordinary the better.

Qiu Xingxun disliked the honey trap and the kind of intelligence gathering that Jiang Gan stole the book from, preferring instead a more subtle and gradual approach to intelligence gathering.

Previously, they relied on bribing spies to obtain intelligence and quietly acquire key information about the enemy. However, this method is somewhat unreliable and may result in buying back false information. It is better to plant spies that they have trained themselves.

This was all inspired by the Japanese. When Qiu Xingxun was conducting intelligence and counter-espionage work in China, he arrested some Japanese who had infiltrated the country. Some of them had even been living in China for ten years and looked no different from Chinese people. If he hadn't caught them red-handed, Qiu Xingxun wouldn't have dared to confirm that they were actually Japanese spies.

After the initial shock, Qiu Xingxun realized how effective this tactic was. True intelligence infiltration is not the last-minute effort of sending a handsome and capable 007 to gather information. Unless the other side is an idiot, no matter how many 007s you send, they will be eliminated.

The best approach is to infiltrate from the bottom up, sending spies trained over many years to the target country, posing as immigrants or from slums, ideally with backgrounds that are difficult to trace.

Once they obtain a legitimate identity, they are provided with resources to help them climb the ranks. They don't even need to reach a high position; they just need to settle down. Even if they are just ordinary citizens, it is far better than being an outsider spy.

If you have the opportunity to infiltrate the target's military and political circles, that's a huge win. If you can even reach the middle or upper levels, then you're a strategic-level spy.

This is why all the candidates are men; these days, only men have the opportunity and probability to enter the military and political fields and even climb to the middle and upper levels.

Qiu Xingxun didn't take any female spies because his master had said that you should never expect women to do great things; their greatest skill is to deceive people, and emotional women are more terrifying than anything else.

If a female spy can obtain information through her looks, it's basically easier to just bribe her.

In movies, female spies can easily seduce men at two parties and obtain intelligence, but in reality, no one dares to believe such intelligence. This is because men understand men best. Everyone should know that when men are pursuing women, they rarely tell the truth; they lie until they get their hands on the woman.

As for seduction, even he himself doesn't believe the things he says to women in bed, so would you dare believe them? Who the hell isn't heartless after sex?

Truly valuable information can only be known behind closed doors, or it can be obtained through the analysis of various data and information.

Moreover, there is a principle of "one piece of evidence is not enough" in the field of intelligence. A single piece of intelligence cannot be trusted. It must be a comprehensive analysis of multiple intelligence sources before the final result is reported to the decision-making level. Even at the decision-making level, it is only a reference. If the leaders are normal, they will not decide the future of the country based on a single piece of intelligence.

Like the legendary Zogel, who is said to have single-handedly reversed the course of World War II in the Far East because his intelligence alone allowed the Soviet Union to confidently redeploy its Far East troops to aid Europe. Anyone who believes that is a fool.

The Soviets dared to divert troops from the Far Eastern Front to aid Europe for two reasons: first, the Battle of Khalkhin Gol had dealt a heavy blow to Japan; second, if they hadn't diverted troops, Moscow would have fallen and the country would have been on the verge of collapse. Who the hell cared about Japan's invasion of the Far East?

There were also instances where the Allies misled the Germans by placing incorrect landing site information on corpses, dressing them in uniforms, and letting them float to the other side of the sea. When the Germans obtained this information, they immediately believed that the Allies would not land in Normandy again.

This is actually absurd; even the most foolish German army wouldn't use such intelligence to decide the fate of the Atlantic defense line.

The truly crucial intelligence is obtained by core spies, who have to infiltrate many years in advance to have that opportunity, and even then, they need to analyze and study it extensively.

After all, you don't know if your spy, who has been infiltrated for so many years, is still reliable, so you can't trust him too easily.

Qiu Xingxun's current plan is to train a large number of spies year by year in batches, and to infiltrate major European and American countries, from civilians to governments, the military and scientific research fields, and to place people in all areas in a multi-faceted and comprehensive manner.

One spy is unreliable, but if you get intelligence from dozens or hundreds of spies and analyze it together, it becomes much more reliable.

After inspecting the place with his own eyes, Qiu Xingxun left without saying anything more, taking the person in charge with him.

Then, various matters were handed over to the person in charge. These children had to be sent to different places in batches for training, to get to know each other and grow together. Children receiving training must not be sent to the same country, small region, or field at the same time; they must be sent separately.

At the same time, the training content doesn't need to be sophisticated, and it doesn't need to teach assassination or infiltration techniques. It only needs to brainwash people and prioritize increasing their loyalty.

Then we taught them about the customs, languages, and lifestyles of various countries—basically, very ordinary things that they could easily learn about.

However, it is essential to provide consistent and long-term training until the habit is fully formed. We must avoid situations like the one in a German beer hall where someone asks for three beers and then makes an OK sign.

Qiu Xingxun also arranged the relevant funding and the construction of bases across the country.

Finally, Qiu Xingxun took all the children's files with him. The branch base did not keep any backups or records. All paper records had to be destroyed immediately after they were used up.

All subsequent training records and supplementary materials are prohibited from being backed up; the originals must be submitted to the headquarters in Beijing.

Chapter 227 My shady and unpredictable intelligence agency has come to me because of my involvement in military spending?

Qiu Xingxun was decisive and efficient. After the Tianjin branch checked the recruitment of child agents, he inspected the work records of the Tianjin branch and then summoned several section chiefs for questioning.

Feeling that there were no major issues, they headed back home. After all, in intelligence work, the greatest success is to avoid any major mistakes.

The saying "Aim not for merit but for no fault" is derogatory in other fields, but in the field of intelligence, it is a golden rule: the greatest achievement is to avoid mistakes.

On the contrary, no one would be happy if some outstanding achievements were made, because if achievements were made in the intelligence field, it would mean that big problems would arise in other fields.

The National Security Intelligence Service is in charge of foreign intelligence gathering. It has the authority to intervene in and handle any intelligence information that concerns national security. If nothing is wrong, it means the country is at peace and the people are safe. If something is wrong, it means a major event that will result in many deaths.

Internal intelligence was mainly the responsibility of the Inspection Department, though it wasn't exactly intelligence, but rather internal order monitoring.

After completing his mission, Hou Qiuxingxun prepared to return to the capital that same day. The highway between Beijing and Tianjin was now fully open, with paved cement roads, and the drive would only take two or three hours.

Now, all major departments in the central government have begun to completely replace horse-drawn carriages with automobiles. The National Security Intelligence Agency has also prioritized the purchase of a large number of automobiles. Qiu Xingxun also likes to travel around by car, as it is much faster than taking the train.

At 7 p.m., Qiu Xingxun returned to the capital. The bumpy ride had left the young man feeling tired. The car's shock absorption was terrible these days, and there was almost no comfort at high speeds.

The headquarters of the National Security Intelligence Agency is not located in the Forbidden City, but on the site of the former Prince Qing's Mansion. The headquarters occupies a converted mansion, which is another special privilege of the National Security Intelligence Agency.

Other departments were neither jealous nor envious, because no one wanted such a cunning and treacherous department around them, and few people wanted to deal with the National Security Intelligence Service. Since the bloody New Year's Eve, civilian officials had developed a strong aversion to this department.

The only exception is probably the military; the Ministry of National Defense personnel have been waiting for Qiu Xing to come to the headquarters.

"Director Qiu, you're finally back! We've been waiting for you until it's almost dark!" Lieutenant General Chen Qian, the Deputy Minister of National Defense, sat in the stone pavilion in the courtyard, with a kettle beside him that had been refilled countless times, and cigarette butts scattered all over the ground.

"Deputy Chief Chen, what are you waiting for me here for? The military hasn't been conducting any combat operations recently." Qiu Xingxun took off his hat and cloak and sat down opposite Chen Qian.

Qiu Xingxun neither saluted nor reported anything. According to military rank, Qiu Xingxun, as a specially appointed brigadier general, was not on par with Chen Qian, but at least he should have saluted and reported.