Chapter 1062: Going with the flow
Takahashi Minami's area of expertise is on the battlefield. Whether it is investigation or combat, his methods are quite different from the requirements of secret operations such as the Ministry of Security. Gong Qiqi leads field teams to perform missions all year round, mostly in populated areas such as towns. His observation and utilization of the environment is much more flexible than that of the military. In the current situation, his experience is even more evident. advantages.
As Gong Shiqi said, as long as he finds the merchant who provides rice, grain, meat and vegetables to Liao Zhai, the rest will be easy. This was obviously not a problem for Gong Shiqi's men. At noon that day, relevant information was fed back to Gong Shiqi one after another from different investigation teams.
According to the situation described by the rice merchant and vegetable vendor, there were not many people living in Liao's house, because their deliveries were delivered directly to the house's kitchen. You can tell how many people eat in the house by looking at the condition of the kitchen. According to their speculation, the entire permanent population of Liao House should be only about ten people. But one thing that is strange is that the amount of food Liao Zhai buys each time is at least several times that, far exceeding their estimates.
"According to the person involved, the people in Liao's house are either big eaters, or they feed the food to the pigs, because according to normal people's appetites, they simply cannot consume so much food." Gong Shiqi told Gao Qiao Nan relayed the contents of his subordinate's report.
Gao Qiaonan said: "I guess Brother Gong's men also asked about the condition of the house in the north?"
Gong Shiqi smiled and said: "Brother Qiao is really a prophet. Yes, after they asked, they found that the neighboring house to the north had never purchased ingredients from the surrounding rice merchants. It seemed that no one came in or out during the day, and even I don’t know if anyone lives in that house.”
Takahashi Nan said: "The more reasonable speculation is that Liao Xun hid some people in the house in the north, and the food and clothing of these people were sent through Liao's house. For some reason , Liao Xun didn’t want these people to be exposed, so he minimized the opportunities for contact with the outside world.”
"If we go by what we know, Liao Xun has hidden dozens of people in the house. I don't think Jinwu Cangjiao has such a hiding method. I'm afraid there is something wrong with these people." Gong Shiqiman Shou put away the smile on her face: "Fortunately, we didn't attack Liao Xun rashly, otherwise we might have been ambushed by him!"
Although it is still unclear what the identity of the person Liao Xun hid in the house is, such a sneaky approach is obviously not serious. Gong Shiqi was a little suspicious that Liao Xun, who was a Jin Yiwei, had smelled something from the recent intelligence, so he moved to the north of the city and bought two adjacent houses to set up a suspicious situation, waiting for someone to fall into the trap. But there was no basis for this suspicion, so although Gong Shiqi had doubts in his heart, he still did not tell Takahashi Nanming.
Gao Qiao Nan said: "Since we have to try to trick Liao Xun out of Hangzhou City and then attack, it will be useless even if there are heavenly soldiers and generals hidden in his house. In my opinion, it is enough to continue to monitor for now, and there is no need to take risks to investigate for the time being. The situation inside.”
Gong Shiqi disagreed with Gao Qiaonan's view: "Even if we don't care about the house in the north, the situation of Liao House still needs to be figured out. If we want Liao Xun to surrender, we will probably have to fall on his family."
When Gao Qiaonan heard Gong Shiqi's tone, he naturally knew that he was not joking. Professionals like Liao Xun who are engaged in security intelligence work will not succumb to force as easily as ordinary people. Moreover, he himself has a huge conflict of interest with Haihan. He can be regarded as one of the anti-Haihan groups in the Ming Dynasty officialdom. Even if he could be captured alive, it would probably be difficult to force him to submit. Gong Shiqi obviously did not want to waste time persuading him to surrender through ordinary coercion and inducement methods, but wanted to seize his weak point that was difficult to resist and strive to hit him with one blow.
According to an investigation by the Ministry of Security, Liao Xun has a wife, a concubine, and one child each. Both children are only five or six years old. Recently, Liao Xun moved to the north of the city, and his family also moved here. A vendor who delivered rice grains had seen traces of two children in Liao's house, which can basically confirm this. Although Takahashi Nan didn't like this less than fair method, he also knew that the mission was the most important. Gong Shiqi made such a decision not out of selfishness, so he would not speak out against this arrangement.
"Then when do you plan to start?" Takahashi Minami asked.
"Let's get to know the situation of the house in the past few days first." Gong Shiqi responded: "I plan to capture Liao Xun alive first, and then try to take down his family. Then let them meet and interrogate. Liao Xun should get twice the result with half the effort.”
Takahashi Nan asked: "To capture Liao Xun alive, where is the most convenient place to do it? Do you have any arrangements?"
"Chengfengxing." Gong Shiqi had already made plans for this: "He already revealed his identity when he went to Chengfengxing last time. This means at least two things. One is that he will end up personally as a Jinyiwei Baihu. , it can be seen from this that he attaches great importance to this matter; secondly, he only brought a few men with him last time and identified themselves, which shows that he believes that the vicinity of Hangzhou City is a safe area for him, and for Chengfeng There is no need to be wary in this environment.”
"But most of the people in the action team have withdrawn from Chengfenghang. Now that Jinyiwei has spies near Chengfenghang, it will be difficult to set up an ambush again, right? And the few guys in Chengfenghang are not ours. "People, if we have to set up a situation in the store, there will be a risk of leaks." Gao Qiaonan was a little worried about Gong Shiqi's arrangement.
"Those guys have tried to gradually replace them in the past two days." Gong Shiqi was not worried about this: "There are corresponding plans for handling this situation, and Wanfa also knows what to do. As for how Send people into Chengfengxing... Hehe, Brother Qiao, have you forgotten how we gathered people in the city? "
Takahashi Nan also laughed when he thought about it. Even if Jin Yiwei deployed manpower to monitor Cheng Fengxing, its main surveillance target was Wan Fa. As for his several assistants and the people who came and went in and out of the store, If Jinyiwei wanted to monitor everything, the situation they would have to operate would be too big. Judging from Jin Yiwei's attitude in handling this matter, they did not want to make it too public. This should also be to prevent the plan of adding sand to the immigrants from attracting the attention of the Haihan people.
Chengfengxing was originally a place where people came and went. After Gong Shiqi and his party quietly moved out, Chengfengxing has resumed normal business and started accepting merchants to stay. If the action team disguises itself as a caravan and moves in again, there won't be any flaws. On the contrary, it can be used to pretend that Fenghang is doing normal business, further reducing Jin Yiwei's vigilance. During this period, the person who most needs to test his acting skills and character is not the members of the action team, but Wan Fa, the shopkeeper of Cheng Feng Hang, who is currently under the surveillance of Jin Yiwei. When Gao Qiaonan thought about this, he took the initiative to ask: "Wanfa... won't there be any problems?"
Gong Shiqi said: "This is also the first time for me to cooperate with him. Although this person is a bit overjoyed, he can still distinguish the importance of things. There was no sign of disloyalty to Haihan before. Another point is that although he has not Having a family, but both parents live in Sanya, can guarantee his loyalty to a certain extent.”
This last piece of evidence was obviously more convincing than the previous points. When Gao Qiaonan heard that Wanfa's family had settled in Sanya, he felt relieved. He was mainly worried that merchants like Wan Fa would not be able to withstand the pressure exerted by Jin Yiwei. If there were any omissions or even betrayals, the risk to the action team would be difficult to avoid. Of course, at least so far, Wanfa's performance has been basically impeccable, and he did an excellent job of confusing his opponent in the first round of confrontation with Jin Yiwei. It can be said that there is no way to ask him to do better.
At this time, Wan Fa was not as relaxed as his colleagues. After the excitement of successfully deceiving Jin Yiwei passed, Wan Fa inevitably fell into a nervous mood. In his past life, this was the first time he had dealt with Jin Yiwei, a secret service agency. Although he had received a lot of targeted training in Haihan before, when he actually faced Jin Yiwei, it was still unavoidable. I felt tremendous mental pressure.
After Wanfa joined the small society of Haihan, he realized that the room for improvement of this emerging force was much greater than that of the Ming Dynasty. With his own intelligence, he should be able to make some names in this system, not to mention honoring his ancestors. But at least you won’t always be struggling at the bottom of society. He moved all his family to Sanya to settle down, also out of confidence in his career prospects.
He was sent to Zhejiang to do undercover work mainly because Wan Fa was born near Hangzhou, and the Haihan Security Department also gave him an almost perfect identity. However, before Gong Shiqi came to Chengfengxing, he They have always believed that running Chengfengxing well is their main task. They never thought that one day they would actually serve as a part-time employee of the Security Department and participate in secret operations against Ming Dynasty.
Although according to Gong Shiqi's command and the training he had received before, he withstood the Jin Yiwei's interrogation almost perfectly, but in the next five days, he had to recruit a group of immigrants to meet the Jin Yiwei's requirements, and at this juncture, Gong Shiqi Qi quietly left Chengfeng and marched to Hangzhou City with his troops. Now there was no one he could trust around him. Wanfa felt that he was suddenly the only one to face such a chaos, and he still had to deal with it. You have to make many important decisions independently, and you can't help but feel a little overwhelmed.
Recruiting a group of immigrants is not too difficult. Since Gong Shiqi has said that no matter the cost, all you need to do is spend money. You can always get enough people by looking for connections and finding ways. But after the immigrant has gathered enough, what if the person named Liao coerces him to do other things? It is said that Jin Yiwei has already monitored Cheng Fengxing, so how will he get in touch with Gong Shiqi and others in the next few days? If Gong Shiqi and others failed in their operation in the city, should I rush to the intelligence ship on the Qiantang River to report the news? Will doing this expose himself and the personnel on the intelligence ship to Jin Yiwei's sight?
For Wanfa, there are a lot of problems that are difficult to solve at the moment, and he does not dare to make a decision rashly, because any decision may involve his own life and fortune, as well as his colleagues currently lurking in Hangzhou. He was not even sure if he would be able to keep the secret if Jin Yiwei discovered the details, and if he was tortured by them, would he betray Gong Shiqi and others who are currently in Hangzhou. On the other hand, if Gong Shiqi and others were arrested in the city, would that drag him into the water as well, who has not yet been fully exposed?
Wan Fa was full of doubts, but he didn't dare to show it too obviously. He didn't even know if in addition to Jin Yiwei, Gong Shiqi also left people near Cheng Fengxing to monitor him, or if he simply abandoned him. The chess pieces were about to be exposed, so they immediately canceled the action and evacuated Hangzhou.
Wanfa wanted to go into the city and go to the house that Gong Shiqi bought to see if his colleagues were still in the city. This would at least give him some peace of mind, but he also knew that he was under the surveillance of Jin Yiwei. This kind of reckless behavior It was very possible that he would betray his colleagues, so he had no choice but to endure the thought. Although it had only been a day since Gong Shiqi left Chengfengxing, Wan Fa already felt that he had lost his backbone and had no idea what to do.
That night, when Wan Fa was sighing and pacing back and forth in the room, someone suddenly knocked on the door. Wan Fa thought it was his assistant, so he walked over and opened the door to take a look, only to see Gong Shiqi standing there with a smile on his face. Looking at myself outside the door. Wan Fa was surprised and happy, and quickly let him into the house. He looked around to see if there was no one in the courtyard, and then quickly closed the door again.
"Boss, no one noticed you when you came in, right? There were people from the Imperial Guard watching outside the store!" Wan Fa asked worriedly.
Gong Shiqi smiled and said: "Don't worry, Jinyiwei arranged two groups of people to monitor outside, staring at the front and back doors respectively. They probably didn't expect anyone to climb over the wall and enter this store in the middle of the night."
Wan Fa breathed a sigh of relief and said: "That's good...Boss, you suddenly came back in the middle of the night, but what happened?"
"Nothing has changed. It's just that we have made some adjustments to our plan. The focus of the operation in the next few days may return to Chengfengxing." Gong Shiqi did not explain to Wanfa in detail how he treated Liao Zhai during his stay in the city. As a result of the investigation, a new order was given directly to him: "Starting early tomorrow morning, you will send a few guys home as soon as possible without leaving any trace, and arrange for our people to take over. In addition, there will be people from the action team pretending to be a caravan to move in again. , don’t be surprised either.”
"Re-checking in? Why is that?" Wanfa didn't understand the significance of his boss's move. After all, he had just evacuated here not long ago, why would he want to come back again.
Gong Shiqi said with a smile: "Didn't Jin Yiwei want to use Cheng Fengxing's channels to catch up with Haihan? Then let's help them along the way."
(End of chapter)