Spy Wars: Return of the Red Luan

Chapter 171 The Last Day of the First Half of the Year

On the evening of June 30, Chen Jiehua received a telegram from Hotsumi Ozaki:

The Naval General Staff and the Army Ministry reached an agreement to temporarily suspend the theft of the silver coins.

Damn it, what's going on? Did I miss something? Just as Chen Jiehua was about to ask the reason, Ozaki Hotsumi's second long telegram arrived:

Army Minister Minamijiro and Vice Minister Sugiyama Gen were both members of the emerging faction in the Army, opposing the Choshu faction within the Army system. The Naval General Staff was composed of the Kagoshima faction, which also opposed the Choshu faction. The emerging faction in the Army relinquished some of its interests to support the Kagoshima faction in seizing power in the Navy in exchange for a secret alliance between the two sides.

"Holy crap, this works?!"

Chen Jiehua finally understood where he had lost this time. After all, he wasn't Japanese and hadn't studied the internal factions in Japan carefully. He never expected to be defeated here.

Since the Meiji Restoration, the Kagoshima and Choshu clans have been sworn enemies. To put it simply, if Japan and the Northeast Army went to war, and a group of Kagoshima soldiers and a group of Choshu soldiers encountered a group of Northeast Army soldiers in the Northeast, the Kagoshima soldiers would definitely fight the Choshu soldiers first, and the Choshu soldiers would definitely fight the Kagoshima soldiers first. Only after the two sides had fought each other would they consider whether to fight the Northeast Army soldiers.

Having learned his lesson, Chen Jiehua decided to spend some time researching the factions and relationships among important figures in Japan, realizing that his defeat was not unjust.

As Chen Jiehua was lost in thought, Ozaki Hotsumi's third telegram continued to arrive:
The terms of the negotiations proposed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the Guangzhou representatives are as follows:

1. Recognize Japan's special rights in Northeast China, including recognizing the legitimacy of the South Manchurian Railway and the Chinese Eastern Railway, and recognizing the rights involved in the Twenty-One Demands;
2. Economic cooperation and joint resource development, demanding the establishment of a "China-Japan Economic Cooperation Committee" to jointly develop Northeast China, open up domestic residency rights, and allow Japanese expatriates to freely invest and trade;

3. Political non-aggression and cooperation: China recognizes Japan's legitimate status in Northeast China and restricts anti-Japanese movements, while Japan can provide support to stabilize the situation in North China.

With the true intentions revealed, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Army General Staff have essentially reached a tacit understanding, and the covetousness of various Japanese factions over Northeast China is now blatantly obvious.

The third point is also ridiculous. Providing support? Isn't that just sending troops? If we send troops to North China, it's like inviting a dog into the house. Would you still leave? First the Northeast, now they're eyeing North China. Their wolfish ambitions are blatantly obvious.

The question now is, will those three dogs sign? The conditions drafted by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs are too insidious. On the surface, they don't involve Guangzhou's interests at all. If Guangzhou is a little short-sighted or a little shameless, they might actually sign!

As for the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Army, they didn't care whether the Guangzhou Nationalist Government was legitimate or not; once the treaty was signed, they would simply acknowledge its legitimacy.

We need to find a way to leak this content to patriotic media without exposing Ozaki.
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Dividing line —
On the evening of June 30, Kenji Doihara, Seishiro Itagaki, and Kanji Ishihara were still deducing the reasons behind the theft of the naval silver coins.

Although the bigwigs at headquarters had reached a tacit understanding, these were matters that couldn't be discussed openly and couldn't be communicated to the Kwantung Army via telegram. Therefore, Itagaki and Doihara hadn't given up yet.

But no amount of reasoning could get past the final hurdle: how could six boxes of silver dollars be transported to the headquarters warehouse without anyone noticing?

The guards aren't blind. Such a large item means there's only one possibility: the car could drive directly into the compound without being checked, so it must be one of their own.

Secondly, someone on the team behind this needs to have a warehouse key, or be able to obtain one.

This is a public, ordinary document repository. Each section chief has a key, as do the Commander-in-Chief's and the Chief of Staff's secretaries. Haruko, being a long-time employee of the General Office, also has a key. This means it was entirely orchestrated by their own people. Who was short of money and had this idea? But why did they put it directly into the ordinary repository instead of their respective secret repositories? Was there simply not enough time?

Furthermore, this is incredibly brutal! Marines, killing without hesitation! The dead were Kagoshima soldiers. Zhao Shiyu served Aoki, and although Aoki was born into the army system, he was actually a Kagoshima soldier!

This is interesting; it means that the planners and the ones who carried it out were from the Choshu clan!

The three of them, having deduced this far, looked at each other and dared not go any further; the answer was already quite clear.
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Dividing line —
On the evening of June 30, at the Japanese Kwantung Army Hospital in Lushun.

There were only two people in room 203 of the inpatient ward: two survivors of the robbery. Aoto Roku, who had gone out to get food, returned and told the two in Japanese the latest news he had gathered.

"Zhao-kun, Ijuin-kun, Fujiroku has received news that the silver coin has been found! Do you know where it is?"

"Sister Qing Teng, stop being so mysterious, you can't keep it a secret any longer!" Ijuin Seiki said with a double meaning.

"You damn Qinghui! The silver dollars are in the warehouse of the Army Headquarters building!" Qing Teng Liu tugged at his shirt; he'd been running so fast his big white rabbit was practically jumping out. "You saw it, so what? What are you saying!"

"What!? It was really those shameless army guys who did it?" Ijuin Seiki ignored what Aoto Roku said next.

"Absolutely true! And the Marines from Shanghai have all returned. They've stopped investigating. I heard that the Navy Ministry at General Headquarters has also given up the investigation."

"Baka!! How could this be?!"

Ijuin Seiki let out a loud roar, followed by a fit of coughing as the wound on his back reopened.

On the other bed, Zhao Shiyu remained silent throughout. He was already annoyed by Ijuin Seiki and Aoto Roku's flirtatious talk, and hearing this, he found it unbelievable. Was he just going to let it go like this? Had he taken that bullet for nothing?

Qing Teng Liu called the doctor and nurses to check the wound, reapply medicine and bandage it, which took a long time.

Ijuin Seiki clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, and couldn't hide the hatred in his eyes.

These childhood friends, who used to play and joke around together, followed their superior from Kagoshima to Shanghai, and then from Shanghai to Manchuria. They were together almost every day. In the blink of an eye, five of them were killed by the army's idiots!
I'm all alone now, all alone! Those idiots in the Navy Ministry actually gave up the investigation! I'm going back to find my father! I'm going to avenge my comrades!
Dividing line —
On the evening of June 30, under the encouragement of many parties, warlord Shi Yousan secretly took the oath of office as the "Commander-in-Chief of the Fifth Army Group" appointed by the Guangzhou National Government at his residence in Xingtai, Hebei. He buried alive Zhang Yungui, the liaison officer sent by Zhang Xiaoliu to his army, and cut off contact with Zhang Xiaoliu.

Shi Yousan planned a swift victory, advancing all the way to occupy Beijing and Tianjin.

However, Zhang Xiaoliu had already made preparations after his secret meeting with Chen Jiehua last time, and his troops had been deployed in advance, just waiting for Shi Yousan to fall into his trap.
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On June 30, the Red Army radio intercepted a secret telegram from Chiang Kai-shek outlining his third "encirclement and suppression" campaign, confirming that the Kuomintang had mobilized 300,000 troops, intending to advance rapidly and achieve a swift victory.

That evening, the leader led his troops on an emergency return to southern Jiangxi.
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Dividing line —
The unrest on the last day of the first half of 1931 foreshadowed the extraordinary events of the second half.

(End of this chapter)