Chapter 25: Female Agent Matsubara Kioka (Part 2)

  Ji Xiang fell silent for a moment, then shook her head and replied: "I've never heard of it, and we're not allowed to ask."

  Li Yuyuan saw from Ji Xiang's eyes that she wasn't lying, so he continued to ask: "Besides the Owl Squad, are there any other teams or squads in the Eagle Plan organization?"

  "Besides our own Owl Squadron, I know of two other squadrons: Hawk and Vulture."

  "What are they each in charge of?" Li Yuyun was a special agent herself, and she wouldn't miss this great opportunity to dig up the enemy's internal secrets.

  "Hunting Hawk Squadron is responsible for assassinating and ambushing the intelligence agencies and military and political officials of the Chinese army, Bald Eagle Squadron is responsible for infiltrating into the Chinese army to gather military intelligence."

  Ji Xiang's answer reminded Li Yuanyuan of the ambush at Guanzhai, which was probably done by the Hawk Team. And her intelligence department would be informed of the exact location by the Japanese spy organization. It seems that there are indeed Japanese spies infiltrating the inside, otherwise they wouldn't have known.

  Li Yuyuan asked some questions about Matsubara Kiyo's personal situation, and learned from her that she was a Japanese woman from Osaka, born in a mountain village farmhouse. At first, the Japanese army recruited her as an entertainer for the military, but because of her beauty, she was noticed by the Japanese intelligence agency and sent to China for training. In addition to learning basic spy skills such as gathering intelligence, she mainly learned how to seduce high-ranking officers. The Nakamura who was killed by Yamamoto was from the same hometown as Kiyo, and joined the Owl Unit around the same time as her. Because Kiyo often received harassment from Yamamoto and others, Nakamura became Kiyo's protector, and soon the two fell in love. Nakamura could not tolerate Yamamoto and others bullying Kiyo, and had proposed several times to take Kiyo away to escape.

  Li Yuyuan asked again: "Besides these few people who have passed away, is there anyone else who knows you?"

  Keiko thought for a moment before answering: "Because I'm a new member and we're all on an external mission, there shouldn't be anyone else in Burma who knows me, though..."

  "But what?" Li Yuanyuan immediately asked back.

  "But there were also a few women who trained with me, and they might be sent here too, but since I arrived in Myanmar, I haven't met anyone who trained together." Kikka replied.

  "Do you have something on you that can prove your identity? Like a certificate or something?" Li Yuanyuan asked, just wanting to know how the Japanese military agents identified each other.

  Ji Xiang glanced around the cave, stood up, and walked to where a bag was placed. Li Yuanyuan stretched out her hand from her waist and aimed a gun at Ji Xiang. After a moment, Ji Xiang took out a small notebook the size of a palm from the bag, turned around, saw Li Yuanyuan pointing the gun at her, hesitated for a second, and threw the notebook over to her.

  "Come over and squat down." Li Yuanyuan said, waving the gun in her hand.

  Ji Xiang obediently walked over and squatted down in front of Li Yuanyuan, who then put away her gun and picked up the small notebook on the ground to take a look. It was an ordinary Burmese ID card without a photo (author's note: at that time, taking pictures wasn't as easy as it is now, so identification documents didn't have photos). The Burmese people don't have surnames; they add a prefix to their names, such as "Du", which is a term of respect for women, meaning "lady". So what Li Yuanyuan saw was translated into Chinese as: Du Ma.

  "This ID card is what you use when you're on a spy mission, so how do your people identify that you're a member of the Eagle Plan organization?" Li Yuanyuan couldn't see any flaws in Ben's words.

  "Do you see the broken pattern above the name? As long as it's a member of the organization, seeing that breakage means knowing it's one of us." Kiyo replied.

  Li Yuyuan took a closer look and indeed, after writing her name, there was an L-shaped damage on the paper that would be easily overlooked by anyone who didn't know it was a secret mark to identify one's true identity.

  "Are there any other members of the Cat Head organization? Besides those who have died." Li Yuanyuan put Ji Xiang's ID card into her own pocket, she planned to keep it, maybe it would come in handy later.

  "There are, but I haven't had any dealings with them and don't know where they all are," replied Keiko.

  "Are they all under Yamamoto's command? How did you usually contact them?"

  "Mainly it's radio contact, and occasionally Yamamoto also goes to meet them alone." Kiyo looked at Yiwon with a puzzled gaze, as if she found it hard to understand why the woman in front of her was asking such detailed questions, and she thought to herself: 'Maybe after she finishes asking, she'll kill me.'

  "How many more of you are there, like you who often sneak into the village to gather military information?" Li Yuanyuan was also thinking whether she should kill Ji Xiang.

  "I'm not sure about this, there should be a few, won't be too many."

  "Are they all women?"

  "Not necessarily, there are both men and women, mainly those who can speak local dialects or Chinese. Oh, I remember Nakamura-san mentioning that we also bought some locals to provide us with intelligence." Kioka tried her best to reveal everything she knew.

  ……

  More than an hour later, Li Yuanyuan finished asking all the questions and stood up to take out a gun from her waist: "Sorry, I have to kill you." The muzzle was pressed against Ji Xiang's forehead.

  Ji Xiang didn't panic at all, instead she felt a sense of relief, and a faint smile appeared on the corner of her mouth as she slowly stood up.

  "What are you laughing at?" Li Yuanyuan saw Ji Xiang's smile and felt a sudden jolt in her heart, unable to make a move for the time being.

  "I'm smiling because I get to meet Nakamura-kun now." Kioka said with an increasingly radiant smile.

  "Alright, I'll indulge you! Turn around!" Li Yuanyuan didn't want to see Ji Xiang's smile.

  Ji Xiang slowly turned around with her back facing Li Yuanyuan and said: "Fire the shot, I'm ready."

  Li Yuanyuan's hand holding the gun was trembling. If she hadn't had that conversation with Keiko earlier, perhaps she would have pulled the trigger without hesitation. But from their conversation, she understood that this Japanese woman was also a victim of war. If she hadn't been chosen by the Japanese military intelligence agency, who knows, she might have become an object for some Japanese soldier to vent his beastly desires on. Li Yuanyuan had learned from many pieces of intelligence that the Japanese military used comfort women to alleviate their soldiers' war neurosis.

  "Sister..." Dong Li Mao waited outside the cave for over an hour, but didn't see Li Yuanyuan come out. He felt a bit uneasy, so he went back into the cave and happened to see Li Yuanyuan pointing her gun at Ji Xiang's back of the head.

  Li Yuanyuan let out a long sigh, put away the gun that was pressed against Ji Xiang's occipital bone, turned around and said to Dong Li Mao: "You're just in time, I couldn't bring myself to do it, so you should be the one to fire this shot."

  Dong Li Mao was taken aback, looked at Ji Xiang who had her back to him and asked: "Is she a Japanese spy?" He also thought like others that Ji Xiang was just a local woman found by the Japanese to satisfy their beastly desires, and didn't think of her as a spy.

  Li Yuyuan hesitated for a moment and didn't answer. Instead, she took out the ID card that Ji Xiang had given her and handed it to Dong Limao.

  "What is written on this?" Dong Li Mao couldn't understand the Burmese characters on it.

  "She's called Duoma, she's Burmese." Li Yuanyuan glanced at Ji Xiang who was standing there waiting for her death sentence, without revealing her real name.

  "So that means she's not a Japanese spy." Dong Li Mao took another look at Ji Xiang, who was standing facing the wall, and handed the ID back to Li Yuanyuan.

  Li Yuyuan put away her ID card, took two steps in the direction of Dongkou, and then stopped again. Without turning around, she said a sentence: "But she's with the Japanese military secret service." After that, she quickly walked out of the cave.

  Dong Li Mao was in trouble, a weak woman who wasn't a Japanese military spy or even Japanese herself, how could you shoot her to death? Even if she were a Japanese spy, he couldn't bring himself to do it.

  "What should I do?" Dong Li Mao paced back and forth, suddenly a thought popped into his mind.