Synopsis. Working title: RED SPY.

© Anhua Gao.
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Please note that in China, the family name comes first, so my birth name is Gao Anhua. Although Gao Qing and I share the same family name, we are not related.

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RED SPY is the story of a Chinese/Soviet Special Agent named Gao Qing, code-name, Bashan. As far as I am aware, the Chinese Communists have never released his name nor have they admitted his existence.

Tianming Yu, who was imprisoned with Gao Qing, told the story to me. I translated it into English and called it RED SPY.

I had to be careful when researching the story. In China, every Communist leader of any rank has absolute power over his/her section. Any one of them could have had me arrested and imprisoned without charge. The best I could do was to gently draw out old-people memories, but they were enough to convince me that RED SPY is, in essence, a true story.

My search for evidence that a Mr. Chen-Ye lived in Chongqing was fruitless - just as it should have been. In Long Men (Dragon Gate) Town I had more luck. Quite a few people remembered a Mr. Chen-Ye and a Mr. Gao Qing, Editor of the Dagong Bao newspaper was remembered by several Shanghai senior citizens. Certainly, my research does suggest that Tianming Yu spoke the truth. I have no doubts that Gao Qing and all of the characters portrayed here were real and the events I have written about did happen. As further proof of his veracity, Tianming Yu insisted that I use his real name. For safety reasons, some other names have been changed.
In 2004 I found a reference to Gao Qing, AKA Bashan, on a Russian-posted Mandarin language website that confirmed some of what Tianming Yu had told me. Sadly, as a rookie surfer, I didn’t make a note of the site name and have never found it again - maybe it was closed down.

My last piece of evidence confirming that the story is true concerns the top-secret Moscow Spy School. It is not a figment of someone's imagination - it existed, turning out a steady stream of highly trained intelligence gathering operatives. My research suggests that it is still operational but exactly what is happening there now is anybody's guess.

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My advice is to not worry about whether this is, or isn't,

a true story.

I wanted to create a damn good read, and market research results confirm that I have, so just sit back and enjoy it.

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AGENTS and PUBLISHERS.

Please note that the blog limits the layout of the story.

The hard copy, floppies and CD are "Publisher Perfect."

The first draft of my 3rd manuscript, THE FUNERAL SINGER, is just about finished and

my 4th, FIVE CORNER SQUARE, is under way.
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The year is 1966. The story begins in north-west China with a bewildered Tianming Yu, the storyteller, being taken to prison where his cellmate turns out to be Gao Qing, the very man Tianming Yu has been investigating for anti-Communist activities. It quickly becomes clear that Yu has been arrested and placed in that particular cell to extract information from Gao Qing. When he gets it, Yu will be released but it doesn't work out that way. The two men form a friendship that culminates in Gao trusting Yu with his story, but only after Yu gives his word not to tell the prison authorities but to take it with him if/when he is released.
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Gao’s story begins in 1939 when he and 19 other Chinese are sent to Spy School in Moscow. There, under the supervision of Stalin, through the direct control of the section known in the West as the Communist International (shortened to Comintern,) Gao learns the skills needed to be a successful Special Agent. He was the best and one of only four of his group to make it through to graduation and he is given the codename, 'Bashan' meaning Palm Hill.

The failures, apparently, were executed.

His orders were simple. Everything he did or learned was secret and must not be divulged to anyone except his Soviet Controller or his contact in Moscow. They reported directly to Stalin. However, he chose to remain true to China and the Chinese Communist Party, which meant that he had to betray all others, including the Soviets. For his protection, only a select few Chinese Communists knew of his existence.

Gao, posing as a rich multilingual businessman, is sent to Chongqing, the provisional Capital City of the Chinese Kuomintang (Nationalist) Government during the Anti-Japanese War. His first task is to set up an important radio link between Moscow and the many Soviet spies based far and wide throughout Asia and the Orient. That done, he is given increasingly more dangerous assignments that bring him into close contact with Mao Zedong, Zhou En-lai, Chiang Kai-shek, top Kuomintang and American Generals, a Japanese Agent and a Japanese Communist Agent. Working undercover, he also gets involved with the British, Chinese and American intelligence agencies.

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Gao has an active love life. In spy school he meets and falls in love with Natasha. When she is killed on a Russian battlefield, he turns to the beautiful Zhao Ying – a member of his team, for solace. She too is later killed - tortured to death. He eventually marries Little Dove, a girl whose life he saved several years previously.

Gao was involved in a number of complicated and dangerous espionage activities, which sometimes resulted in him narrowly escaping death. Sadly, his ignoble end, when it comes, is not at the hands of an enemy. It happened during the Cultural Revolution, with his killer being one of Chairman Mao Zedong’s bully-boys.

Tianming Yu kept his word, but he had to wait almost forty years before it was safe for him to reveal what he knew about Gao Qing. RED SPY is that story.
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Author’s note. The USSR intended to use The Comintern both for extensive propaganda and spying. Stalin rapidly became disenchanted with its efforts at espionage and shifted responsibility for that to the NKVD. The greatest (known) triumph of Soviet espionage in China was through the work of the brilliant Richard Sorge, the founder of the first major Soviet espionage net in China. Perhaps Gao Qing was never a part of that network – it would have been typical of Stalin to keep everybody divided and working in ignorance of each other.

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