Okay. I can tell you that according to my information, over the period of time that Rong Jinzhen worked for Unit 701 (from 1956 until 1970) he filled out twenty-five notebooks, all of which are now in the custody of his wife, Di Li. Di Li used her position as Rong Jinzhen’s wife only once, to take a single notebook into her personal possession. The remaining twenty-four are in her custody because she is the security officer and they are all locked away in a rather imposing iron cabinet, secured with a double lock that requires two keys to be turned simultaneously to open it. One key she keeps on her person, the other is held by her section chief. Essentially then, although these notebooks are in her care, she is not permitted to look at them, let alone treat them as her own.
When will it be possible to see them?
According to Di Li, that’s difficult to say for certain. Perhaps some will be declassified in a couple of years’ time; for others it might take several decades. That is because each notebook has been classified with different degrees of secrecy vis-à-vis national security. It goes without saying, therefore, that for us it is as though those twenty-four notebooks don’t even exist; just like the man residing in the Lingshan hospice doesn’t really exist. I mean, he is there, we can go and see him, but the real Rong Jinzhen has long since departed; he is gone. Consequently, I was very keen to see the single notebook in his wife’s possession. From what I was able to gather, no one has ever actually seen that particular notebook, but everyone knows she has it. That is because when she went to get it she had to sign it out and they keep records for that sort of thing. So, no matter how much she might have hoped to fob me off, I knew she had it and so in the end she had to admit it. However, every time I mentioned that I would like to have a look at it, she would spit out two words: ‘Get out!’ This was how she kicked me out of her house each and every time. There was never any hesitation on her part, never any explanation; no room for argument. A few months ago, once I had completed the first five chapters in manuscript, I had to visit Unit 701 one final time in order for the authorities to inspect my work and ensure that I had not inadvertently revealed any sensitive information. Naturally, Di Li was one of the censors in charge and upon reading it she shared her opinions concerning the story I had written. Then she suddenly asked whether or not I still fancied seeing the notebook? I answered, ‘Yes, of course.’ She told me to come and see her the following day; but before that day arrived, she came of her own volition to the guest quarters and presented me with the notebook. As you would expect, it was a photocopy of the original.
I need to explain three points:
1. The copy that Di Li provided me with was incomplete.
Why do I say this? Well as I understand things, each and every person in Unit 701 uses the notebooks supplied by the Unit itself. There are three sizes: the largest is 142 mm by 210 mm, the medium size is 130 mm by 184 mm, and the smallest is 90 mm by 100 mm. The exterior is either plastic or hard leather. Two colours are available for the plastic covers, red or blue. Since Rong Jinzhen was partial to blue, all the notebooks he used were the same: a blue, medium-sized notebook. I’ve seen a genuine example of this kind of notebook (empty of course), and so I know what they look like. Blazoned across the top and the bottom are the words ‘Top Secret’, stamped into the cover in red ink. In the middle of the cover the following is printed:
Serial No.: __________
Code No.: __________
Date: __________
The serial number gave the number in the series; the date indicated from when to when the notebook was used; the code number would tell you the agent’s name. For instance, Rong Jinzhen’s code number was 5603K. No one outside Unit 701 would recognize who that was, but everyone inside would: the year he began work at Unit 701 — 1956; the section he worked in — cryptography; the 03 in the middle indicating that during the aforementioned year he was the third person to have been recruited by Unit 701. Finally, each page is stamped with the words ‘Top Secret’ on the top right-hand side and a page number on the bottom right-hand side, all in dark red ink.
Looking at the copy given to me by Di Li I noticed immediately that it had been tampered with because the ‘top secret’ banner on the right and the page numbers had all been removed. I thought, ‘I can understand why the “Top Secret” banner was removed, since this material was no longer considered top secret. But why erase the page numbers?’ At first, I couldn’t figure it out. I counted the number of pages. There were seventy-two. I then began to understand. In the course of my research, I had learnt that this type of notebook contained ninety-nine pages, and so it was clear that the photocopy provided by Di Li was incomplete. She offered two explanations: first, Rong Jinzhen had not used the entire notebook and thus many pages were blank and did not need to be copied; secondly, certain pages contained their personal secrets — the secrets between husband and wife — and so she did not wish me to see those. Hence they were omitted. From my point of view, those omitted pages were what I most wanted to see.
2. Looking at the data and the content, the early pages of the notebook concerned a time when Rong Jinzhen fell ill.
One day in the middle of June in 1966, after he had eaten breakfast and had left the canteen, Rong Jinzhen abruptly lost consciousness and fell to the floor in the middle of the hallway. The side of his head hit the corner of a wooden bench — and the blood came gushing out. He was taken to hospital, whereupon they discovered that the blood dripping down his face was nothing compared to the bleeding in his stomach. The problem with his stomach had actually caused the fainting fit. The result of this diagnosis, coupled with the doctor believing that it was quite severe, meant that Rong Jinzhen was admitted to the hospital for treatment.
This hospital was exactly the same one as the chess-playing lunatic had been taken to all those years before — it was attached to Unit 701. Located next to the training base in the Southern Complex, the quality of its equipment and the skill of its physicians was no whit inferior to that of a big-city hospital. With respect to Rong Jinzhen’s ailment — well, there was nothing really difficult about treating such a common condition, and it certainly would not give rise to the same kind of problem that the treatment of the lunatic had caused. The difficulty lay in the fact that although this hospital was attached to Unit 701, it was located in the Southern Complex and, as you can imagine, its level of secrecy could not be compared to that of the Northern Complex. To employ a rather inappropriate analogy: the relationship between the northern compound and the southern one was like the relationship between master and servant. A servant is always busy fulfilling his master’s wishes, but what is the master up to? Alas, the servant is not privy to such information. Even if they were to learn of such things, they would not be permitted to talk about them, at least not openly. Strictly speaking, Rong Jinzhen’s true identity was not to be disclosed even when he was in hospital. Of course, that was easier said than done, especially since he was such a well-known person; most people had already learned of him through formal or informal channels and everyone understood that he was a really important man. Of course, if your identity is made public then it is public; you could say that everyone in Unit 701 was part of the same family and so it didn’t really matter one way or the other. Still, when it comes to work or other professional matters — well, those things are not to be revealed at any cost.