Shattered as a lover and a spy

It was the winter of 1958. He had just run away with his lover to Shanghai. They went sightseeing every day and didn't mind the dark streets or meagerly stocked stores where coupons were used to ration food. Life was just beginning.

Until two plainclothes policemen walked up behind them one day and called out his name.

"Are you Kan Zhonggan?"

Blinded by happiness and love, he said yes.

"Take a walk with us."

Around the corner, a car was waiting. The couple got in. One officer sat between them. They drove for half an hour and then his lover was told to get out. As she was dragged away, their eyes met.

They didn't see each other again for 27 years.

This is the story of one man's broken dream to serve his country and love his woman.

Kan Zhonggan was a spy. His master was the government of Taiwan, an island that broke with mainland China in 1949 after a protracted civil war. Ever since, mutual espionage has been a way of life, but it was especially robust in the early years of the split.

Little was known about the lives of the secret agents who risked everything for the cause until a group of elderly former spies decided to speak out recently in hopes of seeking redress and compensation from Taipei. They say that instead of being treated as war heroes, they were abandoned by the island that recruited them.

"The Taiwan authorities don't want to unveil old wounds," said Andrew Yang, head of a Taipei think tank. "To them, these spies are considered redundant, disposable."

During the height of the Cold War, an estimated 30,000 Taiwanese spies were dispatched to the mainland, said Jiang Jianguo, 73, a former spy now living in Hong Kong who spent 13 years in prison. Of those, an estimated 20,000 were executed by the communists, he said. The rest probably died of old age or are living in exile, mostly in mainland China and Hong Kong, said Jiang, whose Cross Strait Relations Victims Assn. has contacted about 70 former spies.

An untold number were caught and thrown into Chinese prisons and labor camps. Kan spent 20 brokenhearted years in prison, turning into a perpetual loner fearful of more retribution.

He is the only known former Taiwanese agent willing to reveal his secret past who still lives in mainland China.