The light and sound vanished all at once; darkness closed in on all sides. After a while, Wei Dafu shifted to the left, stretched out his arm, and touched a wall. He shifted right, and touched one there too. He remembered now—this was an extremely narrow cell, small as a box, small as a coffin.

He knocked with his knuckles; the wall was concrete. He didn’t know how much time had passed since the interrogation until now; even the fact that he’d been interrogated came back to him only slowly. Time mattered—he’d heard Chen Qianli say this before: to keep a clear head, one must try to hold on to a sense of time; with a sense of time, the body would form a kind of order. But he’d lost track of time, and was even a little hazy on how long it had been since the blinding light had suddenly gone out.

He remembered only one thing—he meant to defect. There was important intelligence in his head; if he told it, things would change. But he had to speak at the right moment, so that what he said would carry weight and have effect. Otherwise he would harm both himself and others, accomplish nothing, and become a traitor for nothing.

Someone opened the door; a flashlight beam swung a few times, its circle of light falling on his face. Two men came in, grabbed him under the arms from either side, hauled him up, and shoved him out. In the unlit corridor he was dragged around several turns, taken down a flight of stairs, and finally pushed into a room. The room had a sofa, a tea table, and a small round table on which sat several dishes of marinated chicken and cured meat, and also a covered clay pot.

The man sitting on the sofa he didn’t recognize, but the moment the man spoke he knew—it was the one who had been sitting in the shadows earlier. In the dairy shed at Fahua Town, Chen Qianli had told him there was a secret agent chief named Ye Qinian, who looked like a stern professor, and that he should be very careful of him. The man invited Wei Dafu to sit at the small round table; the lid of the clay pot was lifted, revealing a pot of steaming fish congee.

“This is the best a late-night eatery near the train station can offer,” Ye Qinian said politely. But he himself did not sit down; instead he left the room. Wei Dafu had little experience with scenes like this; unsure of what was really going on, he sat there not daring to move.

Someone came in—it was Lu Zhongde. Seeing him appear here, Wei Dafu was still greatly startled, and this shock was not entirely feigned. He stared blankly for a moment, then blurted out, “Lao Yi—you’re here too?”

Lu Zhongde sat down across the small round table, opened his cigarette case, lit one for himself, and said to Wei Dafu, “Eat something first. Drink the congee before you smoke.”

Back when Lu Zhongde was still, in Wei Dafu’s mind, that “Lao Yi,” his manner had always won Wei Dafu’s admiration. Wei Dafu had come across all sorts of small-time con men in the city, but he’d never once suspected that Lao Yi might also be a fraud. He very much wanted to ask him directly—what exactly did you do to Ling Wen? He held on to a thread of hope that she might still be alive, even if only locked away in some prison. He still remembered her lovely profile; it was only later that he’d realized he’d met her once before, at an unexpected liaison meeting. If not for joining the revolution, he’d never have come to know a woman writer. He’d once thought her relationship with Lao Yi wasn’t an ordinary one. If it really was as Chen Qianli had guessed—that Ling Wen had been killed by the man before him—then this fellow was nothing short of a beast.

But Wei Dafu didn’t dare ask him that.

“Was it Chen Qianli who sent you to the newspaper office?” Lu Zhongde asked casually, just as the old Yi Junnian used to ask Wei Dafu things offhandedly, knowing in his heart that Wei Dafu would never keep anything from him.

Wei Dafu thought it over, and said, “That much I can tell you. Yes.”

“What is there that you can’t tell me?”

Wei Dafu shook his head and said nothing. Lu Zhongde began to gently coax him along—back when he’d played “Lao Yi,” he’d often talked Wei Dafu round like this, when the man swung between careless indifference and dejection. He started from the state of affairs between the Nationalists and the Communists, mentioning how many underground Party organizations the Special Services Headquarters had cracked in recent years, how many people they had caught. He recounted the various fates of those arrested, casually mentioning execution and death. From there, working off the old cliché that one’s body and flesh are gifts from one’s parents, he turned the topic toward Wei Dafu’s father and mother.

Lu Zhongde understood Wei Dafu far too well. He knew Wei Dafu’s parents were dead. That year the Yangtze had flooded, the fields destroyed overnight; the couple had rowed a sculled boat all the way from Anhui to Shanghai, and built a shack on the north bank of Suzhou Creek. After his parents died, there had been a stretch when Wei Dafu often told “Lao Yi” that while helping people look at houses, every time he opened a door into a dim room, he would suddenly feel as though his parents’ faces and figures had flickered before him. Wei Dafu had told him that the place where his parents now dwelled was just as dim as the place where they’d lived while alive, without windows either. He hoped that one day he could properly own a house of his own, and fulfill his parents’ wish.

“With your wish unfulfilled, you’re going to go see them now?”

Wei Dafu sighed softly. In his heart he asked himself—is it time? He said nothing, drank down a bowl of fish congee in two or three mouthfuls, then picked up a piece of marinated chicken and chewed on it for a long while.

“Intelligence is like this fish—you slice it and it has to go straight into the pot. Once the time passes, it’s not good to eat anymore,” Lu Zhongde said.

“But you need the chef to arrive before you can put it in the pot,” Wei Dafu shot back. “Even the finest fish should go to a chef who knows what he’s doing.”

Lu Zhongde laughed. He knew exactly what this self-styled clever peddler in front of him was thinking. Through his laughter he said, “You don’t trust me—worried I’ll pocket your reward?”

Wei Dafu had made up his mind, and smiled back at him as well. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lao Yi, you should know better than that—when I, Wei Dafu, do something, I’ve always played it straight. When it’s time to place the bet, when have I ever flinched? This hand is just too big. Put simply, if we play it right, your whole ‘suppress the Communists’ campaign is half done. What worries me is that you, Lao Yi, won’t be able to play this hand—and I’ll have played the traitor for nothing.”

Lu Zhongde nodded. He finished his cigarette unhurriedly, and seeing Wei Dafu had stopped eating, tossed the silver cigarette case onto the table, said, “Help yourself,” and turned and left the room.

“Put two men to stand watch at the end of the corridor. You stay in the room. No one from the Shanghai station is to come near. If Wei Dafu wants anything, call upstairs and have them see to it.” Shutting the door, out in the corridor, Ye Qinian gave orders to Secretary Weng. He and Lu Zhongde left Wei Dafu’s room and slipped into the room where Lu Zhongde had been staying earlier.

It was now the early hours of the eighteenth day of the first lunar month. Ye Qinian had interrogated Wei Dafu through the night and achieved astonishing results. Once Wei Dafu learned that the man standing before him was Deputy Director Ye of the Special Services Headquarters, he’d told everything he knew. Lu Zhongde was extremely excited, but seeing Ye Qinian still somewhat distracted, he felt a bit puzzled. “Teacher, are you too tired? Perhaps you should rest a while.”

Lu Zhongde didn’t know that his teacher, Deputy Director Ye of the Special Services Headquarters, had felt his heart turned to ashes these past two days. At times he even felt he ought to, like old Meng, withdraw to some little refuge and live out his remaining days there. He drifted for a moment, then forced himself to rally.

Had Chen Qianli not uncovered that old affair from years past, Ye Qinian would surely be wild with joy right now. Was this luck? He didn’t think so—this was the fruit of years of painstaking effort, a great price paid over a long time. Very likely, tomorrow night he would capture a great many leading figures of the Communist Party. Even in the history of espionage worldwide, such a victory would be unique—in Nanjing, he would become the man of the hour.

Chartering a cargo ship—he truly admired Chen Qianli, such audacity. The cargo ship was loaded with rice, timber, cotton. Once loading, inspection, and customs clearance were complete, in the evening before departure they would use a small steam launch, in the darkness over the river, to send the people aboard, claiming it was a leftover shipment that had just arrived at the dock.

No one would care what sort of people those were. Most of the crew wouldn’t even be on deck at that hour; they wouldn’t see what happened at the ship’s side. The few crew who might find it a bit odd—well, the captain had already been informed beforehand that this was the ship owner’s arrangement, nothing to make a fuss over.

The Customs patrol boats on the river wouldn’t concern themselves either—this sort of thing happened often; as long as a ship had berths available, it would sell as many as it could, right up to the last moment before departure; ship owners would sell even the captain’s own cabin if they could. As long as the right people at the Customs House were given a word, they’d turn a blind eye and let it go.

Of course, the most important thing was getting hold of a ship. A ship—Chen Qianli said he’d secured one, but he kept the details close, unwilling to tell comrades who didn’t need to know. But Wei Dafu, that sharp-eyed fellow, had noticed something. He was a great slippery character, not to be trusted too much. But this time his sharpness had hit the mark.

When Chen Qianli had taken the drafted advertisement text from his pocket, he hadn’t noticed a small scrap of paper tucked in with it—a punched tram ticket. Wei Dafu had had a thought, and slipped the ticket into his own pocket. When Ye Qinian got hold of the ticket, he immediately had Secretary Weng call the Chinese Merchants Tramway Company; based on the ticket’s color, number, and the pattern of holes punched, the person answering at the tram company told Secretary Weng at once that it was a Route One tram, boarded at Dongjiadu.

That made things easier. He had You Tianxiao, who’d been waiting all along in the stationmaster’s office, take men to the docks that very night to make inquiries. Whatever happened at the docks, someone would know about it. Whether it was the six-share gang, the eight-share gang, the sixteen-share gang, the thirty-two-share gang, or the seventy-two-share gang, he told You Tianxiao to lean on these dockside gangs hard, in the name of the Songhu Garrison Command’s military tribunal, and to have news for him before daybreak.

“Now that we’ve come this far, everything’s clear to us.” Lu Zhongde was in high spirits; he could hardly wait to bypass Ye Qinian and go straight to Nanjing to report to the Generalissimo himself.

“Li Han went to pick someone up. Wei Dafu placed an advertisement, and then made another contact. Teacher, having Shen Bao run the ad—truly brilliant.”

Secretary Weng had checked the phone number in the advertisement; the telephone company said the line was installed in a residence in Fahua Town.

“We can now surmise that at least three leading Communist figures are attempting to flee Shanghai aboard this cargo vessel. Considering that Chen Qianli wants to charter over a dozen remaining passenger cabins on the ship, we might even imagine the number could be greater still.”

Ye Qinian sat with his eyes closed, paying no attention to his student. He was waiting for the news You Tianxiao would bring back from the docks.

Close to four in the morning, You Tianxiao drove back. The moment he arrived he called Ye Qinian on the internal line. Ye Qinian believed that by now, the “Xi Shi” operation had been completed successfully. He had You Tianxiao come downstairs, straight to this secret chamber beneath the Zhengyuan Hotel—originally a place the Special Services Shanghai station used specifically for directing covert operations. This time, the moment Ye Qinian had arrived in Shanghai, he’d had it cleared out for his own exclusive use; no one else from the station was permitted to come here.

You Tianxiao saw Yi Junnian sitting in the room, and froze. A moment later it dawned on him—so this was the “Xi Shi.” You Tianxiao had put him through electric torture; recalling it now, he looked somewhat sheepish. But no one had any interest in hearing pleasantries from him—

“What news from the docks?” Ye Qinian asked at once.

“Wangjia Wharf Street, Lintai Shipping Company. Early on the sixteenth of the first month, a man in his thirties, dressed like a wealthy merchant, went to them wanting to charter every passenger cabin on a cargo ship, paid a deposit on the spot—one gold bar.

“They happened to have a ship bound for Xiamen and Shantou, carrying a shipment of foreign goods; the cargo owner is Jardine Matheson. On the return trip it’ll carry timber and ore.

“Departure time is the evening of the eighteenth. The man booked the cabins in the name of a travel agency, but said the passengers would take the train into Shanghai at five in the afternoon, so they wouldn’t be able to board until after eleven at night. He also wanted the cargo ship to leave the dock early and wait near Wusong, where the passengers could be brought up by a barge alongside.

“After that, this man also went to the Gongmao Transport Company beside the Sailing Vessel Guild near the docks, and rented a small steam launch for use on the evening of the eighteenth, requiring it be brought to some small dock in Pudong to pick people up, then take them out to meet the large ship at Wusong.

“As for exactly which dock in Pudong they’ll pick up from, the man said he’d send someone to the transport company that afternoon to board the launch first, and the exact pickup location would be given at the last moment. He also paid a deposit here.”

“This Chen Qianli—truly cunning.” Lu Zhongde cursed under his breath. This meant they had no way to pin down where to make the arrest. There were so many small docks in Pudong, and the launch could move freely up and down the Huangpu at night—who could say where they’d actually board. Perhaps they could set an ambush on the cargo ship itself, but truthfully, Ye Qinian had little trust in those dockside gang men. You Tianxiao could get information just by asking around casually, but if they tried to seize the large cargo ship ahead of time, sending troops and police up the gangway from the wharf—news of it might well leak out.

To treat a cargo ship floating on the Huangpu as a trap involved too many uncertainties. Where would the troops and police secretly board? Would the other side post lookouts to watch the ship? How many people did they have? He judged that they must first get word of where these leading Communists would gather at the docks in Pudong—only then could they be sure the operation would go smoothly.

Lu Zhongde had been unable to let go of the first thing Wei Dafu had said to him earlier. The two of them now sat smoking, and he told Wei Dafu his true identity.

“Not used to it,” Wei Dafu said. “Called you Lao Yi for years, hard to switch now.”

“That doesn’t matter, you can still call me Lao Yi. I expect you’ll be calling me Lao Yi for one more day yet.”

Wei Dafu thought this over for a moment. “What do you mean—you want to go back?”

“We need to know where they’re gathering before boarding the ship.”

“Just go arrest Chen Qianli at Fahua Town, wouldn’t that do it?” Not having slept all night, Wei Dafu yawned, then thought again. “Actually, if we arrest them, there’ll be no one to make contact, and the line breaks off. What if instead we sealed off Dongjiadu entirely?”

“That won’t work. Chen Qianli’s too crafty—he’s sure to have lookouts posted around Dongjiadu. The slightest disturbance, and they’ll pull back and lie low.”

“What about the ship? Just find the ship, then?”

Lu Zhongde shook his head, then asked, “You haven’t gone back since leaving Shen Bao—won’t Chen Qianli suspect something’s happened to you?”

“Yesterday at the newspaper office, I called him. He told me not to go back to Fahua Town—said to meet him at Gujiazhai Park gate at eight this morning. He’ll give me a new task then.”

On this point, Wei Dafu hadn’t been making things up. After they’d seized him outside the Shen Bao offices, they’d gone to the advertising department and questioned Miss Wu. Miss Wu said he had indeed made a phone call afterward, and after hanging up had said cheerfully that his boss had given him the day off, and that he was going to ask her to lunch.