These past years, although the Nationalist government had promulgated a policy of adopting the new calendar and abolishing the old one, forbidding celebrations of the lunar new year—no holidays, no New Year visits, no fireworks or firecrackers—the public paid it no mind. When the lunar new year came, people celebrated exactly as they always had. The newspapers now called it “Abolished-Calendar New Year’s Eve,” but aside from the change of name, they still ran all the usual holiday advertisements—restaurant New Year’s Eve banquets, department store spring sales, the Race Club’s Spring Festival charity races. In the Concessions, firecrackers went off nonstop; the Municipal Council had always banned setting them off in the streets, but the constables turned a blind eye as usual.

Renji Road, however, was very quiet. As dusk settled, twilight enveloped the red-brick buildings of the foreign trading houses standing like cliffs on either side. A Buick sedan turned into this narrow road, the words “Yunlu Motor Company” painted on its door. You Tianxiao had the driver stop at the back entrance of the Cathay Hotel—he had left the car bearing the Garrison Command’s military plates at Fenglin Bridge, walked out of the Chinese city on foot, and rented another car from Yunlu Motor Company.

That morning, You Tianxiao had telephoned Nanjing; Ye Qinian was not at headquarters. He had urgent matters to report to Director Ye, but had to call back a few hours later, and again was told he wasn’t in. By the afternoon, just as he was about to call again, he received a call from Ye Qinian instead.

Ye Qinian, it turned out, had come to the Bund—and had checked into the Cathay Hotel.

Passing through the glass revolving door into the hotel lobby, feet sinking into the woolen carpet, You Tianxiao suddenly felt rather shabby by comparison. He walked down a corridor beneath an enormous bronze carved chandelier hanging overhead, light falling on the gold patterns on the wall pillars, and he felt as if he’d entered a maze. The corridor led to an octagonal atrium, the colors of its vaulted glass ceiling shifting unpredictably; dazzled, You Tianxiao tilted his head back and found that one step to the left, the glass turned milky white, one step to the right it became indigo, and a few steps forward the very same pane blazed with orange light.

He turned down another corridor, which led instead to the hotel’s front entrance facing the Bund. For some reason a crowd had gathered here; a group of reporters with notebooks, cameras, and flashbulbs clustered by the door, and more people stood outside the hotel. A hush fell; not knowing what was about to happen, You Tianxiao pushed into the crowd and leaned against a pillar to look.

Standing among the crowd was a foreigner, sneezing repeatedly. He wore an odd thick brown sweater dotted with stars all over. He waited a while, and when no one came to greet him, gave a scornful laugh, said something to the foreign woman beside him, and turned to leave. You Tianxiao couldn’t understand foreign languages and had no idea this foreigner was “the greatest living playwright.” Seeing the reporters swarming here, he felt rather dismissive of the whole thing.

You Tianxiao went to the front desk and asked directions; the desk called up to Ye Qinian’s room for him. Music from a band drifted down the corridor. You Tianxiao knew this tune well—”There’s a crab on my belly”—he occasionally danced the tea dance himself. He had, of course, no idea that the song’s real title was I Belong to Your Heart.

The elevator stopped at the seventh floor. You Tianxiao went in; in the entryway sat Secretary Ma, whom he had met before. The small hall had a moon-gate opening leading to a sitting room. Ye Qinian stood at the window, which faced the Bund.

Secretary Ma announced, “Captain You has arrived,” then withdrew from the room.

“Teacher!” You Tianxiao snapped to attention.

Ye Qinian was still looking out the window. “The Bund hasn’t changed.”

“Would Teacher like to go out for a walk?”

“It’s a place of trouble. Nothing much worth seeing.”

You Tianxiao didn’t understand his meaning.

“Is Shanghai this quiet on New Year’s Eve too?”

Ye Qinian sat down on the sofa and had You Tianxiao sit as well.

“The people are answering the government’s call—it’s the New Calendar New Year that’s lively now.”

Ye Qinian laughed. “You’ve picked up quite the official manner from Mu Chuan at the military tribunal. How is it, getting along with him?”

“Director Mu is playing at officialdom. This student prefers to get things done,” You Tianxiao said, somewhat resentfully.

“Both things must be done—the work, and the official part too. Headquarters posted you all to different units precisely so you’d learn to be officials, so you’d put down roots and sprout in every unit and department. The Special Services Headquarters is like a great net—your job is to weave that net wider and denser.”

You Tianxiao straightened his back. “Yes, Teacher.”

He was only sitting on half the sofa cushion. Ye Qinian leaned back against the sofa. “There’s no one else in the room, relax a little. You can smoke too, if you like. How did you get here?”

“A Garrison Command car has to report to the police when entering the Concession. I left the car at the checkpoint at Fenglin Bridge and rented another to come over.”

“Good. You should always come to the Cathay Hotel by rented car.” Ye Qinian’s tone carried a trace of mockery. “It’s already the twenty-second year of the Republic, and here they still get to call the shots—so this time I’m in Shanghai, I made a point of staying at the Cathay, staying at Sassoon’s house, staying in the home of the imperialists.”

“Has it been a long time since Teacher was last in Shanghai?”

Ye Qinian said nothing.

“Shall I book you a New Year’s Eve dinner? Cantonese-style restaurants are fashionable these past couple of years.”

“I don’t feel like going out. Come,” Ye Qinian waved a hand, “tell me what you came to report.”

“I’d originally meant to go to Nanjing to see Teacher in person,” You Tianxiao said, opening his briefcase and taking out a photograph. “A newly arrived Communist—we’ve made contact with him.”

In the photograph, the man stood by a tram stop sign, a folded newspaper in one hand, the other tucked in his coat pocket; behind him stood enormous cigarette-girl and cold-cream-girl advertisement posters. He had arrived in Shanghai on the twenty-first of the twelfth month—no, that is, January sixteenth—by ship. You Tianxiao reported to Ye Qinian, organizing the summary in his head as he went.

Him? Ye Qinian’s heart gave a start. Of course he recognized this man—even if he had deliberately used techniques to alter his appearance, Ye Qinian would have known him at a glance. Even if he weren’t so young anymore, he could still recognize him. Even if he could transform seventy-two times over, Ye Qinian thought bitterly, even if he were burned to ashes and scattered by the wind into smoke, he would still know him. Sometimes, waking at midnight and thinking of the past, he found he could no longer even recall Ye Tao’s face—yet this man’s always appeared before him with perfect clarity. Hatred outlasts everything. Chen Qianli—”Xi Shi” had not given him this name over the phone.

“He came by ship? From where did he board?”

“He told the hotel staff he came from Qingdao, in the antiques trade—his background seems rather mysterious. By the time I had the police political department wire Hong Kong, the ship had already left port. But this freighter’s port of departure was Vladivostok.”

You Tianxiao told him that Chen Qianli seemed unaware he was being watched at all. Some of them, when tailed, always behaved furtively—glancing at shop windows now and then, pacing back and forth on the street, or getting into a car by the front door and out by the back. The more they did this, the easier they were to follow. But this Chen Qianli seemed completely oblivious, perfectly at ease—chatting with the doorman in the hotel lobby, asking directions, cracking a joke or two; wandering the streets looking at everything, never missing a single bit of street theater, just like an idle man, just like an antiques dealer who’d miscalculated his timing and come to Shanghai during the New Year, only to find no one wanted to do business, and had nothing to do but stroll about to pass the time.

But he always vanished suddenly. Several men would tail him for hours, holding firm to three key positions—one walking ahead, one behind, one across the street. Certain of success, they would suddenly find him gone. No knowing where he’d gone, or whom he’d met, until at night he’d turn up back at the hotel, casually pick up the day’s paper from the front desk, have the boy bring him hot water—even at that late hour he wanted a cup of hot tea. Once, a detective squad man sent to tail him, worried he’d lost him again, grew so tense he ended up looking suspicious himself, drawing the attention of the beat constables, who questioned him thoroughly; by the time the constables let them go, the man was gone again. Fortunately, they now had “Xi Shi”—

You Tianxiao actually lit a cigarette. “Fortunately we have ‘Xi Shi’ now. Teacher had ‘Xi Shi’ contact us directly, so we know he’s the man the higher-ups sent, and that he’s already met with these people. When making contact with them, he almost never arranges anything in advance. He has a habit of barging into other people’s homes unannounced—or their workplaces.”

He’s always been like that, Ye Qinian thought—barging uninvited into other people’s homes, even into other men’s daughters’ private chambers. He examined the photograph again carefully; the man in the picture was already quite different from the young man who used to come to his house on Xinzha Road. In all honesty, he had liked that young man once. So clever, quick to learn anything. Warm with people yet carrying a quiet composure—it had reminded him of himself in his youth.

“If a man doesn’t take part in revolution at twenty—” He had been thinking of a speech summary the intelligence section had sent over the day before, and suddenly realized he had spoken his thought aloud.

“What was Teacher saying?”

“Did you see those reporters downstairs in the lobby? This morning, that foreign writer’s ocean liner anchored at Wusong; they sent a launch to bring him over, had him rest here at the Cathay for half a day and give a speech. In a little while he’ll go back aboard and continue his voyage around the world.

“A couple of days ago he gave a speech at a university in Hong Kong that made the British political police over there quite nervous. Word of it reached Shanghai, and reached me here too. He incited the students there to revolution, saying something like: if a man isn’t a revolutionary at twenty, by fifty he’ll be an old fool. Of course, he’d distorted the original saying.”

Ye Qinian went on regardless of whether You Tianxiao could follow. “I did some reading myself in my youth, naturally. As I recall, that line came from a judge, who explained to someone: if you’re not a revolutionary in your youth, you have no conscience; but if you’re still clamoring for revolution in your old age, then you’re a fool.”

You Tianxiao didn’t understand why Teacher Ye was telling him all this; he simply waited quietly for his teacher to finish. He had no idea that at this moment Ye Qinian’s heart was a tangle of emotions. Ye Qinian felt that the composed man in the photograph before him was the true form of the young man who had betrayed him all those years ago. He had never anticipated Chen Qianli would become a man like this. He supposed this must be why Ye Tao had turned her back on her father and stood on his side instead. This gradually maturing form—he had been utterly blind to it at the time, while Ye Tao had probably seen it in an instant. If Ye Tao had lived to this day, she would very likely be much like the man in this photograph—which gave him a faint, uneasy feeling.

“But so far, it’s still not clear what he’s here for,” You Tianxiao said, sensing Teacher Ye seemed a bit distracted. “At first we thought he’d come to restart the mission that had been forced to a halt, so to get him moving faster we pulled the surveillance team back home for a while and let him go make contact. But after meeting these people, he said nothing at all. No meeting called, no assignments given, and he doesn’t seem to intend to evacuate them either.”

Ye Qinian understood: Chen Qianli had guessed his plan. Perhaps they were certain the organization had been infiltrated, and were now purging the traitor within—he had been prepared for this all along.

“Has Chen Qianli been to the clinic?”

“Not yet, so far.”

“So he understands perfectly well that the clinic is completely under our control. But he knows we want to find out exactly what the mission is, who was sent to command the operation—that’s his trump card. Until we’ve uncovered these secrets, I won’t move against them.

“So far, we still hold the advantage. They’re locked in an invisible cell, and our men watch them from all around. The moment the order is given, we can round them all up within minutes.”

“The Concession police have agreed to cooperate with the operation too—nothing like last time will happen again. The police are anxious to save face; last time, a mole who tipped them off cost them dearly, so this afternoon at Central Station, their commissioner promised me that in this case, if things become urgent, we may go ahead and arrest the suspects ourselves without waiting for the police to fully assemble at the scene,” You Tianxiao explained.

Though whatever faint admiration he’d once felt for Chen Qianli had long since vanished entirely, Ye Qinian could not help thinking with a certain grudging approval that this student of his, trying to lead these people out of danger by walking a perilous tightrope, was without question bold to the point of recklessness. But what plan could he possibly be carrying in his mind?

Now, another crosswind had blown across that tightrope—gathering these people together at the clinic was truly an inspired stroke. When You Tianxiao had told him on the phone that day that there was only a single guarantor listed for the clinic’s lease, a rough plan had already begun forming in Ye Qinian’s mind: gather them all together at the clinic, and they would expose their own secrets. “Xi Shi” only needed to act as a lever—pry a little here, a little there—and cracks would begin to appear among them.

“This Lin Shi is very likely their superior special envoy,” You Tianxiao was still reporting, though most of the content Ye Qinian had already learned directly from “Xi Shi” himself.

“We still don’t know what’s actually in the safety-deposit box. I discussed it with Director Mu—whether we could go straight to the bank and have them open the box. Director Mu seems to know this bank’s background very well; he says that although it looks small in scale, its backing reaches to the very top—they wouldn’t think twice about ignoring an official document from the Shanghai-Woosung Garrison Command. The bank is in the Concession—they can simply disregard it entirely. Director Mu seemed unwilling to get involved in this matter.”

“Chung Wai Trust—I can’t manage that either, and headquarters wouldn’t dare offend the Ministry of Finance. There’s already plenty of talk in Nanjing about us running a secret-police state behind the scenes. Even if it went all the way to the Generalissimo, if we forced open the box and found no evidence of Communists inside, even he couldn’t protect us.”

Ye Qinian did not tell You Tianxiao that he had already put in a word through Mr. Lifu at headquarters, and that the moment he arrived in Shanghai he had negotiated with the bank to request cooperation. The bank said they could not open a customer’s safety-deposit box, and moreover it required two keys—one held by the bank, the other by the customer. Ye Qinian had been somewhat disappointed, but the bank had also quietly told him that, as far as they understood, the box contained gold bars, and no secret documents belonging to the Communist underground. Without proof that the owner of these gold bars was a Communist, or that they were intended for use against the Nationalist government, they could not agree to confiscate them. And as for the fact that there were gold bars in the box at all—that, too, they could only say privately; they would never publicly admit to knowing what a customer kept in their box.

“Teacher, why not just have them all arrested? Once we catch the special envoy, I don’t believe he’ll hold out through the military tribunal’s interrogation.”

Ye Qinian stared at him for a long while, then shook his head. “If you don’t use your head like that, how can you ever beat someone like him?”

Even in the old days, he had never fully beaten Chen Qianli. He had always suspected his fishing scheme back then had been seen through by Chen Qianli from the start—that even without Ye Tao tipping him off, Chen Qianli would have escaped anyway. Though he was unwilling to let himself think this way, if it were true, then his daughter Ye Tao had died for nothing at all, and the resentment he had buried in his heart for all these years would turn out to have been entirely without foundation.

“Go back, and tell the surveillance team around the clinic to be extremely careful—absolutely no sign of themselves must show,” he instructed You Tianxiao. “We’ll wait patiently—they’ll start moving. As long as that Lin Shi doesn’t leave the clinic, don’t tail anyone else coming and going from there. Let them relax a little these next couple of days.”

From Nanchang Field Headquarters had come intelligence that, while raiding a Communist underground stronghold, the military police had discovered a copy of Red China, the official organ the Communists printed and published in Ruijin. An article in it mentioned that going forward, this paper would change from being the organ of the Soviet-area provisional government to the organ of the Communist Central Committee itself.

There was also an article signed by “Bogu,” in which the author gave his views on the revolutionary situation in the Soviet areas—from the tone, this person had already arrived in Ruijin. Almost no one at Special Services Headquarters knew that this “Bogu” was in fact the pen name of Qin Bangxian, head of the Communist provisional Central Committee. This news made Ye Qinian realize that the Communist provisional Central Committee, which had been based in Shanghai all along, might now be evacuating to Ruijin.

Others might have overlooked the connections between these pieces of intelligence, but Ye Qinian could fairly be called the most knowledgeable man in the Nationalist Party when it came to the Communists—an expert on Communist intelligence. He immediately connected this to some things he’d heard recently: intelligence sent in from Special Services Headquarters’ various regional stations occasionally included odd fragments mentioning a “painting”—though perhaps it wasn’t actually a painting at all, just a name they’d used.

Someone had speculated it might be some secret Communist operational plan. No one knew exactly what kind of plan it was—there was money being moved, several makeshift action groups hastily formed, and quite a few Communist underground organizations whose whereabouts had already been tracked had suddenly shut down, the buildings emptied overnight. Ye Qinian began to suspect that behind that newspaper, those scattered pieces of intelligence-system chatter, the secret gathering above the market, and Chen Qianli’s sudden arrival in Shanghai, there might run a hidden thread linking them all together.

The plan in his mind was gradually taking shape. The gold bars in the bank’s safety-deposit box were ready-made bait; he would once again employ his fishing techniques—this time not only to hook the special envoy and their secret plan, but also to finally net that slippery fish who should have gone into the pot long ago. He would capture Chen Qianli, and settle this long-overdue account once and for all.

He instructed You Tianxiao that the operation must be kept entirely secret—assemble a crack team, and have every person involved gather in the Chinese city, none to leave, none to go home, none to make outside contact by phone. The detective squad at Baiyun Temple was to clear a space for the special task team, and to seal it off tightly. If anyone let slip anything through carelessness, headquarters would treat them exactly as a Communist accomplice, with no leniency whatsoever.

“Understood!” You Tianxiao stood, brought his heels together, and saluted Ye Qinian, then picked up the photograph from the tea table.

“Leave it there,” Ye Qinian said flatly.

This time, You Tianxiao remembered the way through the lobby corridor. He went out; the Yunlu Motor Company Buick was still waiting for him on Renji Road, and the car soon vanished into the night.

As You Tianxiao got into the car on Renji Road, Ye Qinian too left the Cathay Hotel. He had changed into a gray cotton-padded gown, put on a scarf, fur cap, and muff, and went out through the door facing the Bund, walking toward the Huangpu River. Tonight even the Huangpu was quiet; the wharves along the bank stood empty, the wooden boats and tugs that usually crowded the river like schooling fish were nowhere to be seen, and the constant chugging of ship engines had vanished entirely—the boat families must all be preparing their New Year’s Eve dinner by now.

Rows of cars were parked along the bank; in the darkness, someone leaned out of a car window and called to him: “Director Ye.”

Ye Qinian did not stop walking, continuing toward the river; the man hurried out of the car and trotted a few steps to catch up. It was Cui Wentai.

Without turning his head, Ye Qinian said, “You’re early.”

A few sailors on the road, half-drunk, staggering along, muttered: “Not early at all! Not early at all!”

Cui Wentai wasn’t sure whether he should step up alongside him; he didn’t know whether Ye Qinian liked having someone walk beside him. Dodging pedestrians while listening for instructions, he trailed behind, veering now left, now right.

“Do you drive like this too, weaving all over the place?” Ye Qinian stopped and turned to look Cui Wentai over, then added, “Aren’t you cold, dressed like that?”

“Not cold, not cold, it’s not cold sitting in the car.”

“Bring the car around,” Ye Qinian ordered.

Once in Cui Wentai’s Dodge, Ye Qinian said, “Dongjiadu.”

Cui Wentai turned to look back at Ye Qinian in the back seat.

“There’s a lame man who runs a noodle stall over there. Very good noodles. I don’t know if he’s still around after all these years.”

Cui Wentai started the engine and said, “Lame man’s noodles—I know the place.”