The orderly brought in freshly boiled water. Mu Chuan took his vermillion clay teapot with the bridge-shaped handle out of the cabinet, sat down on the sofa, and put a bit of rock tea into the pot. He rinsed the cups with the first infusion, then poured the water for the tea itself. Steam rose in the sunlight; he thought a moment, then picked up the phone and called You Tianxiao.

“Squad Leader You’s here—the Section Chief’s inside having tea, please go right in,” the orderly called out loudly at the door.

You Tianxiao knocked, and without waiting for Mu Chuan to answer, pushed the door open and walked in, a stack of case files in hand.

“Section Chief, I’ve brought the interrogation records for you.”

Mu Chuan waved him toward a seat. You Tianxiao set the files on the coffee table, and as he sat down on the sofa, a pair of dice fell out of his trouser pocket; he bent quickly to pick them up.

Mu Chuan glanced at him, chose a cup, and rinsed and refilled it back and forth.

“What good tea is the Section Chief drinking?” Mu Chuan gave an exaggerated yawn. “Adjutant Weng dragged me out drinking last night—had a bit too much. Wanted some tea this morning.”

“The Cantonese fellow who’s always at the Garrison Command in that Panama hat?”

“Nothing gets past you, Squad Leader You.” Mu Chuan poured a cup for You Tianxiao. “Try this Da Hongpao from Wuyi Mountain—I think it’s rather good.”

“Fine tea.” You Tianxiao took a sip, though he actually preferred cold water.

Mu Chuan, uncharacteristically, actually began reading the file with some care. He turned a page and suddenly said, “I know your Detective Squad has all sorts of tricks up its sleeve. But once you’ve got money, you could find yourself a wife, settle down—”

He pointed at You Tianxiao’s trouser pocket. “As for that sort of thing—have your fun and leave it there.”

You Tianxiao seemed about to say something, but in the end only said, “Yes, Section Chief.”

For a moment the room held only the sound of pages turning.

“Still hasn’t talked.” He said it softly, as if to himself, then lit himself a cigarette.

“Been interrogating for two days now, hasn’t it?” Mu Chuan said, still not looking up, turning another page.

“These people come from all walks of life—all sorts of professions mixed together in one group. That alone is enough to confirm it.”

“Though Communist cases fall under emergency prosecution,” Mu Chuan said as he read, “in this period of political tutelage, the Judge Advocate’s Office can’t simply do as it pleases either—a verdict still needs evidence.”

“This Ling Wen—a writer, and the widow of a wealthy merchant, practically a lady of leisure.” Mu Chuan flipped a few more pages. “A schoolteacher, a journalist, a bank clerk, an antiques and calligraphy shop owner, and one who was once a soldier. Plenty of suspicious points here, no wonder you brought them all in together. What exactly did that intelligence tip of yours say?” Mu Chuan said lightly. “This Yi Junnian—did you give him a rough time of it?”

“He deals in calligraphy and paintings—he looked a bit frightened, so we roughed him up a little.”

“His confession’s all over the place—must have been quite a beating.” Mu Chuan laughed.

“No beating. We gave him the electrical treatment.”

“Used that German equipment?” Last year Nanjing had sent the Garrison Command a batch of German equipment, including a set of electric torture apparatus.

“Lin Shi, the bank clerk—which bank?”

“Renta Bank Corporation. Was shot in the leg during the arrest; the headquarters’ military doctor bandaged it up. He’s been half-unconscious, hasn’t been questioned much.”

“Liang Shichao—served in the army, is that right?”

“He claims he used to serve in the 19th Route Army, was badly wounded in the Battle of Shanghai on January 28th, and has been recuperating ever since he was discharged.”

“Oh—” Mu Chuan studied this page of the confession more carefully. “Checked with their army command by telegraph?”

“His officers are all up at the front, ‘suppressing Communists’ in Fujian. Headquarters says the name’s in the roster, but they’ve been fighting so long the ranks have turned over several times already.”

“You think Yi Junnian is their group leader—on what grounds?”

You Tianxiao did not tell Mu Chuan that he’d found a pair of dice on Yi Junnian’s person, though Yi Junnian insisted the dice were his own, that he’d brought them himself. You Tianxiao sometimes felt his mind was splitting into two halves—every record he made had to be produced in two versions, each with different content: one for the Judge Advocate’s Office, another delivered to the Special Services Headquarters.

“Yi Junnian and that writer,” Mu Chuan flipped a few more pages, “Ling Wen—old acquaintances, are they?”

“The neighbors say Yi Junnian often visited her home. When we asked the two of them directly, both said it was purely for buying and selling paintings. Ling Wen’s husband’s family name was Long—wealthy merchants from Guangdong, they say. He went out on some business matter one year and was kidnapped and killed for ransom. These past years she’s gotten by selling off antiques and calligraphy, and subletting rooms as a landlady.”

“A woman like that, taking up with the Communists?” Mu Chuan mused. “How is it there’s no transcript for Chen Qianyuan?”

“He’s still in the interrogation room. We questioned him most of the night—”

“And got nothing out of him either?”

“Dong Huiwen, the schoolteacher—she’s his weak point. I’m trying to use that to break him.”

“Oh? His sweetheart?” Mu Chuan looked rather interested. He lit a cigarette and, watching the smoke curl upward, said, “These interrogation transcripts you’ve shown me—they don’t seem to be numbered in the order the questioning actually took place?”

“I’ve only got the one clerk—he only has time to sort and file everything once a whole day’s questioning is done. He may have gotten them out of order.”

Mu Chuan smiled like an old fox. “You really do have quite a devious mind, Squad Leader You—you’re worried I’ll notice exactly what you’re looking for, aren’t you?”

“Section Chief—”

Mu Chuan waved a hand. “No need to take it to heart, Squad Leader You—you and I both serve the Party and the nation.”

He fixed his gaze on the photograph on Chen Qianyuan’s file page, as if he could read something from those blazing, angry eyes. You Tianxiao was lost in his own thoughts too, ash from his cigarette falling onto the carefully waxed floor of the Section Chief’s office.

“Adjutant Weng treated the Section Chief to drinks last night,” You Tianxiao said, one word at a time, as if struggling to find the right phrasing, “or was it something General Cai wanted to say?”

“General Cai is the rising star at the Nanchang Field Headquarters these days—he’s been away commanding troops these past years, too busy with military affairs. Back when his troops were garrisoned in Shanghai, the General made a good many friends.”

You Tianxiao straightened up and shifted forward to the edge of the sofa. He stubbed out his cigarette, eyes lowered, and kept listening.

After a moment, Mu Chuan continued, “Adjutant Weng said a great deal, but the most important thing was this—he said, if these people really are Communists, then go by the rules, handle the case fairly. If they’re not, then show a bit of leniency.”

The telephone rang. Mu Chuan got up to answer it. “It’s for you, Squad Leader You,” he said, and set the receiver down on the desk.

“I’m questioning Chen Qianyuan—I told them to find me here,” You Tianxiao explained.

He picked up the phone, listened a moment, then said loudly, “Passed out again? Then—send him back to the cell for now.”

“Did he confess anything?” Mu Chuan leaned back against the sofa, running a hand along the armrest.

“Not a word.” You Tianxiao stood by the coffee table. “I understand what the Section Chief means. I’ll go have a look now.”

Mu Chuan nodded. You Tianxiao was about to leave when Mu Chuan spoke again: “That Tao woman—”

“Miss Tao’s being released today. That day we sent her over, they talked with her a whole afternoon. Mr. Song came out personally to work out the terms—she’s learned her lesson.”

“These women—lock them up a while and they come around.” Mu Chuan flicked ash off his trousers, then asked with sudden contempt, “Has she ended up pregnant, in the end?”

“Locked up all this time—from what I can tell, no.”

“Just as well she’s not, or Mrs. Song wouldn’t be letting her through the door either. Before she goes, have another word with her—tell her to keep her mouth shut.”

Miss Tao came out of the cell in high spirits. She’d assumed she would go straight out the back door of the detention house—that’s how it had gone the morning the car came to take her to see Mr. Song—but instead the jailer took her to see You Tianxiao. Every time she saw this man, Miss Tao felt a chill run down her spine.

Sunlight was bright outside the window, but You Tianxiao sat in the shadows. “Miss Tao, please sit,” he said, his voice cold and grim. “Won’t be causing any more trouble once you’re out, will you?”

“Squad Leader You, no, I won’t.”

“Good, then—” You Tianxiao stared at her a long while, then suddenly said, “Did any of them ask you to take anything out with you?”

Miss Tao said nothing.

You Tianxiao stood, walked over to her, bent down, his face nearly touching hers, and, narrowing his eyes, kept staring at her. Miss Tao felt as though those pupils had shrunk into needles of ice, stabbing straight into her chest, and her blood seemed about to freeze in her veins. You Tianxiao straightened up abruptly and moved behind her; the room fell utterly silent, and Miss Tao could almost hear her own heartbeat. Her legs went weak; she could barely stay in her seat, and wished she could curl up into a ball and sink into the floor.

You Tianxiao suddenly reached out, snatched up the wicker case the jailer had set at Miss Tao’s feet, put it on the table, opened it, and turned it upside down, dumping everything out onto the table—qipaos, clothing, lipstick, mirror scattered across the surface. He gave it all a couple of rough shoves, and the neatly folded slips, stockings, garters, and underclothes were tossed into disarray—that paint-chipped table suddenly looked like the counter of a department store’s ladies’ section.

“Think this is a fancy hotel—” You Tianxiao said sharply. “Strip you and search you properly later—if we find anything, you won’t be walking out of here at all.”

Miss Tao suddenly gave a giggling laugh, glancing coquettishly at Squad Leader You, and reached out to touch the leather belt on his gray wool uniform. The Detective Squad issued uniforms too, but there had never been much requirement about wearing them properly—yet the moment You Tianxiao entered headquarters, his dress was always strictly regulation.

Miss Tao seemed to make a great effort to sit up straight, pointed at the table, and said, “There really is a letter.”

“Bring it out.” You Tianxiao had his back to her.

“Sewn into the lining of a qipao.”

“Which one?”

“The sapphire blue one, the wool one.”

You Tianxiao found the qipao among the pile of clothes and tore open the lining. Miss Tao felt as though the qipao were still on her own body, and her heart lurched with unease.

The letter was found.

Brother Fang, as we speak. As for how things stand with Lao Yi and Sister, I imagine Brother already knows. Now that we are within these walls, we are resolved to resist to the end. My heart is entirely at peace; the worst that can happen is but death. The weather is bitterly cold; take care of yourselves. Please also relay to Father and Mother that they should take good care of their health. Your Sister, Ling, and the others.

You Tianxiao turned the paper over and over, examining it, then asked Miss Tao again, “Where were you supposed to send this?”

“They told me that once I got out, I should put it in an envelope and post it to the Xujiahui Post Office, general delivery, box one-three-seven,” Miss Tao said hesitantly.

You Tianxiao nodded and said nothing more. He reached over and switched on the desk lamp, turned the letter face-down toward the light, then took a small bottle of chemical solution from a drawer and dripped a few drops onto the paper. Soon a line of writing appeared:

All comrades are resolved. The matter of the dice is exposed—there is a traitor inside. Also, they are asking about Hao Han’s whereabouts.

You Tianxiao drained half a glass of cold water in one gulp, then lit another cigarette. Miss Tao, seeing his expression change, didn’t dare make a sound for a long while. After a good while, You Tianxiao finally looked up, his expression strange, as if he’d just noticed Miss Tao was still there. He tilted his chin, gesturing for someone to take her out through the back door of the detention house and let her go.

The wooden shutters were folded down, and the room grew dim. You Tianxiao smoked two more cigarettes in a row, then suddenly took the dice from his pocket, gave them a shake in his fist, and threw them onto the table. He looked at the numbers, picked up the phone, and had the Garrison Command’s woman switchboard operator connect the call to Zhanyuan Garden in Nanjing.

“Please connect me to Deputy Director Ye at Special Services Headquarters,” You Tianxiao said solemnly on the phone, though, like everyone else, when face-to-face with Ye Qinian, he addressed him simply as Director Ye.

Half an hour later, the call from Nanjing came through.

“Teacher,” You Tianxiao said, standing at attention, speaking respectfully into the phone, “I need to report to you in person.”

You Tianxiao had just stepped off the train at Nanjing’s Xiaguan Station when someone stopped him outside the newly built oval-shaped hall.

“Squad Leader You,” said the man—it was Secretary Ma—pointing at a car parked not far off. “Director Ye is waiting for you over there.”

It wasn’t even six o’clock yet; morning fog blanketed the southern bank of the Yangtze. The afternoon before, on Ye Qinian’s arrangement, You Tianxiao had gone to the supervisory office of the Nanjing-Shanghai Railway Bureau to pick up a ticket, and had ridden the overnight blue steel express straight to Nanjing.

He saw Ye Qinian sitting personally in the driver’s seat, and had just reached to open the passenger door—

“Sit in the back.”

Ye Qinian was You Tianxiao’s teacher; back in the training program, Teacher Ye alone had been a true insider in the work of the secret services. This teacher was very hard to get close to—all these years, You Tianxiao had always stood at a distance before him, and even in private meetings, had never once closed the gap between them to less than five meters. The front and back seats of a car already counted as an unusually close proximity.

Yet whenever something came up, he still picked up the phone straight to Ye Qinian’s desk. Special Services Headquarters was nominally a subordinate unit of the Nationalist Party’s Central Organization Department, but internally it operated more like a matter of clan law. If you made a mistake, the punishment could be severe—even execution was possible. At Special Services Headquarters, Ye Qinian was not technically You Tianxiao’s direct superior, but Ye Qinian never objected to You Tianxiao calling him directly to report—they never operated strictly along the surface chain of command.

“Teacher, I’ve been questioning them for days, and I can’t get anything out of them.”

“Even you, an old hand, can’t get anything out of them?”

“The police station leaked word, we had no choice but to make the arrest early. I mishandled it. I request disciplinary action.”

“Punishing you won’t solve the problem.”

The car circled once around Xiaguan wharf, then drove east through the morning fog. The road held neither pedestrians nor vehicles; the car slowed, and Ye Qinian gazed out the window at the Ming city wall by Xuanwu Lake.

You Tianxiao looked at the dim silhouette in the front seat and said nothing.

“What did you want to tell me this time?” Ye Qinian suddenly asked, as the car passed Jiming Temple.

“I want to release them—for now.”

The car stopped for a while by the old city wall, and You Tianxiao, studying the moss on the cracked bricks, slowly laid out his thinking.

Persuading this teacher was no easy matter. Back in the training program, Teacher Ye had been extraordinarily skilled at seeing through his students’ every trick. He distrusted overly complicated plans, always saying that if you made things too complicated, the actual operation would run into far too many unexpected snags. But “Xi Shi” was his masterstroke, and You Tianxiao made a point of stressing that releasing them all first was precisely what would let “Xi Shi” play a greater role.

“It seems, for now, that Yi Junnian isn’t the Central Committee’s special envoy,” he said, in answer to his teacher’s question.

“Anyone could be. The very essence of intelligence work is to doubt everyone.” Ye Qinian, equally, spouted a string of empty platitudes, interspersing them with questions he’d already asked several times over. You Tianxiao knew Teacher Ye was carefully weighing things.

“That Mu Chuan—has he heard about ‘Xi Shi’ too?”

“Yes. He goes to Nanjing often.” You Tianxiao thought a moment, then added, “He probably doesn’t much want to stay on as Judge Advocate—finds it too sinful a line of work, worried it’ll hurt his career prospects.”

“What nonsense! Sinful? The Party has far too many officials like that—like a sieve, leaking secrets everywhere.” Ye Qinian was thoroughly angered.

“What did you do with that letter?”

“Burned it.”

“Send it on.”

You Tianxiao sat there in a daze, and Ye Qinian said again, “Write a new one.”

Seeing that his student still hadn’t caught his meaning, Ye Qinian added, “They’re operating on a single-line contact system. The letter’s addressed to someone surnamed Fang—this is the man we absolutely must bring in.”

He seemed to recall something. “I don’t smoke, but you may.”

You Tianxiao shook his head. After a moment, Ye Qinian said, “I agree with your plan. Go back and send a telegram to Special Services Headquarters. Once they’ve arranged bail, I’ll issue my approval. Have them released on bail bond—look carefully into whoever comes to stand surety. Every single one who walks out needs to be watched closely, double the manpower. I’ll send you some new recruits from the Hangzhou training program. That Detective Squad of yours has turned into a nursery for the Garrison Command—all sorts of people in it.”

“Yes, Teacher.”

“If anything else goes wrong, even I won’t be able to save you.”

“Yes, Director,” You Tianxiao said, catching the shift in Ye Qinian’s tone.

The car drove back to the train station. You Tianxiao got out, preparing to catch the next train back to Shanghai.

Ye Qinian moved back to the rear seat, and Secretary Ma drove toward Zhanyuan Garden.

“What did you say to me this morning, when you came to pick me up?” As the car passed the old Shence Gate wall early that morning, a shadow of unease had suddenly crossed Ye Qinian’s mind, and he’d been distracted for a good while since.

Secretary Ma reported: “Director, a few days ago headquarters sent men to Shanghai for a covert arrest of Hao Han, but someone spoiled the operation, and for a while we suspected there might be a traitor among the men sent by headquarters. Now they’re saying someone reviewed the case file sent back to headquarters from Shanghai, and found that Fang Yunping, the Communist who didn’t show up for the meeting, was likely the one who opened fire on Puensin Road. Fang Yunping came close to borrow a light, and our man got a good look at his face.”

“Have them press the pursuit of Fang Yunping,” Ye Qinian ordered Secretary Ma. “Did ‘Xi Shi’ know nothing of this?”

“He probably doesn’t know.”

“Tell him. Have him look into it. Fang Yunping didn’t go to the meeting—instead went to the steamed-bun shop to save someone. Did he have inside information?”

“Director, I don’t think so. It’s very likely the field operative exposed himself. Fang Yunping most likely went to make contact with Hao Han, and noticed something amiss on the scene.”

“That’s also possible.”

Both of them knew that men who had done secret work this long really did become different from ordinary people, in some way.

Ye Qinian mused, “Fang Yunping going both to the meeting and to make contact with Hao Han—that’s rather intriguing.”

“Is the Director suggesting this meeting has something to do with Hao Han?”

“All the regional stations have been buzzing these past days—word is the Communist Central Committee may have some major operation planned, some secret scheme.”