At around ten in the morning, Lao Lu, the day-shift attendant at the Shenxin Hotel, showed a guest into a second-floor room. During the day, this floor was under his charge. He set the two leather suitcases on the rack, closed the window, turned on the steam radiator in the room, and stood there without moving. In two more days it would be New Year’s Eve; there weren’t many guests, and quite a few of the long-term residents had already left. Only after the thirtieth of the twelfth month would guests start coming to book rooms for mahjong.

The guest’s surname was Chen. Mr. Chen slipped fifty cents into his pocket. He wasn’t the type of guest who threw money around, but he understood the customs, knew how things worked. If it weren’t New Year’s, he probably would have only handed over a twenty-five-cent coin. Lao Lu said with a grin, “Mr. Chen, I’ll bring you hot water for tea later. There are telephones at both ends of the corridor—calls outside the hotel go through our switchboard girl.”

“Good, thank you.”

“Anything else you need?”

The guest shook his head. On the way up the stairs, Lao Lu had tried making conversation a few times, but the guest was taciturn and didn’t respond much. He looked utterly exhausted, his face gaunt, and he probably hadn’t shaved in several days. The thick wool overcoat with the fur-trimmed collar carried the smell of a long journey, but it looked genuinely fine on him.

He only mentioned that he had come from “Xinjing” and was an antiques dealer. Ever since the puppet state of Manchukuo had been established the previous year, hotels in Shanghai had often seen guests arriving from there—these newly-risen figures from the Northeast of uncertain origin, all seemingly quite wealthy, and no one knew what they’d come to Shanghai to do. If Mr. Chen had been the chatty sort, Lao Lu might have brought up the recent Japanese occupation of Shanhaiguan.

The guest suddenly seemed to come back to himself. “Oh, right, Lao Lu—I’d like to get a haircut. Is there a good place nearby?”

Lao Lu had taken something of a liking to this guest who had kept an expressionless face the whole time; guests staying at the hotel usually just called out to the attendants without a thought for who they were.

“There’s one right here in the hotel—should be open by now. Outside, you go north from the entrance, follow this road all the way down to Third Road, and you’ll see one right after you turn the corner,” Lao Lu explained carefully.

“Thank you.”

Chen Qianli went downstairs and picked up a copy of Shun Pao from the table in the lobby. He first read on the front page about Chiang Kai-shek personally traveling to Nanchang to take command of the “Bandit Suppression” campaign, then flipped to the classifieds section and, seemingly without much interest, scanned through it—all just small ads about shop rentals, used cars wanted, or people selling calligraphy and paintings. Outside the hotel entrance, he tucked the newspaper into his coat pocket and, following the attendant’s directions, headed toward Third Road.

With the New Year approaching, the street carried the smell of salted fish and cured meat. Outside several woolen and silk fabric shops hung banners boycotting Japanese goods. He slowed his pace, strolling as leisurely as the other pedestrians on the street.

Crack—a sharp pop sounded from an alley on the left, and a small boy came dashing out, bundled up like a round ball, his new padded jacket already smeared with dust. In his left hand he clutched several firecrackers, in his right a lit fuse-stick, and he collided head-on into Chen Qianli, who sidestepped and caught the child. He glanced at his watch, then noticed a tobacco-and-paper shop by the alley’s mouth with a public telephone on the counter. He paid, dialed a number, and waited quite a while before the other party picked up the receiver…

He saw the barbershop Lao Lu had mentioned, right there on the corner across the street, but he didn’t go over. Instead, he hopped onto a passing tram at the stop in the middle of the road.

A little over a month ago, Chen Qianli had left the training school in Khabarovsk, where he had lived for three years. After three years, even the unsentimental instructors had developed some feelings of parting. That day, they had pulled Chen Qianli—who had been swimming in the winter river—out of the icy water and up onto the bank, and drunk with him all night in the instructor’s quarters. Then came the long journey of ten thousand li: first a six-hundred-kilometer train ride through the Siberian forests to Vladivostok, where, unexpectedly, he was delayed for half a month.

In winter, a thick layer of ice formed on the outer harbor waters; only a few cargo ships carrying urgently needed Soviet supplies could use icebreakers to clear a path in and out of the port. It took him great effort to find a cargo ship willing to take passengers.

When he set out from Khabarovsk, his instructions had been to infiltrate Fujian and the two Guangdong-Guangxi regions to carry out work undermining and dividing the upper ranks of Nationalist warlords, in preparation for smashing the enemy’s next “encirclement and suppression” campaign against the Central Soviet Area. He was originally supposed to disembark in Hong Kong, but in Qingdao, an unexpected visitor had boarded the ship and come to his private cabin. This person told him to temporarily change his plans and make Shanghai his destination instead.

“‘Lao Kai’ of the Central Transportation Bureau has been arrested in Shanghai—the special agents surrounded the meeting location. Five other comrades were arrested along with him. Including ‘Lao Kai,’ there should have been twelve comrades at that meeting. After the meeting, these twelve comrades were to form a temporary action group to carry out a confidential mission.”

The visitor told Chen Qianli that the mission they were about to carry out was connected to a major decision recently made by the Central Committee—an absolutely top-secret plan that even within the organization, only a very small number of comrades knew about. The higher-ups had temporarily transferred Chen Qianli over to instruct him to assist “Lao Kai” and continue advancing that mission. The specifics would be conveyed to him once he arrived in Shanghai; the comrade who would convey the task’s content to Chen Qianli would very likely still be “Lao Kai” himself.

Chen Qianli asked, “Is there a possibility the arrested comrades could be rescued?”

“Not everyone at the meeting was arrested. According to the information received, the agents charged into the meeting site before the meeting had even started. Among those arrested, aside from ‘Lao Kai,’ no one else knows the content of the mission. So far, no one even knows which one of them ‘Lao Kai’ actually is. ‘Lao Kai’ is an experienced comrade; the organization believes the relevant intelligence has not been leaked.

“The Party organization is using every resource to rescue them. From what we can see now, there’s a good chance of success. By the time you reach Shanghai, they may well already be out. You’ll need to find a way to make contact with ‘Lao Kai’—he’ll convey to you the Central Committee’s top-secret plan, along with the specific tasks the temporary action group is responsible for.”

Chen Qianli looked out the porthole at the harbor in the night: “The Shanghai group was arrested at the secret meeting site—that suggests the underground Party organization may well have been infiltrated. I need to know more.”

The visitor lifted his teacup, warming his palms against it. “The organization has reached the same judgment. Recently in Shanghai, underground Party organizations have been uncovered by the enemy one after another. The special agents even broke into an absolutely top-secret Party Central organ—there’s evidence confirming that someone was arrested and turned traitor.

“These past two years, that special agent headquarters in Nanjing seems to have found some kind of knack for it. It’s said that because they’ve repeatedly destroyed our Party’s underground organizations, they’ve won more and more trust from Chiang Kai-shek, and these past two years the special agent apparatus has expanded considerably. The current situation of struggle is extremely severe.

“The higher-ups received intelligence from an inside source that there is an agent with the code name ‘Xi Shi’ who may well be lying in wait within our own ranks. The source of this intelligence doesn’t know when this person began infiltrating the Party organization. It was only because the special agent headquarters, smug and boastful about their achievements in ‘bandit suppression,’ let the news slip out. The higher intelligence department has analyzed this and feels that this ‘Xi Shi’ sometimes seems like a long-buried infiltrator, and sometimes seems more like a recent defector.”

Chen Qianli had just been thinking of this very question: strictly speaking, if the Party’s underground organization had been infiltrated and compromised by the enemy, then this portion of the system ought to be frozen and temporarily suspended from use.

“If there’s an insider, why not organize a new action group and reassign the mission?”

“Time is extremely pressing. The mission the Shanghai temporary action group is to carry out is part of the Central Committee’s top-secret plan. The participants were urgently selected by the organization from people in various different professions, taking into account the circumstances the mission might encounter—it would be very difficult to reorganize such a team on short notice. Besides, ‘Lao Kai’ has already met with them. The reason the higher-ups are sending you is precisely so that you can make a precise judgment about the scope of the underground organization’s infiltration, work to root out the insider as quickly as possible, and at the same time help ‘Lao Kai’ complete the mission.”

“Before the action group was convened, how many people knew about this?”

“Aside from ‘Lao Kai,’ at that time only Fang Yunping, the comrade in charge of the Shanghai underground Party, knew the situation. The people joining the group only received notice of the meeting. Originally, the higher-ups wanted Lao Fang to join the action group as well, as the group’s leader, to work with ‘Lao Kai’ in completing the mission. But there’s word that he didn’t go to the meeting that day.”

“Everyone was at the meeting place—why did the agents only arrest six people?”

“The market was very chaotic, things happened suddenly, and some comrades slipped out by blending into the crowd.”

“Among these people, who does the leadership think can be trusted?”

“The leadership is waiting on your judgment.”

“This Lao Fang—does he seem to be a point of suspicion?”

“If there were a problem with Lao Fang, the enemy’s arrests would have come earlier and been broader in scope. The organization isn’t considering that possibility for now.”

Chen Qianli felt this reasoning wasn’t entirely rigorous.

Following this visitor’s instructions, he came to Shanghai. The ship anchored for one night at the mouth of the Wusong River; the next morning after the tide went out, the pilot boarded, and the foreign police of the concessions came aboard along with him. The constable questioned him and registered him as an antiques merchant. After disembarking, he had a rickshaw puller take him to the Shenxin Hotel, and once he’d settled in, he went immediately to the rendezvous point to find Lao Fang.

Chen Qianli got off the tram in front of the North Sichuan Road Bridge, crossed the bridge, and turned west along the Suzhou Creek embankment, circling around the Post Office building back to North Sichuan Road. He looked around to make sure no one was following him, then continued north. This was an area he used to frequent—he wondered whether the Wave Bookstore and Xinken Bookstore in Gongyi Fang were still open; Lu Xun, Feng Xuefeng, and Chen Geng had once taken part in activities of The Vanguard magazine here. Gongyi Fang was a gathering place for people from Guangdong. To the northwest was Yihong Garden, a place Dr. Sun Yat-sen had visited several times; right now, outside its gate, a group of newlyweds and their friends and family were preparing for a modern Western-style wedding.

Chen Qianli passed through the crowd and walked into the alley across the street, where he found the barbershop.

A customer with a hot towel over his face lay reclined in a barber’s chair with the back tilted down. The barber, in his twenties, held a razor in his hand and was about to give him a shave. Seeing another customer come in, he gestured with the razor toward another chair beside him, and Chen Qianli sat down. The shop suddenly fell silent, none of the three saying a word. After a while, the customer having his face shaved spoke up from beneath the hot towel: “This gentleman isn’t from around here, is he?”

“Just arrived in Shanghai by boat from Qingdao.”

“New Year’s is coming—are you here to visit relatives?”

“Business.”

“Business, even in this cold, with the year drawing to a close?”

“Antiques business doesn’t follow the seasons. Wherever there’s something good, that’s where you have to rush.”

Just as they were talking, the barber went over and closed the shop door. The customer being shaved yanked off the now-cooled towel and turned his face toward Chen Qianli—

He said he was Lao Fang.

The barber carried the kettle and stood outside the shop door; there was a stove beside the door especially for heating water. He closed the shop door, and now there were only the two of them inside.

Lao Fang lay back in the chair and put the cooled towel back over his face, leaving only his eyes exposed, fixed on a small mirror hanging on the wall opposite. This mirror was presumably meant to be handed to the customer only after the haircut was finished. Chen Qianli followed Lao Fang’s line of sight and looked at the mirror too. It had been hung cleverly, tilted slightly, positioned exactly to face the window beside the shop door—through the window, one could see what was happening outside.

“Here—you’re not at ease?” Chen Qianli asked softly.

“There’s no problem here. That’s my son.” Lao Fang gestured toward the door.

After a moment, he added, “The enemy has gotten hold of most of the locations. The place I was staying was also surrounded—I escaped. This place has never been used as a contact point; none of those arrested know about it.”

“He doesn’t seem too pleased?” Chen Qianli was looking at the door, the gap between it flickering light and dark.

“He wants to be involved in the work, wants to do something important.”

Outside the door, Lao Fang’s son was stopping a regular customer from a nearby alley who often came for a haircut: “Too busy right now—two customers just sat down. Come back later.”

“The people who come here for haircuts are all residents from the nearby alleys,” Lao Fang said quietly.

Chen Qianli stood, walked to the door, and looked out for a moment, then went back and picked up a folded white barber’s cloth from the stool beside him, draped it over himself, and sat back down. “Still can’t be careless. You didn’t go to the meeting that day?”

“I was supposed to go, but I was late. When I got near the market, I saw the constabulary’s police cars, and then I ran into Cui Wentai, who had escaped from the meeting site.”

“You were the convener—how did you end up late?”

Lao Fang hesitated. “The night before the meeting, the higher-ups sent someone to notify me that I was to make contact with a comrade the next morning at six, at a steamed bun shop on the corner of Puensi Road, diagonally across from the Lyceum Theatre. After the bun shop opens in the morning, they lay the door panel outside as a table for people eating breakfast—that comrade would be sitting there at the time.

“The moment I got there, I sensed something was wrong. There were too many idle people on the street—that early in the morning, there shouldn’t have been so many people dressed the way they were. I could see from a distance that the table outside the bun shop was empty; no one was sitting there.

“I had to do something to warn that comrade. There was a man to the east, leaning against a plane tree, smoking—exactly the type of suspicious-looking idler I just mentioned. I went up to him to bum a light, and when he wasn’t paying attention, I reached out and patted his clothes—sure enough, there was a pistol underneath. Before he could react, I punched him, pulled out the gun, and fired several shots into the air.

“Puensi Road comes to an end a short way to the east; ahead lies Xiaobangwan. The alleys there connect through, so you can walk straight through to the neighboring Notre Dame Road. So I ran east, firing shots as I went, then threw the gun away in Xiaobangwan. They didn’t catch up to me. I waited a long while before circling back, found a hat somewhere to put on, and went to ask around near that bun shop—apparently that gang of plainclothes agents hadn’t caught anyone.”

“Who was this person, that you’d take such a risk for them?”

“Do you know who that comrade was?”

“You tell me,” Chen Qianli said, watching Lao Fang closely.

Lao Fang turned his head. “That was Comrade Haohan.”

Chen Qianli certainly knew of him, though this was only a work alias.

“The higher-ups had originally instructed me to make contact with Comrade Haohan, arrange a safe hiding place, and wait for further notice. A few days earlier, someone in an absolutely top-secret Central organ had defected, and Comrade Haohan had to evacuate—the situation was extremely urgent. I asked the higher-ups, since it was so dangerous, why not have Comrade Haohan transfer somewhere quickly, instead of having me make contact with him? It’s not exactly safe here either. The higher-ups said, once the meeting’s over tomorrow, you’ll understand—’Lao Kai’ will tell you what to do.”

“When did you notify everyone about the meeting?”

“Starting the afternoon before, I made contact with people one by one, spent the whole afternoon at it, and by evening had notified all ten people—plus me, plus ‘Lao Kai,’ twelve in total. The specific selection of people was also left to me to decide—it was called on short notice, and I only said there was an important mission. Six were arrested, five escaped. I know all five who got out, so ‘Lao Kai’ must have been among those arrested.”

“You arranged the location?”

“Yes, it was a new location, one we’d just gotten our hands on and hadn’t yet—”

Occasionally someone passed outside, and they would pause their conversation, acting like two mildly impatient customers—one cracking his finger joints, making a clicking sound, the other constantly recrossing his legs.

Lao Fang thought for a moment, then said solemnly, “I’m willing to submit to an organizational investigation.” He pulled a letter out from inside his padded jacket and handed it to Chen Qianli.

Brother Fang, as you see this: Lao Yi and my sister and the others’ circumstances, I imagine you already know. Having entered the institution, we are determined to struggle against it. My heart is at peace; the worst outcome is nothing more than death. The weather is bitterly cold—please take care, brothers. Also, please pass word to our parents to look after themselves. Your sister, Ling, and the others.

Chen Qianli turned the letter over and found a section written in secret ink, the characters very small, written on the back of that visible text—very hard to spot.

All comrades are resolved. The dice matter has been exposed. There is an insider.

“This came out from comrades in prison?”

“It’s from Comrades Ling Wen and Dong Huiwen.” Lao Fang pointed to some barely noticeable ink dots in the corner of the letter. “The position and number—the enemy couldn’t fake this.”

“What is the dice?”

“The method of making contact was gaming tiles and dice. Everyone would bring several bone tiles, and once everyone had arrived, they’d form a complete set of tiles for gaming. When the meeting formally began, ‘Lao Kai’ would produce a pair of dice. I don’t know ‘Lao Kai’ myself either, so that’s the method we used. The enemy still doesn’t know about ‘Lao Kai,’ but they do know about the dice.”

“Who knew about the dice?”

“That’s where I was careless. I shouldn’t have told anyone else about the dice. I was going myself, so there was really no need to tell anyone. At the time I only thought, once the meeting started, everyone would know anyway. Thinking back carefully, several people knew about the dice. I’m not sure whether Lao Yi told Ling Wen. This was a contact signal—since they were all temporarily pulled in from various different lines of work into this group, I told them that whoever produced the dice at the meeting would be the comrade sent by the higher-ups to assign the task.”

“Perhaps they’ll mention it to someone else while in prison?” Chen Qianli shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “Is it safe to retrieve this letter?”

“We rented mailboxes 137 and 138 at the Xujiahui Post Office. 138 is right below 137; there’s a mechanism in the partition—pull it gently, and the mail in 137 drops down. Even if someone’s watching nearby, they’re unlikely to notice whoever opens box 138.”

“Still, it’s quite a risk—” Chen Qianli examined the letter again carefully.

“My courier is Cui Wentai. Actually, he’s the one who retrieved the letter—handed it to me just this morning.”

“Tell me about the comrades who attended the meeting.”

“I’m in charge of local Party organization work; I know all of these people well, and they’ve all been through rigorous testing. Ling Wen is a woman writer, was part of the League of Left-Wing Writers, knows quite a lot of people. Her husband was killed. I felt she ought to settle down and just be a writer—our Party needs comrades like that too—but she said she wanted to carry on her husband’s unfinished work, willing to take on the risk of underground work.

“Liang Shichao took part in the Nanchang Uprising, was severely wounded during the counter-‘encirclement’ campaigns, and could only be sent to Shanghai for treatment—Comrade Qin Chuan’an is the doctor who treated his injuries.

“Wei Dafu—the organization specifically arranged for him to work at a housing rental agency; many of our secret contact points were rented through his hands. If something had gone wrong with him, the underground organization would have been exposed long ago.

“Comrade Yi Junnian—the organization transferred him to Shanghai in July of the eighteenth year of the Republic. He’d been doing intelligence work in Guangzhou all along, has rich experience in secret struggle work, and has more than once gotten word out ahead of enemy action. A reliable comrade.

“Tian Fei works at the library above the market—he’s the one who found the meeting location. I’ve thought carefully about whether there might be a problem with him, but I can’t think of any sign of it.”

Lao Fang seemed to grow agitated, ceaselessly cracking his finger joints. “They’re all reliable comrades. Although their professions differ, and some comrades lack experience, I have no way to doubt their loyalty to the Party.”

“We’re not doubting them—we’re examining them,” Chen Qianli corrected him.

“I agree. They’re willing to sacrifice everything for the Party’s cause. Li Han’s older brother, Ling Wen’s husband—both were killed. Chen Qianyuan and Dong Huiwen are a couple, both full of passion—” Lao Fang suddenly looked up at Chen Qianli, wondering whether he’d really seen a flicker in his eyes. How could it be such a coincidence?

“What is Chen Qianyuan to you?”

“He’s my younger brother.” An image of Chen Qianyuan as he used to be flashed through Chen Qianli’s mind. “We haven’t seen each other in almost three years. All these people, including Chen Qianyuan—what I want to understand more is their history before this. History—” He looked at Lao Fang in the mirror. “A person’s face is hard to make out clearly. It’s painted, layer by layer, out of their history—”

“There’s no way to build files on comrades doing White Area work.” Lao Fang felt that this comrade sent by the organization had a sharp eye, but was somewhat rigid and overly cautious in how he considered things. “These past years, the Nationalists have been wildly expanding their special agent organizations. The slightest carelessness in underground work and the enemy discovers it. Every system keeps suffering losses; many comrades, because their original line of work was destroyed, have lost contact with their superiors and subordinates. They come to the Party carrying tremendous revolutionary fervor, then get assigned to other lines of work. According to discipline, within the new work system, people shouldn’t mention the past to one another. But loyalty and trust between comrades—that’s the foundation on which everyone carries out the work.”

“Yi Junnian—is his intelligence reliable?”

“When Lao Yi came to Shanghai, it had been two years since the failure of the Great Revolution, and the underground organization was in a difficult position. The organization transferred him over specifically to rebuild the intelligence network. Over these years he’s built it up bit by bit, providing the organization with a great deal of valuable intelligence.” Lao Fang added, “Once, because there wasn’t time to notify the comrade carrying out the mission, he personally dealt with a traitor himself, and averted a major loss.”

“Tell me the details.”

For the first time, Lao Fang felt Chen Qianli show some interest in the topic.

“The organization investigated—that traitor was extremely dangerous, and Lao Yi acted decisively, did the right thing. Afterward, the special agents retaliated fiercely, and one comrade in Lao Yi’s intelligence network was killed.”

“I see—” Chen Qianli went back over the clues in Lao Fang’s account, step by step. “How far has the rescue effort gotten?”

“Through connections with the Nineteenth Route Army, the organization has gotten the military tribunal to require us to submit guarantor documents. I’m arranging it—I’m planning to have Qin Chuan’an stand guarantor for Liang Shichao. He runs a private clinic and has a good reputation in Shanghai society.”

“He’s also a member of the group—he went to the meeting at the market. Is it appropriate for him to step forward?”

“By rights, it really shouldn’t be him, but he says no one else in the group knows him. Liang Shichao has been helping out at his clinic all along, so it makes sense for him to be the guarantor. Dr. Qin came out of the German Hospital, has practiced in the concessions for many years, and has made the acquaintance of quite a few people of standing. As long as the enemy doesn’t catch him red-handed or have solid evidence, they can’t just arrest people in the concessions as they please.”

Lao Fang said, worried, “The guarantor arrangements for the other comrades still aren’t settled. I’m working on it, but these past few days the special agents have been looking for me everywhere—there are wanted posters on the iron gates of the concessions. I can’t move around freely during the day. To ensure the organization’s safety, I’ve cut off most of my working contacts—I’ve just been waiting for you.”

“On one hand offering guarantees for release, on the other hunting for you—what is the enemy trying to do?”

Both men fell silent.

Someone pushed the door open—it was Lao Fang’s son. He stuck his head in and said, “There are two strangers loitering in the cross-alley.” Then he withdrew and closed the door.

Chen Qianli got up alertly and walked to the door again. “Did these comrades have any horizontal working relationships with each other before?”

Lao Fang also stood, glancing out the door while unconsciously picking up the razor beside him, holding it by the blade, tapping the handle lightly on the small table. “Ling Wen and Wei Dafu are Yi Junnian’s downline—they’re the internal staff of the intelligence network. I specifically chose Lao Yi—he has strategy, and he’s brave—” Lao Fang looked at Chen Qianli. “I feel like he and you, from certain angles, actually resemble each other a bit. We put in a great deal of effort arranging the rescue—they should be released from Longhua any day now. When that happens, you make contact with him—the two of you might get along—”

“We need to get out of here quickly,” Chen Qianli cut him off.

A figure moved outside the door. Someone pushed the door open with an elbow, hand tucked into the sleeve of his padded gown, and stepped in. Little Fang shouted from behind the newcomer, “Too late for a cut today, come back tomorrow—” and gave the man a shove forward through the door, then stepped in himself and closed the door behind him with his hands.

Seeing things had gone wrong, the newcomer let his tucked-in hand drop, lifted the hem of his padded gown, and reached inside—

Chen Qianli crossed the two steps behind him, seized his hand, felt along it, and said to Lao Fang: “Gun.”

“Better cooperate—the detective squad’s got a whole force right behind, coming any minute. Come along with us—” Before the man finished speaking, Chen Qianli snatched up the razor from Lao Fang’s hand and slashed it across the agent’s throat.

Chen Qianli held the man and slowly lowered him to the ground.

“There are a lot of people at the mouth of the alley,” Little Fang urged, “you two go out the back door first.”

Lao Fang bent down and pulled a Smith & Wesson revolver from the agent’s waist, checking the cylinder for bullets as he retreated, and looked gravely at Chen Qianli: “Go out the back, find Lao Yi first.” He stepped out the door, then turned back to say to Chen Qianli: “Take my son with you!”

Lao Fang walked into the alley, glanced back once at his son, raised his hand and fired a shot into the air, then ran off deeper into the alley. Chen Qianli stood behind the door and saw through the window that just as Lao Fang reached the mouth of the cross-alley, he suddenly stopped, turned around, as if he meant to run back—at that moment a volley of gunfire came from the direction of the alley mouth, and a bullet struck Lao Fang in the shoulder. He staggered a few steps and ducked into the cross-alley.

But the back door was blocked too. Little Fang opened the door, poked his head out only briefly, and pulled back. There were plainclothes agents at both mouths of the alley by the back door as well. The two of them went upstairs and climbed a dim, narrow ladder up to the flat rooftop terrace. Little Fang ran to the parapet, leaned over to look outside, and pointed beyond the wall, saying to Chen Qianli: “You go down there, climb along that wall—cross over the roof and it’s the neighboring house’s terrace.”

Two more shots rang out in the alley, followed by a burst of scattered gunfire, then silence. A flock of pigeons someone kept shot up from a rooftop into the sky; someone hurriedly shut a window.

Chen Qianli climbed onto the parapet and called back: “Stay close to me.”

Gunfire sounded again. Little Fang waved his hand at him: “I’m going back to find the old man.” He turned and ran toward the stairwell, and in the blink of an eye he was gone.

Chen Qianli hesitated a moment, then moved forward. The parapet connected to the gable wall of the neighboring house; it was more than half a person’s height below the roofline. He put his hands up onto the roof, stepped lightly onto the tiles, climbed a few steps and crossed over the sloped ridge—sure enough, below was a terrace.

He crouched down and heard the sounds of a struggle and commotion on the neighboring terrace—someone tumbling down the stairs, someone cursing, then a flurry of footsteps, as if many pairs of leather shoes were stamping on the wooden stairs, then another burst of fighting, someone suddenly shouting curses—it was the barber, Little Fang, his voice broken and intermittent, muffled, as if coming from very far away, as if his face were being pressed against the cement floor.

He crouched by the wall and thought it over—the enemy probably knew there had been three people in the barbershop. If so, they would soon search every household in the alley; he couldn’t afford to linger here. Chen Qianli stood up on the terrace and looked around—this stretch of stone-gate houses ran together, roof against roof.

After crossing two more terraces, there was a street outside the wall. Chen Qianli took off his overcoat and turned it inside out, revealing the lambswool lining beneath, put it back on, and went down the stairs, quietly crossing the corridor. No one was there. He went downstairs, crossed a courtyard, pushed open a door—behind it was a tea shop facing the street. There were no customers inside; the shopkeeper stared in astonishment as he walked out the door as though no one else were there.

A crowd had gathered around the mouth of the alley where the barbershop was. Several constables held up their batons, intimidating a few young people who’d come close to look. A baton struck a padded jacket, and cotton wadding floated up into the air. Chen Qianli didn’t leave right away—he stood quietly at the back of the crowd for a while and heard someone say: “The young one’s a mess, blood all over his face. The old one was killed on the spot.”

As he walked along the road, Chen Qianli kept remembering what Lao Fang had just said: “Take my son with you!”