The port of Tianjin at night was a city unto itself, a chaotic labyrinth of towering cranes, mountains of cargo, and the dark, creaking hulls of ships from every corner of the world. The air was thick with the smells of coal smoke, brine, and a hundred different spices, a place where fortunes were made and laws were forgotten. It was here, in this grimy, lawless nexus of global trade, that Agent Donovan was forced to become a common criminal.
He was in his deep-cover disguise, the anonymous, stooped laborer, his face partially obscured by a worn flat cap. He moved through the teeming, lantern-lit docks with a practiced ease, his shoulders hunched, his eyes downcast, a man who had mastered the art of being invisible. He was here to begin his new, humiliating mission as Dr. Chen's procurement agent.
His contact was the deputy of a local Triad, a man known as 'Third Uncle,' whose criminal syndicate the American government sometimes used for the kind of off-the-books operations that required a plausible deniability. The meeting took place in the back of a warehouse that smelled of dried fish and opium. Donovan did not use names. He was 'the buyer.' He was trading a small, heavy bag of American gold eagles for the first item on Dr. Chen's impossible list: a small, lead-lined crate containing high-purity tungsten filaments.
It was an innocuous industrial component, used in everything from light bulbs to scientific instruments. But this particular grade of tungsten was also a key component in the production of armor-piercing shells for the Qing Empire's new naval guns. As such, it was a restricted material, its sale and transport under strict imperial embargo. This was not a simple purchase; it was a black-market arms deal.
The transaction was tense but professional. The gold was weighed and tested. The crate was opened for a brief inspection. Donovan, satisfied, arranged for his own low-level contacts to pick up the crate later. His part was done.
What Donovan did not know was that the Emperor's witch hunt, the purge being conducted by Spymaster Shen Ke, had tightened the web of surveillance across the entire Empire. Every port, every major city, was now crawling with a new network of informants. One of the Triad members who had witnessed the deal, a low-level enforcer with a gambling problem, was also a paid informant for the local branch of the Ministry of State Security.
Hours later, the informant's tip reached the desk of a Qing intelligence captain. It spoke of a suspicious transaction involving restricted military-grade materials and a mysterious 'foreigner in disguise' who paid in foreign gold. Normally, this might be handled by the local port authority. But in the current climate of paranoia, any mention of a foreigner and restricted materials was a matter of the highest priority.
The intelligence captain, however, was not one of Shen Ke's men. He was part of a newer, more aggressive network of agents who answered, through a series of cut-outs, directly to Madame Song, and by extension, to Minister Yuan Shikai. Yuan's own private intelligence service was now a shadow player in the great game.
The trap was sprung with a silent, deadly efficiency. As Donovan was leaving the warehouse district, moving through a narrow, unlit alleyway, he sensed the shift. The ambient sounds of the port behind him changed. A distant shout was cut off too quickly. The usual flow of late-night workers seemed to melt away. He was a man who had survived by listening to the silences between the noises, and the silence was now screaming at him.
He flattened himself into a darkened doorway just as a team of men, dressed in the dark, simple clothes of dockworkers but moving with the disciplined precision of soldiers, entered the alley from both ends. They were not the clumsy, uniformed guards of the city watch. They were professionals. He was compromised.
A tense, silent chase ensued. Donovan was a highly trained field agent, and his skills were pushed to their absolute limit. He burst through a flimsy door into the kitchen of a noodle house, sending pots and cooks flying, and exited out the back before his pursuers had even registered his entry. He scrambled up a rusted fire escape, the metal groaning under his weight, and disappeared onto the rooftops.
The chase became a desperate ballet in the darkness. He leaped from one tiled roof to another, his heart hammering in his chest, the sounds of his pursuers a constant, terrifying echo behind him. He knew he could not outrun them forever. They knew the city better than he did. He needed a diversion.
He saw his chance. Below him was a bustling night market, a river of light and humanity. He took the heavy bag of gold coins he had been paid with for the tungsten—his own operational funds—and, without a moment's hesitation, hurled it down into the center of the crowd.
The effect was instantaneous. The bag burst on impact, showering the market square with gleaming American gold eagles. A cry of surprise was followed by a roar of avarice as the crowd descended into a chaotic, brawling mass, every man fighting for a piece of the unexpected fortune.
The diversion was perfect. In the ensuing chaos, Donovan slipped down from the rooftops, merged with the frantic crowd, and vanished. He had escaped, but at a high cost. He had been forced to abandon the crate of tungsten filaments. He had failed the first task given to him by his new, formidable mistress. And far worse, he now knew, with absolute certainty, that his deep-cover disguise as a simple laborer in the Tianjin-Beijing corridor was blown. Someone had been watching him. Someone knew who he was.
From a high, private window in a building overlooking the port, Madame Song lowered her spyglass. She had observed the entire chaotic event. Her informant had reported a suspicious foreigner, but she had not expected the target to be so skilled, nor the response from Shen Ke's agents to be so swift and overwhelming. The level of resources deployed told her that this was no ordinary smuggler.
She reported her observations to Yuan Shikai in Tianjin. Yuan listened, his mind processing the information with a cold, strategic calculus. A high-level foreign agent, a man of exceptional skill, operating in his city, trying to acquire restricted industrial materials. He immediately connected this to the Emperor's paranoia about a new American spy, the one who had supposedly approached Dr. Chen.
But he did not share this vital information with Shen Ke or the Emperor. This mysterious agent was a new, unexpected piece on the great board. A wild card. He saw a potential opportunity.
"The Spymaster is chasing a ghost," he said to Madame Song. "And it seems the ghost is very real. Do not inform the Ministry. I want our own people to investigate this American agent. Quietly. I want to know who he is. I want to know what his true objective is. I want to know why he needs tungsten." He smiled, a thin, predatory smile. "Perhaps… perhaps he and I have a common interest in acquiring things the Emperor would prefer we did not have."
Donovan, meanwhile, made his way back toward Beijing, a fugitive with a blown cover. He had failed Dr. Chen, and was now being hunted not only by the official, methodical forces of Shen Ke, but also by the secret, unknown network of his far more ruthless rival. His situation in the Great Qing Empire had just escalated from incredibly dangerous to nearly impossible.