The headquarters of the Ministry of State Security was a dark, imposing fortress of stone and secrets in a forgotten corner of the Forbidden City. Here, in the quiet, lamp-lit office of Spymaster Shen Ke, the threads of a thousand hidden plots were gathered and woven into the grand tapestry of imperial intelligence. Shen Ke, a man who preferred the subtle art of listening to the brutish noise of action, was now a man under immense, crushing pressure. The Emperor's mandate was absolute: find the ghost. Find the traitor. And the Emperor's fury was a fire at his back.
He sat at his desk, reviewing the progress of his two great hunts. The first was the search for Yuan Shikai's "ghost army," a frustrating and fruitless endeavor so far. The Minister of Industry was a master of concealment, his industrial empire a labyrinth of false ledgers and loyal cronies. The second, more delicate hunt was for the mysterious foreign agent who had approached Dr. Chen, the man whose clumsy attempts had been followed by a professional's silent escape.
His top field agent, the man known as the Weaver, entered the room. He moved with a silent, unobtrusive grace, a man who had perfected the art of not being seen. He carried a single, thin file.
"Spymaster," he said, his voice a low whisper. "We have made a breakthrough."
He laid the file on Shen Ke's desk. "The hunt for Minister Yuan's hidden resources. As the Emperor commanded, we have been meticulously unraveling his financial empire. Following the trail of the assets frozen by the Ministry of Finance, we found a weak link. A trading company in Tianjin, the Seven Seas Trading Company, a known front for the local Triads. They were one of the firms whose primary accounts were seized."
The Weaver's expression remained impassive, but there was a flicker of professional pride in his eyes. "Desperate men become careless. We… persuaded… an accountant from the company to talk. He was most cooperative."
The scene shifted for a moment, a brief, stark flashback to a dark, windowless room. The accountant, a small man with terrified eyes, was confessing everything he knew, his words tumbling out in a desperate, pleading rush. He spoke of a new, highly profitable "side business" the company had been running for the past few months. They had been brokering the sale of massive quantities of imperial-grade coking coal and refined steel on the black market, selling the Empire's own resources at a huge profit. The materials, he sobbed, were being supplied directly, through a series of untraceable intermediaries, from a source high within the Ministry of Industry.
And the profits, the river of silver and gold, were not going into the company's official accounts. They were being funneled into a new, secret, untraceable fund, a fund controlled by a single person: a ruthlessly efficient aide to Minister Yuan, a woman known only as Madame Song.
Back in Shen Ke's office, the Spymaster stared down at the signed confession. He had it. The first concrete, undeniable thread that connected Yuan Shikai directly to a capital crime. He had a witness. He had a trail of money. He had a direct link to Yuan's inner circle. The net that he had cast was finally beginning to tighten around the great beast. He would prepare this explosive evidence, verify it, and then present it to the Emperor. The end of Yuan Shikai was now in sight.
He was about to dismiss his agent when the Weaver cleared his throat. "Spymaster, the accountant's confession contained another, seemingly unrelated piece of information. I have included it as a minor footnote, but I felt you should be aware."
Shen Ke looked up, his curiosity piqued.
"The accountant also mentioned another recent, unusual transaction," the Weaver continued. "Before their assets were frozen, the same Triad was used to procure a shipment of restricted, high-purity tungsten filaments. The deal was for a mysterious foreign buyer, a man in disguise. Our informant said the deal was interrupted by some of our own local agents, who were likely conducting their own unrelated surveillance, but the buyer escaped after creating a significant public disturbance."
Shen Ke went perfectly still. A high-level foreign agent, the one his team had been hunting. In Tianjin. Trying to buy military-grade materials.
His mind, a machine for connecting disparate facts, began to work. The American spy who had approached Dr. Chen. The agent who had escaped his trap on the rooftops. And now, this same agent, or one of his network, trying to buy tungsten. Why?
He looked at the Weaver. "What are the primary uses for military-grade tungsten?"
"Armor-piercing shells, for the new naval guns," the Weaver replied instantly. "And… certain types of advanced scientific equipment. High-temperature filaments for vacuum tubes, emitter crystals for… for resonance devices."
Shen Ke's blood ran cold. He felt a profound, chilling sense of clarity. He had been looking at the puzzle all wrong. Dr. Chen was not a passive victim being targeted by the Americans. She was not a loyal subject they were trying to recruit. She was an active participant. This was not a recruitment; it was a business transaction. The American agent was not trying to turn her; he was her supplier. She was building something. Something that required the most advanced and restricted materials in the world. Something the Americans were willing to risk their best agents to provide for her.
The Spymaster's entire understanding of the threat shifted. The danger was not that Dr. Chen might be turned into an American spy. The danger was that she was already engaged in her own, private enterprise, a scientific venture so important that a foreign superpower was acting as her quartermaster.
He made a critical, dangerous decision. He would hold back this new information about the tungsten from the Emperor. For now. His primary mandate, the one upon which his life depended, was to deliver proof of Yuan Shikai's treason. He would not muddy the waters with this new, complex, and unproven hypothesis about the physicist. He would deal with one dragon before turning his attention to the other.
But he could not let the threat go unchecked. He looked at the Weaver, his eyes hard as flint.
"Your work has been exemplary," he said. "But the mission has changed. Double the surveillance on Dr. Chen. I no longer want her simply watched. I want her contained. I want a perimeter around that university so tight that not a single breath of wind can get in or out without your knowledge. The next time this foreign agent, this smuggler of tungsten, tries to make contact with her—and he will try again—I do not want him chased. I do not want him observed. I want him taken. And I want her taken with him, in the act. I want them both. Alive."
The Spymaster, in his relentless hunt for Yuan Shikai, had inadvertently and dramatically escalated the threat to both Dr. Chen and Agent Donovan. His web of surveillance was no longer a passive net for observation. It was now an active trap, baited and waiting to be sprung.