The interrogation room was a sterile box of gray plaster and silence. There was no window, no decoration, only a single, bare electric bulb hanging from the ceiling that cast harsh shadows and buzzed with a low, insistent hum. It was a room designed to make a man feel small and isolated, a place where the vast, impersonal power of the state could be focused on a single individual. In this box sat Constable Bao, his simple policeman's uniform seeming flimsy and absurd, his hands resting nervously on his knees.
He had not been arrested. The process had been far more disorienting than that. Two men in quiet, unassuming clothes had met him at the end of his shift. They had not been aggressive. They had been impeccably polite. They had shown him an insignia from the Ministry of State Security and had "invited" him to assist them with a matter of national importance. It was only now, sitting in this featureless room with a single locked door, that Bao understood the profound and terrifying weight of such an invitation.
The man who sat opposite him was the antithesis of a brutish interrogator. He introduced himself as Section Chief Ling. He was a man in his late forties, with a scholar's thin face and neat, precise movements. He did not threaten or shout. He offered Bao a cup of hot tea, which the constable accepted with a trembling hand.
"Constable Bao," Ling began, his voice soft and calm. "First, allow me to commend you. Your service record is exemplary. Your superiors praise your diligence. The Empire is grateful for men like you who perform their duties with honor and precision."
The praise, coming from a man of such obvious authority, was more unnerving than any threat.
Ling slid a piece of paper across the bare wooden table. It was Bao's own handwritten report from the day before. "We are here to discuss this," Ling said. "This foreigner you encountered in the market. I have read your report. It is very thorough. Now, I want you to tell me the story again. But do not simply repeat what you have written. Close your eyes if it helps. Tell me what you saw. What you heard. What you felt. The smallest detail may be of immense importance."
Bao, though terrified, was at his core a good policeman. He had a trained eye and a memory for the kind of details that broke cases. He took a deep breath, the steam from the tea warming his face, and he began to talk. He recounted the story of the commotion, the shattered pottery, the foreigner's sudden, panicked flight.
Ling listened patiently, his hands steepled before him, his eyes never leaving Bao's face. When Bao finished, Ling began to ask questions, his inquiries like a surgeon's probes, gentle but incredibly precise.
"You said his clothes were worn. What kind of wear? The wear of a poor man, or the wear of a man on a long journey?"
"A long journey, sir," Bao said, thinking back. "They were of good quality material, but faded. And his shoes… they were scuffed, but not broken. Sturdy leather boots."
"What kind of boots?"
"American, I think," Bao said, a new detail surfacing. "Military issue. I've seen them on the U.S. Marines who patrol the legation quarter. They have a particular type of sole."
Ling nodded slowly, filing the information away. "His speech. You spoke with him, briefly?"
"I did not, sir. But I heard him shout something as he ran. It was Mandarin, but his accent was… flat. Not like the English merchants, whose speech is full of hills and valleys. His was like a calm river. Very clear."
Ling's probing continued for nearly an hour, circling closer and closer to the central object of the report. Finally, he tapped a finger on one line.
"The pocket watch," he said. "You wrote 'Westclox Pocket Ben.' You are certain of the model?"
Bao nodded emphatically. "Yes, sir. Absolutely certain. My own father had one. He bought it from an American sailor many years ago. It's a very common model. You can see them all over the port. I know it well."
"Is there anything distinctive about it?" Ling pressed. "Anything that would separate it from any other watch?"
Bao thought for a moment, dredging his memory for a detail he had always taken for granted. "Yes, sir. It's a small thing. An irony, really. The watch is made by the Western Clock Company in America, but on the back of the metal casing, there is an engraving. A picture of the great clock tower in London, Big Ben. That is why they call it the 'Pocket Ben'."
A flicker of intense, triumphant interest lit up in Section Chief Ling's eyes. A common watch was a dead end. But a common watch with a specific, verifiable, and unusual decorative feature… that was a clue. That was a thread that could be pulled.
The scene shifts to Spymaster Shen Ke's vast, silent office in Beijing. The room is dark, lit only by the desk lamp that illuminates his pale, thoughtful face. He is listening to Section Chief Ling's report via a secure telephone line, a recent and expensive piece of technology that connects his key bureaus directly to his office.
He listens impassively to the details of the interrogation—the military-issue boots, the flat accent. These are useful data points, refining the profile of their phantom agent. But when Ling recounts the detail about the Big Ben engraving on the back of the watch, Shen Ke sits up straighter.
A traditional spymaster, one trained in the old ways of court intrigue, might dismiss such a detail as trivial. But Shen Ke is a new kind of spymaster, serving a new kind of Emperor. He has been forced to adapt to his master's way of thinking, to see the world not just as a web of human loyalties and betrayals, but as a system of logistics, manufacturing, and data. Mass-produced items, he now understood, were not anonymous. They had origins. They had distribution networks. They had shipping lots and points of sale. They left a trail a man could follow, if he had the will and the resources.
Shen Ke made a decision, one that reflected the modernizing, global scope of his new Ministry. The hunt for this agent was no longer just a matter for the men in Tianjin.
"This trail may not begin in China, Section Chief," Shen Ke said into the telephone, his voice a low, decisive hum. "We have been looking for the man. We should have been looking for the watch."
He issued two new orders, his voice crisp and clear over the crackling line.
"First, I want you to assemble a small, elite team. An accountant who speaks fluent English and a man skilled in… persuasion. They will be dispatched to the United States on the next steamer. Their destination is a town called Peru, in the state of Illinois. It is the headquarters of the Western Clock Company. They are to infiltrate or bribe their way into the company's corporate offices. I want access to their shipping records. I want to know the distribution history, the lot numbers, and the final destinations of every crate of 'Pocket Ben' watches sold to merchants in East Asia in the last year."
It was an audacious, unprecedented intelligence operation, extending his reach across the Pacific and into the industrial heartland of his enemy.
"Your second order is for Tianjin," Shen Ke continued. "Take Constable Bao's description of the foreigner. I want every plainclothes agent you have blanketing the concessions. This ghost has made a mistake. His nerves are frayed; his training is failing him. A man under such pressure will make another mistake soon. The time for passive surveillance is over. We are now actively hunting. I want that city sealed. I want every pawn shop, every hotel, every opium den, every point of transit watched. He cannot disappear this time."
The noose that had been loosely circling Agent Donovan had just been pulled terrifyingly tight. The hunt was no longer just in the alleys of Tianjin. It was now international in scope, a systematic, modern manhunt, all set in motion by a single, diligent constable and the small, ironic engraving on the back of a cheap American watch.