Spymaster Shen Ke's office was a place of deep shadows and deeper silence. Here, information was the only currency that mattered, and for weeks, Shen Ke had felt impoverished. The hunt for the American ghost, the phantom agent codenamed 'Nightingale,' had been a frustrating exercise in chasing echoes. Now, for the first time, he felt the intoxicating thrill of holding a real, tangible weapon.
It was not a dagger or a pistol. It was a stack of papers.
The first intelligence reports from the new Imperial Bank of China lay on his desk, their neat columns of figures illuminated by the soft glow of his desk lamp. This was not the usual whisper from a frightened informant or a cryptic message from a field agent. This was cold, hard data, a river of financial transactions flowing directly from the heart of the Shanghai International Settlement into his hands. It was the fruit of the Emperor's brilliant, unsettling foresight.
Beside him stood Section Chief Ling, his face impassive as ever, but his posture radiating a quiet tension. He had returned from Tianjin, his mission to find the watchmaker's trail now a global operation, but his primary focus remained on the hunt for the agent himself.
"For years, the foreign concessions have been a black box to us," Shen Ke murmured, his finger tracing a line of figures. "We knew money flowed, but we could not see the currents. Now…" He tapped the ledger. "Now we have a window."
He was cross-referencing the bank's transaction logs with his own meticulously compiled list of suspected foreign agents, sympathizers, and persons of interest. He was looking for anomalies, for the quiet ripples that betrayed the presence of a hidden stone. He turned to a new page, his eyes narrowing as he focused on a single name: Dr. Chen Linwei.
"The physicist," Shen Ke said, his voice a low hum of concentration.
According to the Ministry of Education's records, Dr. Chen received a modest but respectable monthly salary from Peking University. Enough for a comfortable life, for books and academic materials. Not enough, however, to explain what he was now seeing in the bank's ledger.
The records showed a series of large, anonymous cash deposits made over the past several months into the account of a small, obscure entity called the "New Century Trading Company." On their own, the transactions were unremarkable. But another of Shen Ke's agents had already investigated this company. It was a shell, a front. Its only function was to pay the exorbitant monthly rent on a large, private warehouse in an industrial district—a warehouse that Shen Ke knew, from his physical surveillance, housed Dr. Chen's private laboratory.
The numbers didn't add up. The total sum of the deposits was more than ten times Dr. Chen's official annual salary.
"She has a benefactor," Shen Ke stated, the pieces clicking into place. "A wealthy and very careful one. Someone funding her research off the books." He looked at Ling. "Someone like a foreign intelligence service."
Section Chief Ling spoke for the first time. "My teams have blanketed Tianjin since the incident at the market, Spymaster. We have a description of the agent from the constable, but the man has vanished. He has gone to ground. He is a professional. It could be months before he surfaces again."
"He will surface sooner than that," Shen Ke replied, a new, cunning strategy forming in his mind. He stared at the ledger, at the trail of money. The ghost agent had been careful, using a front company and untraceable cash. But to operate, he needed to maintain the flow of funds. And that flow now ran directly through the Emperor's new bank. The bank was not just a window; it could be a trap.
"A professional spy can change his face, his clothes, his location," Shen Ke mused aloud, thinking through the logic of his plan. "But he cannot change his mission. His mission is to support Dr. Chen. That means he must supply her with money. He will have to make another deposit."
He leaned back in his chair, a thin, predatory smile touching his lips. "We will use the bank itself as the bait."
He turned to Ling, his eyes sharp. "Return to Shanghai. You will go to the Governor of the Imperial Bank and give him a direct order from me. The account for the New Century Trading Company is to be flagged with the highest priority."
He outlined the deceptively simple trap. "The next time anyone attempts to make a deposit into that account, the transaction is to be deliberately delayed. The teller will inform the depositor that, due to new Imperial financial regulations designed to combat money laundering, any cash deposit over this amount requires secondary administrative review."
"The depositor will be told to take a seat, that the process will take approximately one hour. Then, crucially, they will be informed that to complete the transaction, they will need to present a secondary form of identification to verify the source of the funds."
Ling nodded slowly, seeing the cold, brilliant logic of the plan.
Shen Ke elaborated, savoring the elegance of his own design. "A legitimate merchant, while annoyed by the delay, will comply. He will have the necessary papers. He will wait. But a spy? A man operating under a false identity, carrying a large bag of untraceable cash? The demand for a second form of identification will be a death sentence to his cover. He will not have one. He will be trapped. His only logical move will be to abort the transaction, to abandon the funds and flee the bank before his identity can be scrutinized further."
He fixed Ling with a final, chilling stare. "The moment he turns to walk out of that bank without completing the transaction, that is your signal. Your men will be in place, disguised as guards, as customers, as clerks. You will not let him reach the street. You will take him. Alive."
The scene shifts. The quiet, shadowy office of the Spymaster dissolves into the noisy, smoke-filled chaos of a teahouse in a crowded Shanghai alley. Here, Agent Donovan, looking haggard and worn, is meeting a low-level contact. The man, a local fixer and petty criminal named Wu, is a disposable asset, a cutout designed to provide a layer of anonymity.
Donovan slides a heavy canvas bag across the table. It is filled with the last of the emergency funds authorized by Roosevelt. It is the money Dr. Chen has been demanding, the money that keeps her from exposing him.
"You know the account," Donovan said, his voice a low, strained whisper. "The New Century Trading Company. Deposit this. Be discreet. Be fast. There can be no complications."
The fixer, Wu, felt the weight of the bag and grinned, showing a row of stained teeth. To him, this was just another easy, profitable job, moving money for a rich, secretive foreigner. He nodded, picked up the bag, and melted back into the teeming crowd outside, leaving Donovan alone with his cold tea and his frayed nerves.
Donovan was now out of money, out of contacts, and out of options. His entire survival depended on this final, simple transaction, the last link in a chain of clandestine finance. He was completely, blissfully unaware that he had just sent his man on a calm, leisurely stroll into the most sophisticated and lethal financial trap ever designed in the Chinese Empire.