The first gunshot was a stone thrown into a silent pond, and the night shattered into a thousand violent ripples. For Agent Lin of the Eastern Depot, perched in the skeletal frame of a half-built warehouse, the world dissolved into a cacophony of primal, terrifying sound. The sharp crack of Mauser pistols was answered by the deeper roar of the gangsters' heavy revolvers. Men screamed in German and Mandarin, their cries of rage, pain, and terror swallowed by the sudden, brutal chaos.
Lin moved, not towards the fight, but along its edge, a shadow flitting between stacks of crates and coils of rope. His mission was not to participate in the slaughter, but to harvest from it. His senses were on fire. The air, already thick, was now choked with the acrid, metallic smell of gunpowder. He could hear the wet, percussive thud of hatchets biting into the wooden decking of the barges, a sound punctuated by the sickening crunch of them finding flesh and bone.
The Green Gang swarmed the barges with the ferocity of a tidal wave. They were not soldiers; they were a force of nature, driven by greed and a lifetime of casual violence. They clambered over the railings, their cleavers and knives flashing in the stark work lights. The Germans fought back with the disciplined courage of professionals, forming a small, shrinking perimeter around the most valuable cargo. Their pistols were deadly and accurate, each shot felling a gangster, but they were being overwhelmed by sheer, savage numbers. For every thug that fell, three more seemed to take his place, their faces contorted into masks of bloodlust.
Lin's eyes, trained to see patterns in chaos, noticed something strange. Amidst the main, anarchic brawl, a smaller group of gangsters moved with a different purpose. They were not joining the frenzied looting and killing. They moved with a quiet, ruthless efficiency, their faces covered, their actions precise. While their brethren fought and died, this elite team was systematically isolating a small number of specific, pre-marked crates—those bearing a small, stenciled black orchid. They ignored the larger, more obviously valuable machine tools and focused only on their prize.
He didn't understand the significance of it, but the detail burned itself into his memory. This was not just a raid. It was a heist, cloaked in the bloody garments of a massacre.
His attention was pulled back to his own mission. Across the water, on the largest barge, he saw his target. The lieutenant, Lao Hu, was a whirlwind of death, his massive frame a focal point of the battle. He fought not with a pistol, but with a gleaming meat cleaver in one hand and a long, heavy-bladed knife in the other. A German officer, the one Lin had seen smoking a cigarillo earlier, charged him with his pistol raised. Lao Hu took the bullet in his thick shoulder without flinching, a grunt of annoyance his only reaction. He lunged forward, his cleaver a silver arc in the lamplight, and the German's head seemed to simply come apart.
"Now," Lin whispered into the darkness. Two of his fellow agents, who had been circling the brawl from the opposite side, broke cover. Their attack was a masterpiece of coordinated violence. One threw a heavy fishing net over Lao Hu, its weighted edges tangling his arms and weapon. The second agent slammed a solid iron bar into the back of the gangster's knee, buckling his leg with a wet crack of bone. Lao Hu roared in fury and pain, stumbling, trapped and wounded.
Lin moved in to finish it, his own pistol drawn, aiming to disable, not to kill. But the battle had reached its terrible crescendo. The elite team had secured their black orchid crates, loading them onto a long, narrow getaway boat that had slipped up to the barge's far side. One of them gave a sharp whistle, and the rest of the Green Gang thugs disengaged from the fight with a sudden, practiced speed. They began tossing canvas satchels among the remaining machinery.
Lin saw the sputtering fuses.
"Back! Get back!" he screamed to his men.
There was no time.
The world erupted in a chained series of brilliant, blinding flashes. The dynamite on the barges detonated in a rolling, deafening roar that was more felt than heard. Lin was lifted from his feet and thrown backward by a solid wall of superheated air, his body slamming into a stack of lumber with bone-jarring force. Shrapnel, white-hot and jagged, hissed through the air like angry insects. A searing pain blossomed in his shoulder. For a moment, the world was nothing but a ringing in his ears and a field of swimming, dancing lights behind his eyes.
He pushed himself up, his head swimming, his arm a useless, burning weight. The scene on the river was an inferno, a vision from hell. The barges were gone, replaced by churning, flaming pyres of wreckage that illuminated the entire waterfront in a ghastly, flickering orange light. The great Krupp machine tools, the foundation of an empire's arsenal, were now twisted, molten scrap sinking into the murky, polluted depths of the Huangpu. He saw the special boat with the stolen crates already far downriver, a swift shadow vanishing into the smog and darkness, its mission accomplished.
Coughing, his lungs full of ash, Lin stumbled back towards his target. His agents were wounded, but alive. Lao Hu, the gangster lieutenant, was not so fortunate. He had taken the full force of the nearest blast. He lay in a spreading pool of his own blood, his body mangled, a jagged shard of steel the size of a man's hand buried deep in his chest. He was dying.
Minutes later, as the first clang of distant fire bells began to echo across the city, a calm, commanding figure walked onto the pier. Spymaster Shen Ke moved through the carnage as if he were strolling through a garden. He took in the devastation, the bodies of gangsters and Germans floating in the water, the burning debris, his face an unreadable mask of stone.
He found Lin leaning against a pillar, his face pale, trying to staunch the bleeding in his shoulder.
"Report," Shen Ke said, his voice quiet, yet it cut through the din.
"The main cargo is destroyed, sir," Lin gasped. "A small, specific portion was stolen by an elite team. We… we have one. Barely." He nodded towards the dying form of Lao Hu.
Shen Ke's eyes followed his gaze. He dismissed the medic who was approaching the gangster. He knew there was no time for medicine. There was only time for truth. He knelt beside the broken man, his fine robes brushing against the blood-soaked planks of the pier. The gangster's breath was a ragged, wet gurgle, each exhalation a struggle.
Shen Ke's voice was not that of an interrogator, but of a priest offering a final, strange benediction. "You are a brave man," he said softly, his words clear and precise over the crackle of the flames. "You are dying for your brothers. But your leader has betrayed you. He sent you here to die for his own profit, while he is safe in the shadows."
Lao Hu's eyes, glazed with pain, flickered with a last spark of comprehension.
"Tell me his name," Shen Ke continued, his voice a mesmerizing, gentle whisper. "Tell me who hired you for this night's work. And I will see that your family is cared for, for the rest of their days. Your wife, your sons. They will want for nothing. I swear it on the Emperor's name."
He offered not a threat, but a promise. A legacy. A final act of meaning in a meaningless, bloody death. The dying gangster stared up into the Spymaster's dark, fathomless eyes. With his last, fading ounce of strength, his lips, stained with blood, formed a single, gasped word.
"Guo."
The name meant nothing to Lin or the other agents who heard it. It was just a sound, lost in the night.
But inside Shen Ke's mind, it was a key turning in a lock. His vast, internal library of files and connections opened instantly. Guo. Guo Liang. Former captain, Beiyang Army, First Division. Discharged for embezzlement and extortion, 1899. Known associate of criminal elements in Tianjin. Recruited into private service by Yuan Shikai's staff in Mukden, 1901. Official file lists his current position as… personal stable master to the Minister-President.
The chain was complete. The stable master was the cut-out. The link between the high corridors of power and the bloody gutters of the Shanghai underworld. The trail was no longer cold. The serpent, at last, had a face.
Shen Ke rose slowly to his feet, his expression unchanged. He looked at his wounded agent.
"Get the doctor to tend to your wound, Agent Lin. You performed admirably."
He paused, turning his gaze back to the fires still burning on the black water, a funeral pyre for Germany's aid and Britain's failed gambit.
"Then," he said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, laced with the chilling weight of absolute certainty, "I want you to send a priority-one encrypted message to our assets in Mukden. I want a complete list of every man who has ever served on Minister-President Yuan Shikai's personal staff. Every guard, every aide, every cook, every stable boy. I want to know where they are, who they talk to, and what they had for breakfast."
He turned his back on the inferno, his silhouette stark against the flames.
"The hunt is no longer blind."