Tuesday, August 17, 1937.
Nanjing.
The summer heat was at its peak, and the shrill cries of cicadas rasped through the air.
It was nine fifteen in the morning.
Fang Jibai slipped quietly back into his rented lodgings on Min'an Road. He had leased this place in secret well in advance to serve as a contingency safe house.
He had chosen it with meticulous care: his neighbors on either side were Nationalist Army officers.
The family to the left was surnamed Liu, and the one to the right, Lu.
Army officers spent the entire year campaigning in the field. After fighting broke out at Marco Polo Bridge, war clouds gathered thick over Songhu as well. To escape the flames of war, the officers' families had relocated to their ancestral homes in Hunan and Sichuan. With both houses currently empty, Fang Jibai was afforded the greatest possible convenience when coming and going.
Fang Jibai fitted the wig firmly into place, then stood before the mirror to check for any flaws.
His deliberately tousled hair looked messy, and the trimmed fake beard sat just right.
Thanks to the concoction he had applied, his complexion was a waxy yellow, and the exposed skin on his neck and hands matched the look of a destitute refugee.
There was also his expression. He adopted a haggard, sorrowful demeanor, so that at first glance, anyone would take him for an ordinary soul worn numb by the crushing burdens of life.
Fang Jibai nodded in satisfaction.
Next, he retrieved a Mauser pistol from a hidden compartment under the bed. With swift, practiced motions, he stripped it down, inspected each piece, and carefully reassembled it, making sure everything from the firing pin to the cartridges was in perfect working order.
Everything was set now. All that remained was today's rendezvous.
He picked up the copy of the Nanjing Daily from the table and glanced again at the missing persons notice in the middle margin of page four. Looking at the code for the contact, his chest swelled with emotion. He could hardly wait to return to the organization's embrace.
Afterward, Fang Jibai examined the rest of the newspaper. Earlier, his attention had been entirely on the advertisement on page four, leaving the other pages looking practically unread—a detail that could easily arouse suspicion from a sharp eye.
Suddenly, his heart sank.
He had nearly overlooked another detail:
The newspaper was today's.
The timing was wrong.
Today's paper had no business being in this house. He made a mental note to take it with him when he went out and destroy it somewhere deserted to leave no trace.
Not only that, but when he left today, he had to erase every sign that he had been in the house at all.
He shouldn't be here today. Right now, he was supposed to be aboard a steamer bound from Nanjing to Zhenjiang.
……
Fang Jibai reclined on a bamboo deck chair, his thoughts beginning to wander.
He remembered taking leave to return home to see his sister off on her wedding day. When his dormitory mates learned his third elder sister was getting married, they had all sighed in disappointment. He couldn't help shaking his head with a quiet smile.
A few days earlier, his sister had visited a female classmate in Nanjing and stopped by the school to see him. When his classmates caught sight of her beauty, they were utterly captivated.
From then on, the running joke was that Fang Jibai was Dormitory 103's designated brother-in-law.
He pondered their reactions, turning them over in his mind.
Thinking over his classmates was second nature to him now. Living deep undercover had kept his nerves stretched taut for so long that he knew he was jumping at shadows.
Every night before falling asleep, he would sit alone in quiet contemplation, recalling everyone he had met, every word he had spoken, and wondering if he had inadvertently let something slip.
Fortunately, he had always been cautious in word and deed, never drawing suspicion.
Of course, Fang Jibai understood that in an environment like the Central Military Academy, where he was surrounded by potential enemies, there was an even more critical reason he had managed to stay undetected:
He was not an official cadet of the academy.
A month and a half ago, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident had erupted. A major war flared up in the north, and storm clouds gathered over Shanghai.
Shanghai was the gateway to Nanjing. Once Shanghai fell, the defense of the capital would begin.
General Xiao, Deputy Commander of the Capital Gendarmerie, concurrently served as Police Commissioner. Recognizing the urgent need to defend Nanjing, he had petitioned the Military Affairs Commission over a month ago and met in person with the Generalissimo, requesting that the Central Military Academy help provide special training for a hundred police officers to assist in the city's defense.
Chiang Kai-shek had readily agreed, approving the creation of a three-month Police Supplementary Class at the academy to fulfill the operational demands of protecting the capital.
Fang Jibai was one of the trainees in this class.
When dormitory assignments were made, a shortage of rooms led to his placement in a quarters belonging to the First Detachment of the Academy's Eleventh Class, as one of the cadets in that room was on temporary leave due to illness.
His roommates knew nothing of his past, which minimized potential security risks.
Checking the time, he saw it was around a quarter past ten. Fang Jibai rose, preparing to make his way to the long-awaited rendezvous.
……
Boyun Teahouse was an established landmark in Nanjing.
It spanned two stories. The first floor was a public hall, where patrons with tighter purse strings gathered for tea.
The second floor was reserved for private rooms.
The rendezvous was set for Private Room Ding-3 on the second floor.
The appointed time was eleven fifteen in the morning.
If something prevented him from making it, his contact was instructed to return to the teahouse at three fifteen in the afternoon.
Missing both windows would signal that the operative had been compromised or had already fallen—in any case, that something had gone wrong—and the contact would decisively abort the meeting.
Only after reporting back to the organization would they decide whether to reschedule at a suitable time.
Fang Jibai took out his pocket watch to check the time.
Two minutes before eleven.
He had arrived at Boyun Teahouse half an hour early. Instead of heading up to the private room, however, he chose to drink tea on the ground floor and observe from the shadows.
Though his heart surged with excitement at finally receiving the organization's summons, the ruthless caution drilled into him by years of underground struggle bade him keep his emotions in check and approach the rendezvous with utmost vigilance.
In the ground-floor hall, Fang Jibai ordered a pot of tea and a dish of melon seeds, then asked the waiter for a newspaper. He sipped his tea and cracked melon seeds while perusing the pages.
The unfolded newspaper shielded his face, while his peripheral vision tracked the patrons coming into the teahouse, especially those heading straight for the second-floor private rooms.
According to the agreed recognition signals:
His contact would be wearing a dark navy plaid long gown and carrying a copy of the Jinling Daily Anniversary Special Edition magazine.
In addition, the comrade would be wearing a straw sun hat.
Over the course of the past half hour, five men dressed in dark navy plaid gowns had entered.
After all, a dark navy plaid gown was quite popular among the general public.
Of those five, only two had gone upstairs to the private rooms; the other three remained in the ground-floor hall for tea.
As for the two who went up, one carried a magazine, but Fang Jibai clearly saw it was an issue of The Great Way, and the man wore no hat.
The other man wore a straw sun hat, but his hands were empty.
Both could be ruled out.
Seeing that it was already five minutes past eleven and his contact had yet to appear, Fang Jibai could not help feeling uneasy.
Had something happened to the comrade?
……
Dozens of meters away, on the second floor of a residential building diagonally across from Boyun Teahouse.
Zhang Jiaju stood by the window, holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes as he surveyed Boyun Teahouse and the surrounding area, his gaze sweeping through the crowd moving along the street.