At 5:45 in the morning, the sky had only just begun to lighten, and the morning fog still lingered over Wutong Street in the old district. The breakfast stall on the corner had just set up its steamers. White clouds of steam, mingling with the greasy aroma of meat buns, crept along the damp flagstones.
The shutter of the flower shop at the end of the street, “Silence,” whose sign had a patch of paint missing, was halfway open.
Fan Dong wore a faded gray undershirt and loose army-green cargo pants, with hard-soled tactical boots on his feet. He was crouched by the shop entrance. Several old, pale pink scars crisscrossed his thick arms, like hydraulic pincers. As he shifted them slightly, the scars twitched like living centipedes.
Click.
A tiny, crisp sound. Fan Dong’s rough fingers precisely pinched a fine black hair caught at the bottom of the door gap. It was the marker he had left when locking up the night before. The hair was intact and had not moved, proving that no living creature had tried to force the battered door in the six hours since midnight.
He rose to his feet, his towering six-foot-three frame completely blocking the light at the entrance. He drew in a deep breath of air tinged with exhaust fumes and the earthy smell of damp soil, then swept his hawk-sharp gaze across the three elevated vantage points on either side of the street, the two blind spots in the surveillance coverage, and the breakfast-stall owner’s wrist as she chopped scallions across the road.
All clear. Threat level: zero.
