Spy List

1947, Nanjing. Shen Shubai, deputy director of the Telecommunications Division of the Security Bureau, discovered that the iron box had been tampered with in the early hours of the morning. There were only three things in the box: a pen, a cigarette, and a burnt telegraph newspaper. There are more fingerprints on the paper. Not his. The fingerprint points to Lao Gu, the archives administrator who was executed a month ago. Lao Gu said something before he died - "There are still people in the archives." Shen Shubai started to look through the files. Roster. Trial transcript. Frequency register. Every time one is opened, there is another dead person's name. These names are connected to an old case from 1944: six telegraph operators at Peiping Station intercepted an abnormal signal and reported it to the police. All of them were executed. The interrogator's name was Zhang Yangshan, and the recorder's column in the interrogation record was all blank. Someone was erasing the traces earlier than Shen Shubai. Fires broke out in the archives, pages were torn from registers and signatures were covered with glue. Every time Shen Shubai took a step forward, the opponent would take a step back, quietly and precisely, as if he was playing a game of chess with him. A game of chess played for three years. The end of the chessboard is in Hong Kong. ——But Shen Shubai has another layer of identity. He came to look through the files not just to find out the truth. Every page he turned was waiting for a name.