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Three a.m., and you're far from home. You and Sam, lying flat on the roof of a Hong Kong warehouse in the lashing rain, peering through binoculars into the gloom and just waiting for something to happen.

Even the screams of the seabirds have died to nothing. Kowloon slumbers around and behind you. Only a few isolated lights from Hong Kong Island leave dancing polychromatic trails across the black surface of Victoria Harbour. But there is activity ahead on the deck of the Semiramis, the rusting baby tramp steamer moored at the wharf in front of you.

As you peer down from your hidden perch, you see drab-clad sailors bustling about on deck, preparing for departure. You'll have to make your move soon.

Sam shifts their weight beside you, peering at the deck through a battered pair of binoculars. "Sorry, boss," they say. "It all looks innocent to me."

If it's them, they're deep undercover. No swastikas are painted on the hull of the Semiramis, no German guns are bristling out of the sides; to the outside world, it's just another rusting turn-of-the-century merchant vessel plying the shipping lanes of the South China Sea. But this is a tip from Vera Wang, and Vera Wang knows this town like nobody else. If she says it's them, it's them.

"Let me look," you whisper, and Sam hands you the glasses. You bring the binoculars up to your face and squint through the impenetrable gloom and incessant warm rain that lashes the deck and makes Victoria Harbour seethe below.

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