Baiting the Lion

The British Consulate in Singapore was a bastion of calm, ordered authority amidst the chaotic vibrancy of the colonial port. Within its cool, shaded offices, Mr. Michael Abernathy, the new head of the SIS Far East station, was feeling something dangerously close to satisfaction. His first major play against the Dragon Emperor had been a resounding success. His intelligence had saved the Dutch East Indies from collapse, and in doing so, he had forged a powerful, secret new alliance with the Americans. He had proven his worth to London and had demonstrated to his rivals that there was a new, sharper predator hunting in the Far East. He believed, with the quiet confidence of a master strategist, that he was now one step ahead of his opponent.

It was this very confidence that made him receptive to the intelligence that came next. It arrived not through a clandestine channel, but through a method both classic and notoriously unreliable: a walk-in. A local asset, a small-time information broker who had provided minor but accurate tips in the past, reported that he had been approached by a man claiming to be a high-ranking official within the shadowy 'Prosperous Seas Merchant Consortium.' The man, who called himself 'Mr. Chen,' claimed to be horrified by the new, brutal turn in Qing strategy following the failure of the initial rebellion. He was a man of business, he said, not a terrorist, and he wanted out. He wanted to defect.

Abernathy was immediately suspicious. A high-level defector appearing at the precise moment he was consolidating his victory? It was too convenient, too perfect. "It's a trap," he told his station chief, a portly, cautious veteran named Harris. "The Chinese know we're watching them. They're dangling bait."

"Perhaps, sir," Harris conceded. "But the asset who brought him in is trustworthy, if greedy. And Chen has provided a gesture of good faith." He pushed a thin folder across the desk. It contained a detailed breakdown of the consortium's financial structure, including the names of several shell corporations in Hong Kong that Abernathy's own analysts had been trying to crack for months. The information was genuine. It was valuable. It was very good bait.

Chen's main offer, however, was the real prize. He claimed to have knowledge of a secret, high-level meeting scheduled to take place in Singapore in three days. The new head of all Qing clandestine operations in Sumatra—a man he identified as General Tuan, one of Yuan Shikai's most trusted aides—would be meeting with the operational leader of the terrifying new 'Shadow Guard' terror cells. Chen offered to provide the exact time and location. It was an intelligence coup of almost unimaginable proportions. It was a chance to capture or kill the entire leadership of the Emperor's new terror campaign in a single, decisive stroke.

Abernathy's mind was at war with itself. His instincts screamed that it was a trap. But his ambition, fueled by his recent success, whispered that it was a risk worth taking. To decapitate the entire Qing operation in the south… the glory would be immense. It would solidify his position as the master of the great game.

He did the prudent thing. He reached out to his new American ally. Via a secure channel, he relayed the details of the potential defection to David Sinclair. He asked the Americans if their assets inside China could verify any of Chen's claims.

The reply came back twenty-four hours later, and it was the piece that tipped the scales. Sinclair's sources confirmed that there had indeed been a major strategic shift. They had intercepted whispers of a new unit, a deniable special operations force, and confirmed that one of Yuan Shikai's top aides had recently departed for the southern theater under a cloak of extreme secrecy. The American intelligence seemed to corroborate the defector's story perfectly.

The temptation was now overwhelming. The potential reward was simply too great to ignore. Abernathy, his professional caution now overridden by the tantalizing prospect of a history-making victory, made his decision. He would spring the trap. But he would do it his way, with overwhelming force and meticulous planning. He arranged for a joint team: a dozen of his own elite SIS operatives, armed with the latest British weaponry, supported by a platoon of heavily armed Dutch commandos, flown in secretly from Batavia. They would be the hammer.

The designated meeting point was a derelict warehouse on the Keppel Harbour docks, a maze of rusting corrugated iron and the smell of rot and stagnant seawater. On the night of the operation, a thick, drizzling rain fell, muffling sounds and reducing visibility. It was a perfect night for secret work.

Abernathy, unable to resist the lure of witnessing his triumph firsthand, established a command post on the rooftop of an adjacent godown. From his vantage point, surrounded by a small team of his own personal guards and a radio operator, he had a clear view of the target warehouse. He watched through powerful, night-vision binoculars as his strike team moved into position, ghosts in the rain-swept darkness.

Everything proceeded exactly as the defector, Chen, had described. Two black motorcars arrived. Several figures emerged, their faces obscured by the darkness, and entered the warehouse. The bait was in place.

"All teams, go," Abernathy whispered into his radio microphone.

On his command, the warehouse was hit from three sides at once. The Dutch commandos blew the main doors off their hinges with a percussive blast, storming in with rifles raised. SIS operatives smashed through the windows, tossing flash-bang grenades that erupted in blinding flashes of light and deafening sound.

Abernathy watched, his heart pounding with predatory excitement. His team poured inside. He waited for the sounds of gunfire, of a desperate, doomed last stand.

Inside the warehouse, the commandos found exactly what they had been promised. In the center of the vast, dusty space, illuminated by a single bare bulb hanging from a wire, two men in fine silk robes stood over a table, studying a large map. They looked up, startled by the violent intrusion, their faces frozen in shock.

The Dutch commander barked an order in his own language: "Surrender! On your knees!"

But the two men did not go to their knees. They simply smiled. A shared, chilling smile of fatalistic amusement.

The Dutch commander, his instincts screaming that something was terribly wrong, glanced down at the map on the table. It was not a map of Sumatra. It was a detailed architectural blueprint of the docklands. And on that map, a single building was circled in bright red ink: the very godown upon which Abernathy and his command team were standing.

It was a trap.

From the high, shadowed rafters above, from behind stacks of rotting crates, from concealed positions in the surrounding buildings, the night exploded. Not with the loud bang of Dutch rifles, but with the suppressed, spitting cough of Chinese-made Type 77 pistols and the distinctive, heavy chatter of machine guns. The warehouse, which was supposed to be a trap for the Chinese, instantly became a killing box for the Europeans. The two decoys on the floor dove for cover as the commandos, caught in a devastating crossfire, were cut to pieces.

On the rooftop, Abernathy heard the sudden, overwhelming roar of gunfire from the wrong direction and knew, with a sickening lurch of his stomach, that he had been played. He had been played perfectly.

"Ambush! We're compromised!" he yelled into his radio, but his warning was drowned out by a new sound. The sound of disciplined footsteps on the iron staircase behind him.

He whirled around to see the traitor, the defector "Mr. Chen," standing at the top of the stairs. But he was no longer a cowering, terrified man. He stood tall, a pistol in his hand, his face a mask of cold, professional calm. He was an agent of the Qing Empire, and he had led his own team of hunters up the stairs.

Behind him stood the man from the Mayfair office, the man Abernathy had only ever seen in grainy surveillance photos. Captain Jiang.

"Mr. Abernathy," Jiang said, his voice perfectly calm amidst the cacophony of the firefight below. "A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance."

The hunter had walked into the jaws of the dragon. The intelligence war had just escalated into a direct, bloody battle between the spymasters themselves, on the rain-slicked docks of Singapore. And Michael Abernathy was on the losing side.