Lu Shen didn't get a chance to say goodbye to Fang Jizhong.
The night before leaving Hong Kong, he sat in his apartment for a long time, running through several plans in his mind, but he dismissed each one.
Too risky.
Every move he made now was likely under scrutiny during this "observation period."
Under such intense attention, any deviation from the planned itinerary could become a marked red dot in a future background review.
He couldn't let that red dot appear.
As for future contact methods, he would figure something out once he reached the United States.
There would always be a way.
Lu Shen took one last look outside the window. Across the narrow strip of sea between the buildings, the lights of the Central business district reflected in the water like a shattered and reassembled golden ribbon.
He drew the curtains and turned off the lights.
His flight was at four in the afternoon the next day.
Before heading to the airport, Lu Shen completed his final routine task... signing his name, departure date, and transfer order number in the Hong Kong Station's sign-out book.
Macallan personally escorted him to the building's entrance, shook his hand, and said, "See you at Langley."
The Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 took off from Kai Tak Airport's runway 13, skimming over the densely packed rooftops of Kowloon Walled City, climbing northwest.
Victoria Harbour quickly shrank outside the window, becoming a flashing crack before being swallowed by the clouds.
The journey was smooth, and Lu Shen slept without dreaming.
It was the best sleep he'd had in a while... not because he was relaxed, but because he knew clearly that this might be the last time in a long while he could close his eyes without any defenses.
When he opened his eyes again, the plane was traversing the troposphere above the Pacific Ocean.
Outside the window was an endless sea of clouds, sunlight slicing through the gaps, carving golden scars on the white cloud surface.
In a few hours, beneath that sea of clouds would be the North American continent.
Langley.
That gray-white building.
Lu Shen straightened his seat back and fastened his seatbelt.
...
Dulles International Airport, the flight landed on time.
As Lu Shen followed the first-class passengers into the terminal, he hadn't yet felt the dry cold of Virginia in December before he saw two people.
Two white men in dark suits stood unobtrusively to the left of the jet bridge exit.
They weren't holding signs, nor were they in uniform, but Lu Shen immediately recognized their identity... their stance, the frequency of their scanning gaze, the slight bulge under the left armpit of their suits, all pointed to the same conclusion.
CIA armed agents.
One of them stepped forward, without small talk, not even a self-introduction, just flashed the metal badge clipped to his waist.
"Lu? Please come with us."
No unnecessary pleasantries.
The car was parked at the VIP passage exit on the terminal's underground level... a black Chevrolet with dark tinted windows, the license plate number part of the Virginia government vehicle sequence.
Lu Shen got into the back seat.
The two agents sat one in front, one in back, one driving, the other in the passenger seat.
No one spoke.
The vehicle left the airport, merging onto the road heading towards Langley.
Virginia's suburbs sped past outside the window... bare oak trees, frosted lawns, the occasional gas station and fast-food sign.
Lu Shen noticed two details.
The vehicle didn't take the usual route to CIA Headquarters... the standard path via George Washington Memorial Parkway to Route 123... instead, it turned onto a more secluded country road.
The agent in the passenger seat never turned his head, but his right hand remained in the gap between the center console and the seat... a spot typically used to place a shortened shotgun or submachine gun.
This was the standard security protocol for CIA high-value personnel transfer... two armed agents, unconventional route, complete communication silence.
But this specification itself indicated one thing: his value in the CIA assessment system had already risen a notch.
Twenty-seven minutes later, the vehicle entered the outer security zone of Langley Headquarters.
Through the car window, Lu Shen saw the headquarters building, its gray-white concrete facade presenting a stern geometric feel in the night, like a meticulously designed fortress.
The vehicle didn't take the main entrance.
It drove into a ramp on the north side of the building, spiraling down two and a half turns, finally stopping at a numbered parking space on the third basement level.
"Please follow me."
The agent opened the car door, and Lu Shen followed them through the underground garage, passing three security gates requiring separate card swipes, password entries, and iris scans, entering a corridor lit with harsh white lights.
On either side of the corridor were uniform gray fire doors, no windows, no signs, the air filled with the dry metallic scent unique to over-circulated central air conditioning.
At the end of the corridor, in front of a thicker fire door, the agent stopped.
"The meeting room is inside, take the third seat on the right after you enter."
The agent finished speaking and opened the door.
Lu Shen took a deep breath and stepped inside.
...
The meeting room was larger than he expected.
About eighty square meters, an oval conference table occupied the center of the room.
The tabletop was dark walnut, polished to reflect the cold white image of the overhead fluorescent tubes.
Twelve white porcelain cups were placed on the table, each accompanied by a yellow legal pad and two sharpened pencils.
The four walls were covered in the same gray-white soundproof material, making the entire space oppressively quiet.
But what truly made Lu Shen feel the pressure wasn't the walls.
It was the people.
Around the oval conference table, nine people were already seated.
The moment Lu Shen entered, all eyes turned to him.
Nine pairs of eyes, eighteen pupils.
Those gazes were like nine beams of varying frequency, simultaneously shining on him from different angles, each carrying its own message... scrutiny, evaluation, suspicion, disdain, curiosity, vigilance, and a deeper, undisguised rejection.
Lu Shen didn't pause.
He quickly scanned the room...
Seated at the far end of the table, directly facing the door... the head seat.
A man in his sixties, hair meticulously combed back, thick black-framed glasses behind which were eyes sharp enough to make one uncomfortable.
His suit was deep navy, tie impeccably knotted, but the collar button was undone... a mark of someone with high work intensity, not caring much for details but absolutely valuing efficiency.
William Casey.
On either side of the head seat sat the two Deputy Directors in charge of operations and intelligence analysis.
Further out were Weber, Director of the Asia Operations Directorate, and Lane, Division Chief of the Economic Intelligence Analysis Division.
On the right-hand side, closest to where Lu Shen was to sit, was a man in his early fifties.
Sturdy build, square face, jawline chiseled as if carved, graying temples trimmed very short.
His posture was standard... back straight, hands flat on the table... but his gaze was not.
As Lu Shen walked past him, those gray-blue eyes projected a nearly naked hostility.
That hostility needed no preamble to be understood... its foundation was interest.
Before entering this meeting room, Lu Shen had already studied the headquarters' personnel structure, he knew who this man was.
Robert Wilson.
Senior Deputy Division Chief of the Economic Intelligence Analysis Division.
Having worked in the CIA for twenty-four years, he was the designated successor for the Chief of the East Asia Economic Intelligence Group... until Casey's special transfer order brought a twenty-seven-year-old Chinese-American from Hong Kong to take his place.
Wilson's look at Lu Shen was the look of someone who had been usurped.
And across from Wilson sat another person who caught Lu Shen's attention.
Forty-eight or forty-nine, thin, high cheekbones, lips thin as a blade.
His posture was more relaxed than Wilson's, almost leaning back in his chair, legs crossed, one hand idly twirling a pencil.
But his gaze was not relaxed at all... when Lu Shen walked past him, what flashed in those eyes was colder, deeper, and more straightforward than Wilson's hostility.
That was ideological rejection.
Mark Horton.
Deputy Director of the Asia Operations Directorate.
A veteran Cold War hawk.
Lu Shen didn't need anyone to tell him what kind of person Horton was... he had seen this name too many times in the files of his previous life.
Horton was an open advocate of "Asian skepticism" within the CIA, having bluntly expressed his views in multiple internal settings: "All Chinese cannot escape their emotional inclination towards their motherland and must not be allowed access to core secrets."
Such rhetoric was not uncommon within the CIA in the 1980s... under the Cold War atmosphere, the binding suspicion between racial identity and loyalty was almost a systemic cultural gene.
Lu Shen was neither angry nor surprised by this.
In the national security system of his previous life, he had seen too many cases of people being wrongly accused, misjudged, or wronged due to identity prejudice... not only in the enemy's system but also in his own.
Prejudice is a chronic disease common to all intelligence systems, it is not fatal, but it can lead the entire system to make wrong judgments at critical moments.
Lu Shen walked to the third chair on the right, pulled it out, and sat down.
His movements were calm and natural.
Back straight, hands naturally placed on the table, gaze calmly sweeping over each person opposite, maintaining a slight, appropriately humble smile.
Not overly enthusiastic to the point of obsequiousness, not overly cold to the point of arrogance.
It conveyed only one message:
I know why I'm sitting here, I also know what you're thinking, but none of that matters.
What matters is what I can do!
...
Casey, seated at the head, spoke.
"Gentlemen, we have only one agenda for today's meeting."
Casey's voice was low and hoarse,
"The yen appreciation trend post-Plaza Accord, and how the United States should leverage this trend to maximize national interest. This report..." he tapped the document in front of him, "comes from the Hong Kong Station. Its core conclusions are completely contrary to the previous mainstream predictions at headquarters, and market trends over the past week have preliminarily validated parts of the report's predictions."
He raised his eyes, looking over the top of his reading glasses, landing his gaze on Lu Shen.
"Lu, please deconstruct the underlying analytical logic of this report for everyone present."
Lu Shen nodded.
"Thank you, Director."
He stood up and walked to the projection screen on one side of the meeting room.
An administrative assistant had already prepared the data charts he brought from Hong Kong into slides, and the projector hummed to life.
Over the next forty minutes, Lu Shen completed the entire presentation with a precision bordering on coldness.
He started with the background of the Plaza Accord's signing, demonstrating the deviation curve between the actual yen exchange rate trends in the two months following the accord and the mainstream market predictions.
Then he unfolded four core predictions one by one, each accompanied by a complete data chain and logical deduction.
This wasn't to show off, but because in a meeting of this level, any act of looking down at notes would be interpreted as insufficient preparation or lack of confidence in one's conclusions.
Forty minutes later, after explaining the last slide, Lu Shen returned to his seat.
"That concludes the core analytical framework of the report. Thank you all."
The meeting room was silent for a moment.
Then Horton spoke.
"I have a question."
Horton placed the pencil he had been twirling on the table, slowly sitting up from his leaning posture.
His speech was slow, with just the right pauses between each word...
"Your report cites a large amount of Hong Kong offshore market trading data. This data, headquarters analysts in Washington cannot see... at least, not with the granularity and real-time nature you have shown."
His gaze locked onto Lu Shen's face.
"So my question is: who guarantees the authenticity of this data?"
He paused, then added... the subtle hint in his tone was enough for everyone present to read between the lines:
"After all... your data sources are all concentrated in a specific Asian market."
The atmosphere in the meeting room subtly shifted.
Wilson, seated to Lu Shen's right, immediately chimed in.
"I'd like to add something." Wilson's tone was more straightforward than Horton's, without so many twists and turns, "The seventeen senior analysts in the headquarters' Economic Intelligence Analysis Division, with an average of nineteen years of experience, cover macro data, central bank policy signals, and financial market trends of major global economies. These seventeen people..." he emphasized, "unanimously concluded that the yen appreciation would peak and pull back at the 200 mark after the Plaza Accord."
His gaze shifted from Lu Shen to the other senior officials present, as if seeking resonance.
"Now you tell us, all seventeen were wrong, and the correct answer lies with a twenty-seven-year-old, who has been in the job for just four years. So, tell me..." he turned back to Lu Shen, with a mocking smile, "is this a matter of analytical ability, or just luck?"
Lu Shen smiled, "Thank you both for your questions."
"Regarding the authenticity of the data... the appendix of the report lists the complete source index and retrieval record numbers for all data.
Every piece of data comes from publicly or semi-publicly accessible market records that the Economic Analysis Group, Hong Kong Station, can legally retrieve during routine work: offshore yen forward contract position data from the Hong Kong Gold and Silver Exchange Society's filing system, Japanese corporate hedging transactions from the routine capital monitoring of the four major Japanese banks' Hong Kong branches, and insurance fund cross-border investment filings from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission's public platform. All traceable, all verifiable."
His gaze calmly swept across the entire conference table, as if speaking to everyone, not just responding to an individual's attack.
"As for the reason for the collective misjudgment by headquarters analysts..." Lu Shen paused slightly, "I believe it's not a matter of capability, but a difference in information perspective. Headquarters' analytical framework is built on macro data... Federal Reserve interest rate curves, Bank of Japan official statements, G5 Finance Ministers' Meeting minutes. These are all correct, authoritative information sources. But they share a common characteristic: they reflect what policymakers want the market to believe, not what the market is actually doing."
His pace quickened slightly... not out of urgency, but as a natural rhythm change when an analyst enters core argumentation.
"The Hong Kong offshore market is the second-largest venue for yen trading globally. In this market, international capital has established massive yen long positions over the past six weeks, forming an irreversible appreciation positive feedback loop. Meanwhile, Japanese export companies are engaging in large-scale early settlement, further driving yen market demand. More crucially...."
He paused to ensure the following statement was heard clearly by everyone:
"....the core policy demand of Japan's Ministry of Finance and central bank is not to curb yen appreciation, but to alleviate the political pressure of US-Japan trade friction. Yen appreciation is not a problem for Japanese policymakers, but a remedy. This is the root cause of the core misjudgment in all previous analyses."
The silence in the meeting room was heavier than before.
Wilson's lips twitched slightly, as if wanting to say something, but ultimately remained silent; Horton maintained his half-leaning posture against the chair back, but his pencil-twirling hand stopped.
Lu Shen knew this window of opportunity wouldn't last long.
He had to shift the entire discussion from debating past rights and wrongs to discussing future actions before the next round of questioning arrived.
"Based on the above analysis, I propose three follow-up intelligence monitoring recommendations for your consideration."
His wording seamlessly transitioned from an analyst presenting viewpoints to a subordinate making work suggestions to superiors... more humble in tone, lower in posture, but without reducing the substantive content.
Lu Shen succinctly presented the three recommendations one by one.
Each tightly aligned with CIA's existing intelligence framework and workflow, not overstepping authority, not crossing boundaries, not commenting on what policies the White House and the Treasury should formulate.
Finally, he added:
"The above monitoring work involves multi-departmental, multi-line data collaboration, requiring permanent headquarters presence for the most efficient execution. This is also my core work direction for this return to Langley."
Having said that, Lu Shen sat down.
...
The meeting entered a free question-and-answer session.
Over the next twenty minutes, the senior officials present asked Lu Shen a series of questions about several technical details in the report.
Some questions were within his professional scope... about the path of Japanese insurance funds increasing US Treasury holdings, about the market maker structure of the Hong Kong offshore market, about the pricing model of yen forward contracts... he provided precise and concise answers to each.
But there were also a few questions that clearly exceeded the boundaries of an intelligence analyst's responsibilities... about how the Federal Reserve should adjust interest rate policies to align with the yen appreciation trend, about whether the Treasury should preemptively set trade barriers against Japan, about how the White House National Security Council should reassess the US-Japan alliance framework.
In response to these questions, Lu Shen uniformly used the same template:
"This area exceeds my current intelligence analysis responsibilities, I cannot provide a professional judgment. But I will fully cooperate with you all, providing all the necessary East Asia economic intelligence support."
He would rather have the senior officials present think he was overly cautious than let anyone find a doubt that his cognition and ability exceeded the reasonable scope of his position.
Because once the label of exceeding reasonable scope was attached, the next step would be a background review by the Counterintelligence Center.
...
After the question-and-answer session, Casey spoke again.
This time, he didn't look at anyone else, his gaze directly crossed the entire conference table, landing on Horton and Wilson.
"I'd like to say a few words here."
"Lu's report is the most forward-thinking analytical product I've seen in the East Asia economic intelligence field since entering this building. It's not a coincidence, nor is it luck."
He picked up the report in front of him, tapping the cover with his finger.
"In the past week, yen exchange rates, Bank of Japan policy signals, Japanese capital flows... three independent evidence chains have successively validated the core predictions of this report. Everyone present knows that in our line of work, predictions validated after the fact are more valuable than post-event investigations. And what Lu has achieved is not just being correct in the general direction, but precisely hitting the key variables."
Casey put down the report, folding his hands on the table.
"CIA has long had a blind spot in the East Asia economic intelligence field, this is an undeniable fact. We have the world's best Soviet experts, Middle East experts, European experts, but in the increasingly important direction of East Asia economics, there is a serious mismatch between our analytical capability and our strategic needs."
His gaze lingered on Horton and Wilson for an extra second... that second wasn't long, but it was enough for everyone present to read its meaning.
"Lu's presence fills this core gap."