In his first week on the job, Lu Shen was ostensibly focused on team building and business advancement.
But from day one, he was gathering information.
He immersed himself in the daily information flow at Langley Headquarters, like a sponge, passively and naturally absorbing the fragments rushing in from all directions.
Jin Youdai had already retired, but the CIA rehired him immediately after his retirement to serve as an Asian Intelligence Consultant, continuing to participate in core intelligence analysis work.
He came to headquarters three days a week and had a fixed policy analysis meeting.
The logic behind this arrangement was clear... Jin Youdai had long served as the director of the CIA's Asia Policy Research Office, amassing unparalleled expertise in East Asian intelligence.
He understood every clue in this direction, the causes and effects of every historical decision, and the ins and outs of every critical juncture.
The depth and breadth of this knowledge were irreplaceable, not something that could be compensated for by training a batch of newcomers.
So the CIA kept him.
But this also meant one thing.
Jin Youdai still held high-level security clearance, he still regularly entered and exited Langley Headquarters, and he was still active within the CIA system.
This was both an opportunity and a problem for Lu Shen.
The opportunity was that with Jin Youdai still at Langley, Lu Shen might find a legitimate and regulated way to contact him.
The problem was that with Jin Youdai still at Langley, it also meant that Tom Price's investigative reach could touch him at any time.
And the bigger question was...
Why hadn't the organization initiated a recall?
Lu Shen had made it clear to Fang Jizhong: the organization must immediately initiate an emergency recall procedure for Jin Youdai.
Fang Jizhong's response was also clear: this information must be delivered to the highest decision-making level as soon as possible.
Nearly three weeks had passed since that rainy night.
Three weeks.
In the intelligence system's emergency response timeline, three weeks was enough to complete the entire process from information transmission to plan formulation to action execution.
Yet Jin Youdai was still at Langley, coming three days a week, reporting to work on time.
Lu Shen lay in bed late at night, staring at the ceiling, repeatedly considering several possibilities.
The first: there was a problem with the information transmission. Fang Jizhong failed to deliver the information to the highest decision-making level in time, or the information was intercepted or delayed during transmission.
Highly unlikely.
Fang Jizhong was a senior intelligence officer in the Second Department, and his professionalism and execution were beyond doubt.
The second: the organization received the information but, after evaluation, deemed the risk level insufficient to initiate an emergency recall.
Possible, but illogical.
Jin Youdai's level was too high; any security risk involving him should be prioritized as the highest in the organization's evaluation system.
The third: the organization had already initiated the recall procedure, but Jin Youdai himself refused.
This possibility left Lu Shen silent in the dark for a long time.
He had read too many such cases in the archives of his previous life... operatives who stayed in the enemy's system for so long that they couldn't distinguish which identity was real and which was a disguise.
Their social relationships, career achievements, even family life, were all built on that false identity.
When the organization asked them to withdraw, they faced not a simple return home, but an irreversible identity suicide... abandoning everything accumulated over thirty years and starting anew as a stranger.
Many chose to stay.
Not because of betrayal, not because of disloyalty, but because... they could no longer leave the shell they had spent half their lives building.
How many years had Jin Youdai been in the United States?
Thirty years.
From a young man to an old man, from a young analyst newly entering the CIA to the director of the Asia Policy Research Office, from black hair to white hair.
His friends were here, his colleagues were here, his house was here, his life was here.
If the organization said to come back, how would he respond?
Lu Shen didn't know.
But he knew one thing... no matter how Jin Youdai answered, he had to see this man before Price's chain of evidence closed.
To see him in person.
Face to face.
...
Subsequently, Lu Shen shifted the focus of his information gathering from Jin Youdai's daily whereabouts to a more specific direction... Jin Youdai's fixed behavior patterns within Langley Headquarters.
Someone who had worked within the same system for thirty years must have fixed behavior patterns.
Fixed working hours, a fixed parking spot, a fixed lunch location, a fixed work process.
Among these fixed patterns, Lu Shen needed to find a window... a window where he could appear near Jin Youdai without arousing any suspicion.
On Tuesday morning, Lu Shen brushed past a junior analyst from the Asia Policy Research Office in the corridor of the fourth floor's west wing.
The young man was holding a stack of folders, walking briskly, almost bumping into Lu Shen.
"Sorry, sorry," the young man apologized hastily, speaking rapidly, "Director Jin needs these files before he goes down."
"Go down?"
"Top Secret Archives," the young man said without turning back, already two steps away, "Every Wednesday afternoon at two, without fail."
Lu Shen pieced this fragment of information together with the information he had previously accumulated, and a clear picture emerged...
The second basement level of Langley Headquarters, the Top Secret Archives.
This was one of the CIA's core information storage facilities.
All documents marked as Top Secret and above... those that couldn't be digitized, couldn't be copied, could only be accessed through the original... were stored in temperature and humidity-controlled metal safes on the second basement level.
The archives were equipped with an independent reading area... twelve fully enclosed soundproof booths, each about six square meters, with a table, a chair, and a desk lamp.
No windows, no ventilation, the walls and door panels of the booths embedded with lead layers and Faraday Cages... the former blocking X-ray scans, the latter shielding all electromagnetic signals.
Before entering the reading area, all personnel must undergo a security check at the entrance, surrendering all electronic devices... even belts with metal buckles.
The design of this procedure was to prevent any form of information theft and unauthorized recording.
In other words...
Those twelve booths were the safest spaces in all of Langley Headquarters.
Safe to the point that even the CIA's own monitoring system couldn't cover them.
Lu Shen, through various channels... the appointment records of the administrative system, the shift schedule of the archive managers, the work schedule of the Asia Policy Research Office... gradually uncovered Jin Youdai's entire behavior pattern in the archives.
The result was more regular than he had anticipated.
Every Wednesday, at precisely two in the afternoon, Jin Youdai would take a dedicated elevator from the ground floor to the second basement level.
After completing the security check at the entrance, surrendering all electronic devices, he would receive a reading pass.
Then he would enter Reading Booth 7... the one he consistently used, located at the end of the corridor, the quietest spot.
...
Lu Shen completed the final step... submitting an archive access request through the administrative system.
The reason for the request: "To complete the follow-up analysis report on the Plaza Accord, it is necessary to verify the Top Secret historical archives related to economic sanctions against Japan from 1980 to 1985."
The reason was impeccable.
The report he was writing did indeed involve historical data from this period, and the original archives of this data were indeed stored in the Top Secret Archives on the second basement level.
The access request was compliance-reviewed by George Miller and approved with Director Lane's signature.
Every step was clean and compliant.
Appointment time: Wednesday, two in the afternoon.
Appointed booth: Reading Booth 8... adjacent to Jin Youdai's regular Reading Booth 7.
...
At 1:45 PM, Lu Shen rose from his office on the fourth floor, taking with him a blank notebook and two pencils... the archives did not allow any electronic devices, only paper and pencil for handwritten notes.
He walked to the elevator, pressing the "B2" button.
Lu Shen relaxed his breathing control.
Because he knew that in the next few minutes, he would face something more challenging than intercepting Yu Ruoyin, infiltrating the CIA, or reporting in front of Director Casey.
He would face Jin Youdai.
Not as a mission target, not as an intelligence asset to be rescued, not as a name, a code, a file number.
But as a person.
A person whose achievements and sacrifices he understood better than anyone alive, yet had never truly met.
The elevator doors opened.
The corridor on the second basement level was quieter and colder than the floors above.
At the security check station at the entrance, a security officer in his forties sat on a high stool, a metal tray and a handheld metal detector on the table in front of him.
"ID badge and reading appointment slip."
Lu Shen handed over the items.
The security officer verified the ID photo, fingerprint, and appointment number, then pointed to the metal tray.
"All electronic devices, including watches."
Lu Shen removed his watch, placing it in the tray.
The handheld metal detector swept over his body... the buzzing was steady, with no abnormal alerts.
"Reading Booth 8, straight to the end, second to last. Reading time ends at six in the afternoon."
"Thank you."
Lu Shen walked past the security station, heading down the corridor.
On either side of the corridor were deep gray metal doors with numbers... the entrances to the fully enclosed booths.
Most doors were closed, the indicator lights above them showing green for "vacant."
Lu Shen passed by Reading Booth 7, opening the door to the adjacent Reading Booth 8.
A six-square-meter space.
A table, a chair, a desk lamp.
On the table were the archives he had reserved... three thick manila folders, each stamped with a red "TOP SECRET" seal.
Lu Shen entered, closed the door, the lock made a dull click, and the indicator light switched from green to red.
He sat down, opened the first folder, and began to read.
Lu Shen was genuinely reading; he did need these archives on economic sanctions against Japan from 1980 to 1985 to complete his follow-up report, and his reading record would be automatically archived by the archive management system, any obvious "lack of actual reading behavior" anomalies would be flagged by the system.
He had to genuinely be working.
While waiting.
Time passed by the minute.
At 2:23 PM.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor.
The footsteps stopped in front of Reading Booth 7.
The sound of a key entering a lock, the turning of door hinges, the door opening and closing, the indicator light switching.
Then silence.
Jin Youdai had entered.
Separated by just one wall.
Less than thirty centimeters of concrete and lead layer.
Lu Shen's fingers paused at the edge of the folder's pages.
He sat in the chair, motionless.
He found his breathing faster than usual.
This was abnormal.
With his level of training and physical control, in the past month... from intercepting Yu Ruoyin to meeting Director Casey... his heart rate had never exceeded seventy beats per minute.
But now, just because a person was sitting on the other side of a wall, his physiological indicators showed significant fluctuations. Get faster updates on g.com.
This wasn't fear, it wasn't tension.
Lu Shen closed his eyes.
In his previous life, on the ninth floor of the State Security Building, those countless nights lit by harsh fluorescent lights.
He remembered the night he first flipped through Jin Youdai's file in the Top Secret Archives.
It was an ordinary night shift, colleagues in the duty room were dozing off in the next room, and he sat alone at the cramped reading table, an old file spread before him.
The first page of the file was a black-and-white photo.
The person in the photo was young, full of spirit, wearing a 1960s-style suit, standing in front of an American building, a restrained smile on his lips.
It was taken before Jin Youdai went to the United States.
From that page, Lu Shen carefully read through the entire content of Jin Youdai's file.
Thirty years of undercover history.
Thirty years of loneliness, fear, disguise, and perseverance.
In those thirty years, this person lived a lifetime on foreign soil under a false identity.
He spoke at CIA internal meetings, strategized for the United States' Asia policy, shook hands, drank, and played golf with white colleagues.
He bought a house in the suburbs of Washington, planted a cherry tree in the yard, and watched it bloom every spring.
No one knew what this person thought every time he stood under that cherry tree.
Nor did anyone know how many pieces of intelligence he transmitted across the Pacific in those thirty years... the value of that intelligence...
Then exposure, arrest, interrogation.
Then death.
Lu Shen remembered his state after reading the last page of the file... he sat at that reading table, hands flat on the table, motionless for a full ten minutes.
Not thinking, just digesting.
Digesting something deeper than anger, heavier than sadness.
That something had no name.
If it had to be named, it might be...
Debt.
The debt of the living to the dead, of the successors to the pioneers, of the entire system to an individual.
Jin Youdai gave everything for the Republic... his youth, his identity, his freedom, his life.
And what could the Republic give him in return? An honorary title awarded posthumously? A tombstone his family could never publicly visit?
Too little.
Lu Shen shed tears that night.
And now.
The person documented in that file from his previous life was sitting in the room next door.
Not a black-and-white photo.
Not cold lines of text.
Not a legend already deceased.
But a real, living, breathing person in this world!
Lu Shen opened his eyes.
His fingers left a shallow crease on the folder's pages... it was left unconsciously when he gripped the pages tightly.
He released his grip, took a deep breath, then another, and another.
After three breaths, his heart rate began to drop, the pulse in his carotid artery returned to normal.
Lu Shen picked up the pencil again, opened the archive in front of him, his gaze falling on a line about the 1982 semiconductor export control measures against Japan.
To an observer, he was just an analyst diligently working in the Top Secret Archives.
Quiet, focused, unruffled.
But deep inside, something had been permanently altered.
In his previous life, when he cried over that file, Jin Youdai was already dead.
It was all too late, nothing could be done, only watch helplessly as history's wound slowly scabbed over in powerless sorrow.
But now... now Jin Youdai was alive.
Sitting in the adjacent Reading Booth 7, perhaps flipping through an old archive on East Asian geopolitics, perhaps making notes with a pencil, perhaps taking off his reading glasses to rub his eyes.
He was alive.
This time, there was still time.
Time to do something, time to change something, time to prevent that previous life's ending from happening again!
Lu Shen placed the pencil on the table and stood up.
He walked to the booth door, placing his hand on the handle.
Then he paused.
He was making one last confirmation... the security personnel's shift change in the corridor was at three in the afternoon, twenty-seven minutes from now.
In these twenty-seven minutes, there would be no movement in the corridor.
Lu Shen stood in the corridor, facing that door.
His breathing was steady, heart rate normal.
Then he raised his right hand, forming a fist.
His knuckles touched the cold metal door surface.
Knock... knock.
Two knocks.