A boat from Hong Kong arrives in Shanghai harbor, carrying an important official in the Nationalist Party and his striking wife, Leng. Amid the raucous sound of firecrackers, gunshots ring out: an assassin has shot the official and then himself. Leng disappears in the ensuing chaos.

Hsueh, a Franco-Chinese photographer aboard the same boat, has become captivated by Leng’s beauty and unconcealed misery. Now she is missing. But Hsueh is plagued by a mystery closer to home: he suspects his White Russian lover, Therese, is unfaithful. Why else would she have disappeared so often on their recent vacation When he’s arrested for mysterious reasons in the French Concession and forced to become a police collaborator, he realizes that in the seamy, devious world of Shanghai, no one is who they appear to be.

Coerced into spying for the authorities, Hsueh discovers that Therese is secretly an arms dealer, supplying Shanghai’s gangs with weapons. His investigation of Therese eventually leads him back to Leng, a loyal revolutionary with ties to a menacing new gang led by a charismatic Communist whose acts of violence and terrorism threaten the entire country.

His aptitude for espionage draws Hsueh into a dark underworld of mobsters, smugglers, anarchists, and assassins. Torn between Therese and Leng, he vows to protect them both. As the web of intrigue tightens around him, Hsueh must play a dangerous game, hoping to stay alive.