The year is 1935.
Newly arrived in Shanghai for a two-year stint, Douglas Bainbridge bumps into an old friend, a reporter for the AP. While out on the town with him, Bainbridge discovers his friend's dead body in an alley. He does not believe the official ruling of a robbery gone bad and when looking into what his friend had been investigating he learns of Japanese infiltration into a Korean resistance group as well as a triad dealing with opium somehow connected to Chiang Kai-Shek.