We are in Shanghai in 1942, during the Japanese occupation. A young, elegant woman enters Kiessling's café on the corner of Nanjing Road and makes a fateful phone call.

Her thoughts travel back in time to her own story: how she, as a young student, was "caught up" in the resistance movement by participating in a theater group at the university where she studied.

The shy Wong Chia Chi sacrificed herself for the resistance, entering into dangerous espionage to become the mistress of the head of the intelligence service. The connection develops into a high-stakes game of devotion, lust, betrayal, and death.