French Concession (25 page)

Lin was wondering why the man who claimed to be from the Investigative Unit for Party Affairs had not been in to interrogate him for three days in a row. He wondered whether this signaled a victory on his part. Had the enemy decided on a change of tactics because he was refusing to cooperate?

They were certainly treating him better. He was allowed to wear clothes and no longer tied up, but they still kept him locked up in that dark storeroom. A man who said his name was Cheng often came to talk to him. He always brought a whole bunch of newspapers like
Shun Pao
or
Ta Kung Pao
, and pointed specific articles out to Lin. Lin didn't believe their irritating claims about the whole chain of events. They thought they could dupe him.

But why was he even listening to the enemy's lies? He knew they always found ways to slander revolutionaries. Nonetheless, he couldn't help leafing through the articles, which was exactly what they were counting on. Even if it was true that Ts'ao's death had swung the price of public debt, then it only proved their cell had chosen their target well, that they had really delivered a shock to the capitalist system. He didn't believe the shooting on Rue Eugène Bard had anything to do with Ku. Ku would never get involved with a prostitute. And he certainly didn't believe that Ku had accepted a reward for Ts'ao's assassination. If speculators had profited from Ts'ao's death, well then that was a coincidence. They could enjoy
their money while they were allowed to keep it, because it wouldn't be long.

It was hot during the day, especially in that stuffy little room. The dust and cobwebs kept making him sneeze. This is the end for me, he thought. Even if he refused to confess, the casino bombing alone would be reason enough for the courts of the French Concession to sentence him to death. Things wouldn't be any different if they handed him over to Nanking as a Communist. But he was not afraid of death. His only fear was that the enemy would paint him as a terrorist. They could blacken his name by forging documents and testimonies that portrayed their cell as a bunch of criminals. He could already see signs of it, which worried him. He had to come up with a way to foil their schemes.

He was eventually summoned from the storeroom on a sunny day. The furniture had been reshuffled since his first interrogation. The spotlights were gone, and the table had been replaced with a square table placed next to the chair he had sat on. The electric fan was still there, in the corner next to the window, and it had been switched on.

The man called Cheng had someone bring Lin a cup of tea. Tea leaves swirled in the glass. The other operatives had left the room. As he sat down, Lin held his cup up so that he was looking at Cheng through the glass filled with amber-colored tea. He might be powerless, but he wouldn't stop trying to irritate his enemy.

The door was locked and bolted. The windows were closed and the curtains drawn.

“Comrade Lin, let's talk some theory,” said Cheng with a smile.

“We aren't comrades, not since you betrayed the Revolution in the spring of Year 16 of the Republic. You've been pandering to imperialists and capitalists, and we'll fight you to the death.” Lin tried to keep his voice steady.

“Believe me, one of these days we'll be comrades.” Cheng's voice sounded fuzzy, like the steam rising from his teacup. “When you finally know the truth.”

He coughed lightly, as if his cough was a punctuation mark signaling
a new tone of voice. “When I was young, I was leftist like you. But I knew much more about the Communists than you do.”

“Knowing isn't believing. You didn't know anything anyway.”

“Believing won't make you a revolutionary. You've got to be sharp. You've been misled, but you're young, and we want you back on the right path.”

Lin snorted through his teeth. He didn't need to talk theory with a Nanking operative who had a few half-baked theories about the Party. And he did not want to be infected by their poisonous ideas.

“Have you been reading the newspapers I gave you?”

Lin decided not to answer. The poison could affect him subconsciously.

“We know all about your boss, Mr. Ku. We know much more than you know or can even imagine. We know his entire life story. He was born at Mud Crossing in Pu-tung. As a young man, he worked at the China Import and Export Lumber Company and joined one of the gangs active on the pier. I know you don't believe he was involved with the prostitute shot in her apartment on Rue Eugène Bard, but there's proof.”

He drew two photographs from his shirt pocket and put them on the table. He pushed them toward Lin's teacup with his fingertips. Both photos were blurred, but one seemed to be of a document written with a brush pen on red-lined square paper, while the other was a printed form filled out with a fountain pen.

He pointed to the one on the left. “This is a guarantor letter for two second-floor rooms rented on the western wing of a
shih-k'u-men
house on Rue Eugène Bard. The landlord has asked his new tenant to sign ‘Ch'i' next to her real name, because Ch'i is what everyone calls her. He doesn't know her occupation, and he wants a guarantor because he suspects she may be a prostitute. A candle store's official chop has been stamped beneath the guarantor's signature. We went looking for that elusive candle store, but it had already moved away, and no one seemed to know where it was. The guarantor signed his name, which you may or may not know. But at least you'll
know the man's surname: his name is Ku T'ing-lung. The photographer focused on the name, so you'll see it quite clearly.”

He picked up the second photo. “This is the letter of consent for a surgical procedure performed at Nien-tz'u Gynecological Hospital on the corner of Rue Hennequin and Rue Oriou. It's a small private hospital occupying a single
shih-k'u-men
house, not far from Rue Eugène Bard. The only surgeon is Dr. Ch'en Hsiao-ts'un, a doctor trained in Japan, where he may have had his name changed. The patient was in critical condition following a miscarriage. Ku T'ing-lung's name appears again, under ‘nearest of kin.'”

Lin could feel the anger rushing to his throat like lava. He wanted to throw up. Instead he picked up his teacup and smashed it on the ground. He could hear footsteps, and a key turning in the lock. The door wouldn't open and was thick enough to be almost soundproof. Someone was battering at the door and shouting unintelligibly.

Lin planted his hands on the table and stared at Cheng, who stared back. Then Cheng turned and shouted in the direction of the door: “There's no need to come in, there's nothing to worry about. Comrade Lin just got a little worked up.”

The battering stopped. There was a silence, and then the footsteps went away.

“Don't get all riled up. If you'd rather talk about something else, we can do that.”

He produced something else from his shirt pocket, like a magician.

“What we have here is a copy of the manifesto for your so-called cell, People's Strength,” he said, opening the mimeographed pamphlet and beginning to read. At first he read in a monotone voice, as if he were reading a grocery list or a bad student play. But then his face darkened. Before he had finished reading, he tossed the pamphlet on the table as if it were toxic to the touch.

“Tell me what you think of this. What did your boss, that Ku Fu-kuang, tell you? That this is the latest Communist communiqué?”

“That we will learn from your massacre of the revolutionaries, and repay an eye for an eye.”

He looked at him coldly, and clapped his hands to his pockets, but he didn't have any cigarettes on him. He didn't smoke.

“A real Communist would never write something like this!” Cheng sounded angry, maybe because he thought he had a better chance of convincing Lin that way.

“Ku made this up! It's garbage. In fact, he didn't make it up—he plagiarized it. You joined the Party during the May Thirtieth Movement, right? During the student strikes? Young man, you need to learn some theory. Every Communist should apply himself to socialist theory. This is all plagiarized garbage, the work of a Russian anarchist! Marx rejected anarchism for treating revolution as nothing more than individual political theater, a game of violence. Let me tell you about the author of this manifesto. His name was Sergei Nechayev, and he was a consummate liar who started an organization aimed at terrorizing people. Your Ku is like that—he's a fear-mongerer!”

The man's voice softened. He curled the corners of his lips into a smile. “Here's a story that might give you a sense of who this Ku Fu-kuang is. Nechayev was a nobody until he came up with the idea of mailing an anonymous letter to a woman he knew. In the letter, a fellow student claimed that he had gone out for a stroll when he saw someone toss a note out of a police carriage. Apparently this was a note from Nechayev, exhorting his classmates to carry on with the revolution, as he was about to be killed. Then he ran off to Switzerland, where he told everyone that he had escaped police custody in St. Petersburg, posing as a hero! That's how men like Ku Fu-kuang scam their comrades and seize power.”

The electric fan whirred straight at Lin, drying the sweat on his body. His shirt was unspeakably dirty, and he was shivering inwardly.

They crossed the river on the last ferry of the day, which left T'ung-jen Pier at 5:00
P.M.
Hsueh was dressed as a Shanghailander going to Pu-tung to hunt rabbits and weasels for the weekend, wearing a white canvas suit tapered at the waist with a slit at the back. In a trunk under the backseat of the car, they had a single-shot hunting rifle and a picnic basket. Park was dressed similarly, in black. Hsueh didn't recognize the other two men, but Park introduced one of them as Ch'in.

They drove east along the main road that wound along the river, past the piers, and stopped for a break in an empty lot between warehouses belonging to British American Tobacco and the Japanese firm Iwasaki. It was almost sunset. Beyond the warehouse fences and the shipyards, the river shimmered. A Japanese warship was moored at the shipyard awaiting repairs, while its officers were off-duty and had gone ashore. Two men were wrestling on deck while a small crowd hooted and cheered, their cries echoing along the deserted river.

They left the main road at Mitsui Pier, turned onto a dirt road, and took some time crossing a narrow stone bridge. Hsueh got off and beckoned to Park from the other side of the bridge, carefully directing him while the wheels of the car hung partly off the narrow bridge. When they had crossed the bridge, they stopped for some food.

By then it was dark. The rapeseed fields had long since flowered and ripened into pods, but after a long day of sunshine, the soil oozed a residual fragrance of rapeseed flowers. After they had driven past a small copse, the dirt road vanished. The headlights shone into the Pu-tung wasteland ahead of them, and they finally realized that the clumps of soil they could see were actually gravestones. The night was cloudless and patterned with stars; lights flickered eerily in the trees. Hsueh felt as if his heart were being sucked out of his chest with a pump.

An hour later, they drove back onto the main road before turning into a small village just off Min-sheng Road. Ch'in's cousin was a boatman who sailed a fifty-ton cargo boat to villages along Soochow Creek for the Yü clan, a prominent local family, and they had arranged to meet him here. A few years ago, when the Yü clan had had difficulty covering their expenses with land rent, Ch'in's cousin had set up a warehouse to buy hog hair and cattle bones, which he sold on to foreign firms.

It was the Yü clan boat they wanted.

They went into a yard that stank. The boatman stood in dim electric light outside a hut, waiting for them. They all sat around a small table, and Ch'in drank distilled liquor with the boatman. Park picked up the peanut shells littering the table and crushed them one by one between his fingertips. The constant croaking of frogs began to irk them. The mud was plastered with rotting hog hair that bubbled when you stepped on it, which felt like squelching a corpse.

After midnight, when they were finally taken to the boat, Hsueh walked unsteadily onto the pallet, as if he were in a nightmare.

The cargo boat sailed along Yang-ching Creek to the Whampoa. Frogs kept croaking on the banks. All the men were smoking, but the boat stank despite the breeze. Hsueh was sweating, and he couldn't hide how nervous he was. The river made an oily gurgle in the moonlight.

The land along the banks where the Yang-ching flowed into the Whampoa belonged to Alfred Holt and Co., the shipping company that ran the Blue Funnel Line. The goods Hsueh and his companions
wanted were on an eight-thousand-ton English cargo ship moored at a floating dock at the confluence of the rivers. The Blue Funnel Line's ships ran almost every day from Hong Kong's Swire Pier, beneath Signal Hill in Tsim Sha Tsui, to Shanghai. The passenger liners Hsueh usually took from Hong Kong to Shanghai set sail from that pier too.

Over years, Therese had built up a transport network involving the seamen on cargo ships. They were always short of money and usually willing to smuggle something onboard for a few extra bucks. Even though the Customs House was just across the river from the Blue Funnel Line's piers, she never had any trouble slipping her contraband through.

As their small cargo boat drew noiselessly nearer to the larger ship, Hsueh broke out in a cold sweat. His hands trembled, and he could feel the sweat in his clammy armpits. “The signal!” Park hissed at him from the helm.

Hsueh started, and his flashlight nearly fell into the water. It wouldn't switch on, so he pushed the button again, signaling toward the port-side stern of the ship, and waiting for the White Russian seaman to return the signal when he saw it. The huge cargo ship blocked out the sky, leaving only a sliver of starlight that outlined its silhouette.

It was quiet. Waves sloshed against the pier, and the odd seagull squawked. Except for a couple of dim lights among the rows of warehouses a hundred yards away, the riverbanks were pitch-black. There were no dockworkers or guards on patrol.

There were no policemen. The previous day, Hsueh had given Sarly the location of the pier and the name of the boat. Then, before setting out that afternoon, he had gone out on the pretext of buying cigarettes to call Sarly from a corner store and tell him the method of delivery. He realized he was putting both Therese and Leng in danger, but he didn't dare to lie. There was no time to think of all that—too much going on. We're taking this one step at a time, he told himself.

A light sparkled on the railing. He sent another inquiry signal,
and the light answered. Then it was dark again. Several minutes later, two heavy packages were lowered onto the deck of the boat, shuddering as they descended.

The packages hovered briefly above the helm before thudding onto the deck. Park and the other two went up to untie the ropes and hoist the packages into the hold.

Two more packages followed.

They started the engine. It hummed gently, making eddies that were visible for several yards along the surface of the water. Hsueh glanced toward the shore again. Nothing stirred.

He couldn't imagine why Lieutenant Sarly hadn't acted on his tip. Again he was overcome by gratitude. Sarly must not have wanted to blow Hsueh's cover. When he was flashing the signal just now, Hsueh had flattened himself against the cabin doors and only leaned out slightly, aware that he could be hit by a stray bullet if the police attacked from land. But no bullets came—Sarly must have wanted him to be safe.

He hadn't been able to tell Sarly much. All he knew was that the delivery would take place on the river. He had no access to Ku's plans, and he didn't even know when they would reach Blue Funnel Pier. The Concession Police would barely have had the time to round up enough boats to make an arrest. On the other end of the line, Sarly said nothing for a long while, for so long that Hsueh began to imagine that Park was standing behind him and staring straight at him, that he had been discovered by Ku's people, and would be gunned down as soon as he stepped out of the corner store.

Eventually, Sarly said: be careful. He didn't tell Hsueh what he was planning, and he didn't ask him to drag the meeting out or to disrupt it in any way. So he must have decided right then not to take action.

Hsueh attributed this to Lieutenant Sarly's extraordinary friendship with his father. Sarly genuinely trusted him. He must be waiting for intelligence that would allow him to make the arrests when it was safer. For a moment, Hsueh's gratitude to Sarly exceeded his affection for Therese and even for Leng.

But the hours of mental strain, physical exertion, sweating and stinking had left him exhausted. By the time he got into the Peugeot, all Hsueh's muscles felt pleasantly numb. In the morning, he would go to the police headquarters as soon as he had taken leave of Ku's gang. But first, to repay Sarly's trust, he would find out where the goods were stashed.

Right now, they were under the backseat in the car, still in their packages. As he was carrying them, he had thought he could feel a metallic coolness beneath the tarp and the wax paper. The packages reeked of engine oil, so Park collected bits of cloth from all over the hut, and wrapped the packages in scraps that stank of rotting flesh.

The horizon at Wu-sung-k'ou was growing bright when they left the Yü clan village, and the car sped through the deserted countryside. They rolled down the windows, but the stench of cattle carcasses seemed to have been infused into the leather seats. They were all sweating profusely and extremely tired. Only the Korean, who was driving, still appeared to be brimming with energy.

They couldn't cross the river yet. The first ferry wasn't until seven. They parked by a grove of trees and laid out the food in their picnic basket. Hsueh had no appetite. He grabbed a bottle of soda and tipped it into his mouth.

Park had wrapped his hands around a slender tree and was yanking it upward, to relieve his tense shoulder muscles. He turned to ask Hsueh: “Where are you going after we cross the river? Would you like a lift in the car?”

Hsueh had a check for seven thousand yuan in his pocket. That was Therese's money, and he had to get it to her. That was the sort of man he was. If you didn't trust him, he would string you along for as long as possible, but as soon as you decided to trust him, he would become loyal to you and scrupulously honest. The previous afternoon, Therese had told him that she didn't want her bodyguards involved in this deal; she wanted Hsueh to take charge of the whole process, payment included. Hsueh was moved, just as he had been moved by Lieutenant Sarly's trust. But when he was terrified that night—looking out the window into a cemetery, for instance—he
had daydreamed about running away. He couldn't help thinking that seven thousand yuan would allow him to go anywhere he wanted with Leng.

“I have to deliver this money to someone.” Hsueh was not afraid of the man in front of him, even though he knew these people to be capable of shooting someone dead on the street. But he felt like an actor playing a possibly fatal role for which he was not yet prepared. Was this a trap? Didn't stories of double-crossing gangsters appear every day in the Concession newspapers? He was exhausted, and probably imagining things.