French Concession (26 page)

Therese was standing naked in front of her dressing table mirror, trying on a plaited chain belt. A revolver-shaped pendant dangled from it, brushing against her pubic hair. She plucked out a few hairs with a tweezer, making her hair a neat triangle. She had recently started caring more about how she looked.

She got dressed and came out of her room. Ah Kwai was still at the vegetable market. Just as she was about to leave and meet Hsueh at the Astor, the phone rang.

The caller was silent for a long while. Therese could hear nothing but crackling and the sound of someone breathing.

“How may I help you?” she asked impatiently.

Silence.

“Who is speaking?” she asked in Shanghainese instead.

“I am Hsueh's friend.” Therese listened. The woman's voice sputtered, but Therese couldn't tell whether it was because the caller was hesitating or whether there was static on the line. The only word she could make out was the word
danger
.

Then the caller repeated herself, in short bursts punctuated by long silences, still speaking softly: “Don't go to see Hsueh. They want you dead. You're in danger.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I found a phone number on the back of a photograph in his pocket and knew it had to be yours.” Therese picked up on one solid
fact in this confused speech. She knew exactly which photo the woman was talking about.

“Who are you?” she repeated.

“A friend of Hsueh's,” said the woman in a firmer voice.

“And why would they kill me?” It seemed like an odd question to ask, she thought. She might as well be a stranger wondering: Why would anyone want to kill Therese Irxmayer?

“Now that the deal's done, you know too much, don't you see? They don't have the manpower to kidnap you and hold you somewhere.” That was a bizarre rationale. It made her sound like a plate of leftovers. Save it for tomorrow? Don't bother, it'll be too much trouble.

“But what about Hsueh? Will he be all right? Why don't you tell him?”

“I don't know where he is, but you know he went to pick up the goods. He'll come to meet you. They'll keep him alive because he can still be useful to them.” The voice was cut off abruptly, and there was more static. Before long, the caller hung up gently.

Therese slid down the wall and knelt at the entrance to the living room. The ceramic flooring felt cold on her knees. About fifteen meters of telephone wires curled beside her bare feet. Thinking quickly, she realized she would have to rescue Hsueh. He was probably already on the way to the Astor, and she would barely get there in time. She picked up the phone and rang the jewelry store.

Then she left in a hurry, dashing out of the lobby, crossing Avenue Joffre without even looking both ways.

The Cossacks were ready and waiting in the jewelry store, and the Ford was parked round the back.

They drove north. On Mohawk Road they were held up by a pack of racehorses coming out of the stables, but then the car sped up again. They drove east along the southern bank of Soochow Creek. Therese was riding shotgun. She slipped her hand into her handbag to retrieve a cigarette and quietly chamber a round. The Cossacks already had their guns loaded.

She lit the cigarette and stopped to think. Who was that woman who seemed to know everything? Was she one of Ku's people? She
had never asked Hsueh about his boss or the gang. The French Concession was swarming with gangs, and she couldn't count the number of criminal organizations to which she had sold guns.

The car was held up again on Garden Bridge. Three empty Japanese military trucks rattled along the bridge, forcing the southbound cars and rickshaws into the northbound lane, and blocking off traffic in both directions. A gang of ragged child beggars swarmed around the waiting cars.

It was nearly ten in the morning, and in the sunlight a foul smell began to rise from Soochow Creek. Therese began fidgeting. She felt something graze the skin on her waist. It was the chain belt, of course—she had quite forgotten about it.

She lit another cigarette, and rolled the window down to get rid of the smoke.

When she looked out, she saw Hsueh sitting in a car whose driver seemed to be deliberately provoking the Japanese soldiers. It was going north ahead of them but had driven onto the right-hand lane, edging brashly between the first two trucks and blocking the southbound cars. Provisions had been unloaded from the trucks, and each had its tarp rolled up behind the hood. A couple of Japanese soldiers stood by the tailgate of one truck, looking impassively at the little French car, as though the neck flaps on their helmets could block out the chaos around them as well as the sun.

She could see movement inside Hsueh's car. He was leaning back against the headrest, holding a cigarette between two fingers outside the window. She rolled the window down again and pointed him out to her Cossack bodyguards, both of whom had semiautomatic Mauser rifles on their laps. She had to think fast.

They could drive up to Hsueh's car and gesture wildly at him, but she wouldn't be able to warn him properly, and knowing Hsueh, he might kick up a fuss. On the other hand, if she waited for them to get out of the car, she could suddenly drive up to them, trusting her Cossacks to keep things under control with their rifles. While the other men were too frightened to move, she could explain things to Hsueh and leave calmly with him.

The Astor House Hotel and environs

They started tailing the other car. It was in the right-hand lane and her Ford was in the left, so she could see straight into it. She rolled the window up, knowing the reflected sunlight would prevent her opponent from seeing into her own car. Gazing at Hsueh's silhouette in the window, she thought what a handsome man he was.

The cars slowly found their way around the roadblock. A few people got out of rickshaws, and the rickshaw men yanked their empty rickshaws onto the sidewalk. One northbound car after another drove slowly up the bridge. The French car merged back onto the left-hand lane, and honked insolently when it passed the last of the Japanese trucks. Therese had her car drive slowly behind them.

The car turned off Paikee Road and past Seward Road toward Whangpoo Road. But Therese directed her driver to turn east on Whangpoo Road instead, and make a U-turn at Astor Road. They could then drive toward the Astor from the other end of Whangpoo Road and cut Hsueh's car off there. At the corner of Astor Road, she asked the driver to slow down. The sun shone on the pale brown facade of the Broadway Mansions. From inside her own suffocatingly hot car, she could see the other car stopping at the side of the road. Behind it, countless windows glittered.

“Now!” she cried.

As the driver slammed down on the accelerator pedal, the car sped toward the Astor at sixty miles an hour, nearly tipping over as it careened to a halt on the pavement. Hsueh leaped aside and hid in the doorway of the Astor. Two other men had just gotten off, and the car sped toward them, forcing them up against the wall. Hsueh's driver was speechless.

The Cossacks leaped fearlessly out of the car, and went straight up to the young men. They ignored Hsueh—he was on their side. Brandishing their rifles, they cried in off-key Shanghainese: “No one move!”

No one moved. The young men had their backs to the wall, their eyes wide open. Their hands wandered to their pistols, but they wouldn't have time to draw.

But the Cossacks had miscalculated badly. Having judged their opponents' position by their own, it simply hadn't occurred to them that the driver of the other car might also be armed. Their most dangerous opponent was just outside their field of view. . . .

Two shots rang out, and both men crumpled onto the porch with the force of the bullets. One was hit in the temple. Another bullet pierced his companion in the left side, just as he was raising the rifle with his left hand, and probably went through his heart. His head thudded onto the white marble porch, exploding like a deranged artist's convulsive oil painting. (Therese had seen a painting like that in the studio of a White Russian artist who kept up with the latest Parisian trends.) Blood seeped from the man's crushed skull onto the gray-flecked marble.

Therese was furious. With one foot out of the car, she had been just about to step out and yell at Hsueh. Instead she leaned back into the car and reached for her handbag, groping for the Browning under the cigarette case. Craning her neck out, she struck her head on the doorframe but barely noticed the pain as she drew the gun in her right hand, pulling the trigger—

The pistol never fired. The trigger had only been partly held down, not far enough to discharge the round. She would have missed anyway, because she hadn't had time to take aim. Her opponent had already leaped onto the pavement and was firing at her from the right flank of the Ford. The bullet lodged in her stomach. She was still sitting there with the door half open when the bullet pierced through layers of silk to bury itself under her skin.

Before she passed out, she saw Hsueh leap at the gun and clutch the driver's arm. The two men who had thrown themselves against the wall only seconds before rushed at Hsueh and bundled him into another car. Just as she was about to faint, a thought suddenly occurred to her: had Hsueh saved her life instead?

If Park hadn't been so incensed by the Japanese soldiers while he was driving, their car would have arrived at the Astor a few minutes earlier. It couldn't be helped, because he was Korean. But that way the shootout at the door wouldn't have happened, and maybe Therese wouldn't have gotten shot.

If they hadn't stopped by Mud Crossing on their way to Pu-tung Pier, and unloaded a few packages into a hut in a field sunken about five meters below the main road, they might have gotten there a couple hours earlier. And if Hsueh hadn't been racking his brains for a way to refuse Park's offer of a lift, so that he could make a phone call to Sarly, maybe they would have gotten there earlier still. Before he passed out, Hsueh realized that he hadn't had a chance to give Sarly an update. Then someone struck him with a heavy piece of metal on the head. A pistol, he realized, and immediately lost consciousness.

When he awoke, he found himself lying in bed. Ku was sitting at the edge of the bed, smiling at him.

“Good, you're awake. That was impulsive of you.”

Impulsive? Hsueh was surprised, but he couldn't say a word. There was a hammer thudding against his temple.

“Comrade Leng went missing this morning. She may already have been killed. That White Russian woman showed up at your rooms and found her there. Leng sent a message this morning, but
we only just got it. It looks as though Lady Holly came to the Astor because she was after you. They pulled their guns as soon as they got out of the car.”

Hsueh needed to think hard about Ku's words, but his brain had turned to jelly, and he could barely make out what the man was saying.

“Don't worry, we know you care about Leng. We're trying to locate her and we will. So have a good rest. Our comrades here will look after you. Ask them for anything you need. You've already met Ch'in.”

It didn't add up—there was no reason why Therese would want Leng dead. Although he did see her pull out a gun, he didn't believe she would really have fired at them.

Then Ku left the room hurriedly. From the footsteps clattering on the stairs, Hsueh could tell he had brought quite a group with him. He looked round at the paneled walls. Ch'in poked his head out the window, where someone was shouting up at him from the courtyard. Clearly the window overlooked a courtyard; glancing at the sky, Hsueh judged that their room was in the east wing of a
shih-k'u-men
house. There was someone in the living room.

He tried to get up, but he had no strength in his arms. Ch'in saw him try, and came over to help him up, propping his pillow behind him so that he could sit up in bed. Hsueh's mouth felt dry, and he needed a drink.

After gulping down some water, he realized he was exhausted from having been up all night. He tried hard to picture that hut by the road. He remembered helping to carry those packages down a pebbly slope. In fact, he'd nearly slid into a grassy pit about five meters deep, with a hut at the bottom. The road lay higher than the thatched roof of the hut, and only a few steps away along the road, the hut disappeared from view.

The sun streamed onto the wooden floor in front of him. His coat had been draped over him, but he was getting too warm, and tossed it to one side. He thought of Therese taking the bullet in her stomach, and felt a sympathetic spasm of pain in his own.

He still couldn't figure out why she would want to kill Leng. He thought about Leng. Could it be jealousy? Ku could well be right. Therese did keep a pistol in her handbag.

But you couldn't just pull a gun out in Shanghai and casually shoot someone dead—this was a bustling city with a million inhabitants. Sure, the newspapers were full of stories of murder and arson, and Hsueh himself had seen gunfights on the streets before. In fact, a few years ago, they were actually quite common. But they had never had anything to do with him or with anyone he knew well. This degree of terror and suspense was what he might expect to find at the theater, to be enjoyed and then promptly forgotten.

He felt as though he had been hypnotized by Therese, by Leng, by Lieutenant Sarly and Inspector Maron, and by Ku Fu-kuang. He was in a dream world in which shooting someone dead was a perfectly ordinary thing to do, and he couldn't just decide to wake up. Everyone around him seemed to have gone raving mad. Sarly's words came to mind: Shanghai is like a volcano about to erupt.

Or maybe he wouldn't want to wake up, because this life, so different from his old life, had its own appeal. It felt like a hair-raising and never-ending game of poker in which everyone thought they held the best cards. The same throbbing heartbeat, the same sensation of being numb to everything beyond the game. They were right about what adrenaline did to you, he thought. Poker wasn't a perfect metaphor—perhaps it was more like looking down from the roof of a skyscraper, and enjoying the illusory feeling of tipping forward, the sensation of buoyancy. Or like cutting across the road just as a car was speeding past, letting it brush against his jacket tails.

He wanted to share these musings with someone, but neither Ch'in nor the other man who kept walking past the door to his room were likely to be the right kind of interlocutor.

Ch'in was leaning on the windowsill and staring out into the courtyard. That will make his hair warm from the sun, Hsueh thought as he drifted into sleep.

When he woke it was almost evening. Ch'in was still leaning on the windowsill and looking out when he turned with a startled
look, and opened his mouth, as if to shout, but stifled his cry. He heaved his leg off the chair and called toward the living room: “Do you know who—”

But before he could finish his sentence, there was a knock at the door. Opening the door, Ch'in gasped with surprise.

Hsueh recognized one of the shadowy figures at the door. In fact, he recognized him from the night when this man was having dinner with Zung and Park. Hsueh knew that his name was Lin, and that he was one of the comrades Leng trusted most.

Someone said: “I'll go and see if there's anyone outside.” Then Hsueh heard footsteps on the stairs.

The newcomer stood motionless in the doorway. In the late afternoon light, you could see that his cheek had been badly scratched, and his neck and chin were bruised. The scar along his nose was so long it looked fake. Nonetheless, Hsueh knew the man at a glance. He did have a photographer's memory for faces.

“Someone wanted to kill him, but we rescued him,” Ch'in explained, motioning to Hsueh. “But where have you been all this time? Ku said the police got you. Really, I was afraid you'd been killed.” He tugged at Lin's shirtsleeves as if he were his younger brother.

Lin was quiet for a long time.

“Where is Ku Fu-kuang?” he asked abruptly.

“They've taken a boat to Mud Crossing. You don't know what—” Here Ch'in cut himself off, glancing at Hsueh, before realizing that Hsueh already knew all this. “You don't know what we've been up to. Ku is planning a huge operation. We bought some powerful new guns. Ku and the rest of the cell are on boats at Wu-sung-k'ou doing target practice right now. Leng went missing this morning, and Ku says she may have been killed,” Ch'in said all in one breath. His listener looked grave. “When is the operation?” Lin asked. But then he, too, glanced at Hsueh, and steered Ch'in into the living room.

They spoke in low voices. Hsueh couldn't make out a word. Lin suddenly cried: “That can't be true! That can't be true!” His voice grew increasingly passionate.

They lowered their voices again. Someone got up and started pacing around. Hsueh suddenly wondered: if he and Therese had arranged to meet at the Astor, why would she go to his rooms first thing in the morning? And why did she bring her bodyguards and guns to the Astor? Why did she say nothing when she got there but point her gun directly at them?

Thinking made his head hurt. Hsueh detected the choking smell of smoke and the clang of a spatula—they must be cooking dinner in an iron wok down in the courtyard. He couldn't hear what was happening in the next room. The Victrola needle was lifted, and a peal of operatic laughter stopped midlaugh, as though the singer had suddenly been stifled. A child was crying. Someone said something mean in a sweet voice.

Hsueh was dead tired, and he wanted nothing more than to sleep. But just then, Ch'in came in to say that dinner was ready. Despite his lack of appetite, he found himself being helped out of bed. There was a dining table in the living room, and at the table sat Lin.