French Concession (29 page)

Lin hadn't wasted a single moment, and yet he had almost come too late. A minute later and he would only have been in time to see Leng's corpse. He couldn't let any more of his comrades die. When Hsueh told him what Ku had said as he was leaving, Lin realized that Leng would be in danger. Ku wouldn't want Hsueh to see Leng, so he would kill her and blame the White Russian woman. But later he found out that Li, a member of his own unit, had run into Leng. When Li got back to the safe house on Boulevard des Deux Républiques, he had told Lin that Leng was no longer in danger.

So Lin forgot about Leng. There was too much to do, and he only had one night in which to do it. He sent Ch'in and a few others to gather all the members of his unit for a meeting at the safe house, so that he could tell them the truth. A few were missing because Ku had split up the unit, taking several of its members to Pu-tung with him.

Reaching Lin's own unit was the most important thing, Secretary Ch'en had said. Many of them were students about twenty years old. Ku had deceived them, but they could all play a valuable part in the revolution. He had to find them and tell them the truth. All of Ku's pluckiest fighters belonged to this group. Although he claimed to have several units under his command, these young people did most of the work. Secretary Ch'en told him that the Party had investigated Ku's two other units, and that they consisted mostly of
thugs, muscle for the company unions, or ruffians who used to run streetside posts for Hua Hui betting and were wanted by the Green Gang for having absconded with the money. Ku had also attracted an assortment of foreigners: Koreans, Indians, White Russians, and criminals who had fled to Shanghai from all over Asia.

Lin didn't know how to reach all the other comrades he couldn't get in touch with right now. Secretary Ch'en had told him to do anything he could to expose this conspiracy against the Party. After their meeting, he asked everyone to split up and find more members of the unit. He himself stayed to speak to Hsueh. They would have to make the police aware of this intelligence, and he wanted to know what the police would do with it.

“Where's Leng right now?” Hsueh blurted out. The selfish bastard thought of nothing but his own problems. Lin couldn't understand what made Hsueh tick. He might as well belong to a different species. Hsueh had been visibly relieved when he heard that the White Russian woman was taken to the hospital, but now he was asking after Leng. Lin couldn't understand how a man could spend his days chasing two women. He thought it very vulgar.

“She is safe. One of the comrades has told her what is happening, and warned her to stay away from Ku Fu-kuang.”

Lin could tell that Hsueh really cared about Leng, but he still couldn't understand how one man could love two women at once.

“Ku isn't a real Communist. He is planning a dangerous robbery, and he wants the Communists to take the blame for it. You should tell the police, via your friend.”

Hsueh looked as though he had something to say. Lin stared at him, his own lips salty with sweat. Hsueh was reaching into his pocket, and Lin knew he must be craving a cigarette. Lin himself wouldn't mind one either.

“Why would they believe me?” Hsueh asked. The elegant woman in the Hazeline Snow advertisements on the wall gazed down at them, surrounded by flowers that looked a little lackluster in the dim electric light. Why would the police believe him? The imperialists in the Concession were terrified of Communists, not
of ordinary criminals—what incentive did the police have to set the record straight?

Hsueh was deep in thought. Lin gazed at him with a well-meaning smile. Even though Hsueh was selfish and bourgeois, even though his conscience had never been captured by Communist ideals, they were both young men, and Lin hoped to win him over.

“I have an idea,” he finally said. Lin waited. “We're in Shanghai. It's a big city, and cities have their ways of getting the word out. We could write to the newspapers. We could draft an urgent press statement exposing the conspiracy, or send an open telegram. And then there are the radio stations,” he said, thinking out loud. “All those places will be busy now, but tomorrow's paper won't have gone to press yet. We can write something up, make a few dozen copies, and have it delivered to the newspapers and radio stations. Then the news will be on the wireless and in tomorrow's papers.”

It was a brilliant plan. The more Lin thought about it, the better he liked it.

They were up all night, writing and rewriting the press statement. Lin had no way of getting a go-ahead from his Party superiors, so all he could do was write the opening lines himself, with some trepidation.

From the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese Communist Party to all residents of Shanghai:

Hsueh said the newspapers would never get away with running that statement on its own. It would be best to attach an article that framed it as a story. That way, newspapers and radio stations would take the risk of running it because Shanghai people loved “shocking crime stories.” Lin glared at him.

Lin hesitated to reveal the operation taking place the following day. He was worried that his message hadn't gotten through to a few of his comrades. But he eventually decided to put it in. He copied the statement out twenty times, and Hsueh did some copying too.

Then they got on their bikes and delivered all those copies to various newspapers and radio stations. Hsueh went with Lin, because
he knew where all the offices were. They got back at around four in the afternoon.

A comrade who had just returned from Rue Palikao gave them the startling news that Leng had been seen in the candle store. Park had told him to come back to the safe house and summon the rest of their unit to a meeting at the candle store. But when Lin told him what was going on, he immediately reported that Leng had been tied up and was being held there.

Lin didn't stop to think. He rushed out to Rue Palikao, with Hsueh close behind.

They got there just as Leng was escaping from Park.

Lin now looked at the untidy storefront. It was littered with half-eaten food and cigarette butts, and the neatly stacked cardboard boxes had all been overturned. The guns and explosives hidden beneath the floorboards in the corner had disappeared.

Lin was afraid his cover had been blown. He must have sparked Ku's suspicions by openly calling everyone in his unit to a meeting. Park had sped off as soon as he saw Lin, which meant that Ku knew the truth was out, and he would be desperate.

Lin didn't know what Ku planned to do with the new weapon. He didn't know Ku's target, or when he would attack. The plan existed nowhere but in Ku's brain. One of the comrades Lin had summoned to the meeting said the target was a bank. Another said they were supposed to meet at the stables opposite the Race Course. But there wasn't a single bank anywhere near Mohawk Road. Ku always operated this way—he never revealed his whole plan to his operatives until seconds before it was meant to go into action.

They went into the warehouse behind the store. Ku must have held a meeting here—there was a tin stuffed with cigarette ends, and no one but Ku smoked this many cigarettes. Leng sat on a wooden shelf in the corner, clutching Hsueh's hand.

Lin looked around the dark warehouse. All the windows had been nailed shut. The morning light and smoke were seeping in between the cracks, and the heap of coal smelled smoky in the humid
air. He could hear someone scrubbing a toilet next door in Yu-i Alley. One of the boxes was only half full of firecrackers. A piece of paper lay on the side of the table where Ku usually sat.

Lin held it up to the light. He knew what this diagram was for. Ku always planned each operation very carefully. He would explore every inch of the location, and make a pencil sketch of the width of the streets, the doors and windows of each building, where to post an ambush or provide backup with a car.

But Lin couldn't tell what the rows of little squares on either side of the street meant. He could see that Ku was planning to post his men by the squares, two on one side of the road, and one on the other. The target was on the near side of the road. Ku always drew a pig face for the target, with two large ears taking up half the pig's face, and two black dots for nostrils. The triangle on one side of the diagram probably indicated a guard post. And there was a word written very small opposite the pig's head. Lin peered at it closely. It was the word
Kuan
.

The sunlight filtering in between the planks grew brighter. Lin put the piece of paper back on the table. Leng came over to look at it, and suddenly cried: “I know where this is—it's Rue du Consulat.”

“This is Rue des Pères, and this is Rue de Saigon,” she said, pointing them out. “The word
Kuan
is for Kuan-sheng Yüan. The squares are columns lining the arcade. The target must be the National Industrial Bank! And the Singapore Hotel is right there on the corner.”

Lin turned to look at her. He had to ask her this question directly, so as to get a direct answer.

“When you were arrested at the Singapore Hotel, you were taken to North Gate Police Station. Why did you lie? Why didn't you tell Ku the truth?”

“I don't know. I was afraid that if I did, the cell would expel me.”

“And could you tell me,” said Lin, turning to Hsueh, “what precisely is your relation to Inspector Maron? Why did you make contact with Ku via Leng?”

Hsueh couldn't answer his question. “We're friends, just friends,” he stammered. “No, actually, we're good friends.”

Lin smiled at him. “Don't worry, we know exactly what you've been up to. We would like to stay in contact with you. If you trust us, and trust that we're working for a just cause, you can consider us your friends.”

The bigger newspapers, like
Shun Pao
and
Ta Kung Pao
, mentioned the press statement briefly on their local pages. But some of the smaller tabloid-format newspapers that relied on press releases for most of their news printed it in full. The
New Citizen
, for instance, printed the full text on the bottom right-hand corner of the front page. The previous year, it had been temporarily shut down by the Shanghai Committee to Purify the Party for printing a photo of Chiang Kai-shek in full armor in an ad for a libido-boosting drug. Ads poking fun at the commander in chief were everywhere toward the end of the Kuomintang military campaign against regional warlords, but gradually they had been purged. The
New Citizen
's editor on night duty was cautious, but Hsueh pointed out that the Shun News Agency would almost certainly circulate the statement via their wire service, so the editor could attribute it to Shun and let them take responsibility for it. Sure enough, the
New Citizen
printed their convoluted story in a two-page article that consisted more or less of Lin's words, with a few minor changes.

If Hsueh had run into Li Pao-i, he would have given him a copy of the press statement too. Even the
Arsène Lupin
had its regular readers. After seeing Leng safely onto a tram, he bought a copy of the
New Citizen
from the newsstand at the station. Lin was busy making sure that the comrades he had called to that meeting had somewhere
safe to go. As for Leng, it would be simplest for her to stay in Hsueh's rooms and rest.

But Hsueh couldn't go home with her—there was something else he had to do. He found a public telephone booth on Boulevard de Montigny, and called Lieutenant Sarly's office at the police headquarters.

Sarly answered the phone on the first ring. He must have been waiting for this phone call since he woke up and read the newspapers. He exploded before Hsueh could say anything.

“What's this in the papers? Is there anything left for you to report to me? It's all over the news! Ku's gang aren't Communists, but there's a conspiracy to blame the Communists? Why didn't you come to me first with this? What is this attack they're planning? Why didn't you report it to the police? What the hell do you think you're doing?”

Afterward he went into the bakery on Rue du Consulat and ordered a coffee. He was pleased to hear the radio broadcast coming from the other side of the house. This was definitely a good idea, he thought.

And when Hsueh told him where Ku was planning to attack, Sarly had to forgive him. If Hsueh hadn't done what these people wanted, he would never have been able to get away, and he wouldn't have been able to give the police the details of Ku's operation. Hsueh sometimes thought that Sarly was playing a game of cat and mouse with him, that he could see exactly what Hsueh was up to from his lofty vantage point, and would tolerate Hsueh's tricks as long as he wanted to keep playing.

At eleven o'clock, he arrived punctually at Mallet Police Station. The poet was waiting for him at the entrance, and Maron's detective squad had assembled in a large conference room.

Sarly was in a smaller, adjacent room. He took the news with extraordinary calm. He had dealt with an indigenous uprising in French-occupied Côte d'Ivoire in 1912, and after the Great War he had searched houses in Hanoi for homemade bomb factories run by
the independence activists. When he was in a good mood, he would boast to Hsueh about the highlights of his career serving overseas. Right now he was fascinated by the Communists, and he was disappointed by Hsueh's news. He was especially disappointed that Hsueh had gone to the newspapers and radio stations with it. Hsueh realized that he had let Sarly down. He attributed Sarly's reaction to wounded pride, to having been mistaken about Ku.

Sarly was pleased with the diagram that Hsueh had drawn from memory, and had Inspector Maron take it into the conference room. Successfully thwarting Ku's next operation would help Hsueh to save face with Sarly, but it would also allow Sarly himself to save face. Hsueh sincerely hoped Ku's operation would fail. In fact, he hoped the police would shoot Ku dead on the spot. Lin, his new friend, would want that too—after all, Ku was an imposter misrepresenting the Communist Party. The trouble was that no one knew when the attack would take place.

But Sarly didn't seem troubled. He smoked his pipe and waited.

Inspector Maron burst in. “We'll have to seal the streets off with armored police vehicles,” he barked, the boorish ex-wrestler in him coming to the fore. “There are too many pedestrians on the road, and if we don't scare them off, we'll lose control of the situation.”

“But they could put the attack off to tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” Sarly said irresolutely.

“Today isn't just any day. All policemen are reporting to duty, and half of them are at the Koukaza Gardens because Consul Baudez and the directors of the Municipal Office are reviewing the troops. The commanding officer of the Indo-Chinese troops will be up on the platform as well.”

Only now did Hsueh realize that it was the fourteenth of July; not for nothing had Ku chosen to strike on Bastille Day.

“I'll go myself as soon as we wrap up here. Remember that we want to wait until the robbery is under way before striking. Tell me about your plan of attack.” Lieutenant Sarly had put Inspector Maron in charge of coordinating the operation.

“We've stationed snipers at the guard post on Rue des Pères, and
the bank is swarming with plainclothes Chinese policemen. It only takes two minutes for a car to get from here to the location of the attack. The police stations on Avenue Joffre and Avenue Foch are both on standby alert, and all police cars are circling the streets near Rue du Consulat. As soon as the alarm is sounded, the entire district will be sealed off.”

“Very good. What's there to worry about?”

Sarly drew out the small brown bag that contained his private possessions. He undid the string, took out a copper pick, and started to clean his pipe. But as he was about to pack the pipe, they heard an explosion in the distance, to their west. It was two in the afternoon. Many days later, after things had died down, Sarly said to Hsueh: “It hadn't occurred to me that he would start with an explosion. If he wanted to rob a bank, why start by tossing a grenade? No one does that. I thought he was insane—anyone else would have crept into the bank, quietly taken control, and told everyone to get down on the floor. They would need time to put all that cash in bags or crates. Most of it would be in silver, so the crates would be extremely heavy, and they would have to be lugged into a car. I knew he was armed and could break through a barricade. We were extremely well prepared. We had policemen lying in wait inside and outside the bank with rifles, and as soon as they came out, we were going to open fire from all sides. I told our men that they would have at least ten minutes to take up their positions outside the bank. But they didn't want to give us any time. In fact, they didn't even want to give themselves any time.”

The explosions were followed by a barrage of shots as well as single shots that rang out one at a time, as if to avoid being drowned out by the rest of the gunfire. If Hsueh didn't know what they were, he would think these were firecrackers at a wedding banquet. People might assume there was a big banquet at a fancy restaurant like the Hung-yün, or a store opening on Rue du Consulat.

Inspector Maron rushed out with his detectives. They had gotten the tip, and they were ready. The explosions didn't faze them, and police cars awaited them at the gate. Sarly had Hsueh go with himself.

The two of them got into an armored Rolls-Royce. With terrified pedestrians thronging the roads, it took them seven or eight minutes rather than two minutes to reach the bank, although it was less than a kilometer away. By the time they got there, the shootout was almost over.

Hsueh recognized the officer in charge at the scene, Sergeant Ch'eng of North Gate Police Station. Sergeant Ch'eng glanced at Hsueh before giving Lieutenant Sarly an account of the gunfight. Even though his men had been ready, they had been bewildered when the operation started. It couldn't be said that they were unprepared. Yes, when they saw that car pull up to the door of the bank, they had “tensed up,” in the words of one of the snipers. Yes, they had seen three bicycles screech to a halt by the colonnades, one on the same side of the street as the bank, and two on the opposite side, exactly where the diagram had them. But no one would have guessed that the men who jumped out of the Peugeot would each throw a grenade at the door of the bank. At the same time, a loud explosion could be heard coming from each of the bicycles: firecrackers, quantities of them, rerigged so that a single match would make them all go off at once.

The robbers were complete amateurs, Sergeant Ch'eng sniffed. They were terrified out of their wits before they'd even gotten started. And it hadn't occurred to them that there could be an ambush. The police had begun to fire seconds later, and it looked as though they hadn't anticipated that at all. The three men who had burst into the bank through the smoke of the explosion were trapped. They were under fire from behind the bank counters as well as from the steps of the bank.

Then things took a farcical turn. The three men on bikes had been ready to back up their comrades inside the bank from behind the cover of the columns, but as soon as they pulled out their guns, they could tell that things had gone very wrong. They ran out from the colonnades, jumped into the car, and rushed off before the police could take aim, abandoning the men inside.

“They went in the direction of Boulevard de Montigny,” Sergeant
Ch'eng said. As though to confirm his words, gunfire rang out from the direction of Rue Passejo, to their west.

“They won't get away. They won't be able to get past Boulevard de Montigny,” Lieutenant Sarly said, looking at the scene of the explosion. The three corpses lay in a pile of broken glass in the lobby, and who knew how many other casualties there were.