French Concession (30 page)

Li Pao-i stopped at Hsieh-t'ai Money Exchange, a small money changer and tobacco shop run on Rue Vouillemont by a man from Ningpo. His takings from the night before were in his pocket, in the form of a ten-yuan note issued by the Chinese Agricultural Bank and printed by Waterloo and Sons. It was covered with foreign writing and had the bank general manager's ornate signature on the back, an anticounterfeiting device. An entire batch of banknotes had once been stolen from a bank before signatures could be printed onto them, and as a result, banknotes with faded counterfeit signatures still turned up every now and again.

He pushed his banknote through the iron railing to the man behind the counter.

“Nine silver coins, and change the last yuan into cents, please.” He liked hearing them jingle in his pocket.

Then he bought a bag of fried dumplings at the steamed bun shop next door. He knew it was a fake Ta-hu-ch'un, not a real branch of the well-known dumpling restaurant, but who cared?

He put the small change in his other pocket. He was about to go over to the Morris Teahouse to catch up on the gossip. It was Bastille Day, and the Race Club had organized an extra Champagne Stakes race in honor of the occasion. Last night had been a good night for him at poker, thanks to his new strategy. So he decided not to keep playing that morning. Instead, he would stop by Peach Girl's place
to take a nap on her bed around noon, and then continue with his winning streak.

While he was waiting for his dumplings, he could hear the radio playing at the money changer's next door. He heard a name that caught his attention: People's Strength. He'd never forgotten the last time he'd heard those words.

He went along Avenue Édouard VII. It was early, the road was empty, and there were no cars. He was walking right in the middle of the road. Race Course Road arced toward Avenue Édouard VII, which just touched the top of the arc. The two swathes of houses where the roads met spread toward the Race Course like a woman's thighs. A narrow alley between the houses led toward the Race Course, about twenty yards away. To the left of the alley lay a kidney clinic that dispensed traditional Chinese medicine, and a public toilet stood awkwardly in the middle of the road. Li had heard tell that the Race Course's longtime gamblers would all come here to touch the doorframe leading to the female toilets because its
feng shui
gave it especially powerful
yin
luck.

At the tip of that promontory of houses was Morris Teahouse. Li Pao-i went straight up to a window seat on the second floor, and sat on a drum-shaped little stool. He had the waiter make him a pot of jasmine tea, and tore open the oil-drenched wax paper in which his dumplings were wrapped. Then he asked the waiter for a small plate of vinegar.

He was a regular customer here, and even had a tab. But today he wouldn't need his tab. He could even pay it off—in silver yuan coins, no less, playing the high roller. He took out his silver yuan and inspected the bill that the waiter had brought him. He was about to pay with a coin when he realized that he had almost forgotten about his lucky coin, which was jumbled up with all the others. He couldn't just get rid of the coin that had helped him to make good on his losses this morning. He stacked up the coins and sniffed them one by one until he caught a whiff of the familiar smell.

Paying the bill made him feel great. He had the waiter bring him a newspaper. One headline caught his attention, and he read the article
carefully, noticing the familiar name it alluded to as its source: an experienced journalist at a French newspaper in the Concession, Mr. Weiss Hsueh. Li spat tea leaves into his cup, irritated that Hsueh hadn't told him about such a big scoop. Ordinary crooks indeed, he spat. He'd known all along that those people weren't Communists. He remembered the questions Hsueh had asked him that night in Moon Palace Dancing Hall.

When he flipped to the racing post, he forgot about the article. Today was the day of the Champagne Stakes, a big race, and all the most famous racehorses would be there. Unusually, bets could be placed up to a week in advance. But Li was in no hurry to place his bet.

For the race with Aussie horses, he had already settled on Bullet, a horse belonging to the British businessman Gordon. It was the kind of horse that always shot to the front of the pack. Horses like that sometimes lost steam and lagged behind, but Bullet wasn't like them. Even in a long one-and-a-quarter-mile race, he knew it would come out ahead. The jockey was well chosen too. Captain Sokoloff was the Concession's only real master of riding with short stirrups, where you had to almost be squatting on the saddle. For Mongolian horses, jockeys usually used longer stirrups, and kicked the horse in the belly to make it go faster. But Aussie horses were taller, and a jockey would need the aid of his reins and whip. Riding with short stirrups would give him more flexibility.

Li decided that he would simply buy a win ticket for the race with Aussie horses. Any fool could guess what would happen in that race, and the betting odds were low. Easy money. But he was going to win big in the race with Mongolian horses by placing a triple bet, going all in. There, an upset would allow him to win dozens of times his wager. In fact, if he was lucky and the horse racing dailies spent a few more inches raving about Mahler's white mare, he stood to win hundreds of times his wager. For a week now, he had inspected the horses at Mohawk Road every day. The gray horse, Illusion, was sure to surprise everyone. It was no longer as timid as it used to be. They said it was startled by hurdles as they sprang up, and that it sweated too much. But he had seen the stable hands wave a net in its face
without making it flinch. He'd even seen a groom splash water on its belly before leading it out to the practice track, so that the gamblers clustered by the railing would think it was sweating.

Today would be Illusion's day. Old Mahler had slyly arranged for his own son to ride that mare. Mahler Jr. was fat and too heavy, and with him for a jockey, even the renowned horse could only come second. Illusion would come first, and Mahler's “White Rose” would come second. No one else would have worked this out, and the triple bet only made his bet even riskier and the payoff bigger. He would win hundreds of times his wager because the odds were so long.

He had to go back to Peach Girl's around lunchtime. The previous night he had had the idea of stuffing two silver coins into her drawers. She was fast asleep, and even the two hard coins he wedged right into that sticky cleft didn't wake her. They had absorbed all her female
yin
energy and brought him good luck. He was going to do it again—but with more than ten yuan this time, so that he'd be sure to make a killing.

He gazed confidently around the teahouse, at all the sorry gamblers who were about to lose their shirts, and at the Race Club journalists who thought they knew their stuff. Then he saw a pair of eyes, and panicked.

Yes, he'd seen this man before. His name was—Li racked his brains for the name. He'd only just read it in the papers. The man had sent a bullet in a brown paper envelope to his newspaper office. He'd kidnapped Li, and forced him at gunpoint to print a certain manifesto. His name was Ku Fu-kuang. It was all coming back to him, the name in the news report, the Green Gang gossip, the leak attributed to Hsueh. He thought he could see the man looking at him, and he didn't dare meet his gaze. He lowered his eyes, as though he couldn't be seen by Ku if he couldn't see him.

He didn't dare to kick up a fuss. He knew Ku had a gun. He couldn't see Ku's hands, which were under the table. But he thought he could see his right arm moving, reaching under his linen shirt for something. He felt bloated—the dumplings had been far too oily—and there was something stuck in his throat. He tried to burp but
couldn't. He picked up his teacup, and put it down again. He had better pretend he didn't recognize the man, he thought. But he knew he looked flustered, and he was no good at pretending. Ku would have seen him by now.

Li got up and hurried down the stairs. The waiter waved to him, and he waved back irritably—why not wave at someone else, like the man who terrified him, and detain him to give Li time to escape? He didn't look around. He had neither the time nor the nerve. He rushed out of the teahouse and toward a narrow street on his left. The streets were almost empty. The gamblers who'd gotten there early would be on the northern end of Race Course Road, near the stables on Mohawk Road. There were several men clustered outside the public toilets in the middle of the road, so he raced into the toilets. At the door he turned to look back, and saw Ku standing outside the teahouse, looking toward the northern end of the road. He hid inside the toilets, and thought: I'm safe. His stomach ached. He opened the door to a cubicle, undid his pants, and squatted down. His heart was racing. He couldn't shit. He kept farting. His blood ran cold.

He didn't hear the footsteps. But suddenly someone opened the door to the cubicle, and he was blinded by light. He looked up and wanted to smile at him, but he couldn't force a smile. He saw the knife flash, and felt something cold on his neck, as if a gust of wind were blowing straight into his lungs. He couldn't say a thing. He saw his own blood drip onto his clothes, and onto the pants that hung around his knees. His hands relaxed, his legs crumbled, and his pants dropped all the way to his ankles. He could hear the coins jingle in them, and he only had one thought: the coins are there and I haven't used them, so it's still my lucky day.

The moment before he died, he recognized a familiar smell, the smell on those coins, Peach Girl's smell. He saw a streak of gray glide past him, and thought, that's my horse.

Ku's greatest fear had come true. He didn't like what they were saying about him. Whatever he was, he was not an imposter. He was especially irritated by a passage in which he was said to have been caught in bed with a whore and leaped out of bed naked, when he knew he had been wearing briefs. It was Hsueh who infuriated him. He had played fair, hadn't had him killed, and the next thing he knew, that sneak was writing about him in the papers and conniving with Lin to lure all his best people away. Those young people were the boldest operatives he had; they never left a job unfinished. Hsueh must be an undercover detective. As soon as this operation was over, he would have to be executed as an enemy of the revolution.

Ku had deliberately left the diagram on the table at the candle store. As soon as he had gotten back to the store, he had realized something was up. The three people scheduled to meet there hadn't arrived, and they were all members of Lin's unit. He didn't know what the threat to them was, but the candle store was no longer safe. He ordered them all to leave. He made a sign to Park to strangle Leng, so that the neighbors wouldn't hear a struggle. Leng had already betrayed the cell, and her presence would only endanger them. It would be best for Hsueh to think that Therese had killed her. He had originally spared Hsueh because he thought the bastard might come in useful in the future. But Hsueh too could no longer
be trusted, and anyone who wasn't going to be useful to the cell and could even harm it would have to be eliminated.

He sat in Morris Teahouse, reading the newspaper article. It made him so mad he almost lost it right there. He pressed his hands into his thighs and thought, take a deep breath. But no sooner had he calmed down than he saw that accursed reporter. He could tell the man had recognized him. What a day, one damn thing after another. He could feel anger welling up in him as he saw the idiot try to slink away.

He couldn't just let him go. An operation was about to take place, and nothing could be allowed to disrupt it.

He finished the man off in the toilet. No one noticed. He shut the low cubicle door gently, and reached over the top of the door to lock it. His clothes were spotless—it had been a clean death. He decided not to go back to the teahouse.

Mohawk Road was crowded. The first pack of racehorses had already been led across the road and into the Race Course via a special entrance. Long lines had formed in front of the ticket offices, and Sikh policemen were patrolling the road nervously. The crowd parted narrowly to let the mounted police through. It was hot, and everywhere there were thinly clad men clutching their wallets to their bellies, to forestall pickpockets.

He went into Te-fu Alley. There was a large field with stables at the end of the alley. He had arranged to rent a stable there months ago, claiming to be a horse dealer from Chang-chia-k'o. The stables were on the first floor of the building, and there were offices upstairs. The whole place was walled off.

Park was sitting at the entrance to the first stall, with a Mauser rifle in his hands.

They were short a few people, but he decided to go ahead anyway. A roar to the east meant the first race had started. A sudden hush followed, as though the earth itself was holding its breath, and the crowd was leaning forward so that their voices became a thin stream of air that melted into the quiet. Then another wave of cheers broke. The winning horse must be making its final dash.

It's now or never, he thought. From now on, he would be notorious and everyone would be afraid of him. Not only did the Race Course swallow huge sums of cash, it was an image of the concessions in its power, wealth, and thirst for money. It was at the heart of the concessions—it
was
the heart of the concessions. Today he was going to explode this heart and send the concessions into shock. The weapons he had bought from the White Russian woman were crucial to this plan. The way they penetrated their targets was a perfect metaphor for how he planned to penetrate his target and blow it to pieces.

He checked the stables to make sure that there wasn't a single copy of that day's paper lying around. Finding a radio in a corner, he opened the back and pulled out the thickest vacuum tube. The photographer was sitting on the sofa, with his camera and tripod lying on the floor. He nodded at the guard.

He breathed deeply and waited.

By three o'clock, it was scorching hot. Ku had asked Park to leave the truck on the corner of Rue Wagner and Rue Vouillemont. At two in the afternoon, he had heard the blast of explosions and gunfire coming from the direction of Boulevard de Montigny, to the east. The planned sham attack was already under way. He had a few people making a stir at the National Industrial Bank on Rue du Consulat. All the policemen in the French Concession would rush there, and Boulevard de Montigny would be completely barricaded. But the gunfire soon stopped. He cursed Hsueh and Lin for taking his best people—the ones he had left were worthless.

At a quarter to three, he saw a motorcade drive past. The two trucks on the end of the motorcade carried French soldiers in wide-brimmed helmets and short-sleeved military uniforms with leggings, bugles of all kinds in their hands. These soldiers were on their way to the Koukaza Gardens for the review of troops. The motorcade would be full of prominent Concession figures. They were heading to the Race Course to see the final and most important race, which would begin at three thirty. The consul, the directors of the Municipal Office, and the commanding officer of the Indo-Chinese
troops would all be there for the Champagne Stakes, in the VIP box. At least he hoped they would all be there, so that his message would be unmistakable to them all: he, Ku Fu-kuang, was in Shanghai!

A quarter past three. He rapped on the rear window of the truck cab, signaling to Park to start the engine. The truck edged slowly toward the northern end of Rue Vouillemont. A 35 mm camera peeked out from under the tarp covering the cargo bed, near the front of the truck.

A moment later, their target emerged from Avenue Édouard VII.

The first car was an armored police vehicle equipped with a cannon. The second was a small truck, another armored vehicle that had been newly reinforced with steel plates. It carried the takings from that day's races in cash. According to the papers, the Race Club could make 100,000 silver yuan in a single day. On a day like this, for the Champagne Stakes, there must be at least 500,000 yuan circulating in the Race Course, and Ku was certain that at least 100,000 would be in this armored truck. This was the first cash transport of the day, and it was leaving the Race Course quietly, before the last race ended. It would send most of the Race Club's takings for the day directly to its coffers. This was the truck he would attack.

Marksmen were waiting on the roof of a two-story building on the left-hand side of Rue Vouillemont. They were armed with the grenade launchers that the White Russian woman had sold him. He had recognized them from a glance at the diagram, having seen photos of many different weapons in the Soviet ammunition course he took. They looked like rifles mounted on a two-legged tripod, but they fired grenades, not bullets. He didn't know the precise Chinese name for these weapons, but then they probably weren't available on the Chinese market. The most exciting thing about these launchers, and the reason why he had planned this particular operation, was that they could fire grenades that penetrated armor, straight into the heart of a target, where they would explode.

Unfortunately, he hadn't had much time to train the marksmen.
They took their boats beyond Wu-sung-k'ou, where he had them float buoys in the water and sail about fifty meters away. Then his men would lie prostrate on the roof of the boat's cabin, in the exact positions they would be taking up during the operation, and shoot at the buoys. He didn't care about wasting ammunition; he wanted to make sure they would get it right. When the waters were calm, they always hit their targets—he had handpicked the best marksmen. But whenever it was windy, and the buoys began to drift, their hit rates plummeted. They weren't used to these launchers, or to the trajectory of the grenades as they traveled toward their targets.

But he had planned for all that. That was precisely why they were attacking from Rue Vouillemont. He knew the armored vehicle's route inside out. It had to drive along Avenue Édouard VII, the boundary between the French Concession and the International Settlement, and turn onto Rue Vouillemont from there. Those arrogant bastards, he thought. They hadn't even thought to change the route occasionally in case they might be attacked.

The rules of the road differed between the French Concession and the International Settlement. In the latter, cars drove on the left according to the British system, but the Municipal Office stipulated that cars in the Concession had to drive on the right, and it wouldn't budge.

(Ku had no way of knowing that the Board of Works and the Municipal Office were in talks to standardize traffic rules in Shanghai, and that from the end of that year onward, all cars in Shanghai would have to drive on the left. Shortly thereafter, the Kuomintang government would turn that into national law.)

The armored motorcade drove out of the road to the left of the public toilets, and made a U-turn around the opening in the median on Avenue Édouard VII. As it turned into Rue Vouillemont, it would have to stop briefly on the left-hand side of the road.

Shanghailanders had long thought that the traffic rules in the two concessions should really be standardized. At this intersection,
for instance, cars making a left turn out of Rue Vouillemont would have to turn onto the far left lane of Avenue Édouard VII. Drivers often began to turn the steering wheel before they even reached the street corner, to avoid the traffic on Avenue Édouard VII and cut directly into the queue. But this also meant that they were driving straight into southbound traffic on the left-hand side of Rue Vouillemont. Ku discovered that the armored truck always made this turn very carefully. It would stop for about ten seconds, to avoid running into those impatient drivers. After all, it was carrying a truckload of cash.

The sun beat down on the red armored trucks. Snipers hid inside the police vehicle, which had machine guns on the turrets. Ku peered out at the truck from behind the tarp. The camera slid to one side, beneath his chin, to give him room. Once he started shooting, the cameraman appeared to forget how frightened and exhausted he was. There were two parallel rows of rivets along the edge of the armored truck's rectangular body. Ku waited.

The road was white with the sunshine, and he couldn't make out the glow of the launchers. But in the split second before his eardrums vibrated with the explosion, he saw the grenades tear open the armor of the police vehicle and explode its turret, the top of which lifted off altogether and lodged in the branches of a nearby tree.

All the way along Avenue Édouard VII, Race Course Road, and Mohawk Road, firecrackers rang out. He had arranged for them to explode along the route to the Race Course, like a string of those ancient beacon towers used to warn against invasion. Finally, the Race Course itself would be rocked by explosions. The deadliest bombs he had were hidden in the toilets beneath the VIP box.

He saw Park jump out of his own truck and run toward the armored truck. According to the plan, he would kill everyone on that truck, and drive it away to the film studio on Rue Gaston Kahn, where he would hide until it was dark. Then he would drive quietly to the banks of Chao-chia Creek, where a small boat would be waiting for him.

The Race Course and environs

With the finish line in sight, he turned to look at the cameraman. He wanted to watch the film of his own masterpiece as soon as he had time. But just then, he saw the steel plate on the right-hand side of the armored truck shift just a crack, and he realized that he had overlooked the rivets. A pale face shimmered behind the dark holes, he saw the glow of a machine gun, and the two men running behind Park fell dead to the ground. Park pulled out his Mauser, and waved his arms, as though he was about to leap into the river. Then his arm was torn off at the shoulder by a barrage of bullets, and it fell to the ground before he did.