Night in Shanghai (18 page)

When they had finished, Du spoke. “It is only a matter of time, now. But we
will
be defended—Shanghai is where Chiang will launch the War of Resistance. I have his word. We won’t lie down like the north!”

“Can we possibly beat them?”

“Maybe not, but we can fight to buy time. Factories have to be dismantled and rebuilt, gold and silver bullion moved to safer places.”

Lin felt his face twisting. He had been assuring all of his Americans that even if Shanghai fell, there would likely be no actual battle.

At the Royal, he had gathered the seven remaining Kings into the back room. “It’s coming,” he told them, “no way to deny it. You will have all heard that Peking and Tianjin have given up. Very little fighting. But next they will be coming to Shanghai. So each of you, one man, then another, you must tell me you understand. Because these are new conditions. If you have your fare and you wish to go, you have our blessings, never mind your contract, and please do not waste any time. So.” He turned to Alonzo, the eldest. “Mr. Robbins?”

“Staying here,” Alonzo said with ease. “We’ll hunker down much as we have to.” They all knew he meant him and Keiko.

“Mr. Cole?” Lin Ming said to the French horn player, and Lester answered, “Staying.”

“Mr. Mutter?”

“Staying,” said Errol. “I understand the risk.”

Lin sensed the tightening in Thomas. Fate that his friend’s grumbling brass section should hang on until the end. “Charles and Ernest?” he said to the brothers.

They looked at each other in confirmation. “We stay long as Tails stays,” said Ernest. “We don’t have the money anyway.”

“Mr. Ames?” Lin said to the guitar player.

“Leaving Thursday,” Will said. “Saved the tourist-class fare.” His eyes flicked from Thomas to Lin. “I hope you’ll give me my last paycheck a couple days early.”

“We will. Mr. Pratt?” he said to the trumpet player.

“I’m going,” said Cecil. “Same boat as Will.”

“Fair enough then,” said Lin. “That leaves you, Mr. Greene.” He had not addressed Thomas that way since they left Seattle, but this was a formal roll call.

“Far and away the best place I’ve been,” said Thomas. “Staying.”

“All right. But you should understand that this nightlife, this whole world of
Ye Shanghai
, could vanish the minute they take over.” Up in Tianjin, where Japan had held a concession for many years prior to conquering the city as a whole the week before, they had run heroin dens in which customers, once injected with this powerful new version of opium, were stripped of their clothes and their cash and dumped, unconscious, into the sea. Recently a reverse tide had washed 107 naked male corpses back up the river, exposing the scheme to a horrified public. The “mystery of the 107 corpses” was sensational at first, and then sickening. “They could shut us down in the turn of a head. And if that happens, any of you who live in Tung Vong housing”—he sent a glance to Thomas, Charles, and Ernest—“will have to get out right away. So please think carefully.”

They assured him that they already had. And now, the next morning, here was Du telling him the city would not be giving up without a battle—a long, dangerous battle. “Perhaps if there was diplomatic intervention, we would not have to fight,” he said.

Du turned his stony gaze on him.

“If Chiang can get Hitler to stop discriminating against the Jews, it will gain us the sympathy of America and Britain,” Lin said. He was pushing it, but he could see the distant gleam of interest in Du’s eyes.

Please
, Lin Ming begged silently. It would make his father a hero, for there were great musicians among the refugees in Shanghai, also writers and doctors and scientists. Yet every Jew he had spoken to said the same thing.
We are only a few. There are so many more back in Germany
. He watched hopefully.

But Du Yuesheng shook his head. “Chiang Kai-shek has no interest in this. He still hopes Hitler will be his ally, despite what Duke Kung was told in
his
audience. Chiang will not push him on the Jews.”

“And Hitler won’t help us.”

“No.” Du spat out the word.

Lin pressed on, hoping to use Du’s anger at least to gain protection for the Jews in their city. “Shanghai, then—that is yours. And you have many thousands of Hitler’s Jews here, under your protection, already. I’m sure you have heard the complaints from the Germans in the International Settlement—they are demanding that you restrict your Jews, put them in a ghetto as they would do back in Germany.”

“No!” Du thundered, his sphinx-like façade shattered in a second by cold fury. “This is our city, not theirs. Shanghai is a free port, no restrictions. So it will remain.”

“Teacher,” Lin said with a grateful nod of his head, acknowledging Du’s commitment. It was something, at least.

“In fact,” said Du, “you give me an idea. I have already moved the corporate seat of my shipping interests to Hong Kong, along with a few vessels.”

Lin blinked back astonishment. This was the first clear indication he had heard that Du was actually preparing to flee Shanghai.
If he did that, all the cards would be in the air . . 
.

“Just a few vessels to Hong Kong,” Du was saying. “The bulk of Da Da’s fleet will remain here, and continue to serve the Subei ports. Perhaps we should have Jews on the board, and as proxy owners, to prevent the Japanese taking Da Da over.”

Lin made a note. In 1933 Du had engineered a takeover of the Da Da steamer line, whose merchant and passenger vessels dominated the “little Yangtze” routes between Shanghai and Haimen, Nantong, and Yangzhou, called the Subei ports. The Green Gang had already controlled the Stevedores’ Union and the China Seamen’s Union, holding sway over the docks and the sailors. Once they acquired Da Da, they were able to dominate the profitable regional shipping in and out of Shanghai. It was a business worth holding on to, even if one had to leave the country. His heart pounded at the thought; if Du left the country, he would be free. So would Song. “Are you planning to go?”

Du’s look hardened again. “Even though we remove Morioka at exactly the right moment, and our Fifth Army fights valiantly, we still may lose. Therefore contingencies are required. I need you to transfer significant amounts of bullion and cash to accounts in Hong Kong, to begin with. Much less than I have given to the war effort, of course”—he added nuance with a meaningful lift of one eyebrow toward his bald dome—“just what my wives and I would need.”

Lin readied his pen, seeing the brilliance of Du’s hedge. No one could say he had not done his part to bankroll China’s defense, even though what actually happened to that money after he gave it to Chiang Kai-shek was an unanswered question. That was not his problem. He had given, generously.

And he knew his empire, every corner of it. Lin needed his pen and notebook, but the older man could speak from memory not just on his shipping lines but on all the nested tangle of his directorships, corporations, properties, and bank accounts. He knew it all, to the last copper cash, just as he remembered every man he had ever ordered killed, and the terms of every deal he had concluded.

Lin looked at his notes. “So you moved several of Da Da’s vessels to Hong Kong?”

“Three to berths in Hong Kong, captains and crews for each steamer. Rent some godown space right away, so we are ready to ship. Even in war, goods must be moved.
Especially
in war.” There was some tea left in the pot, and he poured all the rest of it into their cups.
“Hun shui mo yu,”
he instructed his son. Fish in troubled waters, profit by disturbance.

S
ONG YUHUA SAT
in front of her mirror Friday evening, August thirteenth, struggling to restore her inner calm as she applied rouge from a small pot. Two days before, Chinese troops had defied the ’thirty-two ban by marching into Shanghai, and were joyfully greeted by cheering crowds, including Song, who waved her handkerchief from the bridge above Suzhou Creek and shouted with the throng—
Ten thousand years to China!
Though she spilled tears of joy at the sight of troops, she also knew somehow that the brown dwarfs would not be stopped, not by these men, or any number of additional Chinese soldiers who might follow them. Demands and reprisals flew back and forth between the two governments as a result of the entering soldiers’ having broken the treaty, until the Chinese army promised not to fire first; thus was a fragile calm achieved.

In this pause, this bubble of safety, Du decided to go ahead with a large party he had planned for the evening. Scores of invitations had gone out, opera singers were engaged—Du adored opera, and despite his lack of education had earned the city’s respect as a connoisseur—and caterers worked furiously in the kitchens. By seven o’clock, black motorcars clogged the driveway and every room was full, even the foyer, with men and women in evening dress talking in fluid Mandarin and the lighter staccato tap of Shanghainese.

Song was about to rise when her door swung open suddenly, rudely, with no knock. She nearly let out some brusque words, but left them to dissolve in her throat when she saw it was Fiery Old Crow, who was always to be obeyed.

“Number fourteen,” he said curtly, and she followed him down the hall, knowing he meant one of the many small wood-paneled, curtained, and bulletproofed studies that lined the second floor. Du scattered his meetings among these rooms, always changing, so that no one outside the building ever knew his location.

Her mask almost cracked when she walked into the room and saw that the man waiting next to Teacher was Dai Li, the infamous head of the Nationalist Secret Police. He was known not only for killing Communists but for stretching their deaths out to be as long and entertaining as possible.

He has come for me
. The thought seemed to tear her heart out of her chest. But she steadied herself, watching him, waiting.

Within a minute, she saw there was no danger; he barely perceived her. He did not even glance at her body, tight-sheathed in crimson silk, or her hair, tied back with hothouse gardenias. This fit what was said of Dai—that he did not go with women, and not with men either, preferring to avoid the house thing altogether. He even required all the men under his command to be celibate as well. Whatever the reason, she was apparently invisible to him, and could breathe again.

“Here.” Du thrust out a copy of the
North China Daily News
, China’s most important English-language paper. “She reads English,” he said to Dai Li, as if this rare ability was commonplace among bondmaids.

“Teacher,” Song said respectfully, with lowered eyes. Quickly she scanned the article before starting to translate, and her last hopes sank. The foreign powers were calling on Shanghai to simply give up—surrender to Japan!

When she was almost finished putting the article into Chinese, the door clicked open and Lin Ming came in, making a silent reverence to Du and Dai Li. She came to the last paragraph: “However bitterly Japanese aggression may be resented, it can hardly be denied that its extension would be encouraged rather than stayed by physical resistance from the Central Government, and would be accompanied by such complete destruction of China’s resources that all hopes of national reconstruction would have to be indefinitely postponed.”

The silence of outrage filled the room. Everyone had been hoping the Concession powers would help them—depending on it, in fact.

Du spoke first. “How dare they print such a treasonous demand?”

“They are telling us to what? Form a puppet government?” said Dai Li. “Just like they did in Manchuria, with ‘Emperor’ Pu Yi!”

“That poor fool,” said Du. “Haven’t you heard it said? The ghost of one devoured by the tiger helps the tiger to devour others.”

Dai Li nodded. “England and France and America do not care if we fall to Japan or anyone else, so long as they can keep making money.”

A rustle of movement brought Du’s attention to Lin, who still stood beside Song, his face full of pain. “Teacher, forgive my intrusion, but I just heard the news from Uncle Hua that you have been awaiting. Thomas Greene received an invitation today by message boy from Admiral Morioka, to tea.”

“Tea?” said Du. “Where? When?”

“Tomorrow, at the hour of the rooster. Café Volga on Avenue Édouard VII.”

“It’s a trap,” guessed Dai Li.

“Trap of what?” countered Du. “Our men aren’t going to be out in the open.”

“All I know,” Lin said, “is he sent his boy with the invitation. And Thomas Greene accepted.”

Song wanted to scream and tear at her hair. How could he accept, after he had been warned—by Lin, by her—

Dai Li, with his bulbous forehead and flabby midsection, bounced from one foot to the other in a dark troll parody of childish excitement. “We won’t miss. His mother! We’ll kill everyone within ten feet of him.”

“Not the piano player!” said Lin. “Not the American.”

She touched his arm from behind, wanting to get him alone so they could talk.

Du turned toward Lin’s voice and saw to his surprise that Song was still there, standing behind Lin, listening. “Go,” he ordered, and she obeyed.

It was past eight the next morning when she awoke to the thud of bombs and distant, toylike pops of gunfire. She jumped up. Plumes of smoke were rising above the rooftops far to the north, well beyond Suzhou Creek, in the direction of Japanese Army Headquarters. She prayed their evil command center had been hit by Chinese bombers. Late last night, word had raced through the Party that a full-on Chinese counteroffensive was about to start.

Just as she began to dress, Ah Pan slipped in. “Elder Brother’s downstairs.”

Thanks to heaven
. “Have Lin wait for me in the garden. Bring Dongting oolong and
xi fan
. Tell him by the time the tea is ready to pour I will be there.” She paused in front of the mirror to put up her hair. “Go!”

Ah Pan vanished.

On the back lawn she found him waiting, brooding as he stared across the back wall toward the smoke. For the first time ever, he looked old to her, his face sunken, cheekbones bulging. He looked more like Teacher.