The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics (34 page)

Wong found himself staring directly into the angry eyes of Commander Zhang, who was revving the accelerator, using the car engine’s roar to scare shoppers out of the way.

‘What do we do?’ Marker said.

‘This,’ Wong replied, whipping the blanket off the elephant. ‘Elephant,’ he called out in Shanghainese at the top of his voice. ‘Come and see the elephant. Real elephant, come and see.’

Two families walking nearby ran over to get a look, and were soon followed by a school party taking a short cut through the building on their way back from an arts museum. An elephant was much more interesting than anything else they had seen that day. People poured out of a nearby shoe shop and filled the corridor.

‘Come see an elephant, elephant, real live elephant,’ Wong continued to holler at the top of his voice.

The word spread. Two hundred children who had been forced to watch the school concert in the atrium leapt out of their plastic seats and poured into the internal avenue where the elephant lay asleep on its platform.

The police car, which had been creeping forward, came to a halt as a river of infants poured into the increasingly crowded space between it and the elephant.

Commander Zhang restarted the siren and honked the horn at the same time. She leaned out of the driver’s window and shrieked: ‘Out of the way! Move away, move away.’

But the rush to see the elephant had turned into a stampede.

Zhang and Xie stopped the car and scrambled to get out, aiming to pursue their quarry on foot.

‘Time to go,’ said Wong, and all four of them started to push again. Fired by the knowledge that they actually did have the strength to get this seemingly impossible weight moving, they quickly managed to start the platform rolling, this time angled to the left. The rolling show quickly recaptured its momentum, chased by dozens of small children, and was soon speeding down a mercifully straight corridor towards a source of bright light which they hoped was an exit.

Wong looked behind them. He saw that Commander Zhang had leapt back behind the wheel, leaving Sergeant Xie to manhandle the crowds of school children out of the way. ‘Move, brats, move,’ the officer shouted, waving his pistol and kicking at them.

Ahead of them, the light
did
prove to be an exit—albeit one with three stone steps. Nelson and his handlers raced out of the other side of the mall and bumped down the steps, losing a few wheels on the way. They emerged onto a dark, narrow street and, thanks to a slight slope on the pavement, rumbled straight into the road, knocking over a scooter rider and sending a number of cyclists spinning away. The platform swiftly moved past a startled traffic cop just as the lights changed and cars surged through the centre of the junction. With a mammoth effort from Cai, Nelson’s trolley moved slightly to the right and neatly slid up a cambered kerb onto the opposite pavement.

They were in a shabby inner city residential area, rumbling slowly along a mottled, crumbling sidewalk. Staring at the ground as she pushed with both hands, Joyce’s mind idly revisited a problem that had been in the back of it for several days: who chose the colours of the small bricks that made up Shanghai’s sidewalks, and why on earth did he or she think that dull orange and Robin Hood green were a good combination?

‘We need to hide. Let them go right past us.’ Cai was talking in Shanghainese to Linyao, but Joyce guessed what they were saying. It was clear to all of them that they had no chance of outrunning a police car.

She looked around and noticed that the area seemed familiar. They were on Xi Kou Lu, near the junction with East Jining Lu, in an ugly cramped area north of Old Town. The roads were small and narrow and dirty, with European-style buildings from the 1920s and 1930s cheek to jowl with recent factory blocks, warehouses and apartments. She had been here before. Who did she know who lived here?

‘This is where Flip lives,’ Joyce said to Linyao. ‘Maybe he can help us. Do you have his number? We could hang out at his place while the police go by—maybe.’

‘With this?’

‘You never know. Perhaps he’s got a bigger-than-average place? Well, anyone got any better ideas?’

No one did. ‘I have him on one-touch dial,’ Linyao said, pressing the buttons and handing the phone to Joyce.

There was an agonising ten-second wait before Flip picked up.

‘Yo, Linyao, howzit—’ Flip said, recognising the caller’s number.

‘It’s me, Joyce. I’m using Linyao’s phone.’

‘Yo, sista. Howditgo las’ night—’

‘Flip—we’re having an emergency. We need to stop and hide. I think we’re near where you live. Is there any place we can hide and—’

‘Dat’s easy. You can stop at de place of my uncle. He got one of dem ol’ courtyard houses.’

‘But the thing is—well, we’ve got to keep moving, because we’ve got to get out of town, and we don’t have much time.’

‘Lemme get dis straight. You gotta stop and hide. But also you gotta keep movin’. You gotta do boat of dese tings at once.’

‘Yeah, I know it sounds—’

‘Dat’s a bit tricky. But head to my uncle’s house firs’. Hide firs’. Den when it’s all clear, run. Where are you ’zackly?’

‘Corner of Xi Kou Lu and East Jining Lu, facing south.’

‘Gotcha. Go down the street to your right, look for the big magnolia tree on de lef ’.’

‘I think I can see the place you mean.’

‘Can you see de turd?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘De turd house. Red one.’

‘Oh, yes. I see it.

‘Dere’s an alley dere. Go down it. I on my way. I meet you dere in two.’

‘But—well, the thing is, we are travelling with a big piece of luggage sort of thing.’

‘No problem. My uncle’s place is huge.’

The house was easy to find, although difficult to reach since it was in a relatively narrow lane, and it took all of Cai’s load-managing skill to keep it moving. The edges of the platform scarred several cars and walls as it travelled along the lane.

Wong, struggling to recapture his breath, felt marginally better to be tucked into the alley. It was a pleasure to get away from that police car, and the danger, noise and pollution of the main thoroughfare.

But he could still hear the thunder of traffic and the wail of police sirens. The People’s Armed Police were probably not far behind them. And there was another sound too—what was it? Something low and chugging. After a moment’s thought he realised it was the distinctive ripping sound of a big motorbike—had the Special Agents abandoned their cars? The noise sounded as if it was only a few hundred metres behind then.

‘They’re coming. Must hide.’ He looked at the house where they were supposed to take shelter. It was an old and ugly
longtang
—the sort of courtyard that Beijingers called
hutongs
. These walled settlements were divided by thin back alleys. The one in front of them was a
shikumen
, a stone gatehouse which had elements of Eastern and Western architectural design. If Flip’s uncle had one to himself, he had more space than most families, who tended to share premises—but it would be unlikely to have any opening which would allow a large piece of cargo in or out. ‘Too small,’ said Wong, looking at the narrow red double-door. ‘We cannot get in with this thing.’

An electronic, amplified voice could be heard in the distance, getting louder.

‘Is the police!’ Wong said.

‘Nah, it’s Flip,’ Joyce said as her friend appeared.

He was gliding down the alley on his skateboard, a baggy-clothed Silver Surfer come to rescue them. He was using his rap-megaphone to announce his arrival. ‘Hey, guyz, I gotcha back.’ Flip didn’t know what it meant, but his friends in New York said it regularly when they wanted to assure each other that they would cover for them. ‘Be happy, dudes, I gotcha back.’

‘We need to get this hidden somewhere,’ Wong told him.

‘Relax, mun. I getchoo in. And your luggage.’

He rapped on the door and a small window opened to their left. There followed a conversation in Shanghainese.

‘Okay,’ Flip said. ‘He’s cool. Round d’back.’

Led by Cai, they trundled their platform over to the left of the house. Flip, though flabby, was surprisingly strong, and they quickly managed to reach a small wooden side door, painted green. Cai took off his shirt and used it to wipe his brow. His body was tightly muscled from long days of physical labour. Joyce wanted to run her eyes over his gorgeous torso but could feel her face reddening, so she turned away.

‘This door even smaller than front door,’ Wong complained.

‘’ave patience, Wong-
sheng
,’ Flip said. He banged twice on the wall.

They heard an answering shout from inside, then the sound of chains rattling over cogs. The noise grew and was followed by the unmistakable clink of gears and pulleys. An entire section of wall—door and all—started moving to one side and tucked itself away, classic moving infrastructure à la James Bond.

There wasn’t time to give this miracle the round of applause it deserved, or even to gape and be amazed by it. Instead they quickly pushed the platform inside. Once they were all in the courtyard, the hidden machinery was operated in reverse, and the wall pulled itself shut behind them. They found themselves in an open space lined with boxes and packing cases. It was a small factory of some sort. There were pallets piled high with crates stamped in several languages, and the words ‘Goods for export’.

‘Dis my uncle.’

A smiling old man with no teeth and a large moustache nodded a greeting to them.

Through a door behind him, they could hear the click and whirr of a number of machines, plus the electronic shushing noise of massed banks of electronic equipment with their built-in fans.

‘What do you do here?’ Joyce asked, strolling through the doorway and peering closely at a machine. She could see disks popping out of a hole onto a conveyor belt. ‘Oh. You make DVDs or something?’

‘Yep,’ said Flip. ‘Six hundred a day. Dey plannin’ to get new machine put de total number up over a tousan’ a day.’

‘
Cheese
. Is this where all the Chinese pirate DVDs get made? All those Hollywood movies that you can buy on the street for a dollar?’

Flip looked affronted. ‘Dey am not pirate Hollywood DVDs,’ he said.

‘Oops, sorry. Didn’t mean to insult you. It was just—you know, the secret wall and all that. And this doesn’t look like a factory. It just looks like, well, a house sort of thing.’

Flip flipped his scowl into a smile. ‘Don’t worry. What I mean is dey am not pirate Hollywood DVDs sold on the street in China. Dey pirated Hong Kong DVDs sold on the street in the United States. Dey love the kung fu stuff over dere.’

Over the next two minutes, the squeal of the sirens became louder, and then louder still—clearly, a number of vehicles were combing the back alleys where the
longtangs
were. But after another minute, the sound diminished in strength. They had found nothing and were travelling further east.

Wong and the team held their breath until the sound disappeared—then gave a silent cheer, punching the air and doing little dances. Joyce kissed Flip, who blushed.

‘No time to waste,’ said the feng shui master. ‘Only twenty-six minutes left before the—you know.’ The crew prepared to move again. ‘Must go.’

Flip’s uncle gave a signal to his staff to slide the wall open. The young man pointed Wong in a direction away from the main road. ‘Go to de lef ’. You keep out of de way of trouble.’

‘But it’s blocked,’ said Wong, looking at a narrow alley piled high with boxes, rubbish bins and other debris.

‘He can clear it,’ said Flip.

The old man banged a gong and the boxes and bins were automatically retracted into the garages they had apparently spilled out of. They were all on strings and pulleys, like a theatre set.

‘We have dis special route for makin’ sure we can get the CDs and DVDs out efficiently,’ said Flip. ‘But government people in big vans who come lookin’ for us have difficulty reachin’ us.’

‘Majorly cool,’ said Joyce.

They started pushing the trolley down the alley.

Jappar Memet snatched up the phone. ‘Yeah?’

‘Number fourteen calling for number one—’

‘Yeah, yeah, wot is it? What’s goin’ on? Spit it out. Yer already on scramble.’ He had been standing by with growing concern as his spies travelling with the Chinese and American Presidents had reported that the two targets had failed to leave the Shanghai Government Building and head to the Grand Theatre on schedule. And a team member who had a vantage point in Renmin Square reported that American and Chinese guards at the theatre were using their walkie-talkies a lot and running back and forth. Something was afoot.

‘We been rumbled,’ number fourteen whispered. ‘The alarms have gone off. Everyone’s going crazy. I’m trying to find out exactly—’

‘It couldn’t be our bloody operation. It must be somefing else. There’s no bloody way they could have found out—’

‘They have. I think they have. I heard someone say something about an elephant. They must have—’

Memet winced. ‘Shite. No, no, nooo.’ He gave a low, guttural moan. Everyone else in the room shivered and moved away. It was the sound he made when he was about to commit an act of violence: it might be against a sofa, a human being, a cat—you could never tell. If something serious had gone wrong with Operation Px2, he would be furious beyond imagining. They had spent a year meticulously planning this caper and thought they had covered every base.