Night in Shanghai

5

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, STILL reeling from his discovery, Thomas attended a lawn party at a Tudor-style estate in the western suburbs of the International Settlement, a wealthy area favored by Shanghailanders, as the white foreigners who had settled in Shanghai generations before liked to call themselves. Their guests were a Caucasian mix of business people, teachers, missionaries, and the interlopers of every stripe who were everywhere, seeking to explain East to West and vice versa. There were also a few dozen Chinese in gowns or business suits, and one or two oddities like himself. Everyone appeared prosperous, from the women in silk stockings and heels to the men in handmade suits with spectacles and timepieces of solid gold. Too successful-looking to be Communists, in his opinion, but then of course he remembered Song, encased in brocade with huge jewels clipped to her ears; she had fooled him.

He loaded his plate at the buffet, choosing from plump pink prawns and roast beef and rack of lamb, cucumber salads, and strawberries with clotted cream. He loved the food at these parties, which was why he often took advantage of the invitations pressed into his hand at the informal receiving line with which he ended every show. He also enjoyed being a guest in rich people’s homes, just as he liked getting the same wage a white player earned.

But here in Shanghai, he did miss Western food. Chen Ma cooked only two things, Chinese food and Southern food. The first had wearied him, and the second he had never liked to begin with. With Anya, he had visited restaurants often, of every nationality and type, usually late at night, when he got off work. They had been faithful about eating at restaurants, because it was the only time when she ate.

It had not been easy to end things. Thomas took her to dinner after the show, as he always did, and by the time they were in a rickshaw, being pulled by a straining coolie back to his studio on Peking Road, it was 3:30 A.M. She rode pressed against him as she always did, unsuspecting; he had planned to say nothing until they were alone together, in bed.

He might as well have poured ice water on her. She was out from the sheets in a second, pulling down her scarves and dumping her fake jewels into a bag.

“Anya,” he said, trying to pull her back.

“Stop it.”

“Don’t do that.”

“If that is all I am,” she swore, “even one wink I will not sleep here!” It took him more than an hour just to convince her she did not have to move right then, before dawn. He made it clear he would rent another place and pay for eight months, but this, of course, she quickly refused.

After that came apologies and accusations, tears, humiliations, and declarations of good intentions, until at last she accepted his offer of eight months’ rent. An agreement reached, they fell into an exhausted sleep. The next day he helped her make arrangements, gave her the money, and she was gone. What surprised him was that he did not miss her, beyond the pleasures of sleeping with her, and the trips to restaurants.

He finished his food, and handed off his empty plate to a Chinese servant with an easy, absent smile.

Strolling the lawn as a digestif, he found himself talking with a trio of foreigners, British, German, and American. When he walked up, the American, a businessman from Pennsylvania, was holding forth about China and Japan. “You see how sloppy everything is here? How much everything has to be greased?” the man said. “It’ll be cleaned up spit-spot if the Japanese win. Now they know what they’re doing. Ed Rollins, Cleveland. Pleasure.” He extended his hand jovially to the white fellow standing on Thomas’s left, who turned out to be British, then to the other fellow, the German, and finally, almost as an afterthought, to Thomas himself.

Once acknowledged, Thomas responded to what he had said. “Do you really think it’s all right for Japan to invade China just because they seem more organized?”

“Works better for us,” Rollins quipped.

“I’ve heard Germany’s pretty organized,” Thomas shot back, keeping it serious. “Think they should take over the U.S.?”

“Now, wait a minute-”

“We would do very well,” the German cut in, a grin stretching his blustery Hanoverian whiskers. “But all of you are missing the point. The danger to the world is not Japan. It is the Jews. And you here in Shanghai, you are letting them in! No other country in the world is so stupid to do that.”

“My good man,” said the Brit, pouring on the plumminess, “Shanghai is an open port. Everyone is welcome here. And so it will remain.”

“Jews are good for work and labor,” said the German. “No more.”

Thomas stared, amazed he was hearing this.

“They breed,” the German added.

Thomas closed his eyes, and back to him came one of those powerful, long-ago memories, dreadfully important but glossed over by scarring until now. He was nine but runty for his age, on account of his father having fallen in France and them running chronically short of food, so he probably appeared too young to be out on the stoop by himself, although he was not. What he was doing that day was sulking; his mother wanted him to play the first ten Bach inventions in sequence, and he wanted to be out with his friends. As he hunched on the steps, two white ladies walked by, which already made him cringe back in fear, because they had steel-colored eyes and wore dead foxes around their necks. They looked at him as if he were a strange animal, revolting but interesting, and one said to the other, “They breed,” utterly careless of whether he could hear her or not. He remembered his sharp intake of breath, and his almost instantaneous decision not to tell his mother, who already suffered with so much.

Now, though, he spoke to the German. “Such claims have no place in Christian company, sir.”

“But I am right,” said the German.

“See here,” the Brit interrupted forcefully, “I must insist you stop. I agree with my friend here, Mr. Greene”-the man nodded his distinguished white head at Thomas, and in a rushing instant, Thomas realized he was the host of this party, it was he who had slipped the invitation card into Thomas’s hand a week before-“your comments are insupportable. This is my house, and my party. I insist you cease such talk.”

“And I insist that you know nothing of Jews,” said the German.

“There you are wrong,” said the Briton, as he pointed across the crowd to a man with a cane. “That is my friend of twenty years, Sir Victor Sassoon. He is a welcome guest here, as he is everywhere in Shanghai.” Now the silver-haired gentleman turned to Thomas. “Just like my friend here, Mr. Greene.”

“Actually,” Thomas replied, “I am not welcome everywhere in the International Settlement. I can’t walk in the front door of a hotel or restaurant.”

The Brit looked sad. “Ah, that is your American policy, not ours.”

“The Jews are your problem too,” the German said. “They are filth, not like us.” With a generous gesture he included Thomas in the circle. “We are gentlemen.”

“You are wrong about me,” said Thomas firmly. “They are filth?” He steadied his gaze right in the German’s eyes. “Then I am exactly like them.”

That night Kung’s ship docked at the Bund, bringing him back from Europe, and Lin Ming went downtown to meet him. He wanted to hear about his trip over brandy and a few cigars.

The shock was Kung’s deflated appearance, unexpected because sea journeys by their nature were restful. “Duke Kung, what’s happened? Are you ill?”

“My pride and my hope are wounded,” the older man said, “not my body, this time. Shall we go have a drink?”

“Precisely why I came,” said Lin, and they scrambled into a rickshaw and swayed comfortably down Avenue Édouard VII, on their way to a coffee shop Kung favored on a small street off Boulevard de Montigny. There they took a private back room, and ordered an expensive bottle of Armagnac, and also a steaming pot of Iron Goddess of Mercy with two tiny teacups.

Kung clipped a cigar and lit it. “Unfortunately, though it was the Soviets who asked me to set out in the first place, their plan had been abandoned by the time I reached Moscow. Nevertheless, I continued on to Berlin-you know I hoped I could get the Nazis to help us.”

“And?” said Lin.

“They will not.”

“I see,” said Lin heavily. “That is very bad.”

“It is,” said Kung, exhaling a tufting cloud of smoke. “But that is not the only reason for my fear. It’s because of what is happening to the Jews! They are seizing their property, their fortunes. My friends lost their banks. They are passing laws against them.”

“Are they all right, your friends?”

“Schwartz and Shengold? I still could not locate them. Their houses were locked up; I pray to God and Jesus they are safe. Young Lin, we must do something. This is a grave international crime. China has to take a stand against it.”

“Other countries have not.”

“All the more reason.”

“Why do you say ‘we’? What has this to do with me?”

“Your father is what it has to do with you. We have to help him see the importance of pressuring Chiang on this.”

“I don’t help Papa Du see anything,” Lin said, using his father’s popular local nickname. “He does what he wants.”

“He wants to beat Japan, doesn’t he?”

“No question.” Du had donated millions to Chiang for the war effort.

“If we take a stand against Germany on the Jews, the West might come to our aid against Japan.”

“Maybe,” Lin said, and also thought, but maybe not.

“There is no reason for the Jews to be persecuted,” said Kung.

Lin nodded; he himself had always had high regard for Jews, starting with Hiram Grant, one of his first recruits, a saxophone player long gone back to America. Hiram wore a gold Star of David around his neck which he never took off, and insisted that he was Jewish, though he was not. Hiram’s grandmother had been taken in during Reconstruction by a Jewish family in Ohio, who sent her to college and financed her education. She educated her son in turn, and he educated Hiram, who was conservatory-trained. All of them considered themselves members of the tribe of Israelites, and wore its golden symbol around their necks. Hiram revered Jews. They had given the priceless gift of an education to his grandmother, the same gift Du had given to Lin Ming; the difference was that his father used it to control him, while the Jews in Ohio set the Grants free.

He knew it was right to stand with Kung on this. It was a kind of filial piety-going beyond his father, whom he could never venerate, to do something for his country, and for all the world’s people. “Here is what you do. Invite the boss to a late-night dinner, you and him and Sun Fo.” He saw Kung nod as the implications clicked into place; Sun Fo, a big supporter of Jewish rights in British Palestine, was also the son of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic, and therefore royalty. He was someone Du would take time to meet. “Then once you are there-”

“-persuade him to insist Chiang Kai-shek pressure the Nazis about the Jews,” Kung finished. “He ought to do it, you know-he is Master of Shanghai. He has ten thousand Jewish refugees in the city already, maybe twelve. More all the time. They are under his protection.”

“The trouble is, he does what he wants.”

“You’re right.” Kung puffed on his cigar. “But I have to try. Because if anyone can make Chiang go to the Nazis about this, it is Du.”

“And if anyone can make Du go to Chiang, it is you,” Lin answered. They squinted, barely able to see each other through the cloud of smoke, but they understood each other perfectly.

Eddie Riordan made his ticket money, and by the twenty-sixth of July, the Kings were without a drummer. Thomas scrambled things once again, moving Alonzo’s slapping bass into the forefront for its percussive feel. There were eight of them left, and the lineup was top-heavy, with two reeds and three men on brass. Cecil Pratt, the trumpet player, would probably be the next to go, since he had been saving, but even then, they would still be out of balance. Thomas was bailing a sinking ship, and he knew it.

After midnight the theater became more relaxed, as it always did, the security at the front door a little less stringent, and this was the hour when Morioka walked in. They were in the middle of a Duke Ellington piece called “Blue Ramble” when Thomas recognized his blocky shape in the archway to the lobby. So did everyone else, for no sooner was he seated than Thomas saw Floor Manager Zhou and Wing Bean move into position.

Thomas played through the sweat, bending over the keyboard and the slow prance-rhythm of “Blue Ramble,” propelled by the paddling, naughty-sounding circles blown by Charles and Ernest on their layered saxophones. Luckily the song was simple melodically-until that one moment in the twelve-bar B section when they came to the sudden sustained chord, six voices with a growling ninth on the bottom from the valve trombone, played by Errol Mutter. It was the key to the song, the unexpected ninth, the twist of fate, the turn, the dissonance. It was the misstep, the instant that changes the course of a life, and it came just at the moment Morioka walked in. They played to the end, and he called a break. Quickly the ballroom floor and stage emptied as dancers returned to their tables and musicians went off to refresh themselves.

The lights flickered up and Morioka rose and walked through the tables, Zhou and Wing Bean hovering as close as possible behind him. But once Morioka reached the empty dance floor, they could not stay so close behind, so they hurried around to the side of the stage where they could idle near a table and, from ten meters away, hear fairly well.

Morioka obliged them by talking loudly. “Mr. Greene, I give compliments.”

“Thank you.”

“I very like the jazz.”

“Thank you for listening.” Thomas felt himself shaking, as his voice pitched up a notch to match the Admiral’s.

“Jazz records, I get from diplomatic pouch.” Suddenly Morioka lowered his voice and spoke in a whisper, imperceptible from the distance at which Zhou and Wing Bean stood, his lips barely moving: “According my spies, some Chinese are watching you. They want to use you to kill me.”

“Diplomatic pouch? Lucky man,” Thomas said, in the same loud voice they had been using. Then, in the same thread of a whisper, he answered, “I know.”

“Yes. So I bring you this.” Admiral Morioka said at high volume, and held out a heavy, shellacked seventy-eight in a paper sleeve. “I present you.” In a whisper he said, “I will invite you somewhere. Say you will go. Do not go. Understand? Do not go.”

“You’re too kind. A new record?” Thomas peered at the label, and whispered, “I understand.” When he raised his face, he said, “Count Basie Orchestra! Several of my men came from his band.”

“Is it so?” Zhou and Wing Bean had edged closer, putting an end to the whispering. Morioka went on, “Now they have a new saxophone player, the name is Lester Young. I never hear any sound like this before! Please. Take this. Listen this musician.”

“All right,” said Thomas. He turned the disc over: “One O’ Clock Jump.” Count Basie Orchestra. “Lester Young. I will listen to him. Thank you.”

Morioka made a slight, crisp bow, and turned away.

Zhou and Wing Bean bore down on Thomas instantly. His insides were shrieking, but he managed to speak calmly. “You heard him. He complimented my playing, and gave me a new record.” He held it up. “Told me to listen to this saxophone player, Lester Young.”

They appeared to accept this, and he finished out the night in a state of controlled panic. What really shocked him was that this plot, this ultra-secret plan Lin Ming had warned him about, had already been penetrated by Japan. He knew that until he had it sorted out, he should tell no one of the words he and Morioka had just exchanged, not even Lin.

But he did hurry straight home after closing, so he could crank up the parlor gramophone.

The first half minute of the twelve-bar blues was a long, frisky piano intro, building atop a light, sibilant drum line. But then the whole orchestra came in, and on top of it the most fully expressive saxophone solo he had ever heard, touched with pleasure and regret. He rocked back on his heels in awe, and cried out for more when it ended far too soon.

This Admiral was a music lover, the real thing. As soon as the song was over, Thomas set the needle back to the beginning, exhilarated, certain this moment would always stand as a before-and-after mark in his understanding of music.

A wry trumpet line came in, and by the second or third listening, Thomas felt sure he recognized Buck Clayton’s sound. It could be Clayton; he had finally left Shanghai after many months of saving while playing Yellow Music in an all-Chinese club. They are fixing to have a war here, he had said to Thomas over tea and blintzes at Rosie’s on Rue de L’Observatoire, two days before he left, and I want no part of it. He had sat across the table as urbane and perfectly dressed as ever, but gray from worry. “I put it to the rest of the Harlem Gentlemen, those who are still here playing the tea dances at the Canidrome, and they all agreed with me, all except one,” said Clayton. “They’re all leaving.”

“Who’s staying?” Greene had asked, curious.

“Stoffer, my pianist. He’s got himself hired on with Earl Whaley’s Syncopators at the Saint Anna. Earl says he’s staying in Shanghai, no matter what. Well, I wish him the best. You too.” And they drank to their futures, about to diverge. Buck left, and now here was his trumpet on “One O’ Clock Jump,” like a clarion call. Fixing to have a war here.

It was almost four o’clock when the teenaged brothers rattled their keys at the front door. They came in rubber-limbed and slurry from drink, but stood at attention the instant they heard the new saxophone solo. “Who’s that?” said Charles, and that was it, sweet land of liberty. They refused to go to bed that night until they had played the record at least fifteen times, hovering next to the sound box, its volume doors swung all the way open. Watching them, he could see a glimmer of the furious journey they were going to take with their reeds as they aged, and the music grew and changed with them. Their form was a young one, his was old. He envied them that.

And it was his job to see that they were safe.

In the third week of July, Du Yuesheng met H. H. Kung and Sun Fo for dinner at Lu Bo Lang, a venerable restaurant next to the Yu Garden in the Chinese City, to talk about the Jewish question. Du brought Lin Ming with him, for the same reason he often brought Song to these events, because men who had been educated abroad sometimes made references to that world, and used foreign phrases, and Du wished to miss nothing.

Over shark’s fin and water shield soup, sautéed abalone, and tofu-skin pastries of minced quail and wild mountain mushrooms brought from Yunnan, only pleasantries about health and family were exchanged, as custom demanded, while the gentle net of guanxi, relationship, was sewn into place. Finally, when the dishes had been cleared, a crock of warm Shaoxing wine brought out, and Kung’s first cigar lit, Sun Fo delivered a passionate denunciation of the Germans’ mistreatment of their Jewish citizens, now streaming into Shanghai by the thousands. Du listened and said nothing.

“These people are under your protection,” said Kung.

But still Du had no response.

“If I may, Teacher,” said Lin Ming, and all eyes went to him. Du nodded permission. “Were you to succeed at this, you would be remembered as a great benefactor. Not just now. Throughout history.”

As he had guessed it might, this kindled the glow of interest. Kung and Sun sensed it, and notched forward.

“What did Hitler say, when you raised this matter with him?” asked Du, since they all knew Kung had just returned from an audience with the Führer.

“He said, ‘You don’t know Jews.’ It’s strange, because he was an impressive man otherwise, quite smart.” Kung’s habitually calm expression was punctuated, as always, by the steady brilliance of his small eyes, which took in everything from behind his tortoiseshells. “But Chiang Kai-shek is his equal, his peer, he is the leader of China, so perhaps if he approached him…”

“What did Hitler say about helping us against Japan?” Du asked then, which was what they all burned to know.

Kung removed his round glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He was rich and powerful, but no longer young, and now he sagged with disappointment. “He refused,” he said, and pushed his frames resolutely back into place. “His advice was, give up and join Japan’s East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere immediately.”

“Hand ourselves over to Japan?” said Sun Fo incredulously.

“As if we would do that,” said Kung.

“Never,” Du agreed. To Sun Fo he said, “We’ll do our part. Tokyo has placed a new chief officer here, an Admiral, and we are about to kill him. I have brought an assassin in from outside, a man with no ties or temptations.” He turned to Lin, and indulged his shallow crescent of a smile. “And he is watching your piano player day and night.”

As a result of handing over the diamond, Song was bumped up a notch, and assigned a new guide. Most Party members in the city belonged to cells, kept small, so that if one person was caught, the others could scatter and start over. Song had no cell, since she lived as a spy. Thanks to her, they had periodic reports on the money flow from the Green Gang to the Nationalist armies, and twice had learned of a Green Gang plot against them in time to avert disaster. When she was a new recruit in 1933 and Du maneuvered a hostile takeover of the Da Da Steam Navigation Company to gain a fleet of merchant and passenger ships, the Party knew about it even before the public did. She had always seen her contact one-on-one.

All she had been told about the man she was meeting today, her new guide, was that he was a person of some import in Shanghai’s theater circles. She already knew she would be deferential, for the relationship was always vertical, never a meeting of equals. In this way the Party was like Confucianism, which unsettled her, because Confucianism was so traditional.

When she stepped off the trolley, she saw by the clock tower atop the Wing On Department Store that she was early; her destination, Cyrano’s on Peking Road, was nearby. So she wandered into the store, past gleaming counters of merchandise and smiling attendants, and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. There, a dim, slow-churning dance floor of tightly pressed couples swayed to a Filipino band. These were not prostitutes; those were on the highest floor. These were dance hostesses, and couples who came looking for a dark place to embrace. She stood on the side, her arms crossed in front of her waist, watching them clutch each other, seeing love the only way she could, as a spectator.

Thomas Greene had broken it off with his Russian girlfriend; she had read about it in the xiao bao, the mosquito press, which, in addition to its cheap scandals and gossip, also ran some of the city’s bravest anti-Japanese editorials.

So he and the gray-eyed Russian had parted company; she had set up a separate kitchen, as the Chinese would put it, and he had kept the studio by the river. And here, watching the anonymous couples press together in the false daytime darkness, she thought of him, and of dancing, something she had never done. She did not know how, just like she did not know how to do the house thing. Obviously she had done it wrong, because even Du did not come back for more, after he had bought her. She watched the dancers rock on their feet, embracing in public.

She thought of the meeting coming up, and moved her hand to her thigh. Her new guide was someone of known sophistication-there would be a conversation, reflections, thoughts. She missed those early years of talking with theater people in cafés while Du pursued his amours. She missed the companionship of people who thought and debated and visualized the future.

She remembered the day she was sworn in. Her directions took her up Henan Road, past the Mei Feng Bank of Sichuan, past Peking Road, and almost to Suzhou Creek before a young man she had never seen before fell into step beside her. She smiled as if she knew him, and they continued along the creek past the Shanghai Waterworks. Her sponsor, Huang Weimin, the editor and writer, had told her they were to look like any couple.

The man took her hand and led her into a narrow alley that ran between the Capitol Theater and Taylor Garage, where he knocked twice on a door that was quickly opened to a dim hallway. Down a corridor, up a narrow staircase, they came to an office where a man who looked like an ordinary clerk, the sleeves of his gown protected by cotton over-cuffs, looked up at them. “Yes?” he said, and put down his fountain pen. “Who is this? Eh, Huang Weimin’s candidate.” His eyes stayed on her as he picked up a memo with a few lines of flowing characters on thin, translucent paper. “He told us about you. Stand right there.” And in just a few minutes, with no fanfare, no ceremony, and certainly no acknowledgment of the danger to her life, she was sworn in and registered to the Shanghai branch of the Communist Party of China. She had joined.

Magic pulsed from the orchestra in looping, sinuous waves as dancers pressed together in the dark, and she wondered why she kept coming back to places like this. To torture herself? She would be Du’s for another ten years. She turned her back on the music and hurried out into the street.

At the café, she gave her name as Mrs. Gao, Gao Taitai, according to her instructions. She was always Taitai something or other, since women of her age were almost never unmarried. They seated her in a private room, where she ordered a pot of tea and two cups. When the tea had gone cool, she poured herself a cup and drank it, and after that, another. It was a full half hour past the allotted time when she finally heard footsteps in the corridor and the door rattled for a fraction of a second in its frame before opening.

The irritation she had been nursing died inside her as she looked into the face of Chen Xing. She had met him at the Vienna Garden during her early exposure to Communism; he was the one who had told her about Miss Zhang, the lovely and pregnant dance hostess who had been planted like a water lily, keening and begging Song with her eyes to save her life. Did he know what had happened to the girl?

Since that time she had seen Chen Xing’s name in the press, and knew that he held various civic posts and served as director of some of Shanghai’s biggest banks. He was also a producer of plays, a leader of the League of Left-Wing Theater People, and the host of a radical salon. He was famous for his scandalous affairs with women. But though he was left-leaning, no one knew he was a Party member.

She could see by the flutter in his eyes that he was just as surprised to see her. No doubt he had been told only that he was meeting a member who had come up with not just information but also a diamond. He certainly had not expected it to be someone he knew, and above all not her, someone connected to Du. She caught the note of admiration in his appraisal, and saw him assume she had stolen the diamond from her master. Fool. No one steals from Du.

“Gao Taitai.” His smile was effortlessly smooth and vacant. “So nice to see you.”

She answered politely, “How is the family?”

Steps sounded outside the door. “Ah,” he said, “here is Miss Wu now.” And a girl came in, a child less than eighteen, cheeks firm and round like a honey peach. Who was she? His daughter? But a third person had never attended one of these meetings before.

In the next instant Song saw she was not his daughter, for she sat on his lap and curved her body against him, despite the fact that he was twenty-five years her senior. “Pleased to meet you,” Song said.

“Gao Taitai,” the girl replied, and went right back to simpering in Chen Xing’s ear.

He whispered back to her and fondled her through her clothes as if Song were not even there. She found it shocking. He was not even trying to attend to the business they had come to conduct.

Then abruptly, he pushed the girl off his lap. “Be a good child and go get an extra teacup and a basket of soup dumplings. No, two baskets. Wait for them and bring them back. You have raised my appetite.” And he squeezed the firm round of her behind as she turned away.

Song endured bolts of humiliation as she forced herself to review how much time and care she had expended in dressing before she left the house today. Nervous as a bed of pins, she had tried on a dozen dresses, eventually settling on a plain qipao of gray cotton which made her look left-wing and serious, but still pretty. She wore her hair as usual, sweetly knotted with flowers at the nape, because to have left Rue Wagner any other way would have been to invite notice. In the end the look suited her, and when she walked out the gravel driveway and through the iron gates, she knew she was beautiful, ready for anything. And now she had to stare painfully at Chen Xing nuzzling this child-bauble. Serene. Face of glass. She watched Miss Wu walk to the door with the excessive, untrained switching of a young girl.

By the time the door clicked shut, Song was in control again. “Lovely,” she said neutrally, hoping that now they could talk.

But what happened went beyond her expectations: he changed completely. The sophisticated ennui drained from his face. His spine lifted, his eyes clicked to a different and infinitely more focused shade of black. In one turn of the head she saw the theatrical producer, the salon host, the man of ideas. “She is spoiled and simple,” he said dismissively. His voice had changed too, become level and grainy; gone was the oil-slick politeness she had heard before. “Easy to deceive. I always bring someone who is pretty and wooden-headed, so they can see the places I go and the things I do as I want them to. Forgive the intrusion. It is actually safer this way, and now we have a few minutes alone.”

She stared. Which was the real Chen Xing, the rich, bored man of the theater, or this concentrated, severe figure who now sat across from her? “Any news from the north?” she said. By this she meant the advance of the Japanese, but also Party headquarters, where all major decisions were made. For the past two years, the top leaders had been operating out of caves in Yan’an. The brain trust was there, the future. One day, when she was free, she too would go there.

He leaned closer. “I do have news. Peking is silent as a tomb, everyone just waiting. Japanese troops are massed outside the city. They have taken Tianjin, and Tanggu, the port that serves both those cities.”

“And will our troops protect Peking?”

“No. Chiang has ordered a withdrawal.” It was like a blow to her chest. So Peking would be handed over to Japan without a fight.

“We must comply,” Chen said sadly. “We are a united front with the Nationalists now-and also, Chiang is right. We could never hold them off.”

The injustice of it flamed up, burning her, parching her. “Will they give Shanghai to Japan the same way?”

“No! Here we will kill them one by one, starting with that foul swine Morioka. I heard he showed up at the Royal again, to see that piano player.”

“Yes, I have details.” Though the story terrified her, she kept her voice even as she repeated what she had heard from Lin Ming. “He gave the American a new record, with a saxophone player called Lester Young. He gets them by diplomatic pouch. The American loves the song; I am told he listens to it over and over, and his own saxophone players, two skinny brothers, a couple of drainpipes, they listen to it even more.”

Chen Xing sat back in his chair, momentarily silenced. “A song,” he said, and paused again. “You know, Gao Taitai, you have learned more than the West-ocean language; you understand how they think.”

She was taken aback. “I do my best to serve the cause.”

“I know. You do a good job. Your skills are high. You have been noticed.” She felt her insides chill, for he meant the diamond, as well as her English.

“I will serve in any way. Never speak English again if they want.”

He raised a hand. “Just be careful. Now, the next thing we want you to do is support Du’s plan to kill Morioka. Do anything you can to help it work.”

“But they are our enemies. If they want to use an American as bait, we should work against them and-”

“Miss Song,” he said, so surprised at her that he used her real name, “your opinion was not requested.”

She blinked back.

“You will help this plan.”

“Yes,” she said, resistance hammering inside her.

“And also,” Chen continued, “we still need money. So if there is any way that you can-”

The door opened, and Miss Wu sauntered through. “Food is coming,” she said, proud of her competence in arranging this.

Chen Xing slid smoothly into his other self. “What do you mean, you think Hu Die is pretty? She’s a great actress-did you see her in Twin Sisters?-but she’s too noble to be pretty, almost like a carving, a face made of stone.” He drew Miss Wu to him. “I prefer a real girl!”

Song sipped her tea, watching them laugh and trade banter, understanding that the meeting was over. Chen Xing wore his public face now, puffy-eyed, weary, brined in a thousand shallow nights-a complete change.

He looked up. “As I was saying, Mrs. Gao, if there is any way that you can again attend the weekly salon, we would all be so grateful. What you contributed was valued by all, last time. We hope you will return again.”

She smiled neutrally. “I will try. Mr. Gao keeps me busy.” She rose, aware that her dress was frumpy and out of date and that she herself was old. “Please give my best to your family. Good day. Good day, Miss Wu.”

The girl looked up as if surprised she was still there.

She swept out, her final turn as the regal matron, and did not let her mask drop until she was outside, her heels tapping on the sidewalk, her profile echoing her in the shop windows she strode past. What was she going to do? She could not support a plot with Thomas as its bait. And what would she do with the diamonds, three in the wall behind her night table and at least twenty-five more in the pouch on the back of Du Taitai’s picture frame? Du Taitai had forgotten them once again, and no one else knew of their existence.

Maybe, she thought, boarding the clanging trolley, she should take them and emigrate. And this strange, exotic thought stayed with her all the way home, to Rue Wagner.

The assassin Du hired, Zhao Funian, came highly recommended by the Nationalists’ paramilitary force as a cold killer, though his background was ordinary in every way.

Zhao had been raised south of the Yangtze, in the painted beauty of Zhejiang, where his father owned five mu of land-and also had five sons, prompting Zhao Funian to leave home at an early age. This was the modern world, and men no longer had to spend their lives serving their clans, especially fifth sons with no land and no wives of their own. So he went to Hangzhou, where he managed a numbers game and collected monthly bribe envelopes from merchants, eventually becoming bodyguard to the city’s Beggar Boss. From there it was only a matter of time until the Nationalist Secret Police tapped him to eliminate collaborators. Competitive, clever, secretive, charming when he needed to be, he was perfect for the work.

“And the jazz man, is he to die too?” he had asked Du Yuesheng.

“Spare him, but only if you can.” Du’s eyes narrowed; they were dead eyes, Zhao noted, unencumbered by emotion. “The Admiral’s life is worth any price, Chinese or foreign never mind.”

Zhao knew this was the most important thing he would ever do. He spent excited hours in the little room he had rented in a house behind the Royal, smoking, stubbing out cigarettes on the windowsill, watching the back door and the musicians and the comings and goings of cooks and maids and waiters. He picked out the pianist easily, for he walked like a man in charge, and passed in and out without an instrument.

Still, Zhao Funian needed someone inside the theater to tell him what went on, especially any words that might be exchanged between Thomas Greene and that whore Admiral Morioka, and soon his crosshairs settled on a waiter named Cheng Guiyang. A few nights before, he had overheard him at a noodle stall near the theater after closing, speaking in the soft, sibilant accent of Wu, as familiar to Zhao Funian as his own voice. The man was from Zhao’s part of northern Zhejiang, maybe even from Pingyao County itself. Zhao had paused nearby, pretending to study the turnip-shred-stuffed cakes in the opposite stall, listening until he was sure and even, in a stroke of the gods’ favor, hearing the man’s name when another waiter walked past and addressed him: Cheng Guiyang. Thus blessed by fate, he had been able to learn enough things about the fellow to create a spiderweb of guanxi between them from the first hello. Cheng was a perfect target: he slept in a room of stacked bunks with seven other men, who called him Wing Bean; ate but twice a day; and sent every other copper cash back to his family.

Zhao made the opening move at two thirty A.M., after following the waiter to a food stall. Cheng was tearing into a plate of xiao long bao, soup dumplings filled with hot broth and ginger-scented pork. As he was passing, Zhao contrived to drop a handful of copper cash so that some would roll under Cheng’s stool, forcing him to stop eating as Zhao picked them up. “You should be more careful,” Cheng admonished him.

Zhao said, “Your accent-I know the speech of Wu. You are from Zhejiang?”

“Yes,” said Cheng, annoyance evaporating into curiosity.

“The northern part, near the Yangtze?”

“Yes-”

“Wait! My friend, this is not possible!” Now Zhao had assumed the opposite stool, moving as lightly as a shadow. “I believe I recognize you. Could you be from Cheng Family Village on the Li River?”

“I am!” Cheng stared.

“Your father brewed vinegar, isn’t it? The Tai Yang Company, that one? He was brew master there?”

Wing Bean’s eyes widened. “You knew my father?”

“Yes. Such a good man.”

“I don’t remember you.”

“I was from Guo Family Village.”

He saw Cheng studying him, raking his mind for a memory. Time to play his high card. “About your father,” he said, tilting his head in sympathy. “It’s too pitiable about him passing over.”

The younger man froze, stricken, and looked down at his half-eaten dumpling, the pork fragrance steaming up. He blinked, and closed his eyes for a second.

“There, my friend,” said Zhao, and settled a warm hand briefly on the younger fellow’s shoulder. “All will be well. The gods have watched out for you if they have brought you to Shanghai.”

“No. They have not.” Cheng lowered his head, and for a moment he looked no older than a child. “I work hard but I earn nothing. At home they need my help, but I can barely feed myself.”

“Ei,” said Zhao. “It’s like that, is it? Put yourself at ease.” He too was speaking in their home accent, pouring it on nice and thick. “Persons from the same native place should stick together, isn’t it so?” He held up some coins and called to the vendor for more dumplings. “Now, my friend-what is your name again? Your given name?”

“Guiyang. Cheng Guiyang. Everyone calls me Wing Bean.”

“Guo Liwei,” Zhao lied, indicating himself. “Now listen, Wing Bean.” He moved closer. “I’d like to lay a proposition before you.”

The next night, when Du’s retinue walked out of the Royal at two A.M., Song slipped a scrap of paper into Thomas’s hand at the door. Neither acknowledged the other or made eye contact; to all who observed, each gave the appearance of not even noticing the other. She walked right past him in her gossamer-silk qipao of ivory white, embroidered all over with pale pink butterflies, while he continued his conversation with a British man in black tie. Yet their hands touched, and when he took the paper, he touched her fingers quickly, reassuringly, in return. She vanished, and he moved the slip discreetly to his pocket as he went right on greeting people, burning inside. She had something to say to him.

And he knew her secret.

It was not until he was going home in the back of a rickshaw, his privacy assured by the open night air, that he unfolded the note, and felt himself soar:

Hua Lian Teahouse

Avenue Hing and Route Alfred Magy

29 July, Thursday, 3:00

When the day came, he found that the address was a considerable trolley ride away, almost to the western edge of the French Concession. As he watched the city stretch out and grow leafier from the clanking, rocking car, he ran through all the possible reasons she might have for summoning him. He disembarked early and covered the last stretch to Avenue Hing on foot, just to calm his pizzicato nerves.

The half darkness of the teahouse was cool after the blazing street, and no one was in sight, no staff, no patrons. He walked through a series of empty lattice-screened dining rooms until he came to a circular tower room, in which an old-fashioned octagonal window looked down through meshed trolley lines to the street below. He barely saw the rose-patterned wallpaper, the white damask set with a steaming teapot and two cups, because there she was, rising from her chair to greet him, face opening in a smile. “You came,” she said, and reached across the table to clasp his hand in greeting. She wore a plain cotton qipao, the two-inch spool heels favored by Shanghai women, and no jewels except tiny pearls in her pierced ears.

The door clicked behind him and he was jolted to see they were alone together, for the first time. “Miss Song,” he said.

“Call me Song.”

“Isn’t your name Yuhua?”

“That’s a feudal name, Jade Flower. I have never liked it. My friends call me Song.”

“All right, I will too.” His big dark eyes clouded with concern. “Say, is everything all right?”

“Not really.” She poured tea and pushed a cup across to him. “I asked you to come because there is danger to you, very grave. It concerns that Admiral Morioka who has several times come into your ballroom.”

“That!” he cried. “Believe me, I know.”

“You know?”

“Yes. It’s not hard to figure out. They want to kill him, and here he is coming into my orchestra and sitting through set after set like a man in a trance! I get it.”

She relaxed a little. “I know Du is planning something-I suspect Lin knows too. I didn’t know if he had dared to warn you.”

“It would be very dangerous for him to do that,” Thomas said pointedly, as a way of explaining why he would not say any more. Neither would he reveal that Morioka also knew.

“I need not have come.”

“Not at all.” His eyes, fringed with curly lashes, were warm. “I’m glad you called me here. I want everything straight between us, everything honest. So-I know, okay? I know about you. But I won’t tell a soul.”

All her alarms screamed and she fought to keep her voice calm. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I know. You are a Communist.”

“What?”

“It’s all right.” He covered her hand with his. “No one will ever hear it from me.”

She felt her mouth opening and closing, and no sound came out. He knew. Her life was ruined if someone knew. She had to change everything. “I must leave Shanghai immediately,” she blurted.

“No! Don’t do anything. I told you, it’s all right. You are safe. I will protect this as carefully as you do.”

She looked at him for a long time, desperately calculating. If he kept her secret, what would she have to give him in return? The instant the question bloomed in her mind, she saw herself, in an involuntary dreamlike instant, in his arms, an image she pushed away. Would that be his price? If it was, she would pay it. She looked at the gentle slope of his shoulders beneath his suit. “Can I trust you?” she said quietly.

“One hundred percent.”

“Who else knows?”

“No one.”

“Lin?”

“No one.”

She was trapped, and she knew it. Tears stung behind her eyes and wobbled her vision.

He said, “Believe me. Even if we never see each other again after today, no one will know. I swear it.”

She rose, deciding, and he rose with her, and they exchanged the brief embrace of a promise.

“Please be careful,” she said into his ear. “My life depends on it.”

“I will.” They sat down again, Thomas electrified from that moment of holding her. “May I ask about this contract with Du? Lin Ming told me you have a contract related to your debt.”

“My family’s debt.”

“Under that, you cannot-”

“No,” she said miserably. “I cannot. Even though that is not what I am to him. He has other women.”

His look was patient. “And how much longer does this contract last?”

She felt sadness spring up to prick behind her eyes, and she hated the answer she had to give, since it would extinguish all his desire. And she badly wanted his desire to stay alive. “Ten more years,” she said.

She saw how he paled. Ah, there, she had him: deflated. He would have no further interest in her after this. Why should he? He would have better things to do for the next decade than wait around for a broken shoe such as she was. She corrected herself; the phrase was harsh, she was no prostitute, but there was no denying that she had sold herself, long ago, and now he knew. She half expected him to make excuses and leave.

Instead he said, “Ten years is a long time.” His words sounded sticky, as if his mouth was dry. “Would there be any exceptions?”

“No,” she said, smiling a little, in spite of herself, at his sweet persistence. This was a foreign thing she liked, the way he showed himself, and strangely, she felt safe with him, safer than she felt in the Party. She wished she could stay with him forever. The Japanese were coming, everyone said they were surrounding Peking at that very moment, waiting to enter, uncontested-the Chinese army had withdrawn. Tianjin had fought for only three days, and now Peking was not going to fight at all. Next was Shanghai. She wished she could be with him when it happened, instead of in her little room on the top floor of Rue Wagner, with her maid, Ah Pan. The words of an essay by Wang Tongzhao came back to her-In both action and spirit, will you continue to resist or surrender to the enemy? She would resist, she wanted to be part of it. If only Thomas were part of it too.

But it was not even his war. “If we see each other at the theater, you must look right through me,” she told him. “We cannot talk, or meet… whatever you want to tell me, tell me now.”

He smiled. There were no words really for his world, the marble steps of West Baltimore, the ringing sound of a piano in a conservatory practice room, his mother, his grandmother. It could be told in music; one day, if he played for her, he could make her understand. He could spin out the bent-note melody of poverty, the feeling of always being an outsider, an actor, of the turning road that had brought him across the United States and here to China. It was a kind of walking blues; he felt that if they were alone, and there was a piano, he would play it, and she would know everything about him. “We may not be able to even acknowledge each other. But I’m staying.”

“You are staying in Shanghai?”

“Until they throw me out. And if you ever hear me play, it’s for you. Remember that. And if anything changes, or you need help, come to me. I’m going to be here.”

Her face seemed to crumple. “Why are you so kind to me?”

He picked up the pot and refreshed her tea. Because she had wrested freedom from servitude. Because she had brains to match her beauty, and no man had ever yet had the chance to make her happy. “I just want to be part of your life,” he said.

Lin Ming surprised Pearl by arriving at the Osmanthus Pavilion in the late afternoon of August eighth, when the mansion was just stirring and the girls in their bright flimsy silks were sitting together in the public rooms to play cards, and listen to Yellow Music on the wireless. As he opened the front door, Zhou Xuan’s song “Ye Shanghai” was playing, and he felt a stab of fear for the fragility of his city’s fabled nightlife.

“Lin Ming,” he heard softly, behind him, and he turned to see his qin’ai de Zhuli, his dearest Pearl, waiting. He felt all the trouble and worry ease out on his breath as he moved toward her and took her in his arms, not even caring that they stood in the foyer, in full view. “Shall we go upstairs?” she said.

He nodded. “Yes. Order some wine, and an early dinner.” She clapped for the maid, and he hastened up the stairs, anxious to escape to her room.

In the upstairs hallway, the madam intervened. “You will be buying out Pearl for the night?”

“Yes,” he said, needing Zhuli beside him tonight, along with a warm crock of wine. The world was changing, the seas transforming to mulberry orchards and the mulberry orchards to seas, and he had no way to stop it, and certainly no power to protect Zhuli. But the Osmanthus Pavilion was the one place where that sort of promise was not required.

As soon as they were alone, she took off her robe and heavy earrings, leaving nothing but a clinging shift of apricot silk, and her glow of surprise. He rarely told her ahead of time when he would visit.

Food arrived, dark-marinated razor clams, fresh crab paste with leeks and chewy rice cakes, short ribs, and an herb-scented purée of broad beans. They served each other and ate as loved ones, sharing a cup of wine.

“I reached the age of twenty-eight last week,” Pearl said casually.

He immediately understood. At twenty-eight her lifetime buyout price came down to five thousand. Undeniably there was a current of happiness between them, and an ease, something like what the foreign people would call love. In their most intimate joinings she sometimes whispered that everything of her belonged to him, which always lifted him to the heights.

And she was becoming more affordable now.

She lowered her eyes and went on eating, as if what she’d said was an observation of time passing, no more, when he knew her entire life depended on this turning point. She had asked him to free her, without asking.

He froze, stuck between tenderness and reality. First, where would he get five thousand? And if he got it, how would he protect her and see to her well-being all her life? Because if he bought her out, she would be his, as surely as any bondmaid. War was coming, and even in good times, women like her had no way to survive. Almost all of them ended up back in the flower world no matter how much money the man spent, and grew old there, the way his mother had done. It was an old story in Shanghai.

He took her in the same way they had done it for years and fell asleep beside her as always. When he woke it was six thirty. Normally he slept with her until noon, but today he rose quickly to dress for the early meeting Du had called. Maybe it was the click of his watch that woke her, or the slipping sound of his shoes on the floor, but just before he walked out, he glimpsed her watching him.

They both knew he was answering her, for it was the first time he had ever left without embracing her. He could not buy her out, and there was no use discussing it. She was awake, he knew it, but when he looked at her one last time just before he stepped out the door to leave, she had her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep.

He rode the trolley to the Cathay. Du was never awake at this hour; normally he began his days at noon in the steam baths, drinking hot tea while his back was scrubbed by Flowery and Fiery-it being unthinkable for a stranger to have personal access to the boss in a public place. But everything was different now, for Peking had been taken by Japan, surrendering in near-complete silence. Yes, lives had been spared, architecture saved, and most of the art treasures moved out, but it was still devastating. Lin, like everyone in the clubs the night before, was shell-shocked by it.

Meanwhile, the previous night had set a cash record. Even the most ascetic young students and partisans sought to lose their minds, float their senses, stay out all night-to wan wu sang zhi, play at trifles until one has exhausted one’s will. Why should they do anything else? The dwarf bandits were sure to storm Shanghai next, and nothing could stop them.

There were also more foreign men in his clubs now than ever before, men who had been living in Shanghai with their families, but had now sent the wives and children home for safety while they soldiered on. Gloriously unencumbered, they arrived nightly with fresh young girls, pretty things streaming into the city, running for their lives. Riding the elevator up to the restaurant, Lin Ming decided the girls were a reliable barometer of the war’s advance in rural China, just as the daily influx of Jewish refugees told of the conditions in Europe. Things were coming to a head, and that was surely why Du had called him at this hour.

The older man waited in a small private alcove that was really just a glassed-in balcony, tucked behind a waiters’ station so that even from the main dining room, its existence was not apparent. Inside, it was a large-windowed box cantilevered to look over the river, with its great vessels at anchor, flags flying. Du was eating xi fan, rice porridge, and he immediately filled a bowl and set it next to Lin’s spoon and chopsticks. It was jarring, the hint of family, and Lin had to remind himself that it was an illusion. Aside from sending him to an American boarding school, which had beyond doubt been the forging of him, Du had been no father at all. In control again, reality in place, Lin picked up his chopsticks and reciprocated by serving the boss with meticulous care, choosing from the onions, peanuts, pork bits, and pickled vegetables on the small condiment plates around the table.

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.