Hunt Among the Killers of Men

Chapter 7

Trash fires choked the street with milky smoke. The pedicab in which Gabriel and Qingzhao rode, with their inanimate charge wedged between them, threaded its way through the riot of human shapes that constituted the nightlife beyond the favored, protected realm of the Bund. Here were thousands of vendors, prostitutes, thieves, huanquiande bartering for money, DVD hucksters, homeopathic herbal medicine men, pirate electronics dealers, clothiers, all blurring past. Open petrol and propane tanks warned in English NO NAKED LIGHT, meaning fire.

They stopped at the Beggar’s Arch, which was a long stone tunnel like a Roman aqueduct, its shadows lined on both sides by castoffs and derelicts. According to beggar etiquette, the seated and squatting men kept their eyes down and their cups (or cupped hands) up as Gabriel and Qingzhao passed, carrying the canvas-wrapped statue of the bowman carefully between them.

They emerged into one of Shanghai’s many Night Markets, a tightly packed maze of tents reminiscent of an American swap meet or flea market, interspersed with solo hustlers and other racketeers working out of the shells of now-useless automobiles. Gabriel saw several more people burning ceremonial cash at drumfires, and a man putting trained birds through their paces inside an entire corridor of bird-sellers.

“It’s like Mardi Gras,” Gabriel said.

“More dangerous,” said Qingzhao.

“You’ve never drunk a Hurricane, I bet.”

Qingzhao ignored the remark. Wit, charm or humor were not her coinage.

Presently they emerged into a large open area completely engirded in stonemasonry, with drains in the floor. It could have been a covered outdoor patio or a deceptively big space between buildings with a canopy overhead. It reminded Gabriel a bit of an abandoned food court. There was a scatter of tables and chairs. At one, a wizened, skeletal man ceaselessly folded squares of paper into origami shapes and dropped them into an iron pot. Across from him, an equally ancient woman sat surrounded by disassembled cell phones, probing them with tiny jeweler’s tools. They were both clad in simple Maoist tunics and the woman smiled at Gabriel as they passed. Every other tooth was missing.

Qingzhao spoke briefly to the old man in a dialect Gabriel could not place.

“Who are we talking to here?” Gabriel asked.

“Sentries.”

“Sentries,” said Gabriel.

Now the old man was grinning, too. Apparently he had scored all the woman’s missing teeth.

Qingzhao whispered a monosyllable, and the next thing Gabriel knew, two guns were pointed right at his head.

The old folks were still smiling at him.

A big, booming, basso laugh rebounded from the rock walls.

The entryway to the next chamber in the maze filled up with a large black man, six-six easy in flat slippers, with a calm Buddha face and vaguely Asian eyes below a close-cropped crewcut.

“Your expression!” The big man thundered with mirth. “Priceless!” He took a moment to settle. “Forgive me.”

The oldsters stowed their firepower and resumed their innocuous activities, the woman still smiling sweetly at Gabriel.

“I know what you want, I’m sure of it!” The big man embraced Qingzhao. Even more surprisingly, Qingzhao allowed this.

“And I know what you want,” she said before the breath could be squeezed out of her.

The big man stuck out a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt toward Gabriel. “Ni chi le ma?” It was a common greeting for a stranger—have you eaten?—testifying to the centrality of food in most Asian culture. Gabriel shook the proffered hand in the Western fashion. A more traditional Chinese handshake would have consisted of the men interlocking their fingers and waving them up and down a few times; but today this was done mostly by the very elderly or the very etiquette-conscious.

“Tuan, at your service,” boomed the big man, “and the service of our little snapdragon, here.”

Like some grandiose, benevolent street pasha, Tuan escorted Qingzhao and Gabriel through the heart of his domain, which rose in tiers from the cobblestoned street into a labyrinth of subdivisions and alcoves overpopulated with mercantile bustle. Over here, you could get your head massaged, cheap. Over there, your ears swabbed out. It was indoor-yet-outdoor; the grandest treehouse of all.

Besides Beggar’s Arch, three other tunnels fed into the amphitheater. At one end was a traditional Chinese teahouse accessed by a zigzaggy footbridge over a turbid flow of water.

“Four people are in charge of the Bund, now,” said Qingzhao as they trailed Tuan, their fragile burden held between them.

“Like gang turf?” said Gabriel.

“More akin to social castes.”

“Classes.”

“Tuan runs street level. All you can see.”

“It is my privilege,” chimed the big man leading them. “An entrepreneur named Hellweg has a lock on municipal services such as power, water. You may have noticed his petroleum tower—the Fire in the Sky. He’s some sort of European; Danish, or Scandanavian at any rate.

“Our local army of mercenary police is owned by Lo Pei Zhang, who was once a military general. The soldiers are all ex–Red Army.”

“And the fourth is Cheung?” said Gabriel.

“Yes. Qingzhao’s former employer,” said Tuan, and Gabriel realized it was the first time he’d heard the woman’s name. “I believe he made his millions in currency speculation. His first millions.”

Gabriel fired a glance back at Qingzhao. “So you were an employee of his.”

“Mr. Cheung arrived in our fair land just as Communism was gasping its last,” Tuan rattled on. “The CCC is the new land of opportunity, but it is all quite subsurface now. That’s why Occidentals fear it so much, I think.”

“And you,” said Gabriel to Qingzhao, “used to work for this guy? The one you’ve been trying to—”

Her hand was on his forearm, extended across the body of the bowman between them. “Yes.” Her eyes added: Not now. Not in front of Tuan. Please.

This was one raincheck Gabriel was going to follow up on.

Next to a booth whose sign proclaimed CHANGE YOUR I.D., Tuan pointed out an ammo hawker with half a face, masked as though by a giant eyepatch. Most of the man’s fingers were missing or truncated.

“Do not purchase ammunition from that man,” Tuan said. “Unreliable. Misfires.”

“The man or the ammunition?” asked Gabriel.

“Both.”

Tuan led them into another cubbyhole with signage halfway-hidden from the commonweal: SU-LIN GUN MERCHANT. It stank of gunpowder and gun oil, and was a cramped warren of firepower old and new. Su-Lin was a gnomish woman with a calm Easter Island gaze; she weighed maybe 75 pounds. Tuan bent from his enormous height to grace her cheek with a kiss.

“You must use the keyboard,” said Qingzhao. Two laptops were set up collaborator-style on a small counter, with Su-Lin perched behind one as though ready to commence a game of Battleship. “This translates. First you type the proper greeting.”

They set down the bowman and Qingzhao typed: YOUR PIG MOTHER EATS NIGHT SOIL, which transposed to Chinese characters on Su-Lin’s screen.

Su-Lin typed back: I LOVE YOU, TOO.

Gabriel’s attention meanwhile had been arrested by a very special gun hanging from a clip on the back wall. His eye coded it as a close cousin to his faithful Colt Peacemaker, which he still wished he had strapped to his hip. That one was out of reach. This wasn’t.

“You have seen something you like?” said Tuan.

It was a large Colt revolver—age-burnished, true, but Gabriel recognized it as the treasure it was. “If this is what I think it is…”

Tuan lifted it off the wall and handed it to him. The gun sprang open cleanly at his touch. There wasn’t a spot of rust on it anywhere.

“This,” Gabriel said, as if he were introducing an old friend to a new one, “looks like an old Navy Colt, .36 caliber—from when they first started converting cap-and-ball ‘percussion pistols’ to the more newfangled revolver. They called them ‘wheelguns.’ ” He glanced back at Su-Lin. “How much do you think she might take for it?”

“That depends on whether you like it,” Tuan goaded.

“I like it very much,” said Gabriel. “Anyone who knows about guns would.”

“Then it is yours,” Tuan said. “For your trouble. With my compliments.”

“Why?”

“You are a guest. Qingzhao said you helped to save her life. That is a favor bestowed upon me as well. Please allow me to repay this debt in a way that pleases you.”

Gabriel nodded his thanks. He was always ill at ease accepting gifts, because you never knew what obligations might accompany them. But he wasn’t about to turn down this one. He had a feeling he might need a good gun very soon.

The place Tuan called his Pleasure Garden featured a cabaret stage—empty just now—and about a million varieties of flowering plant life nourished by misting nozzles and artificial sunlight, here in the middle of a city of stone.

The newly unwrapped terra-cotta warrior—Qingzhao’s bowman—watched silently as they ate from a table carved from a monkey-puzzle tree, laden with about forty dishes of food.

Tuan held up a goblet of absinthe for a toast.

“To my newest soldier,” he said.

The licorice-flavored drink went down hard and sizzled with an afterbite of burned sugar.

Apparently, Qingzhao bartered the terra-cotta warriors with Tuan for supplies and intelligence. The figures she had discovered near the idol in the shrine room had great value, even as damaged as they were. The two empty slots Gabriel had noticed were remnants of earlier deals between Qingzhao and Tuan; their collaboration had been ongoing for the better part of a year.

“Barter being the best form of trade?” asked Gabriel.

Tuan nodded.

Gabriel surveyed the table. “My apologies, but this seems like an awful lot of food for three people.”

“I am showing off,” Tuan smiled. “Forgive me.”

“It will feed others when we are done,” said Qingzhao. “Tuan is responsible for filling many bellies.”

“So,” Gabriel said, returning to the subject of the clay warriors, “value for value. Like the black market in religious ikons in Russia.”

“Not quite,” said Tuan. “The Russian way provided an interesting lesson on the subject of smuggled antiquities, because so many of their black- and gray-market religious ikons were forgeries. Of course, one of my business interests is a thriving popular outlet for replica warriors. We’ve copied most of the basic templates from the warriors found in the Xian pits and the army of Emperor Qin. We do custom paint jobs. We even have a service whereby your own features can be worked onto the terra-cotta warrior replica of your choice. My artisans use photographs of the subject. You’d be surprised at how many people want a recreation for their garden or foyer. How many people actually collect them.”

“At a couple grand a pop, no doubt,” said Gabriel. It was no different to him than some spinster collecting plates from the Franklin Mint. “But the replica market provides cover for moving the real warriors to private collectors who can’t show them because it would be illegal to possess them.”

“They pay for that privilege,” said Tuan. “The funny thing is, the replica company actually started turning a profit last year. And most people cannot even discern authenticity, which has allowed the market in art forgeries to thrive the way it has.”

It was true. Forgers had become so painstaking at their craft that the difference between a fake masterpiece (which hung in galleries and toured worldwide to the acclaim of millions) and the genuine article (which hung in someone’s expensive, climate–controlled cellar and was available for viewing only by an elite few) had been reduced almost to nil. As far as the world was concerned, the fake was real. The real paintings only increased in value every time a subterranean auction was held, and sometimes the aficionados tried to screw each other. Michael had told him that half the Impressionists in the last Getty exhibition were bogus, but no one wanted to say so. What was the point in starting that blaze of controversy unless the whereabouts of the real ones were known?

The epidemic had gotten so dire that within the last five years, even the Mona Lisa had come under serious doubt. Which might explain her goofy, cryptic smile at last. I’m a fake, boys.

Tuan pushed back his seat. “My honored guest,” he said. “Permit me the ill manner of a private conversation with Qi.”

“Qi?” said Gabriel.

“My diminutive for our delectable little fighter. You have no doubt already felt the strange attraction she exerts.”

She lowered her gaze.

“No doubt,” Gabriel said.

He handed Gabriel a puzzle box of closely worked unlacquered cedar. “We have a few small affairs of business to transact that are not for all ears to hear.”

Gabriel accepted the box with mild interest. It called to mind nothing so much as the Rubik’s Cube he’d held just days before in Michael’s office.

“We’ll be nearby,” Tuan said. “While we’re gone, perhaps you will find this interesting to examine. What most people call a Chinese puzzle box, the kind one buys in the so-called ‘Chinatowns’ of various cities, is actually a Japanese configuration. Historically this has disallowed inquiry into something uniquely Chinese—a different configuration and puzzle strategy, now overwhelmed by the more common Japanese variants. This one is authentic. Its purpose is not to test skill at solving a mere puzzle…”

“But to test the mettle of the solver,” Gabriel said, feeling a tiny surge of dread: of all the ways Tuan might have chosen to test him…!

Tuan and Qingzhao repaired to a curtained alcove to speak in hushed whispers while Gabriel considered the box in his hands.

He wanted to set it aside and perhaps wander near enough to the curtain to eavesdrop on the conversation, but he suspected that neither would be advisable. His host had been cordial so far—but he was clearly a dangerous man and not one to anger.

Gabriel reluctantly focused on the box in his hands. Classic puzzle boxes, he remembered, always featured sliding panels. But no part of this one appeared to slide in any direction. Thinking back to the Rubik’s Cube that had so confounded him in New York, Gabriel began exerting mild stress on different parts of the box and sure enough, a triangular corner came free on a little interior hinge, now hanging out like a wing and spoiling the box’s symmetry. After a one-eighty revolve, it settled back into its appointed corner upside down, completing an ideogram that had previously been bisected. He recognized the ideogram: it translated roughly into “as above, so below.” Accordingly, Gabriel twisted free the corner that was diagonally opposite—a corner that had not budged before. It flipped out and settled back with mild pressure, and Gabriel felt something click definitively inside the box.

Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere.

The top of the box, he found, felt loose, as if it would slide if he pressed it. He did, and realized that the entire top half of the box could be eased away from the bottom half, turned like a knob and reseated. Each repositioning completed a Chinese character previously obscured or lost within the filigree of design.

The top half of the box displaced a quarter of its own length. Gabriel realized that if the bulky section could fold over, the box would retain its original size and shape. The engineering seemed impossible, but sure enough—click.

Now panels revealed themselves in the conventional manner. The wrinkle of an authentic Chinese box would be that some of the panels would be tricks, traps or dead ends. These enigmas were dependent on the user’s preconceptions of how such things might or might not work.

He pressed on one panel—

“A word of advice, my dear new friend,” said Tuan, returning.

Gabriel was embarrassed not to have heard his approach. He’d been more wrapped up in solving the puzzle than he’d realized. He put the box down unfinished, hearing somewhere, in the back of his head, Michael’s voice chastising him. You give up on things too easily.

“Qi has told me of your adventures and difficulties,” said Tuan. “I would say you should not expect to leave China, if that is your thought. You are on Cheung’s map now. The caution you take should be threefold. Really, if it was safety you sought, you should not have even dared to come back into the city at all.”

“Mind reader,” said Gabriel.

They left Tuan in his den and returned, painstakingly, to where they’d first met him. The old couple was gone.

Gabriel wanted to ask Qingzhao what she’d gotten in exchange for the priceless terra-cotta warrior this time, but he was prepared to wait to grill her—about this and her relationship with Cheung—till they were alone, far from prying ears and eyes.

Coming in and out of central Shanghai could be like stepping into a time machine. Barely outside the city limits, the terrain and people seemed to come from far in the past. Gabriel had once seen the backlots of Shanghai Film Studio, where an entire small city had been constructed for the purposes of shooting movies. During Gabriel’s visit, the street had been dressed as 1933 Shanghai right down to the fake billboard for King Kong, in service of an epic called Temptress Moon; on the adjacent lot, you found yourself on the same city street, 200 years earlier. Driving through the streets of the city proper could feel a lot like that, antiquity and modernity rubbing shoulders block by crowded block.

It was easy for Gabriel to close his eyes—once again in a pedicab with Qingzhao—and imagine he was some European interloper from ages ago, racing along the cobblestones toward a meeting with Kangxi Shih-k’ai or one of his lieutenants.

The illusion was enhanced a moment later when he heard a pair of gunshots and, looking up, saw twin holes punched in the canvas flap next to his head. He had a fleeting sense of high-velocity projectiles passing inches from his face and then two more holes appeared in the flap next to Qi.

Somebody was shooting at them.