No Accidental Death

by Garrett Hutson

  The lieutenant sat next to Doug, crossed his legs, and set a pad of paper on his knee.

  The captain cleared his throat. “Here’s what we know about that aerodrome business...”

  **

  Doug wrote a quick note to Lucy to let her know that he was back in Shanghai—she didn’t have a telephone—and went downstairs to hire a courier to run it to her apartment.

  When he got back to his little office, he placed a call to the Associated Press office, and asked to speak with Art Jones.

  “Mr. Jones isn’t in now, but I’ll take a message for him.”

  “This is Douglas Bainbridge calling, and I’d like to speak with him as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember you, Mr. Bainbridge. This is Gladys Thompson—formerly Gladys Sherman. We’ve met a few times.”

  “Yes, I remember. I wasn’t aware of your nuptials, let me congratulate you.”

  “Thank you. Is there any specific message for Mr. Jones?”

  “No, I’ll tell him when he phones. If he gets this message before five o’clock, have him call me at this number.” He gave her the telephone number for the Navy office. “If it’s after five o’clock have him call me at home. He has the number.”

  **

  Doug hired a rickshaw to take him home, but the runner was barely able to navigate the streets, which were packed with Chinese families pulling carts loaded with possessions. The air, already thick with humidity and the stench of the city, now seemed particularly close with the extra body heat, and the odor of livestock.

  Doug shouted to the runner in Shanghainese, asking where these people were coming from.

  “Everyone is leaving Chapei,” the rickshaw operator replied in the same language. “The Japanese are going to attack, and it is safer in the International Settlement.”

  Where would they all stay? Doug supposed some had relatives here that would put them up, but others would end up living on the streets. Shanghai already had too many homeless beggars as it was.

  “Hey, Commander Bainbridge! Ho there!”

  Doug turned at the sound of a familiar voice shouting over the crowd. Ben Trebinski stood on the concrete base of the stop light at the corner of Nanking Road and Honan Road, waving and grinning, the extra couple of feet allowing him to look out over the crowds.

  “Hey there, Ben!” Doug shouted back, not certain his voice carried over the noise of the refugees plus the regular rush hour crowd.

  “Looks like you’re a little stuck, Commander! Want some help?” Ben looked down and whacked the shoulders of his companions, and three white faces turned Doug’s direction— seamen Nick Bonadio, Chet Heiselmann, and Roger Aikins. “Come on, fellas.”

  Ben led his companions into the street, using his big arms to clear a path in the maelstrom of humanity. “Where you headed, Commander?” Ben asked when he reached Doug’s rickshaw, which continued to creep slowly forward.

  “Home—Huang Lei Road, in Hongkou. It’s about a mile from here.”

  “We’ll get you there. It may take a while, but it’ll take a lot longer on your own. Come on, fellas; clear a path for Commander Bainbridge.”

  Doug was about to protest that it wasn’t necessary, but the look on the young men’s faces said they were enjoying themselves, playing human bulldozer through the packed streets.

  “Not bad, eh, Commander?” Nick Bonadio said, looking back over his shoulder, with that smile that always bordered on a smirk. “Next time one of us needs help getting out of a jam, maybe you remember this and do us a favor.”

  **

  Even with the road-clearing help, it still took Doug’s rickshaw a half-hour to get him home. Even on the little side street where he lived, there were crowds passing through, pulling carts. Lucy stood under the awning of Mr. Hwang’s shop, looking at the crowds with an expression of bewildered awe.

  She looked relieved when he climbed out of the rickshaw. “Oh, Doug! I thought maybe you were still lost in this disturbance somewhere.”

  “Almost,” Doug said, and kissed her.

  “Hi, Miss Kinzler!” Ben grinned at them.

  “Oh, hello,” Lucy said, startled. “Mr. Trebinski, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, Ben Trebinski, from Chicago, Illinois!” Ben said, patting his chest.

  “These fellas helped me navigate the stormy seas of Honan Road. I’d still be stuck without them.”

  He paid the rickshaw runner double the usual fee, and thanked him with a deeper than usual bow. Turning back to the sweating seamen, he said, “I think I owe you fellas dinner for that.”

  “That would be real swell, Commander,” Nick Bonadio said. “The pretty dame gonna join us?”

  Lucy gave Doug one of her looks that told him there was no way she was going home in this crowd without dinner, but she also wasn’t happy about the company.

  “Yes, Miss Kinzler will join us,” Doug said.

  Then something caught his eye, at the far end of his street, a block and a half away—a familiar figure, and he had to look again.

  There, lingering near the intersection with Kiangse Road, stood a short and stout figure in a dark three-piece suit, with a red flower visible in the lapel, and an old-fashioned top hat on his head. Doug could just make out a dark mustache in the shadow cast by the hat over the round face.

  It was Kawakami Takahiro, a Japanese secret agent. Doug’s old nemesis.

  To a casual observer, he could have been waiting for someone who was delayed by the crowds of refugees. But Doug knew better. Kawakami was watching him.

  It had been ten months since Kawakami had disappeared from Shanghai, at the time suffering from critical injuries, but his figure and outfit were unmistakable.

  “Doug?” Lucy said, touching his arm. “Are you listening?”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Doug said, returning his attention to Lucy and the four seamen.

  “We were asking where you want to go for dinner,” Lucy said.

  “We’re up for anything, Commander,” Nick Bonadio said, barely glancing away from Lucy.

  “But it’s about chow time, sir.” Ben Trebinski emphasized it by rubbing his tummy.

  “We should probably stay close.” Doug motioned with his hand toward the crowds. “You fellas like Chinese food? I know a nice little Sichuan place a couple of blocks from here.”

  “You know the grub we eat in the mess, Commander,” Heiselmann said. “You think we’re particular?”

  Charlie Ford, Doug’s neighbor across the hall, appeared out of the crowd, mopping his brow with a handkerchief and fanning himself with his hat. His companion, Li Baosheng, walked beside him, but appeared less bothered by the heat.

  “Good evening, Douglas,” Charlie said in his working-class English accent, and reached out to shake Doug’s hand. “Hello again Miss Kinzler. How are you?”

  “As well as can be expected, with all of this going on,” Lucy replied. “Hello, Bao.”

  “We were just leaving for dinner,” Doug said.

  Charlie looked surprised. “So early? Well, I s’pose it might take a bit to get somewhere, won’t it, what with all this.”

  “Where are my manners?” Doug said, shaking his head. “Charlie, Bao, these are four of the men from my ship—seamen Ben Trebinski, Nick Bonadio, Roger Aikins, and Chet Heiselmann.”

  Everyone shook hands, but Doug couldn’t help but notice with a touch of annoyance that Charlie held onto Ben’s hand a second longer than usual; and the look on Charlie’s face was as if someone had set a giant piece of triple layer chocolate cake in front of him.

  Once the pleasantries were finished, Charlie turned back to Doug. “Douglas, you and Miss Kinzler should bring your friends to see the new show at our theater this Friday night.” He turned to face the four seamen, but his eyes rested on Ben’s. “Bao and I work at a Chinese theater on Thibet Road. We make the sets for the shows. We can get tickets for cheap.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Ben said with a grin, and Charlie’s face lit up. Doug glanced at Bao,
who made no reaction.

  “I ain’t too much for plays,” Nick said.

  Lucy gave Nick side-eye before looking back at Charlie and Bao and smiling. “Doug and I would be happy to attend, thank you for the kind offer.”

  Roger Aikins elbowed Nick in the rib. “That ain’t too far from you-know-where, and we can see you-know-who,” he said.

  Chet Heiselmann frowned.

  Nick’s eyes widened with excitement. “Yeah, that’s true, ain’t it? OK, count me in.”

  “Wonderful!” Charlie said, clapping his hands together. “We’ll get six tickets to you tomorrow, Douglas, for the eight o’clock show Friday night.”

  “You’ll like the show, Mr. Bainbridge,” Bao said. “The leading lady is very good singer.”

  “Thank you, both,” Doug said, and bowed to Bao. “We’d best be going, though. We’ll speak more about it after Miss Kinzler and I return.”

  Doug took Lucy’s arm, and they navigated the sidewalk toward Honan Road, the four seamen following.

  “Did ya get a load of the faeries, gents?” Nick Bonadio said with a snicker. Heiselmann and Aikens snickered, too.

  “I thought they were nice fellas,” Ben said.

  “You think everyone’s a nice fella, bird brain.” Nick slapped the back of Ben’s head.

  “Oww!”

  Nick laughed.

  Next to Doug, Lucy sighed.

  **

  Doug answered a knock at his door that evening, and found Jonesy standing there.

  “I got your message,” Jonesy said, walking through the door without waiting to be invited in. “Sorry to call so late; I’ve been busy this evening, as you might imagine.”

  “Hello, Jonesy,” Lucy said from a chair in Doug’s living room, laying a book down on her lap. A small fan on the end table next to her blew her hair, so she reached for a hair ribbon to tie it up.

  “Oh, hi, Lucy. Mind if I take some of your boyfriend’s time?”

  “Not at all, we were just having a quiet evening, both of us reading. Go right ahead.”

  “I’ve been out at the train station in Chapei,” Jonesy said, turning back to Doug. He looked around for a place to set his hat, and Doug took it and hung it up. “You might be interested to know that Japanese civilians are arriving by the trainload, all evening—a couple thousand of them, by my count. I asked a few questions, learned the Japs are evacuating all of their concessions up the Yangtze—Hankou, Chungking, Chengdu, all of them.” His green eyes narrowed a little, staring into Doug’s. “What do you make of that, Commander?”

  A hint of amusement crossed Jonesy’s eyes when he said Doug’s rank, but Doug ignored it. “It seems the Japanese authorities are afraid Chinese mobs will attack their concessions, in retaliation for the violence in the north. Their police forces wouldn’t be enough to protect them from a sizeable mob, so they're consolidating them here, where they have a marine battalion stationed.”

  The arch of Jonesy’s eyebrow said he was skeptical, but not surprised. “Won’t the arrival of a bunch more people to Japantown rile up the Chinese here? Word’s already flying through Shanghai like lightning."

  Doug exhaled slowly, considered that a few seconds. “It’s a risk, certainly—but it would be a bigger risk to leave a couple thousand Japanese civilians stranded in little pockets in the heart of China, given what’s happening. We would do the same thing in their shoes.”

  A hint of smile tugged the corners of Jonesy’s mouth. “Can I quote you on that?”

  Doug scowled. “No, you cannot.”

  Jonesy sighed. “Fine, I’ll say I heard it from an anonymous source within the American Navy.”

  “Within the American military,” Doug replied. Best to keep it as vague as possible.

  “Perfect!” Jonesy said with a grin, and grabbed his hat. Shoving it on his head, he turned back to Doug long enough to say, “Gotta run, I’ve got a story to write before deadline.”

  Watching the stocky reporter rush out the door and down the stairs, Doug wondered why he ever talked to Jonesy.

  **

  Thursday, August 12

  “You have a phone call, Commander,” the desk lieutenant’s voice cracked over the intercom on Doug’s desk. “A Mr. Art Jones.”

  Doug looked at all of the work piling up on his desk, and sighed. “Put him through.” He’d have to keep this short. “Morning, Jonesy. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve been at the station in Chapei since daybreak. Chinese soldiers are arriving, all morning—thousands of them, if not tens of thousands. They’re still coming. Two whole divisions, I’m told. You know about that?”

  That took Doug by surprise; the large number, at least. He let out a low whistle.

  “I guess you didn’t know?”

  A flash of embarrassment swept through Doug. The American Military Attaché in Nanjing might have heard, but there was no guarantee he’d have shared anything with the Naval Attaché, Commander Shock—it was an army matter, after all, not navy or marines. “No, I have not been informed.”

  “Any comment?”

  Doug’s immediate impulse was to hang up on the cocky reporter—but he had just given Doug valuable information. “Only if it’s an anonymous source. And don’t specify the navy, is that clear?”

  “Deal.”

  Doug took a breath. “I’d say that the arrival of so many Chinese troops almost guarantees some sort of confrontation with Japanese forces in Shanghai. And it explains all the Chinese refugees streaming into the Settlement.”

  “You can bet your bottom dollar,” Jonesy said, chuckling. “I heard the Japs are landing reinforcements, too. But I haven’t seen that.”

  “That I have seen,” Doug replied. “They were unloading columns of marines when my ship pulled into port yesterday.”

  “I’ve heard accounts of twenty to fifty Japanese ships docking in the Huang Po,” Jonesy said. “To say there’s a sense of hysteria in the northern parts of Shanghai is an understatement. I assume the real number is closer to twenty or twenty-five.”

  “It’s twenty-two, actually.”

  Jonesy chuckled. “See what I mean? That’s why I never report on rumors. I assume you must have seen these ships and counted them?”

  “That’s right.”

  “For that I’ll quote you as an anonymous source in the United States Navy. More credible than just ‘military’ if we’re talking about ships.”

  Doug jabbed a finger into a pile of papers. “As long as you aren’t any more specific than that.”

  “Phhbt. They’ll never be able to identify you. There are thousands of American sailors in port right now, could’ve been any one of them that told me. At least as far as your brass is concerned.”

  The line clicked, followed by a dial tone. Doug hung up, stood and turned toward his window. Cars and people rushed up and down the Bund, business as normal. But for how long?

  9

  Friday, August 13

  Doug tapped the end of his pencil onto his desk top harder and harder as he sat on the phone in his office, on hold again—probably the seventh or eighth time, but he’d lost count of how many times someone at the Japanese consulate had passed him off to someone else.

  Gun fights had broken out between Japanese marines and Chinese paramilitary Peace Preservation Corps guards in Yangtzepoo, near the boundary of the International Settlement. Small skirmishes in several locations were beginning to meld into a larger confrontation in the northern part of the city.

  “Yes, hello. I’m Commander Bainbridge, United States Navy,” Doug said in Shanghainese when the eighth—or ninth?—person came on the line. “I’m trying to arrange a neutral observation of your marines in north Hongkou, along with an English interpreter.”

  “Yes, Commander, thank you, I can arrange it for you,” the gentle voice on the other end of the line said, also in Shanghainese. “I am Sykora Hideaki, liaison. We are happy for you to see yourself the steps our forces are taking to protect Japanese civilians and
property. Will you have your own escort?”

  “Yes, I will have two United States marines accompany me.” For protection, Doug left unsaid.

  “I will make a pass for each of you,” Sykora said. “May I get the name and rank of the first individual, please?”

  Doug provided his name and rank, but explained that the two marines hadn’t been assigned yet.

  “I can leave the name and rank empty, and will write it when they come with you to get the pass.”

  Doug explained that he would use his pass multiple times, but that the two marines accompanying him might be different each day. “Would it be possible to get a transferrable pass, for the rotating members of my security detail?”

  There was silence on the line for a couple of seconds before Sykora answered. “I will need permission from the military authorities to do that, but I will see if they approve it.”

  “Thank you, Sykora san. How soon will they be ready?”

  **

  Doug’s phone rang almost as soon as he had hung up from the Japanese consulate. “Hello?”

  “Commander Bainbridge, I have a call for you, from a civilian,” the lieutenant who sat at the front desk said. “It’s a Mr. Tolbert, from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.”

  Doug stifled a laugh. “You can put Mr. Tolbert through.” The line clicked. “Hey there, Pete.”

  “Hey Doug. You must be a busy man these days—I’ve been trying to call you for fifteen minutes.”

  That’s because a battle is getting started just a few miles from here, Pete. “Yeah, the Chinese and Japanese are keeping us pretty busy.”

  “How about lunch? Can you get away for an hour?”

  That was almost exactly how much time he had until his passes would be available at the Japanese Consulate. But first he had to call Colonel Beaumont of the 4th Marines to finish arranging for a personal guard into the battle zone.

  “I can in about ten minutes. I’ll meet you in front of the HSBC.”

  **

  Instead of going somewhere within walking distance—such as the restaurant on the ground floor of the Cathay Hotel—Pete hailed a rickshaw on the Bund and had it take them across the Garden Bridge to the Astor House Hotel.