China Seas

by John Harris

  ‘He also dines with his brother-in-law, Yip Hsao-Li.’

  Willie frowned. The ubiquitous Yip seemed to be involved in everything without doing any work. He still liked to look European, always preferred suits to Chinese robes and, so Willie had heard, was even learning to dance Western dances. A collector of objets d’art, he had more than once visited Abigail in search of porcelain. Because the European taipans were indifferent to her jade, embroideries, Sinkiang silver and porcelain, regarding them as ‘Chink stuff’, she had not neglected the wealthy Chinese, and Yip was a good customer.

  Willie didn’t trust him, nevertheless. ‘He’s in with the secret societies,’ he said and Kee nodded.

  ‘He is indeed, sir.’

  ‘According to my information, George, that import-export business of his is a façade and he’s not much better than a gangster himself. Why does he go down to Hong Kong so much, too? He doesn’t do business there? I’ve heard he also visits Swatow and Amoy. What’s his interest there? Keep your ears open, boy.’

  Situated in Peter the Great’s Bay on the western shore of the Sea of Japan, Vladivostok seemed to smell entirely of damp wool, damp leather and damp fur, and at night a skin of ice settled on the buildings, sidewalks and streets, muffling sound, diffusing the street lamps and blurring the anchor lights of the ships in the bay. From the moment Willie stepped ashore the place seemed to be covered in a cold drizzle which was neither rain nor snow but something in between. Newspapers became sodden. Droplets clung to moustaches and beards and even the church bells seemed heavy with the damp.

  It had been an uneasy journey north, because lately the East China Sea had become infested with a new plague of pirates. They came from among the hundreds of islands along the coasts and to the south of Korea, and were said to have a base at Bias Bay, north of Hong Kong, where the deep water ended well out, so that warships couldn’t follow their flat-bottomed sampans and junks. It was a bleak uninhabited area, but it gave access to a thickly populated countryside where they could disappear if they were pursued.

  They liked to attack ships for the opium they carried, sometimes trying to bribe the compradores who acted as pursers and were always the first men they sought out after an attack because they carried the keys to the ship’s safe. Recently, they had even started preying on ships crossing the Yellow Sea or heading for the Sea of Japan. There had even been women pirates, moving out by canoe to moored ships to entice the sailors with their oiled yellow bodies until it was time to draw their knives and take over the ship, but now the pirates were changing their tactics and even using small steamers and, after an attack on a 1,000-ton coaster out of Hong Kong, Willie had given orders that his ships were at all times to have their hoses connected to the boilers, and an attempt on the Kum Kum Kiuw off the Pescadores had been met with scalding steam.

  Now, however, somebody was putting money into the game and organising the pirates so that, instead of out-and-out attacks and boarding, they were showing cunning and were infiltrating the passenger lists. No coastal captain ever felt safe and, taking the extra precaution of hiring Sikhs who had retired from Indian Army regiments, Willie placed them aboard as guards, a lead that was quickly followed by other lines.

  But this time nothing happened and, with nothing worse than a gale that sent spindrift and showers of icy sleet across the deck, the Winifred Whitehead reached Vladivostok safely, with Willie signed on officially for the trip as a mate to give him sea time.

  Vladivostok turned out to be a drab-looking place with a badly organised waterfront, something which didn’t surprise Willie much, because, like most people in Shanghai, he had come to assume that everything about Tsarist Russia was ill-organised.

  Even the commerce of the port seemed to move at only half-speed, because of the 5,000 miles which lay between Vladivostok and Moscow. Despite the Trans-Siberian Railway, little in the way of drive seemed to emanate from the Russian capital, but there were engineering works, fishing and whaling industries, iron ore from the Urals and timber from Siberia. There was by no means as much as he’d expected, however, and the place depressed him with its flat-faced Russian workers, Chinese and Koreans. It had a pronounced international character, however, with people of all nations there and, within forty-eight hours, he found himself approached to do business by a Frenchman, a Russian and an American, none of whom he trusted. There were department stores after a fashion, and one hotel, the Aleksandr, which seemed suitable for a man of his financial stature.

  The firm of A N Kourganov occupied a set of offices near the docks and it was snowing as Willie climbed from the cab which carried him there. Much of the trade from Vladivostok was with merchants to the south, even with Japan across the China Sea, and the clerks had obviously been picked for their ability to communicate with customers in their own language. It was something Willie heartily approved of.

  When he asked for A N Kourganov in person he was led down a corridor and shown into a large office packed with files. Behind a desk stacked with piles of invoices was a woman. She wore pince-nez spectacles, but as he entered she removed them. As she smiled at him, he was startled by the striking topaz eyes and thick brown hair touched with reddish lights. As she rose to greet him, he saw she was dressed in severe fashion in a dark skirt with a high-necked blouse, a cameo brooch at her throat.

  ‘I’m looking for A N Kourganov,’ he said.

  She smiled again. ‘I am A N Kourganov,’ she said in excellent English. She gave him a tinkling laugh at his expression. ‘Oh, it’s quite true,’ she said. ‘I am the firm. In fact, I am Nadya Alexsandrovna Kourganova and perhaps that should be the firm’s name, but I don’t use it because the idea of a woman running a business tends to put men off. Does it put you off, Mr Sarth?’

  ‘No,’ Willie was still recovering. ‘No. Not at all. Business is business. I don’t mind. How did you come to set it up?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘A N Kourganov was Aleksandr Nicolaievich Kourganov, my father. When he died I took over.’ She paused, looking at him quizzically. ‘But I suspect, Mr Sarth, that you didn’t come here to discuss my background.’

  Willie, who was still a bit bemused, not only at finding himself dealing with a woman but also by her beauty, jumped. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I didn’t. I’ve got a load of things you might like. Tin kettles, pans, axes, crockery, cotton, leather and rubber goods, cigarettes, matches, shirts, enamel, varnish, footwear, rattan chairs, printed cotton. Are you interested? I thought that Vladivostok, being a long way from Moscow, might be able to use some of them.’

  She smiled. ‘We lack many of the things European Russians enjoy.’

  She looked round to find a chair for him to sit on, but they all seemed to be stacked with files. She looked at him helplessly and he wasn’t slow to react.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to do business, let’s do it in comfort. Let’s have lunch together somewhere. I suppose there is somewhere?’

  ‘There is the Hotel Novgorod. It’s the best Vladivostok can offer.’

  ‘I have other business to attend to. Timber and coal. I don’t want my ship to return in ballast, because an empty ship loses money, so I’ll attend to that first and come back here at midday. Will that suit you?’

  The smile came again. ‘Excellently, Mr Sarth.’

  Six

  The timber was good, but the coal turned out to be poor quality, though Willie knew he could sell it in the Dutch East Indies. He arranged for it to be delivered at the docks and loaded, and for the timber to travel as deck cargo, then returned with a cab to the offices of A N Kourganov prompt at midday.

  He was curiously excited. Nadya Alexsandrovna Kourganova was a beautiful woman with a lot of charm. Quite different from Abigail, who was pretty, full of humour, but often grave and solemn as she became absorbed in something, Nadya Alexsandrovna was vivacious but given to brooding a little, a fact he put down to her Russian temperament. With her slender figure, her beautiful eyes and the mass of thick reddish brow
n hair, she stood out like a searchlight among the shorter, squatter people of Vladivostok with their wide mouths, darker skins and their Mongol cast of countenance.

  She appeared at once. It had turned colder and she wore a fur coat with a hood that framed her face and caught the flurries of snow in little melting droplets like jewels round her face. The Novgorod was large and opulent but old-fashioned and outlandish, and the dining room was indifferent. Nadya Alexsandrovna apologised.

  ‘Vladivostok is not Moscow,’ she said.

  The dining room contained more than its fair share of uniformed officers – most of them old and stout, as if they’d been sent to Vladivostok to get them out of the way – and of hard-eyed young businessmen, some of them in loud clothes with high, stiff collars and spats. A small orchestra was playing a selection of music on a rostrum, sweet, melodious and totally innocuous. It made sitting opposite a very attractive woman very pleasant.

  She had taken the trouble to go home and change her dress and now wore a simple lavender gown and matching hat that set off her eyes. He was intrigued by how she came to be in Vladivostok. Somehow she didn’t seem to fit.

  ‘Were you born here?’ he asked.

  ‘No. In St Petersburg.’

  ‘So how did you learn to speak such good English?’

  She looked at him with her enormous eyes. One delicate hand lay on the table close to his. She had attended a girls’ school in England as a child, and then the Smolnia, the leading Russian girls’ establishment in St Petersburg. ‘Most girls went to Paris,’ she explained, ‘because French is a second language for wealthy Russians and all our diplomats speak it, because, of course, no one outside Russia speaks our own barbaric tongue. My father, who was always different, chose England.’

  ‘Then how did you come to turn up here?’

  She paused for a moment, staring at her hands, then her eyes lifted to Willie’s. ‘My father was a baron,’ she said.

  ‘Which makes you a baroness?’

  She inclined her head. ‘That doesn’t matter much here in Vladivostok. My father was also wealthy, but it isn’t done for someone in society in Russia to go into business. But he enjoyed it and, when I tried it, I found I did, too. I insisted on helping him.’ She shrugged. ‘But my mother didn’t approve and my sisters objected because their husbands said it lowered their standing in society.’

  He guessed he had heard only half the story. ‘But here?’ he asked. ‘Why here? You can do business as easily in St Petersburg.’

  She stared at her hands again. ‘My father was not very good at holding his tongue,’ she admitted. ‘He didn’t approve of the Tsar and his methods of governing and what he had to say about them made him persona non grata in St Petersburg.’

  ‘He had to leave?’

  ‘Being a baron, of course, he could hardly be imprisoned. But he was advised to disappear to the provinces, to go away from St Petersburg. This was the farthest he could get. I came with him to look after him because I was sick of St Petersburg society. It’s as simple as that.’

  Willie eyed her. ‘It couldn’t have been all that simple. Wasn’t there any man who wanted to stop you?’

  She smiled gently at him. ‘None I found wanted to stop me.’

  There was something he felt he needed to know about her. ‘Are you married?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is your husband in the firm?’

  ‘I don’t know where my husband is. He moves about a lot. I haven’t seen him for a long time.’

  ‘Left you, did he?’

  ‘He found another woman within months – if he’d ever given her up – and left me after two years. There was no point in not coming here to join my father.’

  He found he needed to talk about Abigail, feeling conscious of a vague guilt that he should be enjoying himself.

  ‘My wife’s in business, too,’ he said. ‘Antiques. Chinese objets d’art. Lacquer. Ivory. Carpets. Sandalwood. That sort of thing. She’s an expert.’

  Nadya Alexsandrovna gestured. ‘I can find her things to sell,’ she said.

  Lunchtime seemed to drift far into the afternoon and when they parted they were on terms of close friendship and Christian names. It was all the more surprising, therefore, when a note was delivered to Willie as he sat at breakfast the following morning.

  ‘Mr Sarth. I would like to see you at my office,’ it said. ‘A N Kourganova.’

  A N Kourganova? When the previous day they had been William and Nadya. Finishing his coffee, Willie tossed down his napkin and headed for the hall. When he was shown into her office, she stood up at once and this time there were no smiles.

  ‘I wished to see you, Mr Sarth.’

  ‘It was William yesterday. And you were Nadya.’

  ‘This is business.’

  ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘The footwear you produced, Mr Sarth. It is all left foot. Your matches don’t strike, your tin kettles leak and your cotton print rolls have flaws in them.’

  Willie’s jaw dropped. ‘They can’t have!’

  ‘I’ve inspected them. Did you?’

  ‘No. I bought them in good faith from the same place I always buy them. I’ve sold them in Japan, Burma, Singapore–’

  ‘Perhaps they are not as particular as we are.’

  ‘They’d soon let me know if they’d noticed anything wrong. They’d probably cut my throat. Can I see these things?’

  ‘They are in my warehouse.’

  ‘Show them to me.’

  She wasn’t very willing, but she agreed and they rode in silence in a cab to the warehouse on the docks where Willie’s crates had been delivered. They had all been opened and their contents scattered around. Willie picked up one of the men’s shoes, stared at it, then began to paw among them. As she had said, they were all shoddy and most of them were left foot.

  ‘Is it all like this?’ he demanded.

  ‘Not all. But several crates have been opened. My foreman sent for me to show me.’

  ‘What about the leather and rubber?’

  ‘All right. So are your cigarettes and chairs and the shirts and the enamel and varnish. We’ve found nothing wrong with those.’

  Willie had picked up a bright tin kettle. There were marks of rust on it and someone had filled it with water which was dripping steadily to the floor. Watched by Nadya Alexsandrovna and her clerk, he examined the cotton print rolls and tried the matches. The cotton had flaws in it and the matches showed signs of having been in water. The labels were stained and the match-heads were soft, damaged in a leaky warehouse during one of Hong Kong’s downpours.

  ‘This isn’t my stuff,’ he growled.

  ‘You sent it, Mr Sarth.’ Nadya Alexsandrovna’s voice was stiff and distrustful. ‘I have also found opium. We don’t deal with opium.’

  His eyes jerked up to hers. ‘Neither do I,’ he snapped back. ‘There’s something funny going on. Let me see the crates.’

  He moved the crates around, carefully studying them. They had been used many times and directions on them had been painted over more than once. Then faintly, beneath the Chinese characters stamped on them, he came across the name ‘Wishart’.

  He straightened up, his eyes angry. Emmeline! Was she behind this?

  He looked at Nadya Alexsandrovna. ‘I’ve been swindled,’ he said. ‘I’ll take all this back. I know where it came from. Have it all packed up. I’ll refund every bit of the cost. I’m not dishonest. I’ve spent too many years proving the opposite. I want to do business with you. I’d like to remain not only a business associate but the friend I thought I was yesterday. Will you agree?’

  She studied him gravely for a while then suddenly she smiled. It transformed her face.

  ‘I will agree, William,’ she said and his heart warmed as she used his name. ‘Now let us go to my house where we will celebrate the trust with champagne from the Crimea.’

  She had a house on the Marizliyevskaya, an avenue that ran along the coast. Along the front
was a vast veranda. ‘My father wanted a veranda,’ she explained. ‘We had a veranda on the house we had at Yalta. But in Yalta you can eat on the veranda in the evening. Here, you need a fur coat most of the time.’

  They ate in a small pink dining room where the walls were covered with pictures. ‘Kourganovs?’ Willie asked.

  She nodded. ‘And Anikins, which was my mother’s family. Together with a few Gorkachovs, which was my grandmother’s family. We go back a long way. Does your family?’

  ‘As far as my Pa,’ Willie said frankly. ‘Beyond that, we don’t know much.’ He glanced again at the portraits. ‘None of your husband?’

  She opened a drawer and took out a small folding picture frame. ‘Just one,’ she said. ‘I keep it to remind me that he was handsome and charming and that perhaps I wasn’t such a fool as I’ve often thought since.’

  She held out the folder to him and, as he took it, he almost dropped it. The picture was that of Count Zychov.

  ‘Him?’ he said.

  She eyed him. ‘You’ve met him?’

  He described what had happened near Shantu and the difficulties that had been made for him at Port Arthur.

  ‘That sounds like him,’ she admitted.

  ‘But his name’s Zychov.’

  ‘My proper name is Nadya Alexsandrovna Zychova. Kourganov is my father’s name. I dropped my husband’s name when I realised he was never coming back to me.’

  It was startling to discover how small a world it was, how someone who had entered his life thirteen years before had still not left it. He wanted to know more about Zychov, but she clearly had no wish to talk about him and changed the subject quickly. She had collected a few things for him to take back to Abigail – a cameo scent bottle, a Swiss snuff box, a Statdler vase, some Venetian glass, which he knew would sell like hot cakes in London. There were also one or two items by Fabergé, which he had long since learned were much sought after – a minute gold automaton sedan chair containing a figure of Catherine the Great with a jewelled crown borne by turbaned servants, an egg picked out with diamonds, thimbles, penholders, a kiwi, an elephant, a frog. He picked up the sedan chair, knowing very well that Abigail would swoon over it.