Master of Rain

by Tom Bradby

  “Don’t pry, Field. I told you that.”

  “Why did Chen have to restrain you today?”

  “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  They stared at each other.

  “What do you want me to do?” Field asked.

  “Whatever you were sent here to do. Write up your file. Tell Granger.”

  “I was sent to help.”

  Caprisi smiled thinly. “Tell Granger you’ve helped.”

  “What about Lena Orlov?”

  “What about her?”

  “Shouldn’t we find out where she worked, what her life was like, who she mixed with, whether anyone saw the man in her apartment?”

  “I should.”

  Field frowned. “Shouldn’t this go a little beyond internal politics?”

  “Tell Granger that.”

  Field felt the sweat breaking out on his forehead again. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  Caprisi shook his head. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t trust anyone from Granger’s mob.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. We’re from the same force.”

  “You think so? Then good luck to you, Dickie.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t patronize me.”

  Caprisi frowned. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “I may be new, but I’m not stupid.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for that, Dickie.”

  Caprisi held his stare. Field tried hard to see what was behind the American’s dark eyes. He suddenly felt as if everyone in this city were a total, unfathomable stranger, and would remain so.

  “All right,” Caprisi said, his face softening again. He took a pace toward him. “All right, Field. I’ve got some paperwork to do, but come down in a couple of hours and we’ll go from there.”

  Field looked at his watch, embarrassed.

  “You have a social engagement. Drinks at the Shanghai Club?”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  Caprisi looked as if he was going to say something else, then thought better of it. “Tomorrow morning, then. Nine o’clock, if that’s not too early for you. We’ll meet and then go to the ten o’clock briefing.”

  “What about Lu?”

  “Easy, polar bear.” Caprisi smiled. “As I said, welcome to Shanghai. It’s one slow step at a time, if we manage to take any steps at all.”

  Granger was on the phone when Field knocked on the glass door of his office a few minutes later, but shouted, “Come in.”

  Field stood awkwardly in front of him, trying to pretend he wasn’t listening to the call. Granger was discussing arrangements to go to the cinema with his wife. He smiled at Field as he suggested they see Trifling Women.

  The office was small. A bookcase behind him was lined with leather-bound volumes. There was a black-and-white photograph of an attractive dark-haired woman.

  Granger said, “I love you, too,” and put down the phone. He leaned back on his chair, taking a cigarette from the silver case on the table and a box of matches from the pocket of his waistcoat. “Have a seat.” He pointed at the leather chair in the corner.

  Field shook his head. “I don’t want to bother you, sir. I just need the current file on Lu Huang.”

  Granger frowned. “Why are you asking me?”

  “They seemed to think you had it.”

  “Danny told you that?”

  Field hesitated. “He said he thought you had it.”

  “Shit. I don’t think I have.” Granger sucked in the smoke and blew it out slowly, still leaning back on his chair, his big head resting on the bookshelf behind him. “Biers is so bloody anal about all that stuff.”

  Field watched the thick smoke being dissipated by the ceiling fan. He decided Granger was one of those people it was almost impossible not to like. Doubts that crept into your mind when you were away from him were almost instantly quashed upon return to his orbit by the warmth and force of his personality. “Sorry to bother you, sir.”

  Granger stood, throwing his cigarette into the metal bin in the corner. He moved around the desk and placed a large arm around Field’s shoulders. “Anytime. Like to keep in touch.” They were at the door. “Must get you round for dinner. Caroline always wants to meet my new boys.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Granger reached again for his cigarettes and lit another, inhaling the smoke and blowing it noisily toward the ceiling before offering one to Field. “How are you finding the city?”

  “Exciting.” Field hesitated. “Overwhelming, on occasions.”

  “You’ll get used to it.” Granger waved his arm expansively. “Greatest city on earth.”

  “Better than Dublin?”

  “Jesus!” Granger laughed derisively as he returned to his side of the desk and sat himself down once more. “The work’s a bit dull for you, but we’ll get you doing something more interesting . . . Ready for the match on Saturday?”

  “Yes.”

  Granger pointed his cigarette. “You know, you want to watch that little shit Caprisi. He’s their scrum half. He might be a Yank, but he’s learned fast and he can play.”

  “I’ll watch him.”

  “Good. See if you can break his leg before Saturday. How’s your diary? For dinner, I mean.”

  Granger was smiling and Field found that he was, too. “I’m busy, but I think I’ll be able to fit in with whatever your wife suggests.”

  Granger nodded and Field took a pace toward the door. “What did you want with the Lu file, anyway?”

  Field turned. “Just . . . background.”

  Granger’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “Sure.”

  Field closed the door quietly and returned to his cubicle in the corner. It was almost six o’clock. The office was empty, Yang’s chair pushed neatly up against her desk. He thought he’d walk down to the Bund, despite the heat, which gave him fifteen or twenty minutes to kill before he was due to meet Geoffrey. His dinner jacket—his father’s—was on a hanger on the hatstand in the corner.

  Field sat at his desk, still clutching the brown files he’d taken out of Registry earlier and the envelope he’d forgotten to drop into the mail room. Lu Huang’s name was written in pencil on the outside of the top file, faded with age. There was a typed summary on the front of this background file, and above it, Granger had written in pencil: For MI6. Copy to State Department, Washington, P.G. Jan 12th 1926.

  Lu Huang is the head of Shanghai’s notorious Green Gang, the most powerful triad, whose influence is pervasive across both the International Settlement and the French Concession, particularly the latter. He currently resides at 3 Rue Wagner, in a house full of bodyguards and concubines. We estimate he has around twenty thousand men at his beck and call, armed and loyal to his every whim. This is more than double the number of soldiers and police officers at the Settlement’s disposal, even if one includes administrative members of the force. We have expressed our views on this situation before and do not need to repeat them here.

  Lu originally hails from the township of Gaoquiao in Pudong. His early life is shrouded in mystery and myth, but there is a general consensus that his family was poor. They drifted to Shanghai, like so many others, to try to make their fortune, but found only squalor and disease. Lu’s mother died in the first year here, when he was a small boy (aged five or six, we estimate). His father remarried the following year, another woman from their township, only to die himself shortly afterwards. The stepmother then returned to the village but was kidnapped by Brigands. Lu, now about seven or eight, was left to fend for himself.

  He returned to Shanghai, drifted into a life of petty crime and then into the welcoming arms of the Green Gang, rising to prominence and then ultimate power through a combination of cunning and ruthlessness unique even for one of the most vicious organizations in the world. During 1923 he effectively oversaw the destruction of the Red Gang and is now undisputed master of crime in the Shanghai metropolitan area. He is probably the most po
werful man in all China.

  The primary source of the Green Gang’s income is opium illegally imported from India, an operation we believe is worth millions of dollars a year. Lu controls every aspect of its distribution and sale, as well as having a grip on prostitution across the city. He has a close relationship with the authorities in the French Concession (diplomatic discretion should perhaps prevent us from indicating how close).

  In the past year, Lu has made great efforts to present himself as a legitimate and respectable member of the community, buying a series of “front” companies, donating money to charity, and making regular appearances in the social columns of the North China Daily News. The changing perception of him in normally conservative high society is partly due to the increasing sense of insecurity of the International Settlement as a result of the anarchy that continues to tear the country apart. There is great fear, as I have already documented, that the communists, who now hold sway in the south, will soon conquer the whole of the country. It is felt by some that Lu may be an important figure in ensuring that the Settlement and the French Concession are not in any way violated (the Alabama and Sheffield arrived today, serving as a reminder of the consequences to any Chinese force of attempting such an action).

  As recorded in previous dispatches, we have ourselves made contact with Lu, whilst in no way, as a force, weakening our attempts to stifle and close down his criminal activities. It is clear, though, that he is as committed as we are to the total resistance of Bolshevism. He has, on occasion, provided useful intelligence on Michael Borodin and other Comintern agents who are trying to foment revolution in the Settlement, funding the communist army in the south and operating under the cover of the Soviet consulate (see summary on activities of Sov. cons. and Comintern 11th Dec 1925).

  At the bottom, Granger had written, again in pencil: Borodin. Communists on move. Unifying China? Pact with devil?

  The rest of the file was full of newspaper clippings, many detailing Lu’s charitable and legitimate business activities. One had a photograph of him handing over a check to a middle-aged woman at the Horticultural Society of Shanghai charity tea. He was a portly man in a long silk top, a chubby hand holding his end of the check up toward the camera lens. Another showed him doing the same for the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage.

  Field shut the file and tapped his fingers on its cover. This was only a summary, so he wondered what was in the “current” file that was still in Granger’s possession.

  Field opened Natasha Medvedev’s folder with a mixture of nervousness and excitement. A passport photograph of her, of poor quality, was attached to a single sheet. Her summary was as sparse as Lena Orlov’s.

  Natasha Medvedev resides at the Happy Times block on Foochow Road, on the top floor. She is a native of Kazan on the Volga and arrived in Shanghai via Vladivostok on the 12th January 1922. She is an associate of Michael Borodin.

  Beneath that, Field could only see a series of dates and times, listing meetings she had attended at the offices of the New Shanghai Life. This information had obviously come from an informant, because alongside each entry, someone—Prokopieff, probably—had written: said nothing of note. There was also a list of the seven occasions upon which she had been seen entering the Soviet consulate. Two of these were late at night.

  Field picked up his pencil and tapped it gently alongside each entry, going down the page. Natasha Medvedev was, he thought, just as vulnerable as Lena Orlov had been. Russians did not enjoy the rights of extraterritoriality here—the right to be governed by the laws of their own country—so anyone caught “fomenting revolution” was liable to be tried by the mixed courts and then expelled to the Chinese city and the merciless hands of the local warlord. This had happened a month ago to a Hungarian. He’d been tried, found guilty, and “put in prison,” but his family was still trying to locate him.

  Field returned to Lena Orlov’s file and placed the two summaries next to each other.

  The two women were from the same town and they’d attended the same meetings at the New Shanghai Life on the same days.

  He stood, looking at his watch, suddenly worried he would be late.

  Six

  Field emerged onto the street, relieved to feel a breeze on his face, even if it did carry with it the smell of dead fish and stagnant water from the wharves and the sulfurous pollution of factories over in Pudong, on the far side of the Whangpoo River.

  He had changed into his father’s dinner jacket, but it was just as thick and hot.

  Once it became clear he wasn’t getting into a car, he was besieged by a group of rickshaw pullers—every one scrawny and shabbily dressed—imploring him to use their services. He shook his head and waved them away, but without discernible effect. He walked purposefully the other way, passing the open doors of a packed restaurant and a billboard advertising “Money Exchange.” The signs along the street ahead were mostly in Chinese, competing for the attention of the hordes rushing to their destinations. Long cotton banners twisted in the breeze.

  An old man with no legs thrust a flat cap in Field’s direction and tugged at his trousers as he passed. Field fended him off and careered into a smart, handsome Eurasian wearing a white fedora and a long gray cotton tunic, with a silver watch pinned to his chest and bright, white shoes. Behind him was a woman in a long, figure-hugging white dress, her hair pulled back in a tight bun to reveal a pretty, oval face. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought she smiled at him.

  Ahead, a thousand telegraph wires crisscrossed a dark, brooding sky, heavy with monsoon rain. The first drops landed on his face. Field wondered if he should feel homesick, but he didn’t. He missed nothing at all about Yorkshire.

  Outside the white portico entrance to the tall red brick building that housed the American Club, Field stopped to light a cigarette. He looked up at the Stars and Stripes fluttering above the entrance. He was opposite the Municipal Administration Building and wondered if Geoffrey, too, would be walking. He couldn’t really remember what his uncle looked like. Field realized he was nervous, and recalled Edith accusing him, in a rare moment of disagreement, of “hero-worshiping a man who has played no part in our lives.”

  Field stepped off the sidewalk and waited for a tram to rattle past before crossing the road and turning onto the Bund, the city’s business heart, the Wall Street of Asia. The wind was strong here, so that the Chinese walking next to him lost his hat and had to scrabble on the sidewalk to catch it. Field stopped and ran his hand through his hair, then put both hands in his pockets and watched the new Buicks and Oldsmobiles rolling past. A black Chevrolet moved slowly among them, with burly bodyguards—White Russians—standing on each running board, machine guns resting casually over their shoulders.

  The Shanghai Club at number 2 the Bund was an ornate, classical stone building, with a red iron-framed awning shielding its entrance, Italianate cupolas capping a colonnaded facade of Ningpo granite. The street outside was quieter than usual, a group of chauffeurs kicking their heels, talking and smoking next to their sleek black cars. The rickshaw pullers stood discreetly about twenty yards down the street.

  On the Whangpoo, Field could see two dragon boats pulling away from the shore, their sides and bows decked out with bright-colored silk hangers and paper lamps. He waited again for a tram to come past, then crossed the road, walking between the line of cars parked down its center. He headed for the war memorial—a bronze angel standing above a square stone pillar. Some children were playing tag around it while their parents watched the dragon boats.

  Field looked at his watch. He did not want to be either early or late.

  He waited for a few minutes. A steamer, loaded to the gills with people bent low beneath a canvas awning, made its way downriver. It was towing three cargo barges, but still moving faster than a similarly overloaded sampan struggling to get out of its way. Both were making for the wooden jetty that jutted out ahead of him.

  Field leaned over the wall, looking down into the muddy waters.
The lights along the shore came on suddenly. They were electric here.

  He looked at his watch again and turned to survey the solid majesty of the Bund. It was like the Strand, or any of London’s other classical streets; every building along it, he thought, a projection of European and American power. He pushed himself away from the wall and walked back across the road and through the iron gates. The glass doors at the top of the steps swung back as he reached them.

  “Good evening, sir,” the doorman said, bowing, next to a pair of Greek goddesses that guarded the entrance. He spoke with a thick Russian accent and wore a bright blue and gold uniform. Behind him, a broad staircase of white Sicilian marble climbed toward the first floor.

  “I’m here to meet Geoffrey Donaldson.”