French Concession

by Xiao Bai

  In any case, this was valuable intelligence. It demonstrated conclusively that Shanghai was becoming a center for the firearms trade. Large numbers of bank documents and deposit slips had been found in Mr. Brandt’s apartment, totaling some 738,200 yuan.

  Documents showed that the bank account was extraordinarily active, yet Mr. Brandt could not produce any invoices or receipts. This did not work in his favor. He had enough money to buy a whole house, and he could not explain where the funds came from, or to whom he had paid them. He insisted that he was representing a German trading company based in Hamburg, which planned to buy property in Hong Kong or Shanghai as the first step toward establishing an Asian presence.

  In Nanking, Mr. Brandt kept changing his story. First he said he was trading opium, and then it was firearms. In his third testimony—Sarly figured this must be the tenth turn of the screw—Brandt said that the German company was a shell belonging to a shadowy Moscow firm, one of the firms that had sprung up when Comrade Lenin discovered that his newly established Communist country would have to use the exploitative imperialist methods of international trade if it was to feed itself.

  But the Nanking investigators did not believe this story. The Concession Police never arrested foreign businessmen without incriminatory evidence—not that Brandt would know this—and two sources had fingered him separately. Brandt later admitted that while his mother was a born and bred Berliner, his father had been born in Moscow. Then, in a raid on revolutionary cells in Hanoi, the French police there had found Brandt’s correspondence address in Shanghai. The Political Section of the Concession Police initially thought he might be the leader of the Pan-Pacific Association of Unions. But not long thereafter, in a botched military operation in a small city in Kiangsi province, the Kuomintang discovered documents that the newly established Soviet government had forgotten to destroy in its hurry to retreat. Clues in the documents had led to a series of arrests made by the Kuomintang military in Kiangsi. One of them had caved when threatened with torture and divulged the numbers of a few bank accounts in Shanghai.

  According to the interrogation notes from Nanking, in his fourth testimony Brandt had admitted to leading a new Communist organization with a mandate to support the socialist movement across Asia from Shanghai. The organization would provide expertise, strategy, and, crucially, funding to other radical groups. Lieutenant Sarly had his doubts about that confession too. The manuscript was too logical, too well written. It read like a carefully crafted masterpiece pretending to be a draft. The writer hesitated, contradicted himself, crossed out large sections, and yet when he got to the point it was unambiguous and succinct.

  But although the Brandt case raised many questions, all parties involved agreed on one fact: they had a common enemy, one that was disciplined, well organized, and well funded. After setbacks in Europe, particularly in Germany, their enemy had refocused its strategy on the Far East, which the Comintern considered the weakest link in the capitalist chain. The best place for them to detonate their bomb would be Shanghai, Asia’s most heterogeneous and ungovernable city.

  In their private conversations, Consul Baudez and Lieutenant Sarly agreed that the French Concession was the most vulnerable part of Shanghai. A few Shanghailanders, mostly real estate developers, had strong opinions about the Communists. Although the consul had thus far remained neutral, he would seize this opportunity to take action. Baudez too had received a private letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris via diplomatic mail, hinting that the Concession authorities should make a few high-profile arrests in line with France’s shifting policy toward the Soviet Union. The animosity between the two countries was no longer a mere trade dispute.

  The narrative taking shape in Lieutenant Sarly’s mind linked the recent assassinations to a firearms company that operated across Asia and an amateur photographer in the Concession. Further intelligence suggested that the head of the assassination squad in question had a Soviet background. He thought he could see Fate winking at him.

  Best of all, it turned out that the photographer, Hsueh, was the son of an old friend. Hsueh’s father and Lieutenant Sarly had served in the same company of a colonial regiment during the Great War. They had spent all summer smoking Lieutenant Sarly’s beloved pipes in the wet mud of the trenches. Hsueh’s father loved to take photographs, and Lieutenant Sarly still had a few of them. That winter, Pierre Weiss’s trench had been bombed. Sarly had forgotten all about him until the police station sent him a stack of photographs culled by Inspector Maron from Hsueh’s collection. Maron said this Hsueh character had other, more vulgar tastes.

  There was no way Inspector Maron would have recognized the much younger Sarly in the photographs. In them he was shabbily dressed, having torn off his uniform sleeves at the shoulders, as men often did in the trenches. Left to steep in sweat, the flesh of their underarms could develop sores and rot.

  He did not mention any of this to the consul, partly because it involved a personal matter, but mostly because his opinions were as yet unformed.

  CHAPTER 16

  JUNE 14, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

  8:35 A.M.

  Leng was lonely. No one had given her anything to do, and she also hadn’t had a visitor in days. She felt abandoned. The night before, she had called Ku from the telephone in the hardware store across the street. This was a clear violation of the rules, but she could not help herself. She sounded like she was about to cry. Just stay put and Lin will be along tomorrow, Ku said. Leng felt a rush of hope.

  She slept better than she had in days. Anyone would be miserable, left alone like that. The next morning, she put on makeup, and picked out a checkered cheongsam and a pair of white leather shoes. She would go to the market and buy fish. Lin liked fish. She considered him a real friend, the only person in the cell in whom she could confide.

  As she drew the curtains, sunlight streamed across the table. She pushed the window open to let in the crisp morning breeze. Then she poked her head out and got a shock. That man was standing on Rue Amiral Bayle, at the end of the longtang next to the hardware store, looking up at her window. It was the man she had seen a few days ago—or rather, the man who had been standing at the railing of the Paul Lecat.

  She calmly withdrew her head and put on her shoes. Don’t close the windows or draw the curtains, she told herself. She reflected for a moment, and reached out to hang her thin blanket outside the window. Don’t turn that way, don’t look, she warned herself.

  She hurried downstairs. There was only one way out of the longtang, which opened onto Rue Amiral Bayle. She had no way of knowing what this man wanted. They said her picture was in all the newspapers, and anyone could recognize her.

  On the intersection of Rue Amiral Bayle and Rue Conty, she ran into trouble.

  She picked Lin out right away. He was in a white canvas suit and clutching a magazine. Then she saw the two other men with him. She was dismayed to see a policeman standing in front of Lin, but immediately realized that this was a routine search. Lin’s bourgeois appearance seemed to irritate the Vietnamese man in a bamboo hat, who searched him thoroughly. He grabbed Lin’s magazine and gave it to the Frenchman with him, but the Frenchman only shook his head. At the end of the search, he paused before reaching his hand out to pat down the back of Lin’s waist, as though he had saved the most important step for last, to catch Lin off guard.

  On the other end of the roadblock, the Chinese detective opened up the seat of a rickshaw and rifled energetically through its contents. Passersby cursed and grumbled. The police soon lost interest in Lin, and waved him on.

  To Leng’s puzzlement, Lin did not leave right away. He hesitated, looking at the ground, and rolling up the magazine in his hand. He stared into space, as if he were wondering why the police were performing searches so early in the morning. Then he looked behind him and tapped his head with the rolled-up magazine, as though he had just thought of something and had to go back for it.

  She had already raised her
left arm to wave at him, but Lin was not looking toward her.

  Just as he turned, a gunshot rang out, and everyone looked past Lin in the direction from which the shot had sounded.

  Only she was looking at Lin. He turned around, the gun went off, and in the confusion he nearly tripped. For an instant Leng thought he had been shot.

  Some people fled south along Rue Amiral Bayle, while others ducked into doorways and gaped at the runners. The police had recovered from their shock, and the sound of police whistles and warning shots rang out. Chinese plainclothes detectives raced after the shooter.

  He was still firing off rounds and looking over his shoulders at them. Then he began to skip along sideways, taunting his pursuers like a mischievous urchin. He twisted around to fire into the air behind him, obviously to create confusion.

  Leng saw Lin run toward Rue Conty, and she hurried after him, trying to catch up. The shooter, who was trying to escape, had to be one of her own comrades, someone who had been there with Lin. More people appeared, crowding at longtang gates to see what the fuss was about. People poked their heads out of second-floor windows, as if the street were a movie set and gunfire were nothing to be afraid of.

  Then, suddenly, no one was running any longer, and Rue Conty reverted to its usual morning stillness.

  Lin had melted into the crowd. Leng had to slow down. Her mind was racing. She didn’t know whether she could or should go back to her room. Luckily she had seen the man and left immediately, or she wouldn’t have witnessed this incident. Right now the apartment would be a dangerous place to be.

  She was annoyed that Lin hadn’t gone straight there to give her the news and tell her what to do.

  She was still scanning the backs of people walking ahead of her. Perhaps she should find a telephone and call Ku. But she dared not just borrow a telephone from a corner shop. She mustn’t let anyone overhear her. She thought about calling from a hostel on the street corner but decided the phone at the reception was not safe—a few extra cents would not keep these people from talking. The Concession was crawling with police informers.

  She cut through a longtang toward Avenue Dubail, figuring that she would find a public telephone booth there. During the day, the iron doors leading into the longtangs were all open, but the sunlight never penetrated beneath the third floor windows. Despite the breeze, the air was moist with the smoke from yesterday’s dinner and the smell of chamber pots left to dry in the sun. The narrow alleyways stank like the city’s intestines.

  She heard footsteps clicking on the glazed tiles behind her and echoing through the quiet longtang. When she turned the corner she stole a glance behind her and saw the man again, although this time he was not carrying his gigantic camera. She quickened her footsteps. Who was that man anyway? Why was he following her? She knew he had recognized her.

  She suspected that the unusual search on the corner of Rue Conty had been no coincidence. It must have had something to do with the man. She was irritated at Lin for having made off so quickly. If only he were here, they could ambush that man, attack him with bricks or a stick, or somehow knock him unconscious.

  He was clearly her enemy. He must have drawn the police there. Perhaps he was an informer. But she could not imagine how he could have found the meeting point on Rue Amiral Bayle unless he had seen her leave the safe house. They had been right, then, when they told her she was instantly recognizable. She had to get in touch with Ku. This was an emergency, and she must report it to the cell right away.

  The next longtang led to Rue Lafayette. She stepped out of the longtang and waited impatiently for the Vietnamese policeman to turn the sign so she could cross the street. A fence painted black stood beneath the parasol tree, and behind it she could see the shrubbery inside the Koukaza Gardens, the sunlight glittering on grass behind the wooden lattice gates. The telephone booth lay to the west of the gates.

  Two gangs of French urchins were fighting for control of the booth. When its hinged door swung into one tousled blond head, the boy collapsed next to the telephone booth, and the children scattered immediately. The old man who sold telephone tokens sat inside the booth, observing them impassively.

  Only when Leng walked right up to the booth did the fallen warrior let out a loud cry, leap up, and scamper in the direction of the park gates.

  The street was quiet, except for the breeze rustling the leaves of the parasol tree. Leng had no money. She had not brought her handbag, and she did not have a single cent on her.

  Later, Hsueh would tell her that she had been standing in the telephone booth looking frantic, like a bird trapped in a cage.

  And there he was, smiling through the windows of the telephone booth, just as he had smiled at her not too long ago at Wu-sung-k’ou, when the early morning sun was shining and there was a breeze on deck.

  “I saw you on the ship.”

  He opened the spring-hinged door, poking his head in to speak to her.

  Leng thought it best to deny this. “What ship? I don’t know you.”

  “Sure you don’t. But I can give you this.”

  He retracted his head and held a telephone token against the window with his finger, making it slide up and down the glass.

  She swung the door open and walked out. Yesterday’s dew hung on the thick beams of the fence. He cut her off at the gate.

  “Who are you and why are you following me?” Leng said loudly while a couple two feet away walked into the park, one after another. The young man turned to look at her, unmoved. Clearly he had his own troubles and no time for anyone else’s, or why would he be in the park so early in the morning? Leng caught a glimpse of a red tassel out of the corner of her eye. The Vietnamese policeman was standing at a pavilion by the gate and yawning. The sunlight glinted off the wet grass roof of the wood and brick Romanesque pavilion. The policeman took an interest in them and began to meander over.

  She panicked. Should she scream? Her photograph was in all the newspapers. In fact, it was probably in the police files and pinned on the wall of the police station with photos of all the other suspects. She turned around and walked into the park. She was furious that they hadn’t given her a pistol. If she had one, she would shoot him dead right now, she fumed.

  It was a Sunday, and the park was bustling with visitors. She paid no attention to the people strolling about; it was the policemen she was worried about. The Vietnamese and Chinese policemen kept appearing from the wide path that ran north-south through the park, and a small policeman rode along on horseback, fully armed. His line of sight stretched from the south to the north gate of the park.

  And the man was still walking two steps behind her.

  CHAPTER 17

  JUNE 14, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

  10:12 A.M.

  Hsueh did not lack the imagination that Sarly was always saying a good agent had to have. Not that Sarly gave him much advice about intelligence work when they met that afternoon. He was nostalgic for the war, for muddy trenches, for the smell of burned grass mingled with the deep earthy scent of the fields after rain. So he spent most of the afternoon reminiscing about the trenches and his friendship with Hsueh’s father, whom he referred to as Pierre, and whose photographs lay on the table. Anything I do for you, I’m doing for Pierre (may he rest in peace), he said. The Concession Police always needs new blood, and of course—Lieutenant Sarly had always valued patrilineage—you are French.

  “To be a good agent, you must use your imagination,” said Lieutenant Sarly. “The facts won’t just present themselves to you—all you’ve got are a couple of clues and your imagination. The sergeants each have dozens of agents working under them, and the inspectors have even bigger teams. But you will be different. You’ll report directly to me.”

  He had been terrified when Therese pointed her pistol at him that day, and had consequently told her a boatload of lies. In retrospect, he realized that a woman who sold explosives to Communists and the Green Gang could not possibly have been fooled by his amateuris
h excuses. That night he began to suspect it was only a matter of time before someone blew his cover. Therese would question Mr. Ku the way she had questioned him, and between them they would soon work out that Hsueh had been causing trouble for them. Then they would come for him. They could batter the door down while he was fast asleep, they could ambush him at the end of a dark alley, they could even surprise him in the steamy public baths, and hold his head under the hot murky water to drown him.

  In the middle of the night, he suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. He began to figure how much time he had left to escape. Therese would tell Zung about her suspicions, and then, like a zigzagging billiard ball, this story about an inquisitive young good-for-nothing would reach the ears of the two young men he followed in the cab, and Mr. Ku himself.

  On the other hand, things were also going well for him now that he had become a police investigator with secret privileges. He was anxious to prove himself. Lieutenant Sarly wanted him to locate the dark longtang to which he had followed a Hong Kong businessman and a couple of other men, who then suddenly disappeared.

  He used to make up stories to satisfy Inspector Maron, tell him whatever he thought he could get away with. But Hsueh was moved by Lieutenant Sarly’s determination to honor his friendship with Hsueh’s father, and he agreed to take a police squad to the apartment on Rue Amiral Bayle. When Maron started mobilizing his men, however, Hsueh began to have second thoughts. He still held a grudge against Maron, and he didn’t want him getting all the credit for this case. He was gratified to realize that he would not be able to pinpoint the exact location of the apartment anyway, since all the longtangs on that street looked more or less the same.