French Concession

by Xiao Bai

  The cargo boat sailed along Yang-ching Creek to the Whampoa. Frogs kept croaking on the banks. All the men were smoking, but the boat stank despite the breeze. Hsueh was sweating, and he couldn’t hide how nervous he was. The river made an oily gurgle in the moonlight.

  The land along the banks where the Yang-ching flowed into the Whampoa belonged to Alfred Holt and Co., the shipping company that ran the Blue Funnel Line. The goods Hsueh and his companions wanted were on an eight-thousand-ton English cargo ship moored at a floating dock at the confluence of the rivers. The Blue Funnel Line’s ships ran almost every day from Hong Kong’s Swire Pier, beneath Signal Hill in Tsim Sha Tsui, to Shanghai. The passenger liners Hsueh usually took from Hong Kong to Shanghai set sail from that pier too.

  Over years, Therese had built up a transport network involving the seamen on cargo ships. They were always short of money and usually willing to smuggle something onboard for a few extra bucks. Even though the Customs House was just across the river from the Blue Funnel Line’s piers, she never had any trouble slipping her contraband through.

  As their small cargo boat drew noiselessly nearer to the larger ship, Hsueh broke out in a cold sweat. His hands trembled, and he could feel the sweat in his clammy armpits. “The signal!” Park hissed at him from the helm.

  Hsueh started, and his flashlight nearly fell into the water. It wouldn’t switch on, so he pushed the button again, signaling toward the port-side stern of the ship, and waiting for the White Russian seaman to return the signal when he saw it. The huge cargo ship blocked out the sky, leaving only a sliver of starlight that outlined its silhouette.

  It was quiet. Waves sloshed against the pier, and the odd seagull squawked. Except for a couple of dim lights among the rows of warehouses a hundred yards away, the riverbanks were pitch-black. There were no dockworkers or guards on patrol.

  There were no policemen. The previous day, Hsueh had given Sarly the location of the pier and the name of the boat. Then, before setting out that afternoon, he had gone out on the pretext of buying cigarettes to call Sarly from a corner store and tell him the method of delivery. He realized he was putting both Therese and Leng in danger, but he didn’t dare to lie. There was no time to think of all that—too much going on. We’re taking this one step at a time, he told himself.

  A light sparkled on the railing. He sent another inquiry signal, and the light answered. Then it was dark again. Several minutes later, two heavy packages were lowered onto the deck of the boat, shuddering as they descended.

  The packages hovered briefly above the helm before thudding onto the deck. Park and the other two went up to untie the ropes and hoist the packages into the hold.

  Two more packages followed.

  They started the engine. It hummed gently, making eddies that were visible for several yards along the surface of the water. Hsueh glanced toward the shore again. Nothing stirred.

  He couldn’t imagine why Lieutenant Sarly hadn’t acted on his tip. Again he was overcome by gratitude. Sarly must not have wanted to blow Hsueh’s cover. When he was flashing the signal just now, Hsueh had flattened himself against the cabin doors and only leaned out slightly, aware that he could be hit by a stray bullet if the police attacked from land. But no bullets came—Sarly must have wanted him to be safe.

  He hadn’t been able to tell Sarly much. All he knew was that the delivery would take place on the river. He had no access to Ku’s plans, and he didn’t even know when they would reach Blue Funnel Pier. The Concession Police would barely have had the time to round up enough boats to make an arrest. On the other end of the line, Sarly said nothing for a long while, for so long that Hsueh began to imagine that Park was standing behind him and staring straight at him, that he had been discovered by Ku’s people, and would be gunned down as soon as he stepped out of the corner store.

  Eventually, Sarly said: be careful. He didn’t tell Hsueh what he was planning, and he didn’t ask him to drag the meeting out or to disrupt it in any way. So he must have decided right then not to take action.

  Hsueh attributed this to Lieutenant Sarly’s extraordinary friendship with his father. Sarly genuinely trusted him. He must be waiting for intelligence that would allow him to make the arrests when it was safer. For a moment, Hsueh’s gratitude to Sarly exceeded his affection for Therese and even for Leng.

  But the hours of mental strain, physical exertion, sweating and stinking had left him exhausted. By the time he got into the Peugeot, all Hsueh’s muscles felt pleasantly numb. In the morning, he would go to the police headquarters as soon as he had taken leave of Ku’s gang. But first, to repay Sarly’s trust, he would find out where the goods were stashed.

  Right now, they were under the backseat in the car, still in their packages. As he was carrying them, he had thought he could feel a metallic coolness beneath the tarp and the wax paper. The packages reeked of engine oil, so Park collected bits of cloth from all over the hut, and wrapped the packages in scraps that stank of rotting flesh.

  The horizon at Wu-sung-k’ou was growing bright when they left the Yü clan village, and the car sped through the deserted countryside. They rolled down the windows, but the stench of cattle carcasses seemed to have been infused into the leather seats. They were all sweating profusely and extremely tired. Only the Korean, who was driving, still appeared to be brimming with energy.

  They couldn’t cross the river yet. The first ferry wasn’t until seven. They parked by a grove of trees and laid out the food in their picnic basket. Hsueh had no appetite. He grabbed a bottle of soda and tipped it into his mouth.

  Park had wrapped his hands around a slender tree and was yanking it upward, to relieve his tense shoulder muscles. He turned to ask Hsueh: “Where are you going after we cross the river? Would you like a lift in the car?”

  Hsueh had a check for seven thousand yuan in his pocket. That was Therese’s money, and he had to get it to her. That was the sort of man he was. If you didn’t trust him, he would string you along for as long as possible, but as soon as you decided to trust him, he would become loyal to you and scrupulously honest. The previous afternoon, Therese had told him that she didn’t want her bodyguards involved in this deal; she wanted Hsueh to take charge of the whole process, payment included. Hsueh was moved, just as he had been moved by Lieutenant Sarly’s trust. But when he was terrified that night—looking out the window into a cemetery, for instance—he had daydreamed about running away. He couldn’t help thinking that seven thousand yuan would allow him to go anywhere he wanted with Leng.

  “I have to deliver this money to someone.” Hsueh was not afraid of the man in front of him, even though he knew these people to be capable of shooting someone dead on the street. But he felt like an actor playing a possibly fatal role for which he was not yet prepared. Was this a trap? Didn’t stories of double-crossing gangsters appear every day in the Concession newspapers? He was exhausted, and probably imagining things.

  CHAPTER 46

  JULY 13, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

  8:45 A.M.

  Therese was standing naked in front of her dressing table mirror, trying on a plaited chain belt. A revolver-shaped pendant dangled from it, brushing against her pubic hair. She plucked out a few hairs with a tweezer, making her hair a neat triangle. She had recently started caring more about how she looked.

  She got dressed and came out of her room. Ah Kwai was still at the vegetable market. Just as she was about to leave and meet Hsueh at the Astor, the phone rang.

  The caller was silent for a long while. Therese could hear nothing but crackling and the sound of someone breathing.

  “How may I help you?” she asked impatiently.

  Silence.

  “Who is speaking?” she asked in Shanghainese instead.

  “I am Hsueh’s friend.” Therese listened. The woman’s voice sputtered, but Therese couldn’t tell whether it was because the caller was hesitating or whether there was static on the line. The only word she could make out was the word danger.r />
  Then the caller repeated herself, in short bursts punctuated by long silences, still speaking softly: “Don’t go to see Hsueh. They want you dead. You’re in danger.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I found a phone number on the back of a photograph in his pocket and knew it had to be yours.” Therese picked up on one solid fact in this confused speech. She knew exactly which photo the woman was talking about.

  “Who are you?” she repeated.

  “A friend of Hsueh’s,” said the woman in a firmer voice.

  “And why would they kill me?” It seemed like an odd question to ask, she thought. She might as well be a stranger wondering: Why would anyone want to kill Therese Irxmayer?

  “Now that the deal’s done, you know too much, don’t you see? They don’t have the manpower to kidnap you and hold you somewhere.” That was a bizarre rationale. It made her sound like a plate of leftovers. Save it for tomorrow? Don’t bother, it’ll be too much trouble.

  “But what about Hsueh? Will he be all right? Why don’t you tell him?”

  “I don’t know where he is, but you know he went to pick up the goods. He’ll come to meet you. They’ll keep him alive because he can still be useful to them.” The voice was cut off abruptly, and there was more static. Before long, the caller hung up gently.

  Therese slid down the wall and knelt at the entrance to the living room. The ceramic flooring felt cold on her knees. About fifteen meters of telephone wires curled beside her bare feet. Thinking quickly, she realized she would have to rescue Hsueh. He was probably already on the way to the Astor, and she would barely get there in time. She picked up the phone and rang the jewelry store.

  Then she left in a hurry, dashing out of the lobby, crossing Avenue Joffre without even looking both ways.

  The Cossacks were ready and waiting in the jewelry store, and the Ford was parked round the back.

  They drove north. On Mohawk Road they were held up by a pack of racehorses coming out of the stables, but then the car sped up again. They drove east along the southern bank of Soochow Creek. Therese was riding shotgun. She slipped her hand into her handbag to retrieve a cigarette and quietly chamber a round. The Cossacks already had their guns loaded.

  She lit the cigarette and stopped to think. Who was that woman who seemed to know everything? Was she one of Ku’s people? She had never asked Hsueh about his boss or the gang. The French Concession was swarming with gangs, and she couldn’t count the number of criminal organizations to which she had sold guns.

  The car was held up again on Garden Bridge. Three empty Japanese military trucks rattled along the bridge, forcing the southbound cars and rickshaws into the northbound lane, and blocking off traffic in both directions. A gang of ragged child beggars swarmed around the waiting cars.

  It was nearly ten in the morning, and in the sunlight a foul smell began to rise from Soochow Creek. Therese began fidgeting. She felt something graze the skin on her waist. It was the chain belt, of course—she had quite forgotten about it.

  She lit another cigarette, and rolled the window down to get rid of the smoke.

  When she looked out, she saw Hsueh sitting in a car whose driver seemed to be deliberately provoking the Japanese soldiers. It was going north ahead of them but had driven onto the right-hand lane, edging brashly between the first two trucks and blocking the southbound cars. Provisions had been unloaded from the trucks, and each had its tarp rolled up behind the hood. A couple of Japanese soldiers stood by the tailgate of one truck, looking impassively at the little French car, as though the neck flaps on their helmets could block out the chaos around them as well as the sun.

  She could see movement inside Hsueh’s car. He was leaning back against the headrest, holding a cigarette between two fingers outside the window. She rolled the window down again and pointed him out to her Cossack bodyguards, both of whom had semiautomatic Mauser rifles on their laps. She had to think fast.

  They could drive up to Hsueh’s car and gesture wildly at him, but she wouldn’t be able to warn him properly, and knowing Hsueh, he might kick up a fuss. On the other hand, if she waited for them to get out of the car, she could suddenly drive up to them, trusting her Cossacks to keep things under control with their rifles. While the other men were too frightened to move, she could explain things to Hsueh and leave calmly with him.

  The Astor House Hotel and environs

  They started tailing the other car. It was in the right-hand lane and her Ford was in the left, so she could see straight into it. She rolled the window up, knowing the reflected sunlight would prevent her opponent from seeing into her own car. Gazing at Hsueh’s silhouette in the window, she thought what a handsome man he was.

  The cars slowly found their way around the roadblock. A few people got out of rickshaws, and the rickshaw men yanked their empty rickshaws onto the sidewalk. One northbound car after another drove slowly up the bridge. The French car merged back onto the left-hand lane, and honked insolently when it passed the last of the Japanese trucks. Therese had her car drive slowly behind them.

  The car turned off Paikee Road and past Seward Road toward Whangpoo Road. But Therese directed her driver to turn east on Whangpoo Road instead, and make a U-turn at Astor Road. They could then drive toward the Astor from the other end of Whangpoo Road and cut Hsueh’s car off there. At the corner of Astor Road, she asked the driver to slow down. The sun shone on the pale brown facade of the Broadway Mansions. From inside her own suffocatingly hot car, she could see the other car stopping at the side of the road. Behind it, countless windows glittered.

  “Now!” she cried.

  As the driver slammed down on the accelerator pedal, the car sped toward the Astor at sixty miles an hour, nearly tipping over as it careened to a halt on the pavement. Hsueh leaped aside and hid in the doorway of the Astor. Two other men had just gotten off, and the car sped toward them, forcing them up against the wall. Hsueh’s driver was speechless.

  The Cossacks leaped fearlessly out of the car, and went straight up to the young men. They ignored Hsueh—he was on their side. Brandishing their rifles, they cried in off-key Shanghainese: “No one move!”

  No one moved. The young men had their backs to the wall, their eyes wide open. Their hands wandered to their pistols, but they wouldn’t have time to draw.

  But the Cossacks had miscalculated badly. Having judged their opponents’ position by their own, it simply hadn’t occurred to them that the driver of the other car might also be armed. Their most dangerous opponent was just outside their field of view. . . .

  Two shots rang out, and both men crumpled onto the porch with the force of the bullets. One was hit in the temple. Another bullet pierced his companion in the left side, just as he was raising the rifle with his left hand, and probably went through his heart. His head thudded onto the white marble porch, exploding like a deranged artist’s convulsive oil painting. (Therese had seen a painting like that in the studio of a White Russian artist who kept up with the latest Parisian trends.) Blood seeped from the man’s crushed skull onto the gray-flecked marble.

  Therese was furious. With one foot out of the car, she had been just about to step out and yell at Hsueh. Instead she leaned back into the car and reached for her handbag, groping for the Browning under the cigarette case. Craning her neck out, she struck her head on the doorframe but barely noticed the pain as she drew the gun in her right hand, pulling the trigger—

  The pistol never fired. The trigger had only been partly held down, not far enough to discharge the round. She would have missed anyway, because she hadn’t had time to take aim. Her opponent had already leaped onto the pavement and was firing at her from the right flank of the Ford. The bullet lodged in her stomach. She was still sitting there with the door half open when the bullet pierced through layers of silk to bury itself under her skin.

  Before she passed out, she saw Hsueh leap at the gun and clutch the driver’s arm. The two men who had thrown themselves against the w
all only seconds before rushed at Hsueh and bundled him into another car. Just as she was about to faint, a thought suddenly occurred to her: had Hsueh saved her life instead?

  CHAPTER 47

  JULY 13, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

  10:35 A.M.

  If Park hadn’t been so incensed by the Japanese soldiers while he was driving, their car would have arrived at the Astor a few minutes earlier. It couldn’t be helped, because he was Korean. But that way the shootout at the door wouldn’t have happened, and maybe Therese wouldn’t have gotten shot.

  If they hadn’t stopped by Mud Crossing on their way to Pu-tung Pier, and unloaded a few packages into a hut in a field sunken about five meters below the main road, they might have gotten there a couple hours earlier. And if Hsueh hadn’t been racking his brains for a way to refuse Park’s offer of a lift, so that he could make a phone call to Sarly, maybe they would have gotten there earlier still. Before he passed out, Hsueh realized that he hadn’t had a chance to give Sarly an update. Then someone struck him with a heavy piece of metal on the head. A pistol, he realized, and immediately lost consciousness.

  When he awoke, he found himself lying in bed. Ku was sitting at the edge of the bed, smiling at him.

  “Good, you’re awake. That was impulsive of you.”

  Impulsive? Hsueh was surprised, but he couldn’t say a word. There was a hammer thudding against his temple.

  “Comrade Leng went missing this morning. She may already have been killed. That White Russian woman showed up at your rooms and found her there. Leng sent a message this morning, but we only just got it. It looks as though Lady Holly came to the Astor because she was after you. They pulled their guns as soon as they got out of the car.”

  Hsueh needed to think hard about Ku’s words, but his brain had turned to jelly, and he could barely make out what the man was saying.