The Master of Rain

by Tom Bradby

  Field stared at the wall at the far end of the garden. He could hear a brass band on the Bund, practicing for tomorrow’s Empire Day celebrations. He stood, walked to the end of the veranda, and looked out across the lawn. A servant was watering flowers. “Geoffrey was involved in a syndicate to smuggle vast quantities of opium into Europe. Did you know about that?”

  “I knew he was getting the money from somewhere. He thought that I didn’t know where he kept the key to his safe.”

  Field moved back toward her. “The opium was being shipped through one of Charles Lewis’s factories, but Lewis’s name doesn’t appear on the list of payoffs that I have.”

  “Geoffrey always wanted to be rich like Charlie.”

  “The absence of Lewis’s name on the list doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t involved.”

  “Charlie has more money than anyone could ever need.” She shook her head. “Anyway, he doesn’t think like that.”

  “How does he think?”

  She looked at him, her gaze level. “He’s more like you than you might imagine.” She raised her hand. “Oh, I know you wouldn’t accept that, and in an everyday sense you’re right. He’s unorthodox, even a little cruel at times. But he’s honorable in his own way. Consistent, anyway.”

  “He’s close to Lu.”

  She shook her head. “No, they tolerate each other. They have to.”

  “Lewis doesn’t have to tolerate anyone.”

  Penelope shook her head. “You’re wrong. He once told me that he viewed China as a great river. Sometimes you can divert it a little, but mostly you have to swim in the direction it flows. If Lu didn’t exist, someone else would take his place. He, or his kind, cannot be eradicated, and Charlie likes stability. Rather the devil, you know. That is how he keeps himself and Fraser’s where it is.”

  Field found himself thinking not of Lewis, but of Granger, using similar words on the sidewalk outside the Cathay Hotel in a world that seemed light-years away. Granger had understood.

  He had the uncomfortable sense that he had been responsible in some way for Granger’s death. He wondered if Lu and Geoffrey and Macleod had always intended to dispose of the Irishman, or whether his death had been an accidental by-product of their attempt to eliminate him and Caprisi.

  “What will you do, Richard?”

  Field looked down at the floor, trying to clear his mind. “I will contact Lewis and ask him to arrange a meeting with Lu. Somewhere safe. Somewhere public. I’ll offer them both exactly what they want, a continuation of the status quo.”

  “And what do you want in return?”

  “Something that is of no importance to either of them.”

  “The girl?”

  “The girl, yes. The Russian girl.” Field heard the bitterness and reproach in his voice.

  “Will you forgive me, Richard?”

  He looked at her. She was biting her lip, on the verge of tears again, her face twitching nervously, and he understood her now. “You don’t need me to forgive you,” he said. “You need to forgive yourself.”

  Penelope looked down and began to cry again, but he still did not move.

  She stood, shaking her head, and went inside. Field lit another cigarette, but barely raised it to his lips, watching the smoke drifting up beneath the eaves and melting into the sky, its blue now flecked with thin shards of gray.

  Penelope returned and placed a brown envelope on his lap. “If you’re to stand any chance at all, you will need this.”

  Field opened it up reluctantly, then spilled its contents onto the table in front of him.

  “I haven’t counted it, but I think there’s more than ten thousand American dollars.”

  Field looked up at her.

  “It’s for you, Richard, and your Russian girl. I don’t want it now.”

  “I cannot accept this.”

  “Then take it for her.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Don’t be stubborn, Richard. You have nothing left to prove here. You need to accept help.” Her face softened. “I don’t want the money. If you don’t take it, I’ll throw it away.”

  Field stared at the pile of cash spilling across the table in front of him. It was more money than he had seen in his entire life. It was enough money to live an entire life.

  “I will take a thousand,” he said, “if you agree to take the rest of the money to an orphanage. I’ll give you the address.”

  She knelt in front of him. Her face was serious—soft and sane. “I’m not a bad person, am I, Richard?”

  He didn’t know what to say.

  “Please.” Her eyes implored him. She placed her head on his lap, like a child. After a few moments Field reached forward and placed the palm of his hand gently on top of her head.

  The bedroom window was open, and Field could still hear the sound of the band on the Bund, but the garden was strangely quiet, shielded on all sides by new office buildings that had sprung up in the boom years since the end of the Great War.

  There was a light wind up here, just enough to tug at the curtains.

  He turned, realizing Penelope had been watching him from the doorway.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Penelope breathed in deeply. “Forgive me if I don’t come to the door.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good luck, Richard.”

  Field walked across the room, his footsteps loud on the wooden floorboards as he passed the foot of the iron-framed bed. He could not help glancing at the section next to the fireplace beneath which he had concealed the pages from Lu’s ledger the previous night. He wondered if she had heard him pulling up the floorboards and understood.

  He stood in front of her, their faces close. “What will you do?” he asked.

  “Where will I go, do you mean?” Her eyes were peaceful now, her demeanor calm and unhurried. “I’ll stay here, Richard. Unlike you, I have nowhere else to go. Or perhaps I should say, no reason to go anywhere else.” She smiled.

  Field pressed the knuckles of one hand with the fingers of the other.

  She touched his shoulder. “Good luck.”

  Field bent to kiss her, but she took him into her arms, her grip tight as she held him. Then she released him and stepped back.

  Field hesitated and then walked along the corridor. He stopped by the stairs and looked back.

  She wore a fragile smile.

  “Do you think,” he said, “they will give me what I want?”

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly, “but you are right to try.”

  Field looked at her. She stood with her legs together and her hands by her side, in a position of studied composure.

  He put a foot on the stairs.

  “Richard?”

  Field stopped. He could tell it was taking every fragment of her strength to hold back the tears.

  “He was a good man, you know. And that part of him was always there; it just got smaller and smaller.”

  She had begun to cry now, and Field stepped back toward her.

  “No.” She raised her hand. “Please.” Penelope wiped her eyes. “Just tell me I was not completely wrong.”

  Field thought of the gaping wound in Lena Orlov’s stomach, of Alexei’s frightened face and the photograph that Maretsky had given him of Natalya’s mutilated body. He thought of Natasha’s bruised lip and the fate that had so nearly befallen her. He hesitated, then looked up again at the diminutive figure in the shadows.

  “You weren’t wrong, Penelope.” He shook his head. “You weren’t wrong.”

  He began to walk down the stairs.

  “Good luck,” she said again.

  Fifty-six

  As the national anthem started, a great cheer went up. The crowd in front of him was a sea of red, white, and blue. They had gathered in their thousands, in front of the consulate. Field shifted to the right to get a better view.

  He did not believe he had been followed from Crane Road, bu
t there were so many people about that anyone who wished to tail him without being observed could easily have done so.

  The sergeant, mounted on his horse in front of the guard of honor, shouted, “Three cheers for the king and emperor,” and the crowd around Field erupted. “Hip, hip, hooray!”

  Field helped a man who was struggling to get his young boy on his shoulders and rescued his Union Jack from the ground.

  The nearest troops were the Sikhs, dressed in white, their buckles and bayonets gleaming in the midday sun.

  A portly, middle-aged woman, with a tiny flag tucked into the band of her hat, turned to him with tears in her eyes. “Look at the marines,” the woman exhorted him and whoever else was listening, gripping his arm. “Aren’t they absolutely marvelous?”

  The crowd began to sing the national anthem. Field watched the marines, who were ramrod straight and completely aware of the splendid, heartening spectacle they were creating, a reminder to every inhabitant of this city of the power of the empire, upon which their fortunes rested.

  He checked the revolver in his pocket as a group of drunken young men surged forward, crushing those at the front as they attempted to drown out everyone around them with the noise of their singing.

  Field edged forward, pushed himself closer to an elderly couple. They were talking to each other excitedly in German, the woman’s face shielded behind an old-fashioned broad-brimmed blue hat. They were a wealthier version of the Schmidts and he excused himself as he shoved past them, fingering his revolver once more.

  The crowd was thicker at the front, made up mostly of parents who’d fought to give their children the best view of the Bund. The white rope was ten yards from the line of Sikhs and only about a hundred from the gate of the consulate itself.

  A gun went off as the national anthem came to an end—the midday salute.

  He could see the sweat on the faces of the Sikhs as they stood to attention, their rifles now by their sides, the tips of the bayonets just above their ears.

  There was another shout from the sergeant and they began to cheer, their turbans raised aloft on their bayonets. “Sat Sri Akal!”

  Field pushed through the crowd again. He almost tripped over two young boys kneeling beneath the rope barrier.

  As he walked toward the consulate building, a Sikh policeman, also dressed in white, hurried toward him. Field was sweating violently. “Richard Field, S.1,” he said, holding open his wallet to display his identity card.

  The man examined it more thoroughly than he needed to, perhaps for the benefit of the onlookers. Then he stepped away from the rope to let him pass. Field breathed a little more easily. He crossed the road and looked back at the crowd, which stretched to the line of masts and funnels on the quay behind and for as much as a mile in each direction.

  He passed the line of marines and reached another group of Sikh guards outside the front gate.

  “Field, S.1,” he said, holding out his wallet once more.

  The man he had approached was a sergeant, with a mature, confident face and a long, bushy white mustache. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, shaking his head. “But I’m afraid we have strict orders not to allow anyone through today.”

  “Charles Lewis is expecting me,” Field said, his voice taut, sweat breaking out on his forehead again.

  The Sikh continued to shake his head. “No one in here, sir, I’m sorry. C in C’s orders.”

  “The C in C?”

  The Sikh pointed to the man standing in the center of the dais overlooking the gardens, an extension of the terrace to the side of the consulate. He was dressed in white, with a large triangular, feathered hat. “Admiral Sir Edward Alexander Gordon Brewer, Commander in Chief, China Station.”

  “I’m from S.1, Sergeant. I’d appreciate it if you could send someone to find Charles Lewis and get him to come down here to collect me.”

  The Sikh was still shaking his head.

  “I’m from S.1, Sergeant,” Field repeated slowly, as if the man was hard of hearing. “If you don’t want to be going home without your pension, I would get off your backside and go and find Charles Lewis. Now!”

  Field had barked the order so loudly that a couple of women on the near end of the dais turned. The C in C was giving his address, but the wind was in the wrong direction. Field could not hear a word he was saying.

  The Sikh was angry, but after a brief hesitation, he turned away and spoke urgently in his own language to one of his subordinates, who ran up the gravel path and through the big door at the top of the steps.

  He was gone only a few minutes and returned to whisper in the ear of his superior, who then stood aside and opened the gate.

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  Lewis was waiting in the hallway beneath a portrait of Disraeli.

  “Good afternoon,” Field said.

  Lewis didn’t reply. He led Field up a black and white stone staircase, past a series of oil portraits of previous commanders in chief of the China Station.

  He stopped to allow Field through two enormous gold and blue doors and into a ballroom that was a more magnificent version of the Majestic, the wooden floor polished, huge mirrors interspersed with more portraits. He shut the doors quietly behind him.

  Field walked to the end of the room and looked down over the head of the commander in chief at the dignitaries gathered on the lawn. The junks and sampans bobbed up and down on the wake of the big metal steamers. The epaulets on the commander in chief’s white uniform sparkled in the sunlight.

  Field turned and it was a moment before he made out Lu standing behind Lewis, close to a small door in the far wall.

  The Chinese approached, his eyes never leaving Field’s face, his anger evident in every slow, deliberate step.

  “One day, Mr. Field,” Lu said, “none of you will be here. The . . . greed will hasten the end of the Europeans. But who can blame Mr. Geoffrey and his friends for wishing to use to the full the opportunities while they may?” For the first time, Field saw the hatred that burned in those small eyes, not just for him but for all of them, Lewis included. “You dare to summon me here?”

  “I didn’t summon you.”

  Lu tilted his head to one side. “You believe you will leave Shanghai alive?”

  “That is for you to decide.”

  Lu sighed. “And what of the girl, the boy?”

  Field did not answer.

  “You come to my house. You steal my possessions. Mine. Mine. In my city. In Shanghai.” Lu shook his head, then gave a cough that racked his body, making him seem momentarily vulnerable.

  Field waited. “Natasha and the boy are all I want.”

  “You’re insane,” Lewis said.

  “Insane,” Lu repeated, alongside him. “Yes.”

  “I want—”

  “You dare to bargain with me, in this city? I have many thousand men, and you believe you can escape?”

  “I want the woman and the boy, that is all.”

  Lu stared at him, and this time Field held his gaze. “Yes,” the Chinese said. “The girl is perhaps too old already, but the young boy . . . so vulnerable.” Field felt the tautness in his throat.

  “The boy . . . so much life ahead and yet, yes, still so vulnerable.” Lu raised his hand to his cheek and scratched it idly, portly fingers against poor skin.

  “I have the proof that you have been running an opium smuggling ring generating unimaginable profits, some of which you use to bribe almost every public official of importance in this city.”

  “Where do you have this proof?”

  “Hidden.”

  “You have stolen my property.”

  “If anything befalls me, or the girl, or the boy, then you’ll have a front-page article in the New York Times all to yourself. And that will just be the beginning of your problems.”

  Field watched the realization of the significance of what he was saying creeping across Lewis’s face.

  “This is China,” Lu said.

  “Washing
ton and London would be forced to take some form of action, as Mr. Lewis will attest. Even if there were no prosecutions, the facts would be in the public domain, the ring would be broken, and untold damage would be done to your business interests. Even the everyday corruption in the Settlement police force could no longer be taken for granted.”

  Lewis took out his cigarette case, lit one, and walked to the window. Lu’s eyes followed him, distractedly.

  “You wish to have money?” Lu asked.

  “No.”

  Lu smiled. “An idealist.”

  “The girl and the boy need a passport, papers. Mr. Lewis will arrange it. Once we have reached safety, I will tell you where to find the material that I have stolen. Your activities can continue uninterrupted.”

  Lu raised his eyebrows. “I see.”

  “I’ve told you what I want.”

  “Such a low bargain.” Lu shook his head. “I am almost tempted.” He raised his chin and scratched it again with his long fingernails. “You see, Mr. Field, the difficulty is, this is Shanghai. Not a foreigner’s city. You steal my property and then you tell me what I must do. You . . . threaten me, yes? But how can this be? This is Shanghai. Who can say if you will leave this city? Who can say if the girl and boy are still alive?”

  Field felt the blood draining from his face.

  “You demand of me? No.” He shook his head again. “No, no. It cannot be. An article in the newspaper you speak of? So far away. This is China. China. We can change so much before news travels so far. We can find the pages from my ledger. We can do anything, of course.”

  “My price is low, Mr. Lu.”

  “Your price is low? By whose . . . Who can say such a thing?”

  Field felt the blood pounding in his head. He asked himself how he could have made such a terrible miscalculation, but his mouth continued to speak, as if no longer connected to his brain. “You will control China one day, I don’t doubt it, but that day is not as close as you think. I offer you an arrangement that ought to disgust me; that nothing changes. All I ask is that two people who do not matter to you are released from your net. That is all. And one more thing: that Detective Chen is not harmed.”