French Concession (12 page)

Ta-sheng-yu Candle Store was the second storefront on Rue Palikao, just after Rue de Weikwé. An-le Bathhouse took up the whole street corner and the first storefront. Between the bathhouse and the candle store there was a longtang called Yu-i Alley, and coal for the baths lay piled at the entrance to the longtang. Rainy days were the worst, but even on a sunny day like this, Lin had unwittingly tracked black footprints onto the candle store's green tile floors.

“Are you sure they don't know about this place?”

“I never told them about it.”

Ku was silent for a while. The attic was filled with boxes that smelled of dry dust and gunpowder. An arrhythmic sound of hammering came from the direction of Yung-he-hsiang-pai, the blacksmith. Deep in the alleyway, a girl training to be a Chinese opera singer accompanied a
hu-ch'in
in a raspy voice.

“Why were you carrying guns? I know they don't have any brains, but don't you use yours?”

Ku spoke in a low voice. He had lost his temper, but in the dead of the afternoon, against the backdrop of the singer's shrill voice, his anger sounded unreal.

He was waiting for Park to call. He knew something like this was bound to happen with this lot. They were little more than children. Most of their peers were still in school, fetching water for their teachers, scampering through the streets, and getting into fights.
There was an upside and a downside to working with young people. The downside was unexpected misadventures like this one. The upside was that they were naïve, bold, energetic, and treated danger like a game. In some respects, they blew trained operatives out of the water.

He took the phone from the storeroom up to the attic, and told a young member of the cell named Ch'in to mind the store. The attic was stocked not only with candles and foil, but also with matches, firecrackers, and fireworks. Sitting among the boxes was like sitting on a heap of explosives. But Ku was perfectly at ease lighting his cigarette with a match. He knew all about explosives. He had learned to make them from scratch in Khabarovsk.

No. 10 Yu-i Alley was visible through the tall wooden windows, over the back wall of the candle shop. Scallions grew in a battered aluminum basin on the wall of the rooftop patio south of them.

Whenever he was in a new place, Ku would take note of all the doorways and passages, mentally working out escape routes. This was part instinct and part rigorous training. Instructor Berzin had said that a good undercover agent must be as wary as a victim of claustrophobia, but more assertive and aggressive.

Here, for instance, the south-facing window had been boarded up against thieves, but Ku took the boards down so that the window now opened directly onto Yu-i Alley. In a corner of the alley piled high with An-le Bathhouse's coal, there was a single brick in the wall which could be removed to reveal a loaded German-made Luger pistol wrapped in wax paper. The storeroom also had a back door leading into the courtyard of a
shih
house, one of the gray brick town houses with interior courtyards that lined all the alleyways. If you went through the courtyard you could come out of the entrance to No. 10 Yu-i Alley, take a left, go through the longtang leading to Rue de Weikwé, and turn onto Boulevard de Montigny. Once you were inside the Great World Arcade, you could melt safely into the crowds. In a pinch, you could always open the window facing west, climb onto the balcony and out onto the roof, and then look for your chance to escape.

Boulevard des Deux Républiques and environs

There's always one threat or another, but you can cope. You are a trained marksman and were taught how to fight with your bare hands, to disguise yourself. You have been involved in dangerous business all your life. So you'll take a deep breath and suppress your anger. Even if that man does get caught by the police, he won't know where the Rue Palikao safe house is. And if he breaks under interrogation and gives them the address on Rue Amiral Bayle, the most they can do is arrest Leng, which would be a heavy but not a fatal blow. Leng only knows one phone number, which would take a full day to trace, and the Concession Police are slowpokes.

At almost two, the phone finally rang. It was Park, calling from a public phone. He spoke in a low voice and the line was crackly. His voice hissed into Ku's ear like an echo carried by the wind, or rather, an echo shattered by impurities in the copper telephone lines.

When he put the receiver down, Ku lit another cigarette.

Lin shifted uneasily, watching the match burn out into a crooked stick of white ash in his hand. As it melted in the wind, he finally asked:

“Well?”

“Park confirmed that Comrade Chou Li-min has given his life for the cause as a result of this morning's altercation.” Ku screwed his eyes up, and the corner of his eye twitched, as though irritated by smoke. “He wasn't sure of the rumor, so he went to Chao-chia Creek, where he found the police dragging the creek for Chou's body. It looks like he was pursued there, leaped in, hoping to swim to the other side, and the police opened fire.”

Silence.

Lin said nothing. Ku watched him carefully. Was he afraid? A lighthearted morning excursion had ended in death. Or was he angry? Anger could be useful if it was channeled into courage. They would need it—they were about to make another move.

“Comrade Chou had the courage to sacrifice his own life to protect his comrades. After mourning him, we must press on and avenge him.” He suspected his words were not forceful enough. He swallowed the cigarette smoke into his throat, allowing it to seep out from the corners of his mouth. His hoarse voice became smokier.

“The problem now is that Leng has disappeared. She is not in the apartment on Rue Amiral Bayle. You agreed she would wait for you there, and I'm afraid she may have run away because the gunfire frightened her. It's too dangerous for her to be wandering around alone during the day.”

Lin started, as though waking from a dream, and got up abruptly. “I'll go and find her.” He bent over to pick up the rope ladder.

“Where do you think she might be?” Ku mused. Then he said out loud: “She will call. If she does not call by five o'clock, we should evacuate this place.”

Lin couldn't just sit down. He wanted to do something to avoid being overcome by grief. He didn't stop to ask himself whether Chou's death had frightened him. He was young. As a student, he had been just in time for the tail end of the revolutionary times. Before he knew what he was doing, he had been swept up by an unthinking frenzy and gone along with it. Then the violence of the struggle had surprised him like a sudden rainstorm. One of his comrades was shot dead by the army in a demonstration—the man had been his point of contact with the Party, and just like that, he had lost touch with his cell. Sometimes he thought to himself that if he had managed to stay in touch, he would have been killed. The thousands of young people swept up by the revolution hadn't had time to organize themselves, and when the counterrevolutionaries retaliated, many of them simply lost touch with their cells and hence with the Party. Some of them resisted, and were killed. But he was not afraid. He was angry. He had actually been contemplating a suicide mission of some sort when he met Ku. Ku was a prudent, experienced revolutionary with meticulous offensive and defensive plans. He and his comrades were pinning their hopes on Ku because they thought he could win.

Now Lin was looking at Ku expectantly, trustfully. All his muscles were tense, as if he were a hunting hound awaiting a command, or a coil spring that would bounce back as soon as Ku loosened his grip.

Ku screwed up his eyes and took a draw of his cigarette. He was
fascinated by the restless passion of the young man in front of him. Strangely, he was not even discouraged by the threat of death.

It was time to announce the next operation. If this energy wasn't channeled into an operation, it would explode. Allowing these young people to wait idly would be a recipe for disaster. They couldn't be suppressed—they must be allowed to take action.

He had already been plotting his next operation, which would be even more visible than the last. It would be a defining moment for the cell and earn them lasting recognition and respect. People would remember it not as a headline in a few two-cent tabloid newspapers, immediately overshadowed by the next day's news, but as a legend.

He began to spread the word via various channels. He allowed versions of the story to intersect, appear, and disappear. He did contact a few journalists, but his message was chiefly directed at the various powers operating in the Concession, and the armies of part-time informers who worked for them. He used the network to send a simple message: Ku is here.

Ku is here and to be reckoned with. Whatever your job is, even if it's starting revolutions, people have to know who you are. He did not think of himself as having tricked these young people into joining him. They had a goal, and he could achieve it.

He had long wanted to give the gangs a fright, if for no other reason than that they had helped to massacre the Communists. Now that he was back, they were ignoring him. He would have preferred not to communicate with them via a woman if he didn't have to, and at first he had thought Ch'i could not possibly know anyone in the gangs, but eventually he used her to send them a message: they were underestimating him and People's Strength.

He had not yet settled on his next target, but he was considering either 181 Avenue Foch or 65 Gordon Road. Both were Western-style mansions with a lawn, a fence, a garage, guards, a complicated network of corridors, and police stations not a hundred meters away. The only difference was that Avenue Foch was near a French Concession police station, whereas Gordon Road was near an International Settlement police station.

“Avenue Foch,” Lin said.

Lin wanted revenge, Ku thought. He pictured vengefulness as a liquid that could be poured out into measuring cups. It would certainly be a justifiable target, as the owner of 181 Avenue Foch had been directly involved in the 1927 massacre of Communists. But he would have to consider it carefully, as the guards at Avenue Foch were far better armed.

That meant there would be a gunfight, a significant challenge for his squad. They could handle guns all right, and they would sometimes go to deserted beaches in Pu-tung to practice on scarecrows as they chewed and spat sorghum. Or they might rent a boat and take it out to sea, to use a few of the unlucky seagulls circling around Wu-sung-k'ou as target practice. But real fighting was about fear and conquering fear: could his people do that? By contrast, an assassination was a mere performance, like a mischievous practical joke. You strode up to the unlucky victim, took your gun out, pulled the trigger, and watched him collapse to the floor. Years ago, when he was involved in union activity, he had made his way through the outhouse to the factory yard, and dumped a sack of night soil on the foreman's head. The foreman had been standing complacently at the factory gates with the protesting workers shut outside, fiddling with walnuts in his hand until night soil suddenly rained down on him, and he was humiliated. No one was afraid of him from that day onward, and all the stories of his cruelty evaporated.

In principle, an assassination, or even the grander operation he was planning, worked the same way as that sack of night soil. They toppled an old authority or source of fear, establishing a new one in its place. In the labor camps in Azerbaijan, he had spent days going back to these memories. The more he thought about this moment, the more significant it became for him. It proved that fear can unseat existing powers and install new ones. And by the time he escaped and made his way back to China across the Dzungarian Gate, he knew exactly what he would do.

Leng nearly ran headlong into a rickshaw, and stopped to catch her breath. She had altogether forgotten about calling Ku. If it weren't for that man, she would already have made the call. In fact, this morning she had already been standing inside the telephone booth when he—

She finally remembered about making the phone call when it was growing dark.

She got to the candle store on Rue Palikao based on the directions Ku had given her over the phone. She hurried up the stairs, and as soon as he saw her, Ku asked: “Why didn't you call?”

She had to admit she had panicked. It hadn't occurred to her that in a city of a million people she would run into this man, the photojournalist. There was no way to explain it. And she had to tell Ku what she had learned.

What could she say in her defense? She should have called Ku right away and told him about the incident on Rue Amiral Bayle. Instead she had waited for the man at a pavilion in the Koukaza Gardens for hours, like a nervous lover, and gone with him to the White Russian restaurant. He was the journalist who had tried to take a photograph of her on the ship. He was enormously curious and remembered every face he saw. He liked pretending to be nonchalant. She trusted him instinctively, but she couldn't explain why.

All those days alone in the apartment built across the alleyway
had enervated her, as if she'd spent days lying in the afternoon sun. No one knew she existed, she thought, no one knew the part she had played in that assassination. Both her comrades and her enemies had abandoned her, almost as if they had plotted together to forget about her.

She told herself it was her duty to banter with him, to have dinner and flirt boldly with him. She had to find out who he was and what he wanted. For some reason, instead of telling Ku about their first encounter on the ship, she found herself telling him that Hsueh was an old acquaintance working as a photojournalist, a trustworthy and sympathetic man who only wanted to help.

But none of that mattered in comparison to what this Hsueh Wei-shih knew. He said he had close friends in the Concession Police, and he warned her not to return to the apartment on Rue Amiral Bayle. He had insider knowledge that the police suspected it of being a safe house for Communists, and once they knew the precise location, they would start making arrests there. His newspaper had been tipped off, and he had gone to Rue Amiral Bayle this morning together with the police, in pursuit of a scoop. He had recognized her right away, and wanted to warn her, but there was no time. The frisking on Rue Conty was an old police trick to draw out malefactors.

“And why would he share this intelligence with you?”

“He knew the police were looking for a woman. The minute he saw me, he put two and two together. He knew me, and he could guess from the newspapers that I had to have been involved in the Kin Lee Yuen operation.”

“And you admitted to it?”

“He didn't believe that I could kill anyone—that I could really have been involved in the assassination of a counterrevolutionary army officer.” Strangely, she almost believed her own words. She had prevaricated to make her story simpler, but it was only getting more complicated. And she was surprised at herself for hiding their meeting on the ship from Ku. Was it because it sounded too unlikely, like a chance encounter invented by a romance novelist?

“But he must have suspected you had something to do with it, or why would he have told you about the police?”

“Yes. He thought I had to be involved, but he couldn't accept it. I told him that things were not as simple as he thought they were, but that I didn't want to talk about it. He said that if talking about it stirred up painful memories, he would rather not ask.”

“As an old friend, did he give you any advice?”

“He said I should leave Shanghai right away, as quickly as possible. But he did not know whether I was at liberty to just leave, so he did not want to impose his opinion. He said he would make further inquiries at the police station.”

“At liberty?”

“If there was some reason why I could not leave, was what he meant.”

“And you couldn't call because he was right there?”

“Yes.”

“So you spent the whole afternoon with him.”

“I did.”

“Where?”

“In a Russian restaurant with a name I didn't recognize. On Rue Lafayette.”

It had been on the intersection with Avenue du Roi Albert. The restaurant had a sign on the corner that said
ODESSA
, after the port city on the Black Sea. Steps led down to the door, which he opened for her. The Russian waiter seemed to know him well, and they discussed the menu brightly, as if it were an important ritual.

“Whom does he know at the police station? What are their titles?”

“He didn't say.”

“You must find out. That could prove to be important to us.”

Despite being exhausted, she was aware that Ku's words constituted a mission with which the cell was officially entrusting her.

“You did well to stay calm. Keep in touch with him. His contacts at the Concession Police could be useful to us.”

“He isn't one of us.”

He had been in high spirits, showing off his knowledge of cameras
and Russian food. He had ordered
barjark
, fried beef, and
shashlyk
, lamb chop cut into round pieces and grilled. She had always been with ambitious, idealistic young men; even Ts'ao had fit that description. This man was good-looking—almost handsome—and impertinent, though he could also be gentle.

“What do you think he thinks of you?” Ku blew out the matchstick in his hand.

He had stared at her all that time. He ordered wine but did not drink it. She could tell he wanted to ask her questions but didn't dare to. He pretended to rummage in his pocket for something, but all he pulled out was an expired betting slip. You must give me a way of contacting you, like a phone number. That way if something happens I can let you know right away. Then he produced a pen, as if he had a bottomless pocket, but he was too clumsy to be a magician. The pen was out of ink and drew nothing but white lines on the old betting slip. When she refused, he argued with her.

“He thought the police must have evidence against me, or they wouldn't be coming after me. But to him I am only a frail woman, and he never did ask whether I had anything to do with the Kin Lee Yuen case.” She tried to make her reply sound objective.

“So did you figure out how to stay in contact?”

“He gave me his phone number at the editorial offices, but he's hardly there. He's a photojournalist, so he's always out and about. He told me he would have some news for me tomorrow. We're meeting at noon at the gate of the Koukaza Gardens.”

When they parted ways, she was careful to avoid being followed. Using the techniques she had learned, she would sometimes stop abruptly, or duck into a shoe shop and scan the passing crowd through the glass window. The trickiest thing was managing to shake off three operatives triangulating to pursue you. The man walking parallel to you across the road was the easiest to spot, and likely to be the most careless of the three. Because he had to keep his eyes fixed on you, even his stride would often fall into rhythm with yours.

Not until she was certain of not being followed did she make the phone call.

There were voices downstairs, but she could tell Lin's laughter from all the other voices. Rue Palikao was noisier at night than during the day. She heard the crackle of vegetables being fried, the whirr of the stovetop fan, and a curious sound of running water that came from somewhere else.

Ku smiled the artificial smile of a humorless man who finds himself having to force a smile: “He's in love with you, isn't he?”

“We've known each other for a long time.”

“If he would risk giving you intelligence, he must have feelings for you.”

Her reflexes were always slower in the evening. She stared blankly at Ku.

The photojournalist had been wearing two-tone shoes stitched together from white and brown leather, and she could tell that he took pride in dressing well. He bent over, lifted the hem of his trousers, and retied the elastic band on his socks in a single knot, folding the top of the sock over so it would cover the purple flannel band and leave only a single strand hanging down. He was really quite handsome, much more attractive than she had noticed on the ship, and he knew it. To him, she must seem gawky and subdued. He sprang down the steps, turned to hold the door open with his elbow, and backed into the restaurant while beckoning at her.

“If your comrades are all this beautiful, I'll have to join the revolution,” he had said loudly, appearing to have forgotten that they were in a small restaurant. She instinctively reached out and caught hold of his gesticulating hands to stop him from going on.

“You must think about how he can be useful to us,” Ku said soberly. “Of course, it all depends on whether he really does have connections inside the Concession Police. But if he does, they could be helpful to our cause.”

Before they left the restaurant, the man had warned her again not to return to Rue Amiral Bayle. If you don't have anywhere to go, I'll come up with something, he had said. “But of course, your people will have somewhere safer in mind.”

Just then there were noises downstairs, chairs being moved and
boxes turned over. Lin's steps squeaked up the bamboo ladder and his face appeared.

“What is it?” Ku asked sternly.

“A rat.” He grinned.

Leng felt numb to everything around her. She sat there, blankly, clutching a cup of tea that had gone cold, that feeling of bleakness spreading like a chill across her body.