Heart of Lies (9 page)

But even as she listened to the chorus of doubts rising within her,
she knew she had to leave. Now that she knew where to find him, she could not take any steps that did not lead to a life with Leo. And she knew that she must leave immediately, without hesitating, so that the qualms taking shape in her mind did not grow into an insurmountable barrier.

How could she face her father? He would talk her out of going. He would look at her with those dark, serious eyes and convince her that she was being ridiculous. She dare not confront him.

She sat down at the small desk in her room, picked up a pen, and started to write:

She reread the note quickly, realizing how inadequate it was, yet unwilling to risk writing anything more. She must go, now.

She packed a small suitcase, retrieved her small savings from under her mattress, pinned Leo’s bank draft to the inside of her coat, and,
without a word or a backward glance, walked out the door of her father’s house.

It was not until she was seated in the train, miles outside Munich, that her brain started to function again, and she realized that she still wore Harry’s medallion around her neck.

SHANGHAI

For the fifth time in as many days, Leo Hoffman paced up and down the wide sweep of Waterfront Boulevard, known in Shanghai as the Bund. Although the brutal humidity of late August hindered all movement, every limb of Leo’s frame radiated impatience as he made his way along the riverfront. Periodically his anxious body froze, and his eyes swept the opaque water of the Whangpoo River.

It was not a scenic river, like the Danube; or a romantic one, like the Seine. The Whangpoo was ugly and slow-moving. It stank of sludge, decay, and multiple forms of human abuse. Even now, after living in Shanghai for eight months, the overpowering stench of the river sometimes startled Leo when he opened a window or stepped out onto the street. It lay waiting for him, like a lethargic old beggar, too complacent to try and attract his attention with any ruse more energetic than an assault on his olfactory organ. The Shanghailanders said one got used to the smell, in time.

But for all of its natural indolence, the Whangpoo was a frenetic wa
terway. It had been seized, dredged, and made useful by foreign hands eager to exploit the enormous Chinese market. For the British, the Americans, the French, and the Japanese, the Whangpoo was now the carotid artery of the China trade. Manufactured and imported goods were piled onto barges in Shanghai harbor, then transported twelve miles on the lazy, smelly river to the mighty Yangtze. From there, the valuable cargos dispersed into the vast Chinese countryside via a network of waterways that flowed through the interior for thirty thousand miles. Down the Whangpoo to Shanghai came rice, cotton, silk, tea, and tobacco; peanuts, rosewood, leather, and tung oil. And silver. Vast quantities of silver. Yes, the Whangpoo might smell of refuse, but it also smelled of money. It was, as the Shanghailanders claimed, a stench one could get used to.

Leo stopped his compulsive pacing and scanned the busy river traffic. Boats of every shape and description jostled and dodged each other in the gray-yellow light of early evening, covering the harbor with a floating quilt of tramp steamers, passenger ships, sampans, and junks. This menagerie of vessels brought cargo to and from the massive freighters anchored close to the mouth of the Yangtze, as only smaller craft could navigate the shallow port. The squat sampans served as water taxis, and also as houseboats for thousands of Chinese. From the shore Leo saw charcoal stoves belching out black smoke, and blue cotton laundry hanging out to dry. Here and there a Chinese toddler played in split pants, attached to a mast by a short leash.

But this evening Leo’s eyes swept over the exotic Chinese vessels without interest. The one boat he ached to see was not yet there. No steam launch from the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company cut through the foamy yellow water toward the sturdy piers
that lined the foreshore of the Bund. It was now seven o’clock. Martha would not arrive tonight.

With a short sigh of frustration, Leo turned on his heel and headed toward Nanking Road, back to the cool shelter of the Palace Hotel bar and the ephemeral comfort of a brandy. He cut a path through the mass of humanity crowding the walkway. The last vestiges of daylight would soon disappear, but the Chinese entrepreneurs who worked the Bund with territorial possessiveness were still active. He passed a wizened old coolie selling hot, succulent pork dumplings, and a round-faced, smiling grandmother peddling bamboo trinkets and jade earrings. A tired pregnant woman dressed in pink silk squatted behind a pile of embroidered slippers for sale. They and dozens like them filled the air with a steady din of enticements, encouragements, boasts, and insults. They called out in Chinese, in Pidgin English, and in broken, bastardized French. Leo ignored them all as they shouted to be heard above the engines, whistles, and horns of the harbor. The noise one had to get used to, or go deaf or crazy. Incessant noise, like the stench of the river, was part of life in Shanghai.

The collapse of the Manchu Dynasty in 1911 left the Chinese empire at the mercy of competing warlords. These ruthless land pirates divided the once mighty kingdom into private fiefdoms, slaughtering those who resisted. But Shanghai remained an island of productivity amid the anarchy. There, under the tender protection of warships flying the flags of the United States, Japan, and half a dozen European countries, the invisible hand of capitalism guided the lives of a million Chinese and fifty thousand foreigners with relentless economic discipline.

Since the 1840s, treaties guaranteeing “extraterritoriality” to the foreign residents living within two geographic districts, the French
Concession and the International Settlement, rendered the Shanghailanders subject only to the jurisdiction and laws of their respective countries, as interpreted and executed by the local Shanghai Municipal Council. If an American committed murder in Shanghai, he might be punished. For an economic crime he was virtually untouchable. Most European residents enjoyed the same liberty. Greed and vice were the mainstays of Shanghai commerce, and Shanghai justice was as shallow and corrupt as the waters of the Whangpoo.

Never had there been such a boisterous blend of east and west; never had there been such a clamorous coexistence of the devout and the deviate, the prosperous and the penurious, the opulent and the oppressed. Staggering wealth and stunning poverty existed side by side, each a tribute to the unique world that was Shanghai. It was, as Leo had been told by the crude American James Mitchell, a perfect place to begin one’s life anew.

The best asset a fugitive could bring to Shanghai to aid him in the metamorphosis from hunted and haunted to secure and wealthy was a sizeable bankroll. The second was a good supply of raw luck. Leo had arrived in Shanghai with both.

Six months earlier the Shanghai weather had been in the throes of its opposite but equally uncomfortable extreme. Shanghai’s winters brought with them a damp, insidious cold that bore no resemblance to the invigorating briskness of a Hungarian winter. Dozens of beggars froze to death every night, their stiff bodies stretched alongside automobiles equipped with sable lap rugs to keep their affluent occupants cozy. The only decent thing about winter in Shanghai was that it did not last long.

Despite the uninviting temperature, on the day of his arrival in Shanghai Leo had abandoned his small cabin just after sunrise. He found a little-used corner of the deck and waited, wanting to catch a glimpse of the land that might mean his salvation.

For the five long weeks of the voyage, he’d kept to himself, engaging in civil conversation when necessary, but unwilling to risk making the acquaintance of any of his fellow passengers. He did not disembark at any of the ship’s ports of call, so that he did not have to show his passport to anyone other than the ship’s bursar. He wanted to make sure that no one would remember him, or be able to identify him: that no one could connect him with a murder in Paris. For the time being, he needed to be left alone.

Given his desire for privacy, Leo was not pleased when he saw a cashmere-clad passenger saunter out into the cold air of early dawn. Before Leo could withdraw, the new arrival spotted him and headed his way, ready for a conversation.

“Good morning, Cosgrove is the name. Lawrence Cosgrove.” The trim, middle-aged Englishman offered Leo his gloved hand. Leo shook it, barely meeting Cosgrove’s eyes as he did so.

The Englishman paused, puzzling over the lack of a reaction on Leo’s part. “I say,” he said, with some hesitation, “you do speak English, don’t you?”

Leo reconsidered his cool response. He did not want to insult anyone; he just wanted to be ignored. This man would not forget him if he behaved too rudely. A small smile of resignation skirted Leo’s mouth as he replied politely, but without enthusiasm.

“Yes, I do.”

“Ah, good. I thought so.” Cosgrove looked relieved. He went on.

“I don’t speak anything but my mother tongue. Well, I can manage in a French restaurant, you know, but I’m not what you would call conversational. In French, that is. First time to Shanghai?”

“Yes, it is.” This man Cosgrove seemed determined to chat. Leo would have to let him blather on for a bit before excusing himself.

“Well, you’re about to get your first peek at Chinese soil,” the garrulous gentleman continued, inclining his head toward the blue-gray waves rocking the ship. “The sea water will change color soon.”

This piqued Leo’s curiosity. “Really? Does the water become that shallow so far from shore?” He colored his normally perfect English accent with a trace of French, and a touch of German. He did not want to give away his origins.

“No, my lad. It’s the mud of the Yangtze delta. Seeps out from the river and stains the ocean a sort of yellowy brown for miles out. Lets you know what you’re up against, in a way. Mud from the river stains the sea, stains the soul. Shanghai is that kind of place.”

Leo smiled despite himself. “Are you a missionary, then?”

“Good God, no. Although Shanghai attracts a veritable army of them, and for good reason. As one busy man of the cloth said, ‘If God lets Shanghai survive, then he owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah.’”

Leo did not find this comforting. “Is it really that bad?”

Cosgrove nodded. “Oh, yes. But it’s also an excellent place to make money. I’m an architectural engineer, actually. We’ve had several commissions in Shanghai over the past few years, though I haven’t been back since ’21. This time out I’ll be working on the engineering plans for the new Customs House on the Bund. That’s the main street lining the harbor. Sort of a financial district, only with cargo ships unload
ing right out front. But you’d think you were sailing up to the heart of any European capital, with all the stonework and marble columns. Our new building will be the crowning glory of the Bund. Should be about a year before I head back to England.” Cosgrove waited a moment, as if giving Leo a chance to comment. Then, apparently unbothered by Leo’s lack of participation in the conversation, he kept talking.

“First time here, did you say? Not such a bad decision, really. The whole city is booming again. Things were off a bit right after the Chinese outlawed the importation of opium, but now the Shanghailanders—that’s what the white residents call themselves—are making money faster than they can think of ways to spend it. Of course, once the big merchants began making money, that is,
real money
, everything else just followed along, you know, doctors, lawyers, the telegraph, tramways. Why, there are suburbs full of Tudor homes and Mediterranean villas; you can even import roses and magnolias for your garden, if you like. Buy anything you want in the department stores. It’s downright civilized, Shanghai is, except, of course, for the fact that one is in China.” He finished his soliloquy with a snort of amusement.

Leo digested all of this information without comment. He was beginning to reconsider his strategy. Perhaps a chat with this Cosgrove fellow would prove useful, after all. He knew nothing about Shanghai, except for two, equally important facts: he could enter without a visa, and there was money to be made there.

“You sound like an old China hand,” he remarked, encouraging Cosgrove to go on. The older man seemed flattered.

“No, not really. Not like some of the chaps out here. Taipans, they’re called: the real industrialists. The men in charge. It’s an odd society. Classless, in a way. Money is the only calling card you need. The only
thing a well-placed silver dollar cannot obtain for you is a seat on the short end of the Long Bar at the Shanghai Club. The club is the one place that caters to a more traditional British crowd. But the rest of the city…” He spread his hands, palms up. “Few rules, no limits.”

“So, most of the foreign residents are British?”

“No, actually, though the King’s subjects probably control the biggest slice of the pie. My friends there tell me that the problem now is the White Russians, who started pouring in after I left in ’21. Poor bastards. They’re the only whites actually subject to Chinese law. Ghastly business. Stateless, helpless, fleeing for their lives from the Soviet Reds. Lots of pretty Russian women, though, if you’re interested in paying for that sort of thing. But without changing the city’s entire immigration policy, there was no way to keep the poor Russian bastards out. Some of them claim to be royalty, of course, which is hogwash. Anyone with a shilling to their name would have gone to England, or France, or, well, anywhere, other than Shanghai.”

Leo tried to ignore the flutter of apprehension that brushed against his ribs. “Why? If it’s a place of such opportunity?”

Cosgrove chuckled. “Well, let me put it like this. I am only a periodic visitor, but from what I’ve seen, Shanghai is a damn fine place to get rich, and not a bad place to be rich, but it’s a wretched place to be poor.”

“In my experience, there’s no good place to be poor.”

“No, I guess not. But there must be better than Shanghai.” The Englishman grew pensive and stared out at the ocean for a moment. Leo, thinking that their discussion had ended, was about to take his leave when Cosgrove pulled out of his somber reverie.

“So, are you heading to Shanghai at the behest of your company?”

“No.” Leo looked down at the ship’s rail with a small twist of a grin.

“I’m on a more independent venture.”

“I see.” He did not press further. Leo remembered Mitchell’s words:
If you knew anything about Shanghai, you wouldn’t have asked that question, for no one goes to Shanghai if he has anywhere else to go.

“Look, there,” he then heard Cosgrove saying. “See the water? It’s gone brown.” Leo looked. So it had. They were approaching the land of his future.

The two men continued their conversation for the better part of two hours as the ship cruised across the few remaining miles of the East China Sea and into the placid mouth of the Yangtze. Leo easily elicited a wealth of information from the loquacious Englishman, including a recommendation on where to stay. “I’ll be staying in an apartment that our company maintains for part-timers like myself,” Cosgrove explained, “but I’m sure you’ll be quite comfortable at the Palace Hotel, until you find your own place.”