Night in Shanghai (35 page)

He said, “So you are flatting the third, the fifth—”

“And the seventh,” said Ernest.

“Judiciously,” Alonzo added.

And David nodded as his elegant violin shifted the song into something stranger and more mournfully European. Thomas saw Alonzo and Ernest exchange looks, interested. Gunfire sounded outside, and everyone glanced up, then returned to the music, used to the sounds of violence.

The song ended to cheers and laughter, and then Thomas, the only one of the musicians who had not played, spoke up. “My turn. Music is my nation, and you are my people.” He raised his glass. “This is our country, right here: America is in a song. We have just proven it. Thank you, pioneers.” And they all drained their wine.

The next day, November twenty-eighth, Admiral Morioka left the Japanese Naval Headquarters with a sheaf of freshly decoded documents in a small, stiff leather map case inside his greatcoat. He needed to think, away from the frenzy of cables, the clamoring subordinates. In a few weeks Japan would attack America, and his forces had to be positioned like a clamp around Shanghai, ready to tighten at exactly the same moment. Thousands of his men were garrisoned in the city, and thousands more waited in the rural districts surrounding it. It was essential that he quickly overwhelm the Marines and other foreign troops in the International Settlement, taking the British gunboat
Petrel
and the American gunboat
Wake
, moored in the Huangpu, as his first act. Then he would have his men move through the downtown streets en masse, executing any who offered resistance.
And then it won’t be your Lonely Island anymore. It will be ours
.

He would have all the Allied diplomatic personnel in the city detained at the Cathay Mansions in the French Concession, and keep them under house arrest. Their colonization of China was over. He would take the Shanghai Club from the British and turn it into a club for Japanese officers. And those garish bronze lions in front of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the ones whose feet poor superstitious Chinese rubbed for good luck, he would get rid of those too, just as soon as he had the British flag taken down and the Rising Sun hoisted in its place.

And then there were Shanghai’s eight thousand Allied citizens, British, American, and Dutch. As enemy aliens, they would have to wear numbered armbands in public and be barred from all places of entertainment such as restaurants, theaters, and clubs. Their bank accounts would be frozen, their assets seized. They would be restricted and pushed down until they were lower than the Chinese, and then, by January or February, he would have them all moved out of Shanghai and into prison camps. Their villas and apartments would be of use to him and his men.

It still troubled him to think of all this landing on the American musicians he so admired. But he was a man who held loyalty above all things, and breaching the extreme secrecy of this attack was out of the question.

He also believed deeply that Japan’s enterprise in taking China was a noble one. It would end British domination of Shanghai after 101 years. China had never been able to liberate herself from Anglo-Saxon tyranny; only Japan could do it. China would be free at last—and cared for, that being Japan’s duty as the natural leader of East Asia. The strong should care for the weak. It was correct.

But today’s cable from Berlin had sent him to his chauffeured car, to the back seat where he could not be seen, to tell his driver to take him past French Park. What to do? The bare treetops sketched questions against the gray sky, and he studied them as the motorcar rumbled past the park walls.

The Germans were furious that so many Jews were being allowed to live in Shanghai, allowed to work, provide for their families, and form a community. They wanted something done. It was a complaint to which he had always replied simply that Shanghai was under Japan’s control, not Germany’s. Now things had shifted; the pressure was no longer local. It was coming from Berlin.

He felt the weight of a thousand boulders on him. With their sneak attack about to draw the world into war, it was no time for him to put the alliance with Germany at risk. But Shanghai belonged to Japan, and the tribe of Israelites had flourished here. What was he expected to do, deny them the right to work? And what about the rich Sephardic Jews, like Sassoon and Kadoorie, pillars of the city who had been here since the nineteenth century and lived in vast mansions, off Bubbling Well Road? Surely they were to be excluded from the ugly intimations in today’s cable. His hand went to the leather document case inside his coat. The whole thing was impossible.

“Turn right,” he said when he saw the Cercle Sportif Français up ahead. Every Friday afternoon, Thomas played in the lobby below the grand curving staircases; to hear music would give him clarity. “Wait for me,” he said.

In the lobby, he ignored the barely audible intake of breath, still distracted by the conflict within him. Yet as soon as he heard the music floating across the polished floor, he was righted again. He walked closer, the violin and piano calming him, and took a seat.

The piece contained the world. Morioka found it so moving that he summoned one of the pinch-chested middle-aged men they called boys, who now quavered before him in fear.

“What name this music?” Morioka said, and the boy evaporated to find out. Usually when Thomas and David played, people danced, but today they filled the chairs and settees and all the space in between, listening as silently as he was. He closed his eyes to the music’s purity, and everything seemed clear. The maze in front of him was not so difficult; he would find his way through it. He would make the right decision.

When the movement ended, there was a pause, and he opened his eyes to see the Jew, David Epstein, nodding to the boy and writing something on a piece of paper. Then Thomas Greene caught his eye, and sent him a discreet nod, which he returned with a short bow, for they were masters to him, and war or no war, he venerated them.

A second later the boy was at his side, unable to stop the paper from shaking as he proffered it. The Admiral handed him a coin to get rid of him, and unfolded it.

Mozart, Sonata for Piano and Violin in B-flat, No. 454
.

A rare smile touched his mouth. Mozart’s music was the pinnacle of European culture, and he had just heard a sublime interpretation by this David Epstein, a Jew. Nothing could have made it clearer to Tadashi Morioka that the Nazis were overreaching with their pressures.

He felt even more certain of it as he listened to the third movement, an allegretto full of light-filled, dancing runs, and when it ended, and a storm of applause erupted, he rose and walked out the lobby door. The winter sun was warm, and he felt at peace as he opened his greatcoat and touched the stiff leather document case inside. It was neutral now, the burn of anxiety gone from it.

He would not let the Germans push him, not when it came to his Jews.

Up in Yan’an, reports of the Japanese buildup around Shanghai poured in. The only part of the city not already under Japanese control was the
Gudao,
or International Settlement, for the Chinese had already been beaten, and France was a Nazi vassal state. In Yan’an, everyone thought the signs meant there was about to be an attack on the Settlement. There was no other explanation.

That did not mean there was much sympathy for the unfortunate Westerners who would be caught up in the attack, for they were dismissed as imperialists. The news sparked terror in Song that others did not share.

Alone, she worried about Thomas, for she had not been back to Shanghai since all three of them met there in ’thirty-nine—and that was two years ago. He might be gone, or he might be with someone else and not want to see her. But inside, she felt sure he was still there. And she had to warn him.

So she went before her superior to ask for family leave.

“You have family in Shanghai?” said Wu Guoyong, looking through her file. “I do not see that.”

“Friends.”

“Foreigners,” he said, and she did not deny it.

He turned a few pages. “You have never asked for leave before, and when family is in danger, we grant it. But—”

She just held her eyes on him and let her request stand.

He tapped the file with a sigh. “You know that travel to Shanghai has never been more dangerous than it is right now. Is it worth it?”

“Yes,” she said, putting everything she had on the word.

He glanced at a report. “You have done well. I see the children of Baoding Village are very fond of you.”

“It is my honor to serve the people,” she said automatically, thinking with a pang of Plum Blossom, who was expecting her this weekend, and would wait for her all day.

“All right,” he said, and signed the form. “Two weeks.”

The next day she was in Xi’an, and this time she went straight to the temple near the Eighth Route Army Liaison Office.

From the outside, it looked the same as when she had first seen it four years before, but anything could have happened. Maybe someone had found the diamonds. If so, it was fate. She entered the main chamber and meditated for a time to calm herself.
If the diamonds are there or if they are not, I accept it. Plum Blossom, I’m sorry to abandon you
. The monk came by, nodded to her, neutral, his face empty of recognition. He had forgotten her. She waited until he left, then walked into the empty courtyard and moved close to the wall, heart jumping, until she found the spot and felt the moss intact, grown over the stone she had prised out and replaced so long ago.

Using a small knife, her fingers freezing, she worked the rock loose. There: the pouch, still waiting. The Goddess of Mercy had smiled on her, a fellow woman. She took it and fixed the wall.

Back inside the shadows of the temple, she sat again, heart racing. She was committed now. She had the diamonds and she was going.

She had always had a vision of the moment when she would place the little black pouch in his hands. Maybe she would do it on the ship, or maybe when they docked in the Beautiful Country. She loved the scene no matter where she set it, and she lived it again and again like a moving picture, or a favorite dream. It was her portal, and she followed it now to the Xi’an train station and the steaming, belching Number Twenty-one to Shanghai.

Morioka was irritated by the intrusion of his secretary, who clicked his heels and bowed abjectly. “So sorry, Admiral. We pleaded with him to meet with an assistant, but he insists on seeing you. It is the German, Gestapo Colonel Meisinger. He is here, in the outer office.”

“What! Here in Shanghai?” It was Monday morning and he was only halfway through the stack of cables from Tokyo, some of which mentioned this Josef Meisinger wanting to discuss the Jews here in Shanghai. But to arrive here, uninvited . . .

Now he was trapped. “Show him to the downstairs east parlor,” he said tightly, “and interrupt us after five minutes.”

He pushed back from his desk and saw the calendar—the first of December, 1941. He took a deep breath, steadying himself by imagining the opening bars of the Mozart violin sonata as he had heard it in the lobby of Le Cercle Sportif a few days before. He had to appear normal, smooth, no more agitated than any Admiral in charge of naval operations at the mouth of the Yangtze ought to be. Meisinger must suspect nothing.

Morioka strode into the unfurnished east parlor. If Meisinger found it uncomfortable to stand in the frigid, unheated room, he did not let on. He was blond and solidly built, almost heavy; his features were even and would have been handsome, except for his dissolute mouth.

“Admiral,” said the Colonel jovially, as if they were equals.

Morioka hardened. But his voice was neutral as he spoke in simple English instead of calling a German interpreter, which would raise the risk of whatever they said being repeated. “What I can do for you?”

“I have come on a private mission, my government to yours.”

“Be brief.”

Meisinger blinked, surprised, Morioka’s coolness finally penetrating his blond wall of self-assurance. “It concerns our Jews,” Meisinger said. “Germany’s Jews. The ones in Shanghai.”

“Your Jews?
Germany’s
Jews?”

“You have twenty-five thousand of them here.”

“They are stateless people. You took away their German citizenship, is it not?”

“We did. But they are still our enemies, and we have a new plan for them now. It won’t be finalized until our Conference at Wannsee next month, but we are ready to build camps. We’ll take care of all the Jews in Europe. We need your help with only one little group—the ones you have here.”

Meisinger leaned forward, and his milky European smell wafted over the Admiral.
Batakusai
, Morioka thought with distaste, stinks of butter. “What is it you want?”

“For you to kill them,” Meisinger said.

Morioka stared. “All those people?”

The overweight blond man returned his gaze insolently. “Not difficult. They all go to their temples on Rosh Hashanah, and that is when you gather them up. Load them into boats without food and water and send them out to sea, or set up a camp on an island downriver and let them starve.”

Morioka stopped trying to conceal his revulsion. “Why?”

“Because they must be eliminated,” said Meisinger calmly. “So we cannot leave your twenty-five thousand here.” With his words came another gust of sour breath. “You understand.”

Morioka’s eyes shot to the door. He had seven thousand new troops arriving on warships in the next twenty-four hours alone; teams of assistants awaited him.

Why should he kill them when he had a war to fight?

“So you will give me your decision?” said Meisinger.

“In time,” Morioka said, though he had made his decision already, days before, listening to Mozart.
You will not harm my Jews. If you want them, you will have to take Shanghai from me to get them
.

He had less than a week left until the attack.

Song made it to Shanghai on Saturday the sixth. The dark-skinned Ceylonese gem trader she visited in a small side street off the Bund did not even blink at the mismatch between her bedraggled rural clothes and the fantastic value of the single gem she presented, used as he was to the eccentric habits of the rich. A specialist in anonymous cash transactions, he counted out her money with studied disinterest.