Shanghai (101 page)

It took him two more nights to find the opening to the half-foot-wide channel on the under-edge of the street gutter, and a third to open it up. He followed it. The channel led directly to the second tall post, then to the third.

But the oil smell was gone.

He made his way slowly back toward the first post, then laughed out loud. Unless there was a pumping system of some sort, whatever flowed in those channels would have to move by the force of gravity. So all he had to do was find the highest point on the triangle outlined by the three posts—and dig.

It took him another night of searching to find the spot, and three more to do the digging—but there it was, the source of the oil smell: a substantial reservoir of oil, with a simple wooden block holding the liquid in place. The block could easily be smashed by a rock, releasing the oil into the channel. There
was even a convenient rock, waiting, awaiting the right hand.

* * *

CHIAO MING HAD FOUND a hole in which to hide, inside what used to be a Buddhist temple. The elderly couple who had remained to look after the place took pity on her and did their best to help her. But her wound was festering, and fever crept upon her and seemed to still her baby.

* * *

JUST PAST NOON the next day, Maximilian squatted opposite the Assassin, a cold bowl of rice between them. Maximilian told him about the oil reservoir.

“How do you propose to use what you have found?”

Maximilian thought,
Komodo dragons control the streets of the Heavenly Capital. What could scare a Komodo dragon?

And in a whoosh, he knew—fire.

The voice inside his head laughed.

But more important than fire, godliness.

The voice paused, then laughed a second time, but this time with great gentleness.

Maximilian said, “You can't keep on going the way you've been going, and clearly no one is coming to save us. Eventually the Chinese who know where we are will betray us. They'll give up this hiding place to keep their children from being raped or boiled to death. They'll stand in line to give us up. And you know it.”

The Assassin nodded slowly and reached for a small hand scoop of rice.

“So you'll help me use the oil to set up a sanctuary?” Maximilian pressed.

The Assassin did not move for a full five minutes, ten minutes, then he nodded and put out his right hand, the one missing the two fingers.

Maximilian took the extended hand and the two men stared into each other's eyes. “Good,” Maximilian said, “then maybe it's finally time to tell me your name.”

The Assassin seemed to think about that for a long moment. He said, “Loa Wei Fen,” then added, to Maximilian's surprise, “now, it is Loa Wei Fen.”

* * *

CHIAO MING MANAGED to get to the bank of the great river, managed to push aside the brush that hid the boat, and pushed off into the fast-moving current of the Yangtze. Standing in the bow of the boat she suddenly felt a rush of liquid and reached down. Her pants were soaked through, as was her smock. “My waters …” She took a step, slipped, and almost cracked her head against the gunwale before coming to rest on the damp boards of the round-bottomed boat. And there she lay as the life within her began its voyage to the light.

And she dreamed a strange dream, a waking dream. She was in a great city square, the largest she'd ever seen. And there were young people. Young people her age and Chen's—so many of them. And they were singing and calling out. And somehow she knew that this was later—much later—and that the baby in her womb—no, not the baby in her womb, but the baby that he would sire—was standing, alone, in front of a huge Japanese tank—no, not a Japanese tank—a Chinese tank. He was just standing there. A whole line
of huge Chinese tanks had just stopped—and he stood there—carrying only a flower.

And the boat was taken by the current—turned and spun and paused in eddies, rocked by the hand of the river god—and headed downstream, toward the water access of the safe house that housed the Guild of Assassins in the ancient capital of Nanking.

* * *

AS THE ASSASSINS CAME BACK from their night of killing they retreated to the river to bathe away the gore. And there—like a baby in a basket of reeds—the boat slowly appeared through the morning mist. Immediately the assassins were on their guard. Two plunged into the cold water and swam to either side of the boat. Mounting at exactly the same time, they found Chiao Ming on the wet floorboards.

Ten minutes later the girl's body was laid out on the one mattress in the safe house, and Loa Wei Fen signalled Maximilian to approach.

He immediately saw that the girl was not dead, but her breathing was terribly shallow and her colour ghastly white. “She's in shock,” he said, “and half starved.”

“And pregnant,” Loa Wei Fen added.

“What?” Maximilian threw back Chiao Ming's smock. “Jesus, help me,” he muttered. Then he ripped open her sleeve and saw the extent of her shoulder wound. The wound smelled like cheese left out in the sun. The discoloration on the arm and shoulder were pronounced, and the infection had clearly spread down to her torso.

“So?” Loa Wei Fen asked.

He shook his head. He was no doctor. He knew rudimentary first aid—and even that he hadn't paid much attention to. Besides, he didn't have any bandages or sutures or even a scalpel. Then he saw the womb expand and re-form. “The baby's alive.”

Loa Wei Fen pressed his fingers deep into Chiao Ming's protruding abdomen. His fingers seemed to crawl across her womb, then they paused at the top of the expansive belly. He looked up at Maximilian. “It's the head. It hasn't turned.”

Maximilian reached over and tried to feel what the Assassin had, but couldn't. “Are you sure?”

Loa Wei Fen nodded—for the first time since Maximilian had met him, something that could have been fear crossed the older man's face as he removed his swalto blade and held it out to Maximilian. “Cut out the baby or it will die with its mother.”

Maximilian was shocked. “You do it!”

“No. I kill things, I don't bring them to life. That is for the likes of you.”

The sharpness of the blade amazed Maximilian, as did the founts of blood that rose with each cut. Then Chiao Ming's womb was open and a perfect child turned its head and stared up at him. He reached into the womb and put a hand beneath the infant. For an instant it slipped, but Maximilian shoved his other hand beneath and lifted the baby from his now terrifyingly still mother. He didn't remember cutting the cord or cleaning the child. He just remembered that he was tired, so tired, and saying, “He needs some milk.”

Later that night, with the baby swaddled and quiet, Maximilian stared at the lifeless form of the baby's mother on the floor of the safe house. What had no doubt at one time glittered in this soul had now gone—a flame
extinguished. The only sparkle of life about her was the unusual necklace she wore around her neck. He gently lifted her head and unsnapped the clasp.

The thing came loose in his hand and he held it up to the dawning light. The glass beads cut the light into rainbows that formed, then re-formed—a concerto of colours—across his palm. He noticed the intricate carvings in the heart of each bead, then realized that the necklace was missing some beads. He assumed they had broken off over time, although no remnants of them clung to the silver thread.

The baby let out a howl.

He went to it and put it in his lap. As he gently rocked him, the baby opened its eyes and for the first time they stopped their roaming and seemed to focus—on the necklace that Maximilian still held in his hand.

He moved the necklace slowly toward the baby's face. The boy's eyes traced the movement of the baubles. Maximilian looked from the necklace to the infant, then back again. Finally he said aloud, “It's your inheritance, little one, something of your mother's that you can keep.” He snapped the necklace in two and then retied both strands. The small one he put around the baby's neck, the larger he put around the mother's wrist.

When later that day Maximilian and two of the Guild assassins committed the woman's body to the river, it was taken by the current quickly, and soon all Maximilian and the baby could see of the body was the glint of the brilliant sun off the delicately cut glass.

Maximilian rocked the baby in his arms and felt the surge of the boy's life within—his godliness—and knew how to create the safe zone he needed to save the remaining Chinese citizens of Nanking.

He put on the parachute harness, looped his silk rope around the overhead beam, and pulled. The cord slid smoothly through the pulley he had positioned there and he rose—baby in his arms—a godly thing.

* * *

CHARLES STARED at the photographs in front of him. “How did you …?”

He never completed his sentence, as the Hong merchant who presented the photographs put a finger to his lips and said simply, “They are from Nanking—you can see the famous tower in one of the pictures, the temple of their city god in another, and many other recognizable features of the old capital. Turn to the last picture.”

Charles did.

A man whose hands had been cut off and who was chained to a wall had a Nanking newspaper in his lap, with the date prominently displayed: seven days earlier.

“Thank you,” Charles said. “Do you want …?”

“Money?” Suddenly the man was laughing.

“What could possibly be funny here?”

“Money—money is funny—is ridiculous, when things like that in those pictures are happening to our people.”

—

Jiang pushed the photographs aside and felt a cold rage growing in her. She instantly wanted to call her twin sister, but her mother's words of warning filled her head: “Your allies now, your only allies, are the Chosen Three and the Carver.”

She summoned the Carver and the Confucian. Both gasped at the pictures. The Confucian stood up and did that walking-lecturing thing that she found so annoying, just as her mother had before her. Then he said, “I will contact the Confucians with the Soong girls.”

“You said you already did that when we heard rumours of what was going on in Nanking,” Jiang said. Then she stared at the Confucian. “You didn't do anything, did you?”

The Confucian thought,
I do not take orders from a whore. The time was not right for Confucians to reassume their position of power.
But all he said, with a smile, was, “They were just rumours, then. Now I have proof.”

—

Charles had no way of running the photographs in his Shanghai papers, since each had to pass a Japanese censor, but he had many contacts in France, England, and America—and each received copies of the photographs with a personal note verifying their authenticity and a plea for them to be published and widely disseminated.

—

The Confucian waited patiently for the youngest Soong daughter—She Who Loves China—to return home. The photographs were tucked away in his front pocket. It was getting late. Curfew had already passed, and he had no desire to be caught out after … Then a modest automobile turned the corner and the young woman stepped out. She turned back to the car and gave the driver a
yuan
note.

The Confucian stepped out into the road just as the car turned the corner. “Mrs. Sun,” he said.

She was instantly on her guard. “You again?”

“I intend no harm. I am only a Confucian scholar who has something important for you to see.”

It took a little more persuading, but shortly the Confucian was sitting at a delicately inlaid lacquered table, his photographs laid out for the youngest Soong daughter.

The woman gasped, then picked up one of the photographs. Tears sprang from her eyes and she turned away. “So it's true?”

“Absolutely, I'm afraid.”

“Why do you show me these things?”

“You are a Soong daughter. Your sisters are powerful women. I want you to talk sense to them.”

—

The few papers in the West that ran the photographs carefully blacked out the most offensive parts and all carried warnings that the photographs might not be legitimate—that “those people” were “prone to exaggeration”—a sentiment the western press would repeat a few years later when the agony of another group of “those people prone to exaggeration” was presented to them.

* * *

MAXIMILIAN WAITED for a moonless night. The assassins all assumed their positions, Loa Wei Fen, rock in hand, by the oil reservoir.

Days earlier the assassins had strung the strongest silk ropes they could find to the pulleys on each of the three poles, as Maximilian had instructed them.

Now Maximilian waited for the laughing voice to come—and it did. He fastened the last of the buckles of the parachute harness and grabbed hold of the loose end of the rope that was attached to the pulley with one hand while he held Chiao Ming's baby with the other.

He signalled his readiness, and the assassins began to smash garbage can lids, pots, pans, sheets of metal, woks—anything that made a racket—and sure enough, the Japanese patrols from all over Nanking came running. Maximilian had walked the routes and timed them night after night: ten minutes was not enough time for the Japanese to get there, but twenty minutes would give the soldiers time to interfere with his plans.

He began to count.

When he reached five hundred he heard shots and shouts, but he continued to count. He needed many, many Japanese to see what he had in store for them. Too few and their word might be doubted.

By six hundred and fifty he saw the flash of rifle muzzles piercing the darkness, and by seven hundred he heard the rumble of tanks.

He continued to count. At seven hundred and eighty he saw the youngest assassin take a bullet in the face and fall directly backward against a stone wall. At nine hundred he shouted his command to Loa Wei Fen—the first time he had ever ordered the Assassin to do anything.