Shanghai (24 page)

Hercules MacCallum, the leader of the giant Scottish trading company Jardine Matheson, stretched his massive shoulders and cursed the cold as he propped his bare left foot on a cushion and adjusted the canvas hot-water bottle upon which he sat.
Shanghai is even colder this February than last,
he thought, then noted for the hundredth time that the Glasgow-quarried flagstones covering the floor of his office on the Bund didn't help the problem. He glanced at the massive but empty fireplace. Too many Concession buildings had burnt to the ground because of faulty chimney work,
so most Europeans simply put up with the cold—and used hot-water bottles.

Hercules picked up a surprisingly dainty silver bell and gave it a ring. After a moment, a panel, made from Scottish border county oak, slid back smoothly and his personal secretary came in carrying a bronze tray upon which sat both a large tot of single malt Scottish whisky and a cloudy draught meant to combat the painful gout nodule on the big toe of Hercules's left foot.

“Have we had any responses yet, James?”

“Aye, sir. Everyone, even the Persians, has agreed to meet.”

That didn't surprise him. The Hordoons were heathens, but they were nothing if not practical. He was surprised, however, that the American traders had agreed. “Do we not have to undergo an Evangelical dunking in order to be honoured with the presence of the House of Zion?”

“They haven't stipulated religious conversion as a prerequisite of their attendance, sir.”

“Could we suggest they leave their Bibles at home, or would they consider that ill mannered, do you suppose?” He chuckled, but it caused the gout nodule to glance against the leather of the footstool, which sent shards of pain raging up his leg.

James saw his employer's discomfort but knew better than to acknowledge it. Hercules, at forty-two, still had a body to match his name. In his earlier years the man had been a seemingly unstoppable force of nature. Women loved his physical prowess, and men followed wherever he led. And then had come the debilitating gout. James made himself smile and replied, “Perhaps, sir.”

Hercules took the draught of foul-smelling stuff, then washed it down with a big gulp of the single malt
whisky—and sighed. “Confirm with all of them for this hour tomorrow night.”

James nodded and returned through the oak panel whence he came.

Alone in the room, Hercules stood and walked carefully toward the windows that faced the Huangpo River. He looked across to the Pudong, with its incantatory mysteries, then up the street to the House of Vrassoon, and then in the other direction to the offices of the English traders, Dent's. They could lose it all, he knew. Every one of them could lose everything. All the work. All the time. All the money could go away if they couldn't convince Chinese labourers to come into the Concessions and work.

His left foot brushed against his right shoe. Again the pain, like splinters of glass racing up his leg, took his breath from him. He waited for the agony to subside, then looked down at the small red bump on the big toe of his left foot. Such a small thing to incapacitate someone as powerful as himself. Like the little matter of Chinese workers bringing the greatest trading companies in the world to their knees. He wondered what would happen if he took a knife to the gout nodule and simply cut it out. His doctors had, in no uncertain terms, warned him against that. He took a sip of his whisky and thought that the nodule might have to stay on his foot, but this Chinese labour problem had to go away.

* * *

THE MEETING ITSELF did not start well. Hercules's proffered whisky was pronounced “spittle of the devil” by Jedediah Oliphant, who then added a few choice
words that sounded like a biblical quotation. But Hercules, who was as Bible-learned as any minister, couldn't for the life of him identify from where in the Good Book the man's vituperative admonition against alcohol came. The food was put aside on the basis of some sort of hocus pocus dietary restriction by the newly arrived Vrassoon Patriarch and his skull-capped retinue. Percy St. John Dent sipped his liquor and nibbled at the edges of his food. Only the two Persians ate and drank heartily, the red-haired one smacking his lips loudly.

Hercules ignored these warning signs and rose from his seat at the head of the table. “Thank you for joining me, gentlemen. Please accept my apologies if my humble offerings have caused offence. None was intended, of that I can assure you.”

The men around the table nodded. Maxi reached for a fat turkey leg that oozed reddish juices down his chin as he chomped down on the flesh.

“We are competitors,” Hercules continued, “but we are now confronted by a common problem.” The faces around the table stared back at him. No one spoke. The red-haired Persian set down his turkey leg and wiped his chin. Hercules waited for someone to respond. This was clearly going to be more difficult than he had anticipated.

“All right,” he began again, “we've had years of undercutting, outdoing, and outsmarting each other. We're traders, businessmen, opponents. I acknowledge that, and I think the rest of you around this table have no quibble with those definitions.” Again, no one spoke. At least no one contradicted him, he thought. “But if we fight each other now, if we don't come together and speak with one voice against our common enemy—”

“And who exactly would this common enemy be, in your esteemed opinion?” asked Percy St. John Dent with an open mischievousness. Then, with a breathless sarcasm, he asked, “Would you by any chance be referring to the British East India Company's Vrassoon family with their parliamentary monopoly on direct trade between China and England? Would
they
be the common enemy, Mr. Hercules MacCallum?”

Eliazar Vrassoon spread his arms magnanimously and said, “As simple traders, none of us here has the wisdom to question the noble actions of Her Majesty's duly appointed Parliament. The law is the law. We are law-abiding traders, not brigands or pirates. We all here obey the law, do we not?”

“The law!” Maxi spat out. Richard put a hand on his brother's arm to restrain him.

“Yes, the law,” Hercules jumped in. “The law,” he repeated. Then he asked pointedly, “Why are
we
not the law here, in our own home? Why are the Manchus the law in our Concessions? Surely our Concessions should be ruled by our laws.” He paused for a moment, then said, as if it were nothing significant, “Why do we not work together toward extraterritoriality? Speak with one voice for it?”

Extraterritoriality was the end goal of every colonizing power. With it, the colonizers could control the laws within the bounds of their jurisdictions. No longer would the Concession be a small enclave within the mass of China. The Concession would be a piece of England—or America—a sovereign power governed by the trading houses, who would make and enforce the law as they saw fit.

“But we're
not
the law here.” Jedediah Oliphant stated the obvious.

“Aye, but we could be,” Hercules said, and smiled. “If we unite. Uniting is the key to gaining extraterritoriality.”

Everyone agreed with that. They knew they would have to ask their respective governments to force the Manchus into granting extraterritoriality—perhaps with some substantial loss of life, and definitely with a momentary loss of tax revenue. Anti-colonial forces in both England and America were growing stronger. If they sensed any wavering in the traders' resolve they would pounce.

Maxi reached for his drumstick and took another bite. His bright, hard teeth hit bone with a clink. He looked at his brother and then reached for a second piece of turkey. But before he could get it into his mouth the discussion had degenerated into squabbling.

Richard knew the head of Jardine Matheson was right. Only if they were united could they hope to get their governments to force extraterritoriality on the Chinese. And only with extraterritoriality in place could the traders secure Chinese labourers to work for them. With extraterritoriality, they could offer the workers places to live and, most important, protection from the Manchu Mandarins' retribution. But too many years of animosity and distrust separated the men in the room, and Richard knew that Hercules wasn't the one to unite the traders. He looked at the irate faces around the table as the voices grew in both volume and anger, and his eye kept landing on the calm visage of Eliazar Vrassoon. Finally the man turned his bulbous eyes toward him, nodded, and then said in Yiddish, “Meet me tonight.”

The foreign words stopped the English-speakers around the table. Quickly accusations flew against the
“heathens in our midst.” “English,” Percy St. John Dent suggested, “is the language of this meeting.”

The Vrassoon Patriarch nodded. “My apologies, gentlemen.” But Richard read no apology in either the man's tone or his demeanour.

By the time Richard and Maxi finally got up to leave, the leaders of the great trading houses of Shanghai were sitting in stony, angry silence.

* * *

LATE THAT NIGHT Richard entered the very heart of enemy territory, the private study of the Patriarch of the Vrassoon clan. He stood with his cap literally in hand and waited for the older man to join him.

The room bespoke power and money—both understated, but very much in evidence. Throw rugs from the Punjab, milk-soft leather chairs to rival any found in the finest salons of Paris, delicately leaded windows overlooking the beginnings of the promenade along the Huangpo River, original oil paintings that seemed to feature the same female model at different ages, all in gilt frames, a silver menorah to one side and other telltale artifacts of Judaica.

Without fanfare or apology for making him wait, Eliazar Vrassoon entered the room followed by Cyril, his China hand. The Patriarch dismissed Cyril with the pointing of a finger, then waited until the man was out the door before he turned to Richard.

Richard eyed Vrassoon. A surge of anger raced through him, but it quickly dissipated as something else—something urgent—tugged at the sides of his memory. The head of the British East India Company extended his hand. The words
What are you doing here?
flew into
Richard's mind, but he couldn't find the rest of the thought. For a moment he felt as though he were falling, somehow only a child again—and there was wetness between his legs! Then he was pointing, showing this man something. What?

Richard finally noticed Eliazar's extended hand. It felt good not to have reciprocated the courtesy.

“As you will,” Vrassoon said as he returned his hand to his coat pocket. “Well, our Christian counterparts seem intent upon fighting one another,” the older man said.

“Unlike us Jews, who always love and honour each other,” Richard spat back sarcastically.

The older man nodded and poured himself a small glass of sherry from a crystal decanter. He didn't offer Richard a drink. “Indeed,” he said, “but we at least won't squabble over religious niceties.”

“Only because I have no religious niceties,” Richard responded.

“No, you don't.” Eliazar Vrassoon's voice was suddenly cold as ice. “No, you're not any kind of a Jew. In fact, if they didn't hate us all so much you'd have no identity whatsoever. You're only a Jew because the goyim hate you.”

Richard accepted that. “I live my life by my own values.”

“That assumes you have some.”

“I reject your medieval darkness in favour of finding my own light.”

Vrassoon shook his head slowly and then said, “You are a lonely man, Mr. Hordoon.”

“Better lonely than idolatrous.”

“Idolatrous!” The Vrassoon Patriarch's voice arched in a high crescendo that surprised Richard.

“Yes. Now, could you skip the preamble and tell me whatever it is …?”

Vrassoon hesitated. Did he really need this boy's assistance? Didn't he have enough power on his own? No. If it was just a man or two or three from his own company, the other traders wouldn't care. Why should they? But if it were men from two different companies, then it would imply that the next could be from their firms. It would become a real threat to their safety. Enough of a threat, Eliazar hoped, to force all the traders to speak with one voice to their governments to force extraterritoriality on the Manchus.

He looked at young Hordoon.
We are partners, you and I, and have been for a very long time,
he thought.
And only now will you begin to know it.
The Vrassoon Patriarch took a deep breath and then began.

“I hold the note on your debt to Barclays Bank.”

“This is not news to me.”

“Would you like an extension on the payment schedule of that note?”

Richard stopped himself from speaking. His time with the House of Zion in the countryside had shown him that he could open new markets that none of the other traders even knew existed. Those markets could generate large sums of cash. Maybe not enough to pay off the whole debt, but certainly enough to make a sizable dent in it. But it would take time to set up his networks. Time that, until this very moment, he'd had no way of finding. He made sure his voice was nonchalant when he spoke. “I'm listening.”

Walking home that night Richard knew that Eliazar Vrassoon's plan was the only way to get the traders to unite. He had made as good a deal as he could, although he was shocked when, at the end of their haggling,
Vrassoon had said, “You drove a harder bargain when you were younger.” When Richard had pressed for the meaning of that cryptic remark the older man had just laughed and asked, “So we have a deal?” And Richard had taken the old man's hand—and the deal was sealed. He knew that he must never tell Maxi about the details.
If Maxi ever found out what I did to get the three-year extension on the debt repayment from the Vrassoons, he would kill someone. Well, many people. Eliazar Vrassoon first,
Richard thought, then added,
After that, he'd definitely come after me.