Shanghai (76 page)

The initiates had to pass through three specially constructed arches. Above the first, between crossed swords, were carved the characters
On Entering the Door, Do Not Proceed Further If You Are Not Loyal.
Above the second arch was written
Before the Gate of Loyalty and Righteousness All Men Are Equal.
After passing through this arch, the initiates were required to pay a fee—a fee so high it would have been prohibitive to all but the rich and the larcenous. The third arch, The Gate of Heaven and Earth Circle, was inscribed with the words
Through the Heaven and Earth Circle Are Born the Hung Heroes
. It was only after passing through this final gate that the initiates would be tested and then symbolically reborn as Triad members. They washed their faces, removed their clothing, donned white robes and straw sandals—their old lives washed away. Then they were moved to the altar.

Once more the Incense Master took control of the ceremony. Thirty-six oaths were sworn by each initiate, who was then offered a knife that he used to seal his oaths in blood. A chicken was killed and its blood dripped into a large bowl of wine. A sheaf of yellow paper was burned and the ashes added to the bowl. Each of the initiates drank deeply, and afterwards the bowl was broken to illustrate what happens to those who break their oath.

The
Fan Kuei
's spies had been screaming warnings at their European and American masters for almost
twenty-four hours, but what exactly they were concerned about remained a mystery. They spoke of smelling change in the air, then ranted on about an ancient prophetic relic, and finally they spoke of death and change and what every Chinese person feared most in the world—chaos.

Many of the newly arrived
Fan Kuei
traders dismissed these reports as mere “Chink superstition,” but the older trading houses were not so sure. They had learned, often at great cost, that the Chinese were a practical people. The simple fact of their huge population and the incumbent need of feeding so many mouths made the Chinese decision-making process both basic and practical. Chinese history seldom produced ranting madmen. There were very few Chinese Ezekiels or Elijiahs or John the Baptists. Those were desert creations able to exist only where there was more space than people—and way too much time to contemplate the world rather than live in it. Despite his religious babble, even Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion, had proved to be more the leader of an agrarian poverty revolt than a prophet.

So when the spies reported to their
Fan Kuei
bosses at Dent and Company and Jardine Matheson and to Silas Hordoon, the respective Taipans of these great old mercantile empires metaphorically and literally circled the wagons. Runners were sent to the family homes of the major employees and family members. Quickly they put into effect an emergency plan that had been developed many years before. Hansom carriages with armed guards arrived at every
Fan Kuei
family home, and within three hours the major employees and their families were safely inside their respective headquarters either on the Bund or on Bubbling Spring Road. In either case, the fortress-like structures were quickly
surrounded by several rings of armed troops, both Sikh and British, bayonets at the ready and with orders to shoot to kill anyone who approached the great trading houses of Shanghai.

At midnight the initiates of the Tong of the Righteous Hand, led by the Incense Master, poured through the open door of a hot water shop, down the hidden basement steps, and into the most southerly entrance of the Warrens.

Moments later the disgraced Red Pole led over a hundred seasoned Tong fighters through the well-known western entrance. Once underground they fanned out into the dozens of ancillary tunnels that splayed out like the fingers of the Yangtze as it approached the China Sea.

As they did, Loa Wei Fen led the third of Tu's raiding parties into the Warrens from the east.

It was a massive pincer movement intended to prevent any egress of the Tusk or its keepers. The north end of the Warrens was bounded by the Huangpo River, and the Carver's son had identified the Tusk's hidden chamber in the north central section of the Warrens.

The moment that Loa Wei Fen slid down the ancient rope ladder to the lowest level of the Warrens he knew that something was wrong—very wrong. There were traces of too many people in the underground tunnels! He smelled their fear—the fear of many more men than Gangster Tu had ordered into the Warrens that morning. Then he heard the echo of gunfire in the enclosed underground tunnels—to him a new and truly terrifying sound.

The battle was a grudge match for the police. For years they'd lived in fear of the Triads, maligned by the
Fan Kuei
and disrespected by their own people. Their leaders took bribes and betrayed them, and they were
constantly accused of cowardice in the face of Triad violence. But it was time to prove they were men. Under the leadership of Mai Bao's ex-lover, they would, unlike so many times in the past, fight for their honour. Surprise was on their side this time, and they had every intention of taking full advantage of that … advantage.

And they did.

First in the south tunnels, where they slaughtered almost all of the Tong of the Righteous Hand initiates within the first twenty minutes. Only the Incense Master and six of his men escaped, as the Incense Master had chosen to lead from behind. Some managed to backtrack and reach street level, but the police pursued them, shooting many in the back.

Then the police began to fall in a hail of bullets.

Much to everyone's surprise, young Chinese men were shooting at the police who worked for the
Fan Kuei
. Shooting and killing many. Then these young Chinese men, the Revolutionary's men, turned their rifles toward the
Fan Kuei
's buildings and began to hunt the Foreign Devils in their midst.

The first
Fan Kuei
to die was a clerk in the service of Dent and Company, who had only a day earlier arrived from his posting in Cape Town. He literally took a wrong turn looking for an outhouse, and a bullet caught him in the shoulder. Before he fell to the ground he was surrounded by a group of screaming young Chinese men, two of whom held him against a wall while a third raised a remarkably sharp knife that removed his head from his neck in three quick strokes.

For what seemed forever the body staggered as if somehow still alive before it fell forward to the cracked pavement.

And Shanghai held its breath.

With the police busy fending off the Revolutionary's cadres while at the same time manning traps in the depths of the Warrens,
Fan Kuei
Shanghai lay basically unprotected. The Triads had no quarrel with the Revolutionary's cadres, nor did the hundreds of eyes that watched in fascination as
Fan Kuei
power seemed to disappear like a bad dream with the coming of the dawn. Weapons appeared in the hands of men who had never shown their weapons in public. Women strode forward with cleavers. Children stood by their parents as they set out to settle old scores with the hated
Fan Kuei.

—

While the revenge began on the streets, below street level, in the Warrens, another war proceeded toward a conclusion and its prize.

In the absolute darkness of the Warrens' tunnels two questions raced through Loa Wei Fen's mind. The angry young carver must have somehow followed his father to the Tusk, but had he seen any of the Chosen Three? More particularly, had he seen him? The Assassin's second question was even more pressing: where in the Warrens' darkness was the Red Pole he had disgraced to get into the good graces of Tu Yueh-sen?

Loa Wei Fen led his men directly toward the Tusk's hidden chamber. The quicker they could prove the absence of the Tusk to Gangster Tu, the quicker he could get out of the darkness of the Warrens. The combination of the physical restriction of the narrow tunnels and the darkness nullified the advantage of his years of training. In the dark, narrow tunnels, a stupid man with a stupid gun could defeat a skilled assassin—and Loa Wei Fen knew it.

Loa Wei Fen put his ear to the wet southern wall of the tunnel. It took him a moment to adjust to the natural sounds of the river in the rock. Once he recognized the rhythm of the water he began to hear other rhythms deep in the stone. From the north he heard the disorganized scuffing of boots on rock—policemen? From the south, stealthy, quick movements that might have been the Incense Master's southern advance. Loa Wei Fen was surprised by a slight scraping sound that seemed to come from above, far along the tunnel, maybe halfway between where he and his men crouched and the chamber in which the Tusk had been successfully hidden for all those years. Hidden until about this time yesterday, when he had delivered it in the midst of the great fire to Jiang's.

Loa Wei Fen split his men into three groups. One group was to stay and control the tunnel and guard his back. The second group he sent south at the fork just ahead of them, while he led the third group due north toward the strange scraping that he heard yet again.

—

The Red Pole adjusted the metal belt buckle he had taken from the body of the dead police officer. Shanghai police officers were so proud of those belts and buckles. Well, now it was a trophy he would give his Mountain Master, Tu Yueh-sen.

The Red Pole sent his men south, then headed toward a hiding place he had found as a boy. It was a low-ceilinged ledge running above the route he knew the hated Loa Wei Fen would take. The hiding place was a lot tighter now than it had been when he was a boy, and he heard his belt buckle scrape against the low
ceiling of the shelf as he turned to take up the position of his ambush.

He readied his new pistol. A single shot from the dark would end his disgrace and humble the mighty Loa Wei Fen, who had taken his place in the hierarchy of the Tong of the Righteous Hand.

—

Loa Wei Fen passed the niche that contained the heavy ancient statue of Chesu Hoi that the carvers venerated. He was within three hundred yards of the hidden entrance to the Tusk's chamber when he saw a lit torch in the crevice of the south wall.

Then he heard the scraping rasp in the rock again, this time much closer and higher up. Was there a hidden shelf above?

A distinctive metal
clack
. A gun being cocked? He quickly reached for the torch and doused it against the wall. As he did, he rolled across the smooth tunnel floor—and heard the unmistakable
ting
of a bullet first ricocheting off a wall, then hitting the barrel of his gun, throwing it far into the darkness. A second shot skipped off the wall and ripped most of his left ear from his head. Reaching for his ear he stumbled forward and kicked his weapon sharply into the darkness.

Loa Wei Fen lay flat. When he heard the thud of sandalled feet ahead of him on the stone floor of the tunnel he rolled and scrambled to his feet. He thought of trying to find his gun in the darkness, then discarded that idea and raced down the tunnel, bouncing off the walls as he ran. A third bullet, then a fourth pinged past him.

Loa Wei Fen ignored the blood flowing down his neck and ran with his hand out against the wall on his
left, trying to find the niche that contained the statue of the First Emperor's Eunuch, the original Chesu Hoi. Then a bullet tore through his left shoulder and flung him full force into the very crevice that contained the heavy ancient statue of the Carvers' patron.

—

The Red Pole was convinced that he had hit Loa Wei Fen. He was amazed that the man hadn't fired back. Assuming the man must have dropped his weapon, he raced down the tunnel firing as he went, thinking that it was only a matter of time before he came across his enemy's dead body.

He felt something hard crack into his side and he staggered against the far wall.

Then another thing he knew was a heel of an open palm slammed into the tip of his nose with such force that it drove the bridge into the frontal lobe of his brain.

—

Loa Wei Fen stuffed the Red Pole's body into the crevice, then forced the statue of Chesu Hoi back into place to hide the body.

He was gasping for breath and weak from loss of blood, but he knew that his wounds would heal—that he knew—and at least now he also knew the answer to one of his two questions.

—

An hour later they were all gathered in the secret chamber. No one said a word. Loa Wei Fen thought that
the deep chamber somehow echoed with its own silence. Then he saw the young carver staring at him, and he thought he knew the unfortunate answer to his other question. But before the young carver could approach Tu Yueh-sen, the Mountain Master of the Tong of the Righteous Hand screamed a profanity and kicked the jade stands that had, until yesterday, held the First Emperor's prophetic Tusk.

Then he turned to the young carver and with one slashing motion of his blade solved the Assassin's dilemma. Tu Yueh-sen turned to his men in the sacred cavern and shouted, “Clear the tunnels of the
Fan Kuei
's police, then the streets of the
Fan Kuei
. Every day they walk upon our land they sin against the sacred soil of the Middle Kingdom.”

—

And so they first made the tunnels of the Warrens run with blood of the
Fan Kuei
's lackeys, then they emerged from the tunnels and went after those who controlled the police—the
Fan Kuei
.

And on the streets they were gleefully joined by the six armed cadres of the Revolutionary, already drunk on blood, as well as many, many ordinary Chinese who had simply had enough of
Fan Kuei
rules. Three men pried loose the sign on the Bund Promenade that said “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed” and tossed it far out into the Huangpo.

Then the city exhaled all at once and the slaughter of the
Fan Kuei
began. The years of pent-up pain born of disrespect and hate were finally loosed—and for the first time in
Fan Kuei
history at the Bend in the River they were no longer the rulers. No, they were the hunted.