Shanghai (16 page)

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“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, SIR?” the owner of the opium den asked.

Richard nodded and pushed his journal aside. Slowly he pointed a shaky finger toward the empty bowl of his pipe. The owner deposited a heated orb of opium in the centre of the bowl and then she tilted the pipe over the brazier. Smoke curled upward and Richard inhaled deeply.

Richard didn't see her deposit the third ball of opium in his pipe, but as he inhaled its sweet smoke a maniacal grin crossed his features. By the fourth ball he couldn't hold back his laughter.

“What?” Jiang, the owner of the opium den asked sweetly.

“I was just wondering.”

“Wondering what, sir?”

“Wondering if anyone in England—or anywhere else in the world for that matter—has informed Her Royal Majesty, the most powerful woman in the world, Queen Victoria, that by putting her signature to the Treaty of Nanking she has become the Sister to the Manchu Emperor and … and …” He began to splutter, then regained control, “… and the Auntie to the Moon.”

The laughter that flowed from Richard's mouth filled the den.

Jiang retreated behind a silk curtain, where the progeny of the First Emperor's Body Guard and the Confucian waited. The three listened to the hoarse laughter from Richard Hordoon, and it pleased them.

The White Birds had landed—the first part of the Ivory Compact had been completed.

The Village of Shanghai 1842

“You know who I am,” said the tall man with the cobra tattoo on the back of his hand.

The young woman, his sister-in-law, moved her baby boy so he could suckle from her other breast, then nodded.

The tall man looked at the array of furniture and the dark, polished wood floor of this house.
They have amassed wealth,
he thought. “Where is he?”

“My son …”

“My nephew,” he interrupted her. “My nephew belongs to me, just as …”

“… my husband could have belonged to you.”

“If the time was upon us when he was younger, yes, it would have been him. It is the compact, agreed upon long ago.”

The young mother held her baby tightly to her. At least this one was hers to keep, to raise, and, if necessary, to set out to revenge his brother.

“Where is the boy?” The man's voice snapped in the stillness of the room. The young mother looked up and to one side.

The boy was perched atop a tall, beautifully inlaid, lacquered armoire.

The tall man smiled.
Good,
he thought. Then he called out in a stern voice, “Here, boy.”

Without hesitation, and with the elegance of an acrobat, the boy slid from his vantage point and approached the man.

The woman started toward her son.

“No, Mother, it is my destiny. As it has been the destiny of all the first-born males of this family stretching back into ancient times.”

“Your father …”

“Prepared me, Mother. Now my father's older brother will test me, and if he finds me worthy, he will finish my preparation.”

“For what?” she screamed

“To kill, Mother. To kill. Am I not right, Uncle?”

The boy reached up and took the hand of the ancestor of the Body Guard. There was already strength in the boy's grip. It frightened the man with the cobra tattooed on the back of his hand—frightened him for the safety of his own son. Only one of the two boys would be entrusted with the obligation of the Ivory Compact. Only one of the two could begin the resurrection of the ancient Guild of Assassins. The other
would … he would not let himself complete the thought.

The boy's father entered the room and nodded toward his elder brother.

He saw the cobra tattoo on the back of his brother's hand. So he had finally come—as the legend said he would. And, as the legend stated, his brother had insisted that his first-born go with him and challenge for the right to restart the ancient Guild.

His wife began to sob, and the baby at her breast joined her cries. Her husband ignored her entreaties. “It is our place on the Ivory.”

She'd heard of the prophecy, but there had been no demand since—since forever, and now this man came and demanded her son. She protested again.

“Quiet, now. It is what I began his training for,” her husband said. “It is what I was trained for by my father, and my father by his father. It is the role we must play.”

His wife visibly stiffened and, holding her baby tightly to her, hissed, “And now I will have a role to play too. If my son dies, my people and I will be revenged upon all of those, I say
all of those,
who had anything to do with taking his life.” Then she spat on the floor and stomped on the spittle with her left foot. “A curse into the ground will grow a branch of evil.”

Her husband nodded slowly, knowing she was not wrong, then said, “As it may be. Now dry your tears and leave us.” Then he turned to his brother. “I need a few moments with my son. I do not deny your right to him. I need a moment, that is all.”

The Body Guard left the two—father and son—alone.

The young assassin stood by the window, feet wide apart, head held proudly. Silhouetted against the
setting sun he was the most beautiful thing his father had ever seen.

His father grunted, then held out his left hand with the thumb and baby finger held apart from the three centre fingers, which were tightly bunched. The boy put his right hand over his heart and splayed his fingers.

“There will be death soon.”

“I am ready, Father.”

He nodded at his boy. Every morning for ten summers they had trained together before going to the fields. “Do your duty,” he barked.

“I will, sir,” the young assassin responded.

Then there was silence broken only by the wind outside and the breathing of the two men within.

“This pledge goes all the way back to the First Emperor's Body Guard, who is your revered ancestor, of whom you must beg a blessing. He was the beginning of all this.”

The young assassin had heard the story many times. The phrase
kai shi
(beginning) had been the very first words he had spoken. It had caused a terrible stir in the village. And now, almost eleven years later, the portent of that day had come to fruition.

“Honour your weapons and they will serve you well.”

“I will, my Father, as I honour you.”

“Do your duty as it has been prescribed and do what you need to do to take the position and re-start the Guild of Assassins, for my brother's presence tells me that the time has come.”

“I will, my Father, and help our people out of the darkness into the light.”

They had spoken this litany at the end of every training session, but this time there was a quaver in his father's voice and tears were in his eyes.

The young assassin stood very still and allowed the image of his father to burn into his memory.

Then the door opened and the boy's uncle, the Body Guard, strode in. “It's time.”

“He'll live with you and your family until …”

“Until I must choose. You know this, brother.”

“Can his mother and I …?”

“Visit him? No. And you knew that as well.” Then he grabbed the boy's Manchu-dictated pigtail with his cobra-tattooed hand.

“This goes first.” With a single slash of his swalto blade, the hated symbol of Manchu domination fell to the polished wood floor. “Leave it there,” the cobra man said to his brother. “It will stay until your son's work is done, as a reminder of him and the duty he owes his people.”

The Village of Shanghai June 1843

It was hot. July in Shanghai was always hot, and humid, and mosquito-infested—no place for men in wool suits and top hats. But that was what the assembled were wearing that sultry morning of June 17, 1843, as they awaited the arrival of Queen Victoria's land auctioneer.

“Why are we dressed like this, Richard?” Maxi squawked as he scratched his thighs beneath his gabardine trousers.

“Because
they
are,” Richard said, as a maniacal smile creased his handsome face. Then he broke out in an almost hysterical laugh that caused all eyes in the room to turn in his direction. Maxi gave him a sharp look.
Under his breath Richard whispered, “Don't worry, I'm sober as a churchman.” This last word he spoke loudly. Then he added in a whisper, “Look at us, Maxi, two kids with all these toffs!”

—

“Why are heathens allowed to bid in this auction?” asked the short, pot-bellied, bald-headed leader of the American trading firm of Oliphant and Company, out of Philadelphia. He clutched an aged family Bible to his chest. Not for nothing was the Oliphant trading house called the House of Zion by most of the other traders. Then, of course, there was also the Oliphant claim that they were in the business of spreading the word of Christ—which they did while they sold opium to the heathens. “They're not Christians, are they?” Jedediah Oliphant asked.

“No, sir, they're Hebrews from Mesopotamia,” Oliphant's elderly China hand replied.

“Mesopotamian Hebrews? Whoever heard of …?”

“The Hordoon brothers, sir.”

Jedediah Oliphant paused and adjusted his spectacles. His already florid face reddened. “Those are the Hordoon brothers?”

“There are no others, sir.”

“Handsome in an odd, Hebraic sort of way, I'd say.”

“I've been told that some women agree with you, sir.”

“Where's Rachel?” Jedediah asked quickly.

Rachel, his daughter, would have caused quite a stir at the Bend in the River. Jedediah might have been nothing much to look at himself, but his daughter, through some genetic fluke, was a true beauty. She had pale skin, a thin waist, dark auburn tresses, and startling green eyes. To
the men of the opium trade, who for years had not been allowed to bring Caucasian women into their settlement at Canton, she would be a shock—a breath of pure air—a startling burst of light in their midst.

“As always, safely on board the
Water Witch,
sir.”

“Hate that name. Blasphemous name. Can't we change it?”

“Not without risking a revolt amongst the crew. Sailors are superstitious, sir. The
Water Witch
has made more trans-Pacific voyages than any bark in our fleet. Not a single crewman has perished in any of the crossings, so—”

“It's through Christ's will that the ship arrives safely, not the actions of the ship's Captain or any of its—”

“I don't advise changing the name, sir. I really don't.”

The head of the House of Zion looked at his China hand. The man seemed to know what he was talking about. So he simply harrumphed. “Where are the other heathens?”

“The Vrassoons?”

“Yes, those.”

“Their representative will be less obvious but far more significant. After all, Vrassoon is a knighted lord of the British Empire.”

“Codswallop,” the head of the House of Zion announced. “Just codswallop. We should sit them down and talk to them of the Good Book. Now
there
would be a conversion!”

The China hand looked at his boss and wondered if the man realized the danger that Vrassoon and Company, with its monopoly on direct trade between China and England, posed to the Oliphants' opium assets. But he chose to say nothing.

“Codswallop, I repeat,” Jedediah repeated—this time loudly enough for everyone in the room to wonder what in heaven's name a codswallop was, or did, or meant.

—

“The American looks like he's swallowed a large toad,” said Percy St. John Dent, second in command at Dent and Company of London.

“Aye, or perhaps a lizard,” replied Hercules MacCallum, co-owner of Jardine Matheson out of Edinburgh, as he adjusted the shoe on his left foot to relieve the pain from the gout nodule there. He and Percy had become fast friends during their years at school together on a weather-blown stretch of land on the Scottish east coast just north of Sinclair Castle—the coldest damned place in the coldest damned country in the world. Although they relished disagreeing with each other on almost every other topic, on that point they were in full agreement.

“The head of the House of Zion does sputter, doesn't he?” Percy asked rhetorically.

“It's an American trait, I believe, typical of Evangelical speech over there.”

“Just Evangelical speech?”

“Aye.”

“And why would that be?”

“It's my belief that it is caused by their erroneous conviction that they are the sole recipients of the Lord's final wisdom.”

“And why would that make them sputter, you northern barbarian?”

“Because, my self-satisfied Oxonian, it should be clear to all—even Americans—that God would not
choose to bequeath His final wisdom—I do love the presumptuousness of that phrase, ‘final wisdom'—well, be that as it may, God would not permit His ‘final wisdom' to be housed in such a ramshackle backwater as America.”

“Have you ever been, Hercules?”

“No.”

“And yet you feel confident calling it a ramshackle backwater?”

“I've never been to Sweden, but I know they're all blonds.”

“I rather like blonds.”

“As do I, Percy—as long as they don't sputter.”

“Well, that depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On whether they sputter before or after,” Percy St. John Dent replied with a grin.

Hercules looked at his English counterpart and said, “And here I thought you were a God-fearing, chaste gentleman!”

“Hercules, I am a businessman not unlike yourself.”

“Aye, Percy, a businessman, but not really like myself. You'll see what I mean when the auctioneer arrives.”

Percy turned to Hercules. “What are you planning, you detestable Scot?”