Shanghai (19 page)

The service or song-fest or whatever it was (Richard hadn't attended a religious ceremony of any kind in almost twenty years, and even then only when his mother had insisted) ended with a flourish and the senseless shaking of hands. Then the participants dispersed and returned, Richard assumed, to their jobs.

Richard looked for the woman at the end of the service but didn't see her, so he approached Jedediah Oliphant, as he had initially intended.

The head of Oliphant and Company knew Richard and heartily disliked him—as did all the other opium traders. But Richard had known real hate since his childhood and was not put off by mere dislike. He put out his hand as he approached.

Oliphant declined the offered handshake. “Have you come to this place to investigate the one true faith?”

For a moment Richard had no idea what he was talking about, but when it struck him, he smiled. “No, but I did enjoy the singing.”

“God's songs they are, my son.”

Richard let that go. “Can I have a word?”

Oliphant grudgingly led him into a hardwood-panelled room and closed the door. The board floor was carpeted with a quality Persian rug whose pattern Richard immediately identified as coming from the
Takrit area. A small fireplace was embedded in one wall, and three leather wingback chairs dominated the room. Oliphant sat in one but didn't offer Richard a place in one of the others.

“So?”

Richard ignored the slight. “I want to talk about Chinese workers.”

“Do you have any?”

“No. Do you?”

Oliphant waved a chubby fist in front of his chubby red face as if smoke had somehow entered the room and bothered his nose. “No,” he said slowly.

“And this is not a problem as far as you are concerned?”

“God will provide.”

Richard snicked his teeth and said, “Absolutely.” He turned to leave; the hypocrisy of Christian opium traders was too much for him just now. But before he could get to the door it was flung open, and the vision from the street with the soprano voice appeared. With a quick curtsey she said, “I'm sorry to interrupt, Father, but the Bible translator is waiting for you.”

Richard stepped aside and she passed by, a step closer, he thought, than was absolutely necessary. A whiff of rosewater came off her. He smiled and turned back to Jedediah Oliphant. “Your daughter, here, in Shanghai?”

Gruffly the older man said, “She's a fully qualified missionary who has come to this dark place to bring the light of the Word of the Lord. Haven't you, my dear?”

The green-eyed creature smiled and retreated from the office.

“I've found her a suitable husband, a classmate of mine—two years ahead of me at the seminary, a pastor from Massachusetts. They'll be married once her
missionary work here is finished. She hasn't met him yet, but they're a good match.”

Richard couldn't resist asking, “And she'll be happy with you choosing a husband for her?”

“My daughter is a good girl.”

Richard wondered about how long a “good girl” remained a good girl with a husband older than her father, but he didn't speak.

The silence in the room seemed to draw itself out. Finally Oliphant broke it, saying, “Rachel listens to her father.”

So her name is Rachel,
Richard thought, and although he'd never bothered with the Bible, he thought that perhaps he'd spend the evening figuring out exactly where in that dusty old book the name of this “good girl” originated.

* * *

RACHEL ELIZABETH OLIPHANT was not a “bad girl,” but nor was she the “good girl” her father believed her to be. She had for years privately questioned her Church's teaching. Not only had she found her own urges as powerful as anything she had ever felt in prayer, but her ability to read Hebrew and Aramaic gave her access to part of the “Good Book” that flew in the face of American Evangelical thought.

She was shocked when she painstakingly translated the story of the rape of Lot by his daughters, not to mention the horrors she found in the Dinah story, or Abraham's questionable behaviour with his wife while in Egypt. But perhaps most revealing to her were two passages from the Bible at what she thought of as opposite ends of desire. The first, the openly erotic poetry of the
Song of Solomon, was so surprising to her that at first she couldn't believe her translation was correct. The second challenged everything she had ever thought about faith—it was her translation of the story of Job. She had often been told the story of the good man put through horrifying tribulations to challenge his faith in his God. The way she'd always heard the story was that Job bowed down and accepted the power of God. But her translation from the original Aramaic stunned her. Nowhere did she find Job accepting the totally unjustified punishment that he was forced to endure. In fact, as far as Rachel Elizabeth Oliphant could translate, the final thing Job said to God was: “I have seen You and I am appalled.”

When she realized that in its original form Job was the last book of the Hebrew Bible—not a middle book of what Christians call the Old Testament—she literally began to shake. The whole Old Testament did not lead to the arrival of the prophets that acted as precursors to the arrival of Christ, as she had been taught. It led to Job—and Job's assertion of his right to reject God's arbitrary, capricious use of power.

So, as her mother went first blind, then slowly insane while the tumour grew in her head, Rachel thought of Job's response to God, not her father's relentless platitudes about God's unfathomable plan for man.

And yet she did not openly criticize her Church or resist her father's insistence that she do missionary work. How else could a Victorian girl get to see the world—and hold off her father's impulsive desire for her to marry a man over twice her age?

She found much of Asia to her liking, although, being a woman, she had been kept away from China for almost a year, and when she finally was allowed ashore she was closely guarded by her father and his men. Yet she had
still managed, often from the covered interior of a carried sedan chair, to see much. She loved the sights and sounds of the open-air markets and the street hawkers who produced delicious hot food at almost any hour of the day. She often forced her escorts to stop and, although she was seldom allowed out of the sedan chair herself, she would have her father's men buy her freshly cooked dumplings stuffed with pork and shrimp in a ginger sauce, sticky rice balls with a cooked egg yolk in the centre, or long, thick noodles in a sweet brown sauce. She was anxious to try to eat with the sticks that the locals used, but she was not allowed to try.

There were things that were less pleasing. The few women she saw—since the Chinese, like their American counterparts, kept their women behind locked doors—all waddled painfully on their bound feet. The tiny appendages were an obscenity to her.

Then she met her very first courtesan. The runners carrying Rachel's sedan chair slowed in the narrow street of the Old City as the courtesan's sedan chair approached from the opposite direction. The street was not quite wide enough to allow the two sedan chairs to pass, and as her sedan chair scraped against the wall, Rachel heard a shriek from the other chair that caused the courtesan's carriers to bump her sedan chair into Rachel's. When they did, the rungs of her privacy curtain caught on the rings of Rachel's drapery—revealing one woman to the other.

For a breathtaking few moments, beauty from the West examined beauty from the East and vice versa—and each found the other both enchanting and hideous at the same time.

The one overriding impression that Rachel came away with was that this woman who spent her time
with several different men did not strike her as any less a child of God than the ostentatious virgins of her native Philadelphia.

* * *

ABOUT A MILE TO THE NORTH on the Bend in the River, in the three-storey stone headquarters of the British East India Company, heart of the Vrassoons' empire, Cyril, the Vrassoons' elder China hand, began the first of his two attacks on the Hordoon brothers.

He raised a glass of sherry to the Manchu Mandarin standing in his office and took a deep sip. The scribe by the Mandarin's side and his personal bodyguard didn't move a muscle.

Cyril's command of Mandarin was not perfect, but it was serviceable, and he had one of the very few Mandarin-English dictionaries in existence, with which he spent an hour every evening no matter how long his day had been. Ownership of the dictionary had been a result of one of the more delicate negotiations into which he had entered upon his arrival at the Bend in the River. But he wasn't thinking of that just now.

“May I congratulate you on a fine proclamation, sir. I look forward to its being made public.” Cyril saluted the Mandarin a second time and once again drank alone.

The Mandarin just held his drink and waited—for the rest.

Cyril smiled. “You await
my
proclamation?”

The Mandarin didn't smile. Didn't move. Just listened.

Cyril retreated to his leather-topped partner desk and slipped a key into the lock. He pulled out the central drawer until he heard a click, then he gently pushed it
forward about an inch and heard a second click—which unlocked the bottom drawer. From that drawer he withdrew a document written in English. He put it face up on the desk and resisted smiling.

The Mandarin clearly didn't speak let alone read English. He gave a quick, short shriek and the office door slammed open. Two of his armed guards entered, followed by a tall, elderly Jesuit.

Cyril noted the man's sallow pallor and the fire in his rheumy eyes. The Jesuit wheezed when he exhaled and had a pronounced limp. But he was clearly a believer. Cyril had seen such fire in the Vrassoon Patriarch's eyes when it came to matters of religion and practice. Cyril handed over the document.

The Jesuit pulled back the sleeves of his Chinese-style outer gown. Cyril had forgotten that one of the great fights between the Jesuits and the other Catholic orders in the Middle Kingdom was the willingness of the Jesuits to adopt the clothing and habits of the local population, a choice that was totally resisted by the other Catholic orders (especially the mendicant orders) and thought to be out and out blasphemy by the Protestant Evangelicals.

The Jesuit finished reading the document and turned to the Mandarin. “It is as you agreed. Once your new tariffs drive the Hebrew brothers out of business, you will be given fifty percent of all their property and opium assets.”

The Mandarin nodded, then reached for the paper and with one move tore the thing in two and dropped it to the floor. “Sixty percent,” he said in Mandarin.

Cyril contained his smile. He had authorization to go to seventy-five percent. He did the appropriate harrumphing and muttering, then counter-offered.
They settled at fifty-eight percent, and everyone was happy. Perhaps this deal would pacify Mr. Vrassoon, although he doubted it. Cyril glanced at the calendar on his desk. Eliazar Vrassoon would shortly arrive in Calcutta, and not too long after he would no doubt make his triumphal arrival in Shanghai.

The Mandarin stepped forward and held out his long, elegant fingers. On his left pinky, the ring bearing his chop glinted in the light. He dunked it in the ink the scribe proffered and affixed his sign to the scroll. Then he turned and thought of rewarding himself for completing this unsavoury business with the
Fan Kuei.
Perhaps a session of clouds and rain with Jiang would cleanse him of the distaste.

* * *

EVEN BEFORE the Mandarin could sample the delectations of Jiang's brothel, Cyril completed his note to the Vrassoon Patriarch with the words, “
Your first plan is in place and the second about to begin. The Hordoons may soon be no more, and these new tariffs will undoubtedly raise a cry from the traders to seek extraterritoriality. As you predicted extraterritoriality may be within our grasp.
” He called in his most trusted aide and gave him the handwritten note. “This is not to leave your sight, and you are to deliver it personally to Mr. Vrassoon in Calcutta. I will expect it to be in his hands by the end of the month. If I find it hasn't arrived in that time I will personally see to it that you and your family never see another penny from this fine company. Do I make myself clear?”

The young Jew nodded, took the letter, and ran to the docks—the tide was going out.

Then Cyril called the two hard men into his office and set in motion the second part of the Vrassoons' two-pronged attack on the Hordoon boys.

“So, which of you has the stomach for violence?” he asked. The two young men looked at each other before the taller of the two stepped forward. “I'm y'r man, Guv.”

Ah, our co-religionist from the hard streets of East London,
Cyril thought, then added to himself as a reminder,
No matter how successful we get, we'll always need you and your muscle. You were with us at the beginning, and you'll be with us at the end.
Then he quickly amended his thought,
If there is such a thing as the end for us.

He held out an official-looking document and said, “Do you know where the Baghdadi boys do business?”

The rough man nodded.

“Good. Take this to them, and don't leave until you can tell me exactly how they took it.”

—

Well, the Hordoon brothers didn't take it well.

“The Vrassoons have bought our note from Barclays Bank and are calling in the debt,” Richard told Maxi while the hard man waited for his response.

“The one from the sunken steamships?”

“The same.”

“But we had years to pay off that debt.”

“Not now that the Vrassoons have bought it.”

“Can they do that?”

Richard's hands flew up like two doves suddenly loosed from their cage and a high-pitched laugh came from him. The formal document slipped from his hand
and fluttered to the floor. “The Vrassoons, it would seem, can do whatever they damn well want to do.”