Shanghai (21 page)

As Richard spat the dust from his mouth, it occurred to him that he had eaten dirt before, and no doubt he would eat dirt again before his time on this earth was done.

—

“So how successful was your brainpower in getting the Vrassoons to change their minds about our debt or the new tariffs, brother mine?”

“Take that fuckin' smile off your face, Maxi, and get the boys.”

That indeed took the smile off Maxi's face. “Why do you want to see the boys?”

“Just get them, Maxi. I'm leaving.”

“What?”

“Tonight. I'm going upriver. We need workers and new markets. We have to set out in new directions. We have to get out of the box the fuckin' Vrassoons trapped us in.”

“And you want to say goodbye to the boys?”

“Yes, Maxi, get them. I've got a lot to do before sundown.”

—

Silas and Milo stood side by side in the shed waiting for their father, whom they heard outside giving orders to the men. The sound of horses approaching made Silas step back. Silas didn't like horses.

Patterson stuck his head in the door. “He'll be here shortly, so scrub your tears from your eyes, me little heathens.”

Outside the boys heard their Uncle Maxi saying, “Not enough men, brother mine. Not enough even to carry what you need.”

“I'm not carrying a lot. Just enough to prove to them that I can deliver. This is a search mission, not a trading mission.”

“I wasn't talking about that. You may be able to speak their language, but you've got no fist with you—a language that everyone understands.”

“I can't afford to have you come with me. I need you here to press Chen to get us workers. Press him hard. When I get back I want to see Yellow men everywhere around our warehouses. Besides, I want you to look after the boys.”

Milo smiled when he heard that and turned to Silas. “Uncle Maxi to look after the boys!” he whispered.

Silas smiled. He liked his Uncle Maxi well enough, but there was something just beneath the skin that he didn't understand.

The door burst open and Richard got down on one knee and held out his arms. Milo flew across the floor into his father's grasp. Silas didn't fly, but he snuggled up to his father too.

“So, can you figure out what I'm up to?”

“You're going to find new markets,” Milo said confidently. Richard ruffled his hair. “And make the House of Hordoon the greatest trading house in all of Asia.”

Richard let out a laugh and then turned to Silas.

The boy resisted the impulse to pull back from his father. The strange sour odour that opium imparted was constantly on his father's skin, and it made Silas want to throw up. But he put his hands on his father's face and said, with an odd dispassion, as if he'd rehearsed what he was going to say, “Be careful, Papa.”

Richard heard the distance in the boy's voice but chose to ignore it. He looked right back at his son and said, “Can't be too careful if you want to live your life. You have to take risks now and then. If you want to be a businessman you have to live with risk, Silas.”

“I don't want to be a businessman, Papa.”

“Do you want to live your life? Or do you just want just to be dead a long time before you stop breathing and they put you in the ground?”

Silas thought about that. He was afraid of dying, but he intrinsically understood what his father was saying. “I want to live my life, sir.” The words came out stiff and formal because even at his young age Silas knew that he somehow wasn't able to “live his life” like everyone else. He backed a full step away from his father.

“Good lad. Me too. That's why I'm off upriver.”

“Bring us back something spectacular, Papa,” Milo demanded.

“I'll bring you back a whole new inheritance.”

“I don't want an inheritance, I just want you to come back,” said Silas. Although his words said concern, his tone was purely practical—cold.

Richard stared at his serious son. “I'll come back, Silas.”

“Or I'll fetch him back,” added Maxi, coming in the door. “Time to go, brother mine. The darkness should cover your exit.” Richard looked at him. “Don't want you followed, now, do we?”

Richard turned and headed toward the door. His horse had been brought to the front of the building. He mounted quickly, then looked back through the door. Milo was holding Silas's hand and reassuring him that “Papa will be home soon.” Silas nodded, but it was as if he had been told to do so.

Richard and three of Maxi's irregulars made their way down to the Bend in the River, then headed west. As they skirted the American Settlement they turned in their saddles to look back at the beginnings of the great city of Shanghai. Then Richard pulled his cloak more tightly around him and they headed out through the west gate and passed the last of the Chinese sentries, whom Maxi had bribed only an hour before.

* * *

EARLY THAT NIGHT, after Maxi was sure the boys were comfortably asleep with their Malay
amah
curled up on her mat outside the bedroom door, he headed
down toward the docks. He was usually accompanied by at least two of his irregulars, since Shanghai after dark, even for Maxi, could be a dodgy place.

Maxi passed by Jiang's ever-growing establishment and turned right into the heart of the Old City. The smell of cooking surrounded him, and many staring eyes—often angry eyes—watched his progress. On the sidewalk a street doctor applied a thick, wriggling leech to a large growth on a young man's chest. The young man turned to Maxi and sneered. He was missing both of his front teeth. It didn't surprise Maxi.

Older people sat on three-legged stools, their pant legs rolled up to expose their shins to the evening air. A woman sat calmly on the curb as a young man cut her hair. Three grizzled men shared a hand-rolled cigarette whose smoke hung in the fetid air of what the Chinese ironically referred to as the Chinese Concession. A scrawny, bearded man picked up his little girl and shook the remainder of the pee from her before sliding on her sacking pants. He didn't smile at Maxi. The girl didn't smile either. This was the Old City—Chinese didn't have to pretend to smile at the hated
Fan Kuei
here.

Maxi passed by a river stone seller who held up her very best blood stone. Maxi shook his head, then ducked into an alley. He counted four wooden doorways, then entered the fifth and quickly found himself at the south entrance to the Warrens.

He climbed down the ladder, as he had done that first time, before the British invasion of the city.

He froze. The icy fingers of fear, not something he was used to, slithered up his spine.

He breathed the fear away as he whispered, “Can't be too careful if you want to live your life.” Then he retraced
the steps he had taken two nights before—when he had first found his way to Rachel Oliphant's bed.

* * *

ON THE MORNING OF THE SECOND DAY of sailing, Richard's junk crossed to the north side of the Yangtze to a village he had used to keep the opium safe from the authorities three times in the past. Chen had made the arrangements.

Richard ordered the junk turned into the wind and headed toward shore. The villagers approached the riverside—en masse with pikes and old muskets at the ready. Just outside of musket range Richard ordered the Captain to come about.

“What, sir?”

Richard didn't answer.

“Sir?”

“Tell your men to lower a bumboat, I'm going ashore.”

Twenty minutes later Richard sat in the bow of the bumboat, his arms extended to show he had no weapon. When the boat entered the shallows, strong arms grabbed Richard and dragged him through the water to the shore. He didn't resist. He kept looking for Chen's contact man in the village, but couldn't see him. The man was either no longer in the village or no longer on this earth. Richard was afraid it might be the latter.

Then Richard was thrown face down on the pebbly beach. When he turned and looked up, four pikes were aimed at his heart. He slowly got to his knees and in flawless Mandarin said, “Is this a proper greeting for an old friend? Has courtesy disappeared from the Celestial Kingdom?”

“You are no friend here.”

The breathy voice belonged to a young man in full Taoist robes. From the deference offered him by the villagers, Richard realized that he was the equivalent of a mullah or a parish priest.

“Why is that? I have always been a friend to these people.”

“Friends don't bring poison to friends.”

“I have brought no poison. My intention is only to trade.”

The young Taoist monk made a mocking sound in the back of his throat, then spat. It was at that moment that Richard heard the swoosh of boats. He turned. Dozens of swift village carracks headed toward the junk that had brought him—the junk that carried the four mango-wood chests of opium.

Soon the mango-wood chests were lying empty on the beach, the junk was sunk, and Richard and his men were set adrift in the river in the bumboat with the screamed admonition, “You and your poison are not welcome here or anywhere on the river!”

* * *

THREE DAYS LATER Richard and his men got back to the point where they'd left their horses. The horses were nowhere to be seen—so much for trusting the locals.

“Horse meat is very tasty,” the Captain of the junk said, then muttered something about this being the last time he'd risk his neck or his property for the stupid Round-Eyed monsters.

Two nights later, Richard arrived back in Shanghai.

Maxi lit an oil lamp and looked at his brother. “You look awful.”

“That doesn't surprise me.” He told Maxi of the utter failure of the trip, then added that he'd lost four horses and owed the junk Captain for his vessel.

“He'll have to get in line. There're a lot of creditors ahead of him.”

“What're we going to do, Maxi?”

Maxi had never seen Richard so utterly lost. “Now? Now we're going to sleep.” He took his brother's hand and guided him toward his bed, then wrapped the sheets around him and lowered the mosquito netting.

Three hours later Maxi heard Richard rise from his bed and head toward the door. Maxi stopped him. “No opium tonight, brother mine. Sleep tonight—we have much work to do tomorrow.”

* * *

THE BROTHERS WERE AWAKENED next morning by the shriek of horns and the clash of cymbals. Maxi woke the boys'
amah
and had them secreted out the back alley, then he and Richard opened the door of their Shanghai home.

There, in full regalia, was the Manchu Mandarin, his tile of office dangling from his neck, purple silk robes to announce that he was directly from Beijing, his hair braided and stacked atop his head and neatly tucked beneath his tall, conical cap. Richard remembered his first meeting with a Manchu Mandarin almost fifteen years ago. He had been tempted to laugh at the outlandish costume. Then the Mandarin, with the lifting of his hand, had had three men brought forward and executed while he washed his hands and ate sweetmeats … and smiled at Richard all the while. It took all the laughter out of the situation.

Although this was a different Mandarin and the foreigners were in theory protected by the provisions of the Treaty of Nanking, the smile on the Mandarin's face was frighteningly familiar.

Richard bowed to a middle position. Maxi at his side did the same.

The Mandarin ignored the courtesy and said in his high, nasal voice, “I have come to look at my future property.” Then he tilted his head and six guards rushed forward, pushing Richard and Maxi aside. The Mandarin, like a great clipper ship under full sail, floated past the Hordoons and entered their home.

Richard sensed Maxi's growing tension. He took him by the arm and pulled him to one side.

“Are you going to just let that—?”

“
Zai xiang,
he's a
Zai xiang,
a Mandarin, Maxi.”

“And he has soldiers with him?”

“That too.”

Maxi looked at Richard. “What, brother mine?”

“Did you see his smile?”

Maxi nodded. “Didn't care much for it myself.”

“Knowing, it was, Maxi. A bloody knowing smile. As if all this had come to pass just as he thought it would.”

“I don't follow.”

“As if all along he knew what would happen here at the Bend in the River. Maxi, they let us build up their village, spend our money on it and our expertise, and all along they were just waiting to take it back from us.”

Maxi didn't like that, nor did he like the way the Mandarin's grossly long fingernails probed the sheets on Richard's bed.

Early the next morning Richard sat with Percy St. John Dent in the back room of Dent's formal offices by the river. Richard knew Dent was an old China hand who had worked his way up in his father's company from the very bottom. Rumour had it that his father had never lent him a penny or given him any leniency when he fell short of expectations. As well, it was common knowledge that his father had forced an unloving marriage on his son to solidify a business arrangement.

Percy St. John Dent was perhaps five years Richard's senior and still carried the sinewy muscle that hard work had built up on his long frame. The man was also a mathematical wizard, keeping massive columns of figures in his head. He was famous for his ability to spout data on a moment's notice. And now he was
quoting the declining numbers of Chinese workers in the Concession and its direct effect on profits. Then, as if an afterthought, he added, “I don't actually need your clipper ship, Mr. Hordoon.”

“But at the price I offered it to you, I assume it would be hard to pass up.”

Percy St. John Dent nodded and turned away. He didn't like dealing with the Baghdadi Hebrew, but he had a grudging respect for the man and his maniac brother. The respect one real worker has for another. The price the man wanted for his clipper was more than fair.
So, the rumour about the Vrassoons calling in some sort of debt is true,
he thought.
Interesting. Well, no reason not to profit when the shoals shift beneath a competitor. We are businessmen, after all, and here is a substantial profit right in front of me.
He turned back to Richard and said, “What form of payment are you looking for?”