Shanghai (23 page)

It took time and effort, but Richard was able to get the woman to tell him her name, Yuan Tu, and slowly he began to read the expressions on her butchered face. By the third day he was sure that he saw concern there. Even sympathy. That night she helped him build the mound he needed for sleeping and fed him the scraps she'd collected from the village's rubbish heap.

On the fourth morning Richard found himself awakened by a strange dream. He thought his brother was there beside him telling him that everything was going to be okay. When he awoke, Maxi was nowhere to be seen—but there was a shred of rag tied to the fingers of his left hand. He strained his head to see it better and waited for the early morning light. When the first of the sun's rays cast their milkiness into the darkness, Richard allowed a smile to his lips—the bit of rag was red, flaming red.

Yuan Tu approached him with the morning's ration of food, a thin rice paste that she gently spooned into his mouth. All around him the town was coming to life. The smell of real cooking from the nearby houses almost drove him mad with hunger. To his left, three Manchu guards, who periodically checked in on him, swaggered forward. The Manchus were the only Celestials who didn't have to shave their foreheads and wear their hair in a long braid down their backs. Despite the best efforts of the Chinese to incorporate these impositions into their culture, they still stood out as the overt sign of the conquered.

One of the Manchus leaned down toward Richard and held his nose.

“No doubt you'd smell rosier in my position,” Richard said.

It surprised the Manchu that Richard was willing to speak. The Foreign Devil had never spoken to them before. Then a quizzical look crossed the guard's face and he tugged the bit of red kerchief free from Richard's left hand. “What is this?” he demanded. Without waiting for Richard's response, he turned to the other soldiers and said, “Red rag for the Red Devil. The—”

He never got out another word, as the bullet from Maxi's rifle pierced his larynx. The other guards whipped around. Richard heard a sharp slap, and six rifles snapped out from around the corner of the wall. The sun glinted off strands of silk that somehow joined the weapons. The guards looked at one another—then were almost cut in half as the six rifles fired at the same time.

Richard tugged at Yuan Tu to get behind him. She cowered into his side.

The villagers shrieked and ran for cover.

Richard heard Maxi shout something and then the sound of hooves clattering on the hard ground.

A cart pulled by two horses raced toward him and dropped its back gate to the ground. Maxi and Phillips ran to Richard and rolled him up the slanted ramp into the bed of the cart and slammed the gate shut as the horses took off at a full gallop.

“Take the woman—they'll kill her if we leave her,” Richard shouted.

“Get her,” Maxi yelled at Phillips, who leapt down and grabbed the woman and tossed her into the moving cart. As he did, Maxi braced himself against the side of the moving thing and pulled hard on a strand of silk in his hands. The six rifles that had magically snapped into
position against the wall of the building clattered to the ground and then followed in the dirt, dragged by the cart.

Richard thought he heard more gunshots behind him but couldn't tell as the millstone rolled wildly in the back of the bouncing cart, sending him twisting and turning, slamming into the wooden sides several times, until one sharp turn sent the wheel rolling and his head smashed into the cart's iron gate. With a kind of gratitude Richard accepted the coming darkness. The last thing he remembered thinking was that he really, really wanted a pipe of opium.

—

Richard awoke to a gentle rocking motion.

“You done with the sleeping, brother mine?”

Richard looked up and Maxi was standing over him. Phillips sat silently against the port rail.

Richard went to adjust the millstone and realized it wasn't there. He almost flew to his feet, and he was lucky that Maxi was near at hand because without the excess weight he almost flung himself overboard.

“Time to sit and get your sea legs. We've a day's sailing before we're back in Shanghai.”

Richard sat and stared at his brother. The horses and the cart moved slowly to the rhythm of the river. The six silk-tethered rifles leaned against the port rail of the large junk.

“What?” Maxi asked.

Pointing to the rifles, Richard asked, “Your invention?”

“A little something I'm working on.”

“Well, it worked.”

“This time,” Maxi replied, then added with a smile, “it's never worked before.” In response to Richard's grimace, Maxi asked, nonchalantly, “Is that a problem for you, brother mine? They could just as well have shot you, to be honest.”

Richard said, “No, Maxi, no problem,” but he was thinking about the dwarf Jesuit, about doing the Devil's work, and about the prophecy of the old Indian outside the Works in Ghazipur: “Brother will kill brother.”
Well, not this time,
Richard thought,
not this time.

The earless, noseless woman approached him and knelt by his side, keeping her disfigured face away from the eyes of Maxi Hordoon, a man she was convinced was a red-haired devil.

“What's her name, brother mine?”

“Yuan Tu are the first of her many names. But why don't you call her Lily.”

* * *

“I'M SAFE BACK IN SHANGHAI, but this firm is no better off,” Richard barked. His voice was still hoarse from the days with his neck in the millstone. He looked at Maxi and Phillips and the other loyal irregulars. “All we are is several days deeper in debt, gentlemen. We still have no workers and no new markets.”

“Not to mention the one hundred thousand silver
taels
we owe the Mandarin, brother mine.”

“Thanks, I really needed to be reminded of that. I want us all to ante up. Sell everything we have, Maxi—the horses, the food stuffs, the cooking utensils, everything. I need to go back.”

“Back out there? Upriver? Are you mad, brother mine? Has that thing you wore around your neck squeezed all the reason from your silly head?”

“No, Maxi. What do you suggest we do? Sit here and let everything we've worked for all these years be taken from us? Or should we run, like Papa did?”

Maxi turned from his brother. Richard was surprised to see Maxi doing something that appeared to be calculating. “Maxi?”

“You need cover when you travel inland. A way to be there but not attract the attention of the Manchu Mandarins or the Taoist monks if they get a bee up their butts.”

“I agree.”

“What about travelling with the House of Zion? They're planning to Bible-thump their way into the hearts of the Middle Kingdom.”

“When?”

“In three days. The expedition is already outfitted, they're just waiting for transport.”

For a fleeting moment it occurred to Richard to ask Maxi how he knew all this, but the possibility of the trip so intrigued him that he let it pass. “Fine, but why would they allow me to go with them?”

“Because they need a translator, surely, if they are going to win the souls of the heathens.”

“They already have a translator, Maxi, that flake McKinnon.”

“Yes, but what if something should befall Mr. McKinnon that put him into the bad books of the Evangelicals at Oliphant and Company?”

Richard smiled and shook his head. “I sense a plan.”

“Yes, brother mine, you're not the only Hordoon capable of planning.”

“I grant that.”

“Fine. Now, I would assume that Jiang's little establishment is a dire temptation to the likes of such men as Mr. McKinnon, wouldn't you think?”

Richard's smile broadened, and he clasped his brother to him—the Hordoon boys were at it again!

* * *

IT WASN'T HARD to convince the Chinese hooker to play along. Madame Jiang gave her permission, for a modest fee, and the trap was fully baited. Richard almost felt sorry for the man when he ran out into the streets without his pants or underclothes, with the hooker running after him all the way to the American Settlement … almost. But Richard had limited sympathy for hypocrites. If a religious man claims there is only one path upon which a righteous man must tread, then he had damned well better not stray from that path himself. And paying to be fellated by a whore instructed to dress as a nun would, in most circles, be considered to have strayed from the traditional path to a heavenly reward.

McKinnon's comeuppance was swift and dire. He was expelled from the House of Zion and set adrift. That left a vacancy for a translator on the Oliphants' next missionary voyage into the Celestial heartland—and translators were both vital and hard to come by. Richard, as luck would have it, was available.

Then magically a larger, better-equipped junk became available. The vessel, which Maxi had arranged already, had a crew of five men who had worked for him in the past, and the far forward section of its hold concealed forty-five mango-wood chests containing enough opium to intoxicate the population of a small city.

The sun was rising as Richard boarded the junk at the Suzu Creek wharf. He nodded slightly to two of the junk's sailors, whom he recognized, and traded simple pleasantries with a third as he awaited the arrival of the traders of the House of Zion.

Something niggled at the back of Richard's mind. The sudden availability of the junk, the sailors who were loyal to Maxi, the fact that Maxi had known of the Oliphants' imminent travels—how had Maxi …? But suddenly he didn't care, because Rachel Oliphant was climbing the gangway to the junk, and she was looking right at him.

Maxi watched the proceedings from a distance with a scowl on his face. The warmth of Rachel's smile as she boarded the junk almost matched the passion of her love making the night before. And yet Maxi knew he was somehow moving away from her—from all of them at the Bend in the River.

Eliazar Vrassoon was in Calcutta when he received Cyril's message about extraterritoriality and within days was onboard the swiftest available British East India Company clipper ship—all sails unfurled—headed toward Shanghai. If Cyril thought extraterritoriality was possible, he wanted to be there to move the possible into the probable.

The Vrassoon Patriarch knew that extraterritoriality was the key to securing the family's fortune. His eldest son was safely ensconced in London playing nursemaid to the family's political contacts while he oversaw the textile mills in Liverpool and Manchester. His competent second son was looking after the family's operations in Calcutta, with a sharp eye kept on opium supplies out of the Works at Ghazipur. Sons three and
four were heading Vrassoon operations in Paris and Vienna, protecting the family's banking interests while branching out into textile works whenever they could manage it. The market for Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain was growing exponentially, but the key remained full access to the Chinese opium smokers—something that only extraterritoriality could assure. Vrassoon opium sold in China for silver, which was used to buy tea, silk, and porcelains. These were then sold in England for more silver and cotton goods from Liverpool and Manchester, which were in turn sold for opium in Calcutta, which then went to China—a closed circle of sales, the holy grail of commerce. And round and round and round it went, generating more wealth than some nations possess. But it could all fall apart without extraterritoriality. Hence, Eliazar Vrassoon was willing to deal with almost anyone and do almost anything to secure extraterritoriality—to close the trading circle.

After a difficult and oft-delayed crossing, the Patriarch of the Vrassoon family watched the new buildings of the European trading companies slide by as his ship approached the Huangpo docks. He drew his muffler around his neck. The damp cold of a Shanghai January had penetrated his expensive clothing, but he had a smile on his face.
Things are in place,
he thought. The Vrassoons' impressive building greeted the clipper as it took the bend in the river. Vrassoon sighed.
All we need now is extraterritoriality here in Shanghai and our trading empire will be assured to last.

By the time the great man actually set foot on the soil of the Middle Kingdom there were very few people of importance who did not know of his coming.

Cyril had arranged an elaborate greeting party for his boss that representatives from both Dent's and Jardine Matheson had agreed to attend.

The Hordoons, naturally enough, weren't invited, but they were in attendance that brisk morning nonetheless. Richard, freshly returned from his voyage upriver with the House of Zion, wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Eliazar Vrassoon stared at the ragtag group of Europeans who stood at an odd sort of attention. When Cyril stepped forward to give his speech of welcome, Eliazar held up a hand for him to stop, muttering, “What is this foolishness?”

“Just a welcome, sir, for …”

“I'm a businessman, not a showgirl. Now put an end to this nonsense right now and take me to the company's office.”

Maxi tapped Richard's shoulder and whispered in his ear, just the way he used to when they played spy back in Calcutta, “Ugly, isn't he?”

“That he is. I bet he works at it.”

Suddenly Sikh guards were moving quickly through the crowd pushing open a path for the Vrassoon Patriarch.

Richard sidestepped a Sikh and planted himself right in front of Eliazar Vrassoon.

The man was nonplussed. “So we meet again, young man. What have you to bargain with this time?”

The Sikh guard pulled Richard out of the way, and by the time Maxi got to his brother, Richard was visibly shaking and, despite the cold, covered in sweat.

The Village of Shanghai February 1844