Shanghai (83 page)

—

That night Silas was surprised to be awakened by the feel of Mai Bao at his side. She often slept in her own chamber. His snoring kept her awake. But she was at his side, her slender body curled into him, her fingers interlacing with his.

Silas wanted to ask if everything at her mother's funeral had been all right, but he didn't know a proper way to ask the question so he just returned the pressure of Mai Bao's hand and hoped she understood that he was thinking about her in her time of need.

“My mother made a final request,” she said softly.

For a moment Silas wasn't sure if he had heard her correctly. “A request?”

“Yes,” Mai Bao said. “You do not owe me this favour. You have done nothing to bring this obligation upon you.”

“Except love you,” Silas said.

They both realized that it was one of the few times either of them had talked about love. She knew that this
was not the kind of love she had had with the Revolutionary, or the kind of love that she felt for her mother or for her two growing daughters. But he was right, what existed between the two of them was love. And she repeated the word in Mandarin, “
Ai
.”

Silas kissed her fingers. His night beard tickled her hand. “Do but ask and the favour is yours,” he said in archaic Farsi, then laughed aloud.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing, just reading brought back old ideas.” He propped himself up on an elbow and reached for her long hair. Its silk always amazed him. “Ask, and if it is within my power I will give you whatever favour you wish.”

Mai Bao turned on the electric light at the side of the bed and began to talk. She spoke of an obligation and the need to protect the future of the city at the Bend in the River.

Finally he stopped her and said, “If you cannot tell me details, then don't. But ask your favour.”

She took a deep breath; her chest rose and fell. “I need a large, curved object moved out of the city to a place of safety, and no one must know what the object is or where it has gone to.”

Silas put on a robe and sat on the side of their bed. He asked about the dimensions of the object and was surprised to hear it was over six feet long and at its widest just under a foot.

Then he asked, “Is it fragile?”

“More so with every passing day.”

“And are people watching for this object?”

“There is a huge reward for it, and thousands upon thousands of eyes watch for it.”

“Where is it now?”

“I cannot tell you that, husband, until you agree to move it to safety.”

He nodded. He realized that was a fair precaution on Mai Bao's part, although he found it insulting and said as much.

“I owe you a great obligation, but I owe this object even more than I owe you.”

He stared at her. Was it a relic of some sort? But that hardly fit with the practical woman he knew as Mai Bao, the woman who would soon be known throughout Shanghai as Jiang. He shoved that concern aside and asked for more details. How heavy was it, could it endure cold and heat, would wetness hurt the object, how long did the object have to be hidden for? The answer to that last surprised him.

“Maybe forever, husband.”

Then he asked how soon this had to be accomplished, and she replied, “Within two months. Before the decade ends.”

He got up and opened the curtains. On the other side of the high garden wall he knew the city was coming to rumbling life.
It seldom sleeps,
he thought. Then he corrected himself.
It never really sleeps
. There were eyes awake and watching at all hours at the Bend in the River.

He turned back to Mai Bao and said, “I can't move an object of that size without people seeing me or my men do it, unless …” His voice trailed off and he heard shouts, cheers—no, the echoes of cheers.

Somehow he was down on the Bund, only a youth, and he heard cheering so loud that it caught his ear a full mile away—away from the racetrack—the racetrack where he had murdered his brother. He looked back out the window. He had carefully designed the gardens of his walled sanctuary so that the largest and most beautiful
would be at the exact spot where Milo had fallen from his horse—right outside the window of his bedroom.
How do you get past killing your brother?
he thought.
By taking a pilgrimage—like the desert people used to.

He looked at Mai Bao and opened his arms. She walked over to him, the growing light of morning gracing her elegant features, and he thought
I know where I can take the object. Now all I have to do is find a diversion to attract the eyes of the people
. He was hearing the cheering again. Then he heard a loud car honk from just outside his garden wall—and he knew exactly what diversion he could use.

The next day, Silas retreated to his office on Bubbling Spring Road and spent the night. He weighed and re-weighed options, but every time he thought he had the basics of a plan in place he cast it aside. He was overlooking something important, and he knew it. Something vital was eluding him.

As the dawn's light came through his office window it finally occurred to him. Although he considered himself a native of the Middle Kingdom, although he spoke the language as well as any true-born Celestial, although he had married a Chinese woman and now raised ten Chinese children, he had never been close to the birthing myth of this great place, the vulnerable wellspring of the strength of the Black-Haired people. And never before had he felt that his actions could
influence the destiny of his adopted country. Never before was it so important to think like them—like a man of the Middle Kingdom.

“Practical!” he said aloud to the empty room. Then to himself he whispered, “Think like them—think practically.”

He began to pace, biting hard at the skin around the cuticle of his left thumb. Then he stopped. Who was the one to fear most? Who had the most eyes and ears on the streets of Shanghai? Who threatened to find out and stop him from moving the object?

An image of Gangster Tu driving his automobile with the number-one licence plate came to his mind. Just in the past month the city had begun to issue licence plates, and although Silas's Bugatti had been the very first automobile in Shanghai, Gangster Tu had received the licence plate with the number one proudly displayed. For a time it had been a source of much gossip in the press, especially since Silas had been given the number-two plate. Silas shivered. His last meeting with Gangster Tu had been distinctly unpleasant. Silas had seen Tu screaming and honking his horn at a poor woman whose skirt had got stuck in the grille of his automobile as he bulled his way through a crowd. Silas had raced out of a meeting to come to the woman's rescue, much to the shock of the Chinese crowd and the fury of the gangster.

He thought about Tu for a moment, then the others who collected information through spies. Each of the great trading houses had its spies. So did his brother-in-law, Charles Soong. No doubt the Republican movement led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen had some sort of spy network of its own. And then, of course, there were the Manchus—although now that the Dowager was gone he doubted they were much of a force.

He put on his coat and headed toward the door. He felt he had to know exactly what the object was, and its significance, so that he could know who the opposition might be and plan properly. But halfway down the front steps he stopped himself. Mai Bao had made it clear that she would not tell him any more than the object's dimensions and the desperate need to get it to safety—and he doubted she would offer up any more information now. He returned to his office and ate his breakfast of thin Shanghainese gruel at his desk.

The word
diversion
kept circulating in his mind, and slowly a multi-stage plan came into focus. He began to jot down notes. He rewrote them several times, and when he finally looked up it was almost eleven o'clock. He read the notes one more time.
Excellent,
he thought as he reached for the talking piece on his desk. It was immediately answered by a secretary. “Send in Mr. MacMillan.”

Despite the fact that Silas hated cigars he lit one and puffed heavily on it. Men like MacMillan expected it of him.

Moments later Evan MacMillan, his hard-hearted but reliable Scot, pushed open the door and entered the room from which Silas ran his vast empire.

“So, did you check into that little matter of the licence plate for my Bugatti, MacMillan?”

MacMillan was surprised. That had been almost four weeks ago—and a frivolous complaint. “Aye, Captain.”

Silas never knew if MacMillan was mocking him with that “Captain” stuff. Jews weren't captains—at least not captains the way MacMillan was talking about.

“So?”

“It's true, Captain. Tu must have bribed the officials to get that licence. No other way it could have happened.”

“Damn!” Silas was on his feet, his cigar half chomped through. “Damn and damn again. I won't have this. I won't. MacMillan, do you hear me, man? I won't have this.”

MacMillan had seen the kike angry before, but never quite like this.

It had been bad when the little heathen had insisted on marrying his Chinese whore, but at least that was understandable. Even to MacMillan's eye she was an A-one piece of beef. Not that he'd marry any of the local Slants, but she was a catch. Then he'd thrown a fit when he'd had to defend himself against his critics for taking in those twenty brats with their constantly shitty bottoms. But even that didn't have the intensity of this. He'd never understand these heathens.

“At the time, you talked about me bombing the offending vehicle, Captain?”

Silas stopped in his tracks. “You could do this?”

It always amazed MacMillan. The Mesopotamian was so savvy about so many things but so stupid when it came to the simplest forms of combat. “Aye—a bomb will do the job, if that's what you still want.”

“It is! Damn it to hell, it is! But MacMillan, no one is to get hurt. Just that damn automobile of Tu's is to be bombed. Bombed to a better world. To Automobile Heaven, if there is such a place.”

“Mr. Hordoon, let me be sure I understand you clearly. You want Gangster Tu's automobile blasted to smithereens, but you don't want anyone hurt when I do it—is that the ticket?”

“As you would say, MacMillan, ‘Aye!'”

“And you want the little runt's automobile bombed because it has a licence plate on it that is one number shorter than yours. Is that right, Captain?”

“Who had the first automobile in this city, MacMillan?”

“You did, Captain.”

“Then why does that gangster, Tu, have the number-one licence plate and I have the number-two? Answer me that?”

MacMillan thought,
Because Tu is Chinese, you little Mesopotamian heathen, and he bribed officials, and this is China, and besides, who cares about things like that?
But he said, “Sounds unfair to me, Captain.”

“So you'll do it, then?”

“Fire-bomb Mr. Tu's automobile. Perhaps you'd like me to take the number-one licence plate off his automobile before I blow it to kingdom come?”

Silas thought about that for a moment, then said offhandedly, “If that wouldn't be too much to ask. As well, take off the number-two plate from my automobile and leave it prominently displayed near his … wreckage.”

MacMillan protested. “Switch his licence for yours? But then he'll know who bombed his automobile!”

Silas just smiled.

MacMillan was about to say something about foolish heathens, but instead he said, “What the hell, the automobile's not mine.”

“No, it's not, Mr. MacMillan.”

“Fine. Not a problem. I should have the plate for you by morning. Anything else?”

“No, MacMillan—you're a good man—good man.”

MacMillan left the office and headed toward the old Chinese section of the city. As he did, Silas looked down at the thick traffic on Bubbling Spring Road. Bicycles and rickshaws and Hansom cabs and wagons and carriages and people—everywhere, in every crevice, people.

He had no doubt that Big-Eared Tu would respond in kind to MacMillan's little blast. He picked up his pen and wrote a note to Charles Soong, suggesting that his paper make space for a certain story or two that was bound to “explode” into the public's perception in the next three or four days.

He gave the note to his secretary, who hailed one of the six runners who were always at Silas's beck and call and gave the boy the note.

Silas sat back. He assumed that MacMillan would manage the deed that evening or the next. Then Tu would retaliate, and the press would have a field day. And everyone at the Bend in the River would begin to think about automobiles. That was the first step in the diversion—get everyone to think about how they worked, how to blow them up, why someone would want to blow one up, how to protect them—and eventually how to race them.

Silas smiled. Then he called in his secretary a second time. Holding the ashtray with his partially smoked cigar in it toward her, he said, “Throw this disgusting thing out.”

Silas turned and looked down at the street.
So many eyes,
he thought.
So many eyes that need to be distracted if I am ever to get Mai Bao's large, curved object safely from the city at the Bend in the River.

Silas glanced down at the open newspaper on his table. It was one of Charles Soong's oldest and most popular publications. Its undemanding Shanghainese prose was designed to appeal to the simplest of tastes.
The widest of the very wide base of the vast Chinese population,
Silas thought. He turned a page and noted a letter of bitter complaint from a courtesan. Silas stared at the courtesan's letter—he didn't read it. He
didn't care if she was complaining of a madam or a client or the noise of streetcars. What he cared about was the fact that the courtesan's letter could be read by more than six million people, who might well tell twenty million more about it. That was a lot of eyes turned from the problems of the day to the problems, or supposed problems, of a courtesan.