Shanghai (86 page)

Then he looked across the river. The Pudong stared back at him a challenge to everything civilized that the
Fan Kuei
had made at the Bend in the River.

“Don't worry, the Pudong's on its side and we're on ours.”

Silas stilled the sudden thudding of his heart and looked at the beggar who had evidently curled up on the wharf for a night's rest.

“You're right, sir,” Silas replied.

“It's prayer that keeps it over there and us over here,” the old man said.

“Really?” Silas asked in earnest.

“Yes. Prayer does it, sir.” Then the man drew back a blanket and pulled out an ancient arhu. In a moment he had the instrument's strings tuned and he began to play.

As he did, Silas said the first prayer he'd uttered since he was a boy: “Please keep MacMillan safe. Please.”

The arhu player looked at him and said, “This music is prayer.”

And Silas relaxed. He recognized the song. It was one that Mai Bao had played, “Tears of Time.” Silas slowly
sat down beside the old man and the two listened to the arhu's prayer and watched the dense woods of the Pudong across the Huangpo River as the sun slowly snuck above the eastern horizon.

—

Silas ordered the workmen to make the wall higher, “Much higher.”

“It's not necessary,” MacMillan protested for the tenth time.

“I say it is, Mr. MacMillan.” MacMillan flushed with anger as Silas turned from him and addressed the workmen in fluent Shanghainese. “Please, I need this wall built higher and the curve continued farther up.”

The workers nodded, then turned to MacMillan for their specific orders.

“Chop chop! You hear, mister? Chop chop!” Then he turned back to Silas, but Silas was gone.

Silas had no desire to discuss with MacMillan his decision to build a twelve-foot, concave wall at the point of the sharpest turn on the race course, where the cars would leave the straightaway of the Bund and head inland along Bubbling Spring Road. He had hoped that his explanation—“For the safety of the crowd that is watching the race”—would suffice. But MacMillan had simply replied, “The Chinks'll just climb up it for a better view.”

Silas knew that MacMillan might be right, but still he had insisted on the wall. It was a vital part of his getaway plan—that, and the roll bar he had ordered MacMillan to weld to the Bugatti. He needed an accident to attract eyes away from the dock, but he wanted no repeat of Milo's demise. He made a mental note that MacMillan was to wear a seat harness.

The final piece of his plan had come into focus when MacMillan's mechanic explained the need to gear down as a driver spun the steering wheel to allow for a tight turn in a race when taking the turn “at speed.”

“And there is no other time when the steering wheel would turn rapidly at the same time as the car gears down?” Silas had asked.

“Not that I can think of, Guv,” the cockney mechanic had said.

“Fine. Very interesting, sir, very interesting,” Silas had said as he left the man to ponder what, exactly, this conversation had been about.

That night Silas spread out the mechanical drawings of his race car's innards on his office desktop. Each corner of the large drafting sheets was held down by a piece of rough-cut jade. Silas's hand glided over the intricately etched drawings. It had served him well over the years to plead ignorance of any and all matters mechanical—but he was far from ignorant of such matters. Although not as adept as his Uncle Maxi had been, Silas had always been fascinated by what made things work.

And now he saw quite clearly what the car's moving parts would look like if the steering wheel were turned hard to the left just as the vehicle was geared down from third to second to first.

The slight crossing of the two sets of pulleyed wires offered him all the opportunity he needed.

—

The following night he was alone with the car raised on a hoist. He nicked his hands several times as he connected the two sets of guide wires to the sides of
the pivot that would, when the car was geared down sharply while the steering wheel was spun hard counterclockwise, turn the steel blade to which it was attached in such a way that it would slash the right front tire. The car would roll up the curved wall—then, hopefully, safely back down—attracting every eye to the track and away from the wharf long enough for him to cover the exposed, two hundred-odd yards to the cleat on the wharf to which the junk would be moored.

The initial wires he had brought to do the work were too brittle and kept breaking when the gearshift clunked into place. For an instant he thought that all was lost. Then an ancient voice in his head whispered the word
silk
—and he laughed. He was in China, and silk was the cord of choice here. As he made the knots to join the gearshift wire to the point of the turning axel base, and then to the pivoting knife, he once again felt, as he had with the Carver, that he had been in this precise spot before.

Silas was using the exact same silken knots that his Uncle Maxi had used to affix the rifles that saved Richard from the millstoning.

—

Silas recognized the smell. He had smelled it so often when his father was alive, and it had always nauseated him. But now the smell was coming not from his father's clothes or hair or hands, but from himself. The smell of serpent smoke. Opium in his mouth and in his bowels and wrapping its constrictor self around his heart—and pulling tight.

Silas opened his mouth to scream and red hydrangeas flew from his mouth toward the startlingly white ceiling. As each flower soared upward it struck the ceiling, leaving a blood splatter in its place. Then the blood began to drip onto him, to coat him from his forehead to his somehow naked belly to his feet. Boots of blood formed on him. He reached toward his feet and felt the wind strike him hard in his face.

Then he heard it.

Cheers. Cheers of
Milo! Milo! Milo!

He looked to his right and the thousands of faces in the grandstands of his father's racetrack were moving past so quickly he didn't recognize a single one.

Then he felt it. A stinging across his back. He looked to his left. The Vrassoons' jockey on the huge white stallion had struck him across the back with his whip. The man raised his whip. Silas saw the blood dripping from it and noticed the open wounds on the stallion's side.

Then the whip fell a second time on Silas's arm, jerking the reins free from his grasp. He lurched forward and grabbed handfuls of the horse's mane and shouted, “Run!”

And the horse beneath him, as if lifted by a great wave, moved like a majestic Indiaman sailing ship with God's pure wind at its back, taking the far reach of the Yangtze and entering the Huangpo … heading home.

Silas leaned into the upcoming turn and felt the distance open between himself and the Vrassoons' great stallion. He was ahead. He was winning. On the other side of the turn he saw the finish line. He leaned harder into the turn, shouting encouragement to his horse.

Then he sensed it.

Something moved.

Had his horse missed a stride?

Then he heard it. The sound of the hemp of the cinch strap ripping.

He felt the saddle move beneath him and saw the ground racing toward him. The heavy metal of the right stirrup slammed into his face and gouged out his left eye in a blinding flash of pain. His back slammed into the ground and he heard a bone snap, then another. He found himself somehow in a sitting position looking back up the track. The Vrassoons' great stallion was going to pass him by on the rail side. Then he saw the jockey pull on the right rein and the horse headed directly at him.

Everything slowed, and he saw the stallion's huge right fore hoof rise up and land on his pelvis, snapping it cleanly and rolling him to his back. Then his single good eye filled with dirt and he felt a terrible weight on his back as, he guessed, the stallion's huge left fore hoof stomped down hard … on his spine.

—

Silas awoke in a mound of pillows and sheets on the floor beside his bed. His eyes streamed with tears. The smell of opium was gone, but somehow it lingered in the corners of the room—waiting for the next time he let his guard down.

He threw open the window of his room and turned on the light. And there, as it had always been, was the very spot where his brother Milo had met his death. A death that he, Silas Hordoon, had caused. The square of light from his window lit the spot. To Silas's shock the hydrangeas had all bent so that their blossoms touched the ground—great red tears about to fall.

He promised himself that he would make MacMillan wear that seat harness, if it was the last thing he ever did.

—

The morning was raw. Cold wind swept up the Yangtze all the way from the sea and found Silas standing at the three graves and one mound on the rise of the north reach of the Huangpo. After his awful night, despite the cold, the slowly dawning light was reassuring.

He knelt by his brother's grave and laid his hands upon the wet earth. “I am so sorry, Milo. So very sorry.” The wind answered him in swirling gusts—angry howls. Silas dug his fingers into the soil of the grave and then found himself flinging back clods of earth. The exertion felt good. Somehow Milo felt closer. Then his left hand felt something moist and very cold.

For a moment he felt the sucking grip of the earth and images of Milo, long buried, grasping his hand and pulling him into the grave filled his mind—then they were gone, and the sun came out from behind a cloud. The wind abated, and the warmth of dawn crept into his bones and his mind. It was a new day. A day when he would take the first steps in paying for the sins of his past.

He sat back on his haunches and looked at Milo's grave. Then slowly, meticulously, lovingly, he reformed the ground over his dead brother's body and patted it into firmness. He rose and looked for the briefest moment at the other graves, realizing that if his plan succeeded he would not see them for quite some time. But time, he knew, was part of the penalty you paid for doing the Devil's work.

People came from all over the Middle Kingdom to see the Fabulous Shanghai Road Race. Manchu court officials snuck away from their duties and made their way south. They came from the Macao and Hong Kong trading houses, finding business that just had to be done in Shanghai on that particular day. From Nanking and Canton and all places in between, the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy made their way to the Bend in the River. They arrived on carts and on foot, in palanquin carriages and on horseback. Some were driven in cars—but not many. Boats travelling in both directions on the Yangtze were stuffed to overflowing with passengers literally holding on for dear life to ropes slung to boats that they towed. But those who were drawn to the spectacle were not just from China. They came from
abroad as well, from France and Italy, England and Scotland, and the Americas. And those who came from across the water came with their entourages—their mistresses, their bodyguards, their drivers, their masseuses, their sommeliers, and their cooks. One of whom, a tall, broad-shouldered Black man, had been rescued, as a boy, from Boston and trained to be a chef in “a much better place.”

And the great city swelled to accept its visitors. The partially built walkway along the Bund overlooking the Huangpo River slept over six thousand souls the night before the race. Some were even forced across the Huangpo to the ever-dangerous Pudong to find a place to sleep—from which many never awakened. Brigands still controlled the Pudong, and travellers were not welcomed in their midst.

The night before the race the skies cleared. The gentle breeze from the west blew the incinerator smoke away from the city, lifting it, like so much silk, and flinging it down the river to the sea.

In the garages of the eight entrants final preparations were well underway, and the sound of hammers gave a strange note of preparation to the day. Roosters cried the dawn into morning and the thousands of peasants sleeping on the streets roused themselves and stood in the spots where they had slept, claiming their place in the day. Across the cracked pavements shadows moved with a silent grace as thousands performed their morning Tai Chi exercises. The hawkers were out in full force selling breakfast gruel—at almost seven times the normal price. The five-spice egg sellers were doing a brisk business, as were the water shops selling sheets of toilet paper and access to their “facilities.” Police began to line the route, pushing people back from the course itself. Every
rooftop along the way was filled with people—and the betting shops had sent their people into the dense crowds to facilitate yet more wagering. Before nine o'clock there had already been three million dollars bet on the race. A book Charles Soong published, detailing the assets of each car and driver, had gone into its sixteenth printing the day before and was now being sold by young boys on the street—at a healthy markup.

Food, wagering, crowds—hysteria swept through the city at the Bend in the River, as a two-man junk made its way slowly up the Huangpo to a wharf near the Bund. There, despite regulations, the grizzled Captain wrapped the boat's bowline around a heavy iron cleat. Then he sat back on a coil of heavy, braided rope and took out a Snake Charmer cigarette. Lit it. And waited patiently. He had been paid a huge sum of money directly from a
Fan Kuei
who, he had learned, was named Silas Hordoon. He was to take this man and a single object that the man would carry far up the Yangtze, where evidently he was to be met by other men who would take the
Fan Kuei
overland—to somewhere, somewhere better—a better place.

—

Edward had served a sumptuous breakfast of butter-filled pecan waffles with clotted cream and fresh field berries to his patron and the man's retinue earlier that morning. The man and his followers had both eaten and complimented him with great gusto. Then they'd hurried out into the street to assume positions on the race course that had been reserved for them by forty peasants, all of whom received handsome rewards for their efforts.