City of Waking Dreams
Davide Mana
True to its name, the Bell Buoy chimed, swaying idly on the river, and the engines slowed. Inspector Li Flint tapped his pipe on the balustrade, cleaning the bowl. The metal rang in response to the buoy bell, and ashes fell in the yellow water below, a spray of dying embers. A small motorboat approached the ship. A gangway was lowered, and the harbor pilot came on board, greeted briefly by an officer. They exchanged papers, and hastened to the wheelhouse. The iron and kerosene of the Blue Funnel Line steamship kept the marshy smell of the Huangpu River back, just as the churning noise of the engines seemed to drown any other sound.
Li Flint took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. In the misty light of the early afternoon, the buildings of the approaching Bund looked like ivory chess pieces, aligned along the edge of the board, waiting for the game to begin. The tall green pyramid of the Sassoon House roof was the queen’s crown. Jardine Matheson House and the Russo-Chinese Bank were squat rooks protecting her flanks, and the slender Signal Tower at the north end of the Bund was the lean spear of a knight’s jousting lance.
Inspector Li Flint had always thought of the city as a vast jungle of chessboards, over which multiple games were being played at the same time, by unseen players. Flint was reasonably good at chess. The game suited his personality. He cherished the planning ahead of the moves, the way in which the game expanded like a firework from a single point in the opening, how the possibilities multiplied with each move through the chaos of the midgame and then, as the endgame approached, everything inescapably collapsed back to a single point in the checkmate. Life, he sometimes mused, worked the same way.
Approaching the wharf, the steamer passed the line of barges anchored off the Bund. Mercantile pawns to the Bund’s merchant chessmen, each one showed its three-digit identification number painted on the hull. The steamer passed a solitary boat, an old man standing at the poop, pushing on the single oar, his passenger a silhouette in a fedora under the domed canopy. A comprador, Li Flint thought, on his way back from an inspection of the wares awaiting delivery. Crossing the steamer’s wake, the boat rocked dangerously. The old man at the back did not seem to mind, his rhythm unbroken. His passenger braced himself.
Li Flint’s fellow passengers crowded the deck. Wealthy businessmen in Western suits, soldiers strutting like peacocks, a governess trying to herd a band of children. Calling their names, she pointed in wonder at the buildings, at the crowd milling along the Bund, the cars, the single-wheeled pushcarts, the rickshaws. The children were unimpressed and continued with their game of tag.
The International Settlement loomed larger as they approached their mooring. The Paris of the East, Gateway to China, the City of Never Night. Shanghai.
They filed down the gangplank.
The French officer at the customs desk took a perfunctory look at Li Flint’s ICPC papers and waved him through with a nod of greeting. No routine questions. No need to check Flint’s suitcase. The Kuomintang man at his side did not look pleased, but did not raise a fuss. Flint knew the type, and the man had many more people to harass. Some of the passengers in the customs line grumbled as he went through ahead of them, but Flint did not care.
Outside the customs house, the city was suspended in the twilight hours between business and leisure. Offices would soon close, and the commercial traffic was thinning. In an hour or two, the clubs and nightspots would fire up their neons, and the early birds of the Shanghai nightlife would take to the streets. Defiant of the traffic, Li Flint crossed the street, running a gauntlet with the speeding lorries, the drivers eager to end the last run of the day, and the cars with their honking horns. He joined the crowd of Chinese and Westerners on the busy pavement. He walked briskly, moving against the flow of pedestrians, while discreetly he scanned the crowd on the opposite side of the street. Men in black jackets, women in colorful silk dresses. Not the best place in the world to tail someone, Shanghai. Not the best place to spot a tail either.
In front of the brass lions of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, two young women in rich red silk qipao came out of a taxi, adjusting their short golden capes, early for some teatime appointment. Flint caught the eye of the driver and got in after them, the passenger seats still smelling of tobacco and gardenias. The women looked at him as he pushed past them, sliding his suitcase on the floor of the cab. One said something in a low voice, the other laughed.
“One-eight-five, Foochow Road,” he said.
The cabby gave him a look through the mirror. Flint looked back at him, then checked his watch. The taxi left the curbside. With a final look through the window, Li Flint sighed, and leaned against the back of the seat.
While officially assigned to Shanghai, the ICPC force was stretched so thin that Li Flint had spent most of his time abroad. Yet it was good being back home. He wondered briefly at what changes he would find.
Two Sikhs in red turbans stood guard outside the gates of the Central Police Station in Foochow Road. Flint handed a silver Mexican dollar to the cabby, the metal cold in his fingers. The republican government was trying to drop the silver standard, but “Mexes” were still the preferred currency in China.
He walked in. A bewhiskered sergeant sat behind the reception desk, like a relic from the Victorian era. Flint showed his papers and was asked to wait. The sergeant spoke into a telephone. A tall man with ginger hair appeared a few minutes later.
“Inspector Li Flint? Superintendent Thrubshawe.”
They shook hands, and then Thrubshawe led him through the maze of corridors and staircases, up to the third floor and a small office that smelled of tobacco and dust. Along the way, the superintendent made very British small talk about the weather and the busy roads, but he was all business as he sat behind his desk. “So, what can the Shanghai Municipal Police do for the International Criminal Police Commission?”
“We are looking for a woman,” Flint said.
He had an envelope. In the envelope was a photograph. He placed the photo on the desk in front of the superintendent.
Thrubshawe studied it for a moment, turned it around looking for some note or detail, then looked up.
“Is this all you have?” he asked, his tone doubtful.
Flint nodded.
“Who is she? Why are you interested in her?”
“She is involved in a contraband ring. Stolen art exchanged for opium. We are conducting an international operation.”
Not exactly true, but Flint knew his story sounded plausible. Thrubshawe nodded. “And you don’t have a name?”
“Only a nickname, the Lady with the Red Parasol.”
“Picturesque,” the superintendent snorted, and handed back the photo. “No other details? About her associates, her base of operations?”
“Only that she is based in Shanghai.”
“Just like three million other people. It’s not like we can stop every woman with a parasol on the city streets.”
“I was hoping your records might provide a lead.” No need to lie about it. Accessing the police files would make his work easier. Faster.
Thrubshawe frowned. He picked up a pen.
“I can look into it,” he said, “but it’s a pretty weak lead.” He scrawled a few words on a notepad. “Red Parasol. Art. Opium. Anything else?”
“She is probably moving in upper-class circles,” Flint said.
Thrubshawe looked up from his notes. “Powerful friends?”
Flint nodded. The superintendent scrawled some more notes.
“Where are you staying?”
“I’ve yet to find a room.”
“I can suggest a good hotel…”
“I have heard good things about the Sichuan Road establishment.”
Thrubshawe frowned. “The YMCA?”
Flint nodded.
“I was expecting something more… glamorous, from the ICPC.”
Flint shrugged. “I am afraid we currently don’t have the budget for glamor.”
The superintendent tapped his notebook with his pen. “I will get in touch at the YMCA as soon as something emerges from the archives.”
“Thank you.” Flint pushed back the photo. “You might need this.”
Thrubshawe shook his head as he picked up the photo again. “It won’t be easy.”
“Is it ever?”
•••
The YMCA on Sichuan Road greeted him with the rubbing alcohol smell of a gym and a young man in shirtsleeves, doing a crossword at the front desk. Li Flint got himself a room on the second floor. “There is a bathroom at the end of the corridor,” the crossword man told him as he handed Flint the key.
Flint thanked him with a nod. He picked up his suitcase and ascended the stairs.
The room was small but reasonably clean, containing a single bed with an iron frame and a small bedside table. A niche in the wall served as a wardrobe, a wooden chair sat in a corner by the window. Flint pulled up the blind and opened the window to the sound and smell of the evening traffic. The place would do until he found a more permanent address, and possibly a second place as an off-the-record safe house.
A typed sheet thumb-tacked to the door gave the times of the laundry service, and the time of the religious services in the small adjacent chapel. Clean shirts and a clean conscience.
The single drawer in the nightstand contained a pristine copy of the Holy Bible, a folded map of the city, courtesy of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, and a bunch of blank postcards. A blunt pencil rolled against the side of the drawer when Flint pulled it open.
Flint checked his watch again, then he put his jacket on a hanger in the niche. He ran his thumb under the strap of his shoulder holster, before deciding to keep the thing on.
He opened his suitcase, and took out the thin manila folder in the side pocket. He sat on the bed, and opened the folder.
Commissioner Taylor expected full collaboration, but she was decidedly tight-fisted when it came to sharing information. For the thousandth time since he had sort of joined Taylor’s somewhat sketchy Foundation, Li Flint went through the frustratingly brief file on “Subject 46-Q”.
The Lady with the Red Parasol.
She was in some way connected with the rest of the intricate skein in which Flint had been entangled since his partner had disappeared in London. A game of chess, in which reality itself seemed to shift and rearrange to the whims of some unseen, unknown players.
He suppressed a shudder, the room feeling suddenly cold.
The Lady with the Red Parasol was one of the players.
Average height, black hair, pale complexion. There were hints at connections with well-to-do patrons, but it was all pretty vague, and she was extremely elusive. Also, she was looking for something, maneuvering to acquire some kind of artifact.
And that’s where Commissioner Taylor and her Foundation came into play. Where Flint came into play. The Lady was to be stopped. The artifact retrieved.
Easier said than done.
Li Flint snorted, and reached for his magnifying lens. Time to do the Sherlock Holmes thing. He had a single photo, a copy of which he had left with Thrubshawe. A grainy snapshot of a crowded Shanghai street. The Lady with the Red Parasol was standing among a bunch of other people, mostly Chinese. A man was carrying a bundle or a box on his shoulder, tied with a piece of string. Waiting to cross a road, probably. An old woman stared into the lens with faraway eyes. Behind her, the Lady’s face was a blurry oval. Featureless like an egg. There was a hint of a high collar, a pale, straight-shouldered qipao dress. And a parasol, with a dragon motif. Red, he guessed, like a halo behind the nondescript face.
The shadows suggested the photo had been taken close to noon. Dismissing the sketchy faces of the bystanders, he moved to the background. Pulled the lens back, enlarging further the image. Trees.
Not a plate with an address, or a taxi-cab’s registration number. Not a man with a billboard or a kid selling newspapers. Only trees, two neat rows of what looked like well-groomed plane trees. Common plane trees, also known as London planes.
Really not much to go on with. But everybody knew in Shanghai that tree, “le platane commun”, meant the French Concession.
III. French Concession
One week of legwork and discreet inquiries led nowhere. The crowded streets of the French Concession were deserted of information, empty of sympathy. The Lady with the Red Parasol was like a ghost haunting Shanghai, one shrouded in silence, reticence and fear. People denied any knowledge, or were openly evasive. Questions were answered with questions.
Why was he looking for her?
Was this an official investigation?
When news finally came from Thrubshawe, the superintendent delivered it personally, early one morning. He came in and looked around the room with open curiosity, and accepted the only chair when Flint offered it.
“Your Parasol Lady is not in our archives,” the red-haired man said, his expression somber. He took a deep breath. “I have also checked with my colleagues and…”
Li Flint frowned. “What?”
“I do not believe there is much future, for your investigation, here in this city.”
“What does that mean?”
Thrubshawe shrugged. “The Parasol Lady does have some powerful friends. The sort of friends that do not like files and records. And they might not appreciate you asking questions.”
“Is this intimidation we are talking about?”
The superintendent looked away. “Shanghai is a strange city, inspector. The rules here are more negotiable than, say, in London or Paris.”
Li Flint was not surprised, but his anger flared all the same. “You mean corruption. Powerful people being above the law.”
“Certain people are the law, in this city.”
Li Flint looked at Thrubshawe for a long moment.
“And you serve the law,” he said. Disappointment colored his voice.
The superintendent’s cheeks burned, and he tightened his fists. Flint almost anticipated a physical reaction. Anger. Violence. But then the Englishman relaxed, and sighed. “And our involvement with the ICPC is amply discretionary.”
Flint did not comment. Without support from the local police force, he had no way to apprehend and interrogate suspects, no power to arrest the criminals.
Thrubshawe sighed, shook his head, and stood. “Be careful, inspector,” he said. “You will be alone on this one.”
They did not shake hands as the superintendent left. The door clicked closed behind him.
Flint took a deep breath, and looked out of the window, at the city bathed in the morning light. Working without any support from the local law enforcement would make everything more complicated. He was playing too large a chessboard, and he was playing it alone.
•••
The upper echelons of the city’s society closed to him, Li Flint turned himself into a shadow, moving along shadow avenues, making shadow connections. He haunted the boulevards of the French Concession, walking in the shadows of the planes, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Lady, the red flash of her parasol. And he asked around, discreetly, in hotels and salons, where the powerful of the city assembled.
He talked to the invisible ones, the waiters and the flower girls, the drivers and the bartenders. Slowly, he made a little progress. An Irish guy called Cohan, who served as an in-house detective for the Majestic Hotel, gave him the name of a Frenchman who flew a charter plane service out of the Lunghwa airfield. For the price of two bottles of kao liang wine and a carton of imported Gauloise cigarettes, the Frenchman wrote down the address of a Russian who managed a flop-house off Avenue Foch. She had a young face, hidden under an older woman’s makeup. She smoked black Sobranies and served him black tea in clear glasses. From her, Flint got a warning and an envelope.
The warning, delivered with an amused flirty attitude, was the same that strait-laced Thrubshawe had delivered earlier: the Lady with the Red Parasol enjoyed the friendship of powerful men, and it would be ill-advised to displease them. But if he was still trying to meet the Lady, there was an address on the envelope she handed him, and a letter of introduction.
A friend of a friend, who might help.
“Her name’s Athena, despite being Chinese and Shanghai-born,” the Russian woman said, pulling her purple kimono closed with a shudder. Her face was pale under the rouge. Her lips took a tart twist. “She deals in gossip, and might have some answers for you.”
She squashed her cigarette in an ashtray. He thanked her, and she gave him a sad look as she saw him to the door. “You will have to tread carefully.”
•••
The letter was addressed to suite 809 in the Yangtze Hotel. Li Flint presented it at the front desk, and was asked to wait while a bell boy delivered the envelope and his calling card on a silver tray. He sat in a stuffed chair by one of the art deco columns in the lobby. He picked up a copy of the Shanghai Times and pretended to read it. Minutes dragged on. The hum of voices was like the thrumming of a motor. Hotel porters came in, pushing trolleys loaded with luggage. Men in fedoras and women in silk dresses came and went. Flint spotted a man in a pin-striped suit, hovering by the service staircase.
The bell boy was back, with a note folded in half. A careful feminine hand, in sharp blue ink, invited him for tea that afternoon. Flint tipped the boy, folded the newspaper, and walked out. The pin-stripe suit man followed him.
The sidewalks of Shanghai seemed to have a hierarchy, a stratification of sorts, that caused servants, laborers and loiterers to gravitate towards the edge of the pavement, while the well-to-do and the purposeful remained farther from the street, and closer to the shop windows and the building facades. One block away from the hotel, Li Flint paused by a pushcart that had been parked by the curbside in the shadow of a plane tree, a rich smell of onions lingering, and casually surveyed the river of faces walking by. There was a second man, in a long blue qingpao coat and a fedora, moving parallel to Pin-stripe on the other side of the street. It was a simple pursuing strategy, and when two minutes later Flint crossed the street, Fedora took point, and Pin-stripe fell behind.
Flint felt a familiar thrill. Finally, something was moving.
He wondered briefly who had set up his tail. The Lady was supposed to use less mundane methods. His chief suspect was Thrubshawe, possibly acting on behalf of the powerful men that kept this city in thrall. He led them in a leisurely chase along the sidewalks of the French Concession, for over one hour. Then they either realized they had been spotted, or lost their patience, and in a matter of moments were gone, swallowed by the bustle of the avenue.
“So you are a friend of Helena’s,” the woman said by way of greeting. It was not a question. Li Flint shifted his weight from one foot to the other, feeling the burn of the woman’s heavy-lidded stare.
“Merely an acquaintance,” he said.
She picked his calling card from her nightstand and scanned it. “Inspector Li Flint, ICPC. Helena will never stop surprising me. The people she knows. You’re aware she’s not really Russian, aren’t you? Of course you are.”
Her voice was a husky tone that contrasted with her slender frame. The only splash of color in a white and cream bedroom, she was wearing an emerald green and purple dressing gown, and was busy attaching a cigarette to a long thin silver holder. Her black hair was fashionably styled in a short bob, and framed a triangular face with sharp cheekbones and thin, arched eyebrows.
On his way up he had tipped the lift boy, and learned the name of the occupant of suite 809. Athena Cai Chang, only daughter of one of the directors of the Bank of China. “The bees’ knees,” according to his earnest informer.
Now she gave Flint a look, expectant. He stepped forward and offered her a light. She hollowed her cheeks, the tip of the cigarette burning red. Her fingernails were long and sharp, painted the same maroon as her lips. She sat back on the unmade bed, and exhaled a thin stream of smoke.
“We did the town last night,” she said. She gestured, brandishing her cigarette holder like a magic wand, and pointed at a chair. Flint sat down. “Dinner at the Cathai, then the Paramount for the Charleston, then the Del Monte for a breakfast of ham and eggs.” Her voice had a posh British accent. She shook her head disapprovingly. “Nobody calls socially before noon in Shanghai. Not even to drop a calling card.”
“I am sorry for my faux pas,” he replied, wary. “I am afraid I am not overly familiar with the social rituals of this city.”
“Quite obviously,” she snorted. She looked him up and down. “You look the part but are not from around here. Helena’s cryptic note says San Francisco. Is that where you caught that cowboy drawl of yours?”
Flint decided to offer some information, and see where it would lead. “I was born here,” he said, “in Shanghai. But I was raised in San Francisco. My father worked for the China Light and Power Company Syndicate.”
“The Kadoorie family,” she said.
“Yes. My father was an engineer. He was sent to the United States, to work with the company’s American partners.”
“I met Laura Kadoorie once,” she said. Flexing her social muscles, he thought. Establishing her authority. “A little before she died. She was a formidable woman.”
“So I heard.”
Aristocratic Laura Kadoorie had been a giant in Shanghai’s social life, before the war. Either Athena had met her when she was a child, or she was older than she looked. Flint guessed the latter was true. There were thin lines around her mouth and eyes that makeup did not conceal.
The same maid that had greeted Flint at the door walked in carrying a large tray that she placed on the bed by her mistress, and then retreated again.
“And now you are back in Shanghai,” Athena continued, “and part of the International Police Commission. A Chinese and English bilingual is certainly an asset for such a worldwide organization.”
“I like to believe I’m valuable to the Commission for other reasons, too.”
“Of course,” she conceded. “And Helena tells me you are looking for Tzu San Niang. The Lady with the Red Parasol.”
Flint made a mental note of the name. “You know her?”
“Everybody in Shanghai knows about her. Very few know her. Many want to. Some,” she added, pouring the tea, “regret they do.”
Flint shook his head when she offered him a cup.
“It’s Darjeeling,” she said.
Flint resisted the temptation to check his watch. He was not here for social pleasantries. “No, thanks. I’m more of a coffee sort of guy.”
“How very American.” She dropped a dollop of honey in her cup. “Why are you looking for Tzu San Niang?”
“What is the Lady with the Red Parasol to you?”
She smiled cruelly. “Having second thoughts?”
They were back at the old game everybody was playing. Questions answered with questions.
But she made a dismissive gesture, and sipped some tea. “I’m not her friend or her ally, her accomplice or accessory, if this is what worries you,” she said then. “But this is a commercial city, you see, and everybody’s got something to sell. I am my own agent. My trade is in gossip, one of the most rarefied commodities on the market. This is why you are here, after all. To sample some of my wares. And I did know her, once.” She put down her empty cup, and picked up a biscuit. “Why are you looking for Tzu San Niang?”
“She is involved in illegal activities…”
Athena laughed. “Really? How surprising.”
She nibbled at the biscuit, her eyes sparkling with amusement. Flint did not laugh. “We believe she is at the heart of an international drug-running operation. Something she is financing by smuggling stolen art.”
It was a convenient cover story. Plausible.
The woman frowned. “Sounds sketchy,” she said. She brushed the crumbs off her sleeve. “But I can see her involved in such a racket. Tzu San Niang craves power above all else. Power in every form or shape. It is like an addiction to her. She extracts an almost obscene pleasure from exercising power over others. She used to have a train of smitten hangers-on, following her around. Men and women. But even that was not enough. She now looks for power elsewhere. To get her fix, if you will.”
“We believe she is trying to acquire some sort of ancient objet d’art,” Flint said. “I am here to prevent that transaction.”
But Athena was lost in her thoughts. “Yes,” she whispered, almost to herself. “She’s not above drug running.”
He wondered at the nature of their acquaintance. “You seem to know her very well.”
Athena started, and looked into his eyes. “And I have the scars to prove it.”
Flint arched his eyebrows, questioningly. There was a hint of reticence there. The shadow of a mystery.
“There may have been a time,” Athena said, drily, “when I too was part of that train of enthralled worshippers.”
“But you are not anymore?”
“I am not.”
And she would not say more.
“So far, Tzu San Niang has eluded us,” Flint said, returning to business. He would trust this woman, as she was the only lead he had. “I need to track her movements. Know her associates. Learn about her plans, and thwart them. Can you provide me with details of her whereabouts?”
He tried not to sound too eager, but it was like there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
“I can give you much more than that, Inspector Flint,” she said. “I can guide you into Tzu San Niang’s hunting grounds. But you will need a dinner jacket to enter.”
He frowned at her, surprised. Was she really suggesting a disguise?
“White, of course,” she added.
His room had been searched.
The slip of paper he had pushed between the door and the frame was on the corridor’s floor when he paused to put the key to the lock. His first thought was Pin-stripe and Fedora.
Inside, nothing appeared to have been disturbed. But the window was ajar, and the blinds moved in the draft.
Flint placed the laundry bag with the dinner jacket in the wall niche with his other clothes, and then did a slow tour of the room. His suitcase was in order, the Bible was still in the drawer.
He went down to the front desk, and asked if anyone had left a message. He also inquired about the cleaning of the room. On Friday, he was told. It was Wednesday.
Back in his room, he checked the ventilation grille where he had placed the files and his other documents. The paper slip was still in position. His mysterious visitors had not thought about checking the pipes. Skilled, but lacking in imagination. Just like the men that had shadowed him in the street. Good, but not too good. He still suspected the local police.
He sat on the bed, smoking his pipe. He took his glasses off.
The pieces had been moved into position, the game was entering its mid-stretch. The hardest to predict, the more casually violent.
Flint spent the following three days, as he waited for Athena’s call, roaming the city, and setting up a safe house in a cheap hotel in Huangpu Road, not far from the Japanese consulate.
He also found time to have his new jacket fitted.
•••
In a dinner jacket, and with Athena on his arm, Li Flint walked through the door of the Majestic Ballroom under the smoldering gaze of a colossal Russian with a pale scar on his cheek and a broken nose. Now they waded through the press, circling the dance floor.
“More champagne is consumed in Shanghai than in Paris,” Athena said as she intercepted a passing tray and picked up a glass of bubbly wine. “Most of it imported from Russia.”
Flint ran a finger around his collar. The frantic breathing of hundreds of dancers combined with the warmth and the humidity of the night to labor his breathing. There was an incongruous impression of Moorish Spain in the Majestic Ballroom. Slender columns supported the domed ceiling, and a white marble fountain sat in the middle of the dance floor. The night club was a-bustle with a kaleidoscope of women in extravagant evening dresses and men in what Athena called “Shanghai monkey suits”: white dinner jackets over black trousers, with silk sashes as the only color allowed, the only sign of individuality.
“What would men be without uniforms,” Athena mused, sipping her wine. She was wearing a long black dress. “About two years past its prime,” she had explained. “But in Shanghai it is considered in poor taste to wear the latest Parisian fashion. The sort of ostentation that smells of new money. The mark of the parvenu.”
Flint scanned the crowd. “Is she coming here?”
After all, this was his reason for attending the evening, not the champagne or the Filipino dance band playing jazz standards.
Athena arched her eyebrows. “Here? Of course not.”
Flint had no time to protest. She placed the empty champagne glass on a passing tray, and picked another. “Upstairs,” she said. And tightening her hold on his arm, she continued in her orbit of the dance floor, until they came to the short, wide fan of steps that led to a curtained passageway, and into the Majestic Hotel.
Past the curtains they went.
To avoid unwanted attention from the concierge, they strode across the lobby without haste to where the elevators waited in their iron cages. But before they reached the elevators, Athena turned sharply to her left, and pushed through an anonymous door. She dragged Flint along.
When the door closed behind her, she leaned with her shoulders on the wood, and gave Flint a piratical grin. She acted like this was some kind of caper, but Flint could perceive a hint of nerves underneath her playfulness.
“Welcome to the service stairs that will lead us to the hallowed corridors where people like us can’t go,” she said. She was still holding an empty champagne glass. She raised her eyes. “Two floors up,” she said. “Tzu San Niang is holding court in the Red Suite, on the third floor.”
“How–?”
Athena arched an eyebrow. “Gossip is my trade, remember?”
Flint looked up into the darkness of the service stairwell. “And was all this cloak and dagger necessary?”
“It’s exciting,” she replied. “And going through the main doors we would have attracted too much attention. In all likelihood they would have not let us in at all.”
Flint detected a hint of bitterness in her voice. “This is absurd.”
“This is the rotting carcass of the Empire, my boy,” she replied, her humor failing to hide the anger. “My father can own a quota in this hotel, but he could never be a guest, and I could only on the arm of a Westerner. Which you are not. Come on, let’s go. We are going to be in the next room, listening through the wall with a glass, or something.”
“The next room?”
But she was already up the first ramp.
Flint followed her up the stairs and through an arch into a corridor illuminated by brass and crystal chandeliers. The silence was haunting, and it was hard to believe that two stories below a crowd of revelers was doing the foxtrot while a twelve-piece band played. The air was warm and still, the carpets soft. The light was liquid amber.
Flint let Athena lead, and focused on scanning the corridor as they went. They passed an alcove with a striped couch in it, and peeked around a tall silk screen. Behind a tall green potted plant, they spied two men standing in front of an unmarked door. Broad-shouldered and rough-featured, wearing cheap charcoal suits, they were as still as statues. Flint noticed their scarred knuckles. Russian hired muscle. The one closer to their hiding place had a bulge on his waist of the kind caused by a gun.
“Can you pick a lock?” Athena asked. Her breath tickled his ear.
“Of course.”
“How fast?”
Flint gave another look at the two guardians.
“Fast enough,” he said, slipping his lock-picks out of his inside pocket.
“Fine,” she said, “because I am going to be disgracefully out of sorts as soon as you’re ready.”
•••
The couple staggered down the corridor, being very loud. The man was holding the woman up as she sang “Baby Face” at the top of her lungs, and waved an empty champagne glass. She was wearing an expensive black dress, and walked on rubber legs. She was not a very good singer. Her voice was a nasal drone. “I’m up in heaven when I’m in your firm embrace…!”
The men at the door watched the couple go by, and traded a look. The larger of the two shook his head and rolled his eyes as the couple stopped in front of the door to the next suite. “Bogatyye idioty,” he mumbled.
His pal chuckled. “Da.”
The woman leaned against the lintel while her partner tried drunkenly to find the keyhole and then struggled with the lock. She fell silent as he worked his key with increasing difficulty. Her body almost completely blocked the line of sight, only the back of the man being visible. His key scratched on the metal of the lock as he tried to slip it in.
Another minute dragged on. The bulkier of the two guards frowned, his hand slipping inside his jacket. His partner caught his look and turned towards the couple.
“Hey–” he started, just as their door swung open and the man staggered inside, dragging the drunken woman along. She gave a long, rattling laugh as the door slammed closed.
The corridor was quiet again.
“Bogatyye debily,” the guard snorted. His mate shook his head, and they went back to their duty. Just another wild night in Shanghai.
Athena pressed her shoulders against the door, and let out a deep sigh. Flint found the light switch. A Tiffany lamp came alive on a side table, casting a soft twilight into the suite’s parlor. They checked the rooms. An archway led into a large, darkened bedroom. Past a door was an en-suite bathroom, all white marble and brass fittings. With a nod to his partner, Flint dragged a chair close to the wall, and stood on it.
“What if the suite had been occupied?” he asked.
“It’s booked for the night,” Athena replied, “by a friend of mine.”
Flint looked at her, and she shrugged. “I’ve got lots of friends.”
“I see.”
“Is there a radio on somewhere?” she asked.
Flint listened, and then shook his head. He pulled the lever of the ventilation grille, and closed his eyes. There were voices, talking, in the next room. A tinkling of glasses.
“Five hundred thousand yuan is no laughing matter,” a gruff man said. A faint accent, Dutch or German. The sound was so clear, it was like Flint was standing there by the man’s side.
Flint turned to his companion, and nodded. “It’s this,” he whispered.
Athena shook her head. She pointed at her ear, and grimaced. She twirled her finger in the air. She was hearing something else. She put her empty glass on a table, and lit herself a cigarette. She sat on one of the couches, her foot tapping nervously a syncopated rhythm on the carpet.
“Are we to discuss this issue again?” a female voice asked. A rich, upper-class accent, and an icy edge. Flint held his breath. Was this the Lady with the Red Parasol?
“Well, of course not,” the gruff one replied, “but…”
Flint glanced at Athena who was shifting on her chair. She had wrapped her arms around her body, and was rubbing her hands up and down her arms.
“This was a bad idea,” she said in a low voice.
Flint frowned. It was like all her vitality had been drained from her. Her features were drawn and shrouded in cigarette smoke, and all the excitement for the adventure was gone. Her eyes kept darting around, and returning to the door.
He was about to ask what was up with her, when the female voice came to him through the ventilation pipe.
“You gentlemen asked for my help in closing the deal in Jinan,” the woman said. “I closed the deal.”
Different men started talking at the same time, in a jumble of accents and tones, and then were silent as the woman spoke again. “Moreover, these issues in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur are of a different nature, and can be solved swiftly, and much more cheaply. Something I am sure Mister Groteboer will appreciate.”
The men mumbled and chuckled.
“I was just pointing out,” the gruff man said, “if we had persevered some, the amount might have decreased a little.”
Silence hung leaden for a whole minute.
“I do not deal in perseverance, Mister Groteboer,” the woman said, then. “I deal in solutions.”
“And your solutions are entirely satisfactory,” a new voice said. “Let us not linger on the Jinan affair any longer. This labor strike thing is much more worrying than any warlord–”
“Then there is the railway business,” a third man said. “We don’t want Mantetsu to have full control–”
“And all of the profits,” Groteboer added.
Flint jotted down some notes, more out of habit than from necessity. He was surprised at finding out this mercenary side of the mysterious Lady. He’d have to look into this Jinan affair.
On her couch, Athena was shifting nervously. She lit a new cigarette with the stub of the previous one. Her hands trembled. Flint squared his shoulder. Her fear was rubbing off on him.
“We will discuss the railway in due time,” the woman said. “Right now, the matter at hand is the unions the workers in Hong Kong are setting up.”
“This is costing us a pretty dollar,” a new voice said, in an American drawl.
“We have the utmost faith in your skills, madame,” said the third man.
“And we pay nicely for them,” added Groteboer, a man clearly unable to let an issue rest.
“We need to go,” Athena whispered behind him.
Flint half turned to watch her. She was peering into the shadows of the bedroom. All of her playfulness was gone and she was on the verge of panic. A creeping sense of foreboding came over Flint.
“I can guarantee,” the ice-voiced woman replied, piqued, “that by the end of the month all the workers requests will be archived, and…”
Her voice trailed off, and Flint felt a sudden chill, like an electric charge tickling his spine.
Athena was standing behind him. “We need to go now!” she hissed, a desperate urgency creeping into her hushed voice. She tugged at his sleeve.
The men in the other room were again talking over each other. Clapping hands silenced them.
“I am afraid there is something I will have to deal with first,” the woman said.
It was like a pair of piercing eyes were staring at him through the wall. Flint pulled his hands off the wallpaper, like the wall was burning.
With a curse, Athena ran to the door, and threw it open.
Flint turned in time to see her go out. Breath escaped his lips in a wintry cloud of steam. The room was freezing.
In the corner of his eye he caught a ghostly shape as it took form in the middle of the room. It was vaguely human shaped, and as ragged and running as a wisp of smoke in the breeze. For a minute that lasted an eternity, he looked into the twirls and swirls of the ghostly apparition. Flint’s throat tightened and dried, and he was caught in a swoop of vertigo.
Men shouted in the corridor. Flint saw the larger of the two guards run after Athena.
He jumped off his chair just as a pair of ghostly arms seeped through the wall and tried to make a grab for him.
The shape in the middle of the room threw back its head and screeched. There were evanescent chains wrapped around its form, and it seemed to carry a pickaxe.
Flint caught a drift of a sound, like a distant voice singing a lullaby. The song, insinuating and insistent, did what the ghostly shapes had as yet failed to achieve. A sudden surge of fear like he had not experienced since childhood swept over Flint. Blind, chilling, irrational. He had to get out of that place.
Flint ran to the door, slipped on the carpet, pushed himself into the corridor and collided with the second guard. They fell in a tangle of arms and legs. Flint caught a glimpse of a group of portly, middle-aged men crowding the doorway of the nearby suite.
In front of them, a Chinese woman in a pale qipao was staring at him. A perfect face, absolutely impassive. She lifted a red parasol in her gloved hands and opened it with a click that sounded like thunder in the corridor.
Flint smashed his elbow in the guard’s face. The man rolled back, covering his face with his hands, and Flint scampered to his feet and shot through the nearest arch and through the service stairs door.
Steps echoed in the stairwell, and he spied Athena’s black dress and pale face as she ran, the giant Russian bruiser behind her.
The lullaby still creeping on him, Flint ran down the stairs like hell itself was in pursuit.
Going from the bright light of the Majestic lobby to the black night of the hotel gardens forced Flint to slow down. Gravel creaked underneath his feet. He squinted in the twilight of the distant neons of the city, trying to catch a glimpse of Athena, or of her pursuers. The dance hall band was an afterthought in the distance, but Flint’s ears still rang with the melancholy wail of the ghostly lullaby. He shivered despite the hot, humid air of the night. Trees and ornamental shrubs were darker shadows in the blue evening, like squatting beasts waiting for their prey.
Flint cocked his gun, and strained to catch any movement. Russian voices called in the dark. There was no time to waste. He hastened towards the gates, confident in the fact that Athena would do the same.
A sudden movement, too close to evade. One of the Russian guards slammed into him. It was like being steamrolled by a truck. Flint hit the ground, breathless, the gun escaping his grip. A hand with scarred knuckles grabbed the front of his shirt and a fist smashed into his face, knocking off his glasses. Flint’s head rang with the punch, the pain a further layer underneath the distant song still playing in his ears.
The man called his pals, and then loaded a second punch. Flint pulled up his arm, protecting his face. More voices called, coming closer. The Russian’s eyes rolled into his head, and he let go of his hold and crashed on the ground.
Pin-stripe stood over Flint, holding a blackjack. He offered his hand to help Flint up.
“I’m Shaw,” he said hurriedly. “From the Foundation. We need to go.”
Still dazed, Flint got to his feet and followed the man Shaw towards the garden gates. “There’s a woman–” he started.
“No time.”
Mist-like shapes appeared among the edges of the Italian garden, faintly glowing with the same blue haze of the city lights.
Shaw cursed. “Run!”
The ghostly army of misshapen wraiths closed around them. They seemed to move like waves, advancing and retreating as they followed the rhythm of the song that now was the only thing Flint could hear.
The melody insinuated itself into his brain, shattering his resolve and scrambling his senses. He knew he needed to run, get out of the garden, but he no longer knew where the gate was. There was only the song, twisting and snaking. Stop, it said. Relent. Abide.
The song was the only reality, and the crowd of ghostly faces, drawing closer. Hungry. Desperately hungry.
Someone cried out in the dark. Shots were fired. The crying voice was suddenly silenced. The glowing shapes were upon them. Arms outstretched, fingers like claws, mouths gaping.
Shaw grabbed Flint by an arm and dragged him away, jumping a perfectly trimmed hedge and running past a rose bush, onto a new gravelly lane. “Come!” he said, pushing Flint and pointing at the gates. Traffic streaks of red and white light ran past the iron bars. Flint shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He felt hungover.
Shaw’s hand pressed between his shoulders. “Run, man. Run!”
Flint ran. Without looking back, without thought but for that gaping passage, and the lights beyond. His legs were leaden, breath came ragged in steamy bursts in the Arctic-cold air. Pale blue hands grabbed him but he tore away, screaming in panic.
He slammed into the hood of a black car.
The man in the fedora was at the wheel. He leaned to the side and opened the door.
“Get in, man! Get in!”
The seat creaked under his weight. He had lost his glasses and his gun. The engine started, and soon they joined the traffic of Bubbling Well Road.
“There was a man…” Flint said. He ran a hand over his face. His fingers burned as if from frostbite. “Shaw.”
Fedora shook his head, shifting gears. “He’s gone.”
“And a woman,” Flint said, Athena Cai Chang’s pale sharp face flashing suddenly in his mind. “There was a woman, with me. In a black dress–”
“They’re gone,” Fedora repeated. “Nothing we can do about that.”
•••
Sichuan Road was blocked by fire engines, the sidewalks choked with the curious and the hangers-on. The night was painted orange by the flames consuming the top floors of the YMCA building, the smashed windows belching black smoke and embers.
The man in the fedora stopped the car and climbed out. Flint did the same.
“They’re moving fast,” Flint said. The sticky fingers of the Majestic nightmare were slowly retreating from his mind. He needed to tighten his hold on the little he had.
“Maybe you should leave,” Fedora suggested.
Flint looked at him, squinting. “Leave?”
“New instructions from Commissioner Taylor,” Fedora said. “And by the way, I’m Chen Guiying. From the Nanjing chapter.”
Flint acknowledged him with a nod.
“I am sorry for our friend,” Chen said.
Guilt twisted in Flint’s gut. “What happened to her?” he asked. “To Shaw?”
Chen shrugged. “Dead, probably. Or soon to be. Nothing we can do about that.”
Flint looked at the flames consuming the roof of the building. Police officers, Sikhs in red turbans and French Concession cops in their kepis were holding the people back. Beyond the line of officers, men in uniform and civilians were talking among themselves. One of them was Superintendent Thrubshawe.
“There’s someone I need to see,” Flint said. There was something he still could do.
“Wait.” Chen handed him a massive Webley revolver. “Just in case.”
•••
Thrubshawe looked at Flint like he was a ghost, and murmuring an excuse, left the other officers and came up to meet him.
“Are there any victims?” Flint asked. He was not going to allow the other man time to ask his own questions. He could not allow the superintendent to take control of the discussion.
“Only one, but–”
“Do we know the cause of the fire?”
“Someone smoking in bed,” Thrubshawe said, glancing at the burning building. “But that’s supposed to be you, so I think we’ll have to revise that hypothesis, and the victim count.”
Flint took a deep breath. “You know that even if the firemen are still at work?”
“Witnesses said the fire started in your room. Hence the smoking in bed hypothesis.”
“I do not smoke.”
“And you’re patently not dead.”
Flint felt the weight of the revolver in his pocket. “I’d like you to keep that last detail to yourself.”
The policeman frowned. Again he looked back at the building, at his colleagues standing there. “You can’t be asking me to hide evidence.”
“Not really. Either there will be no body, or there will be a body that you will have to identify. I am asking you to delay the identification of my remains, to allow me time to solve a case.”
“What case?”
“Please.”
Thrubshawe sighed. “I can give you twenty-four hours. Then I will have to report in front of the magistrate, and–”
“Twenty-four hours should be enough.” Flint stretched his hand. “Thank you.”
The superintendent shook it. “Do not give me cause to regret an act of professional courtesy.”
“I can’t guarantee that. But I will try.”
Flint retreated to his spare room in Huangpu Road, switching cabs twice to get there.
From the cheap hotel to the offices of the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank, it was just a short drive across the Garden Bridge to the Bund. Chen drove in silence, and stayed in the car when they got there. Once inside, Flint’s ICPC badge carried him past the front desk, up four stories and into the bank’s inner sanctum.
“I am here to see Mister Groteboer.”
Finding the man had not been hard. There were not many Dutch bankers in Shanghai.
The young man at the desk stared at him.
Running on three hours of sleep and five cups of very bad coffee, Li Flint was a little worse for wear, but still reasonably presentable. He had bought a new pair of glasses from a man selling them off a tray on the Garden Bridge, and he was carrying Chen’s Webley in his pocket.
The young man eyed his badge with open contempt. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I do not need an appointment to make an arrest,” Flint said.
The young man’s eyes goggled. His hand went to the phone, and Flint stopped him, putting his own hand over his. The physical contact shocked the young man, as Flint had hoped.
“What I suggest,” he said, in a low, menacing voice, “is that you show me to Mister Groteboer’s office, and then rush back here to call the bank’s lawyers.”
The young man glanced at one of the doors, and tried to articulate a protest.
“Thanks,” Li Flint said, and moved on to the door. He did not knock, and went in.
A portly man in a stiff collar sat behind a massive mahogany desk, the two chairs in front of it occupied by a man and a woman in their fifties. Coffee had been served, and Flint’s entrance clearly interrupted a friendly chat.
“What does this mean?” the big man bawled, his voice quite familiar to Flint. His jowly features lit up a bright red when he saw Flint coming in, his face suddenly so ruddy that his white whiskers seemed to glow. “Who are you? Berthelot, where are you?”
The young man ran by Flint’s side. “I am sorry, director–”
The man and the woman in the client’s chairs turned and stared at Flint, who showed his badge. “Inspector Li Flint, International Criminal Police Commission,” he said, his tone level. “I am here in conjunction with the payment of half a million yuan to the Jinan warlord, and the disappearance of the daughter of one of the directors of the Bank of China, Miss Athena Cai Chang.”
Groteboer opened his mouth and then closed it.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he finally said, but his voice had lost its edge, and his face was ashen. Nothing’s worse than a bad conscience.
Flint saw a crack, and applied more pressure. “I am talking about money from the coffers of this and other companies, paid to a criminal to have one of your competitors intimidated, by having his daughter sequestered.”
The two guests shifted in their chairs, clearly ill at ease. Flint suppressed a smile. Anything increasing the banker’s panic was welcome.
“The daughter…? I know nothing about anyone’s daughter!”
The woman in the chair stood, and placed a hand on the shoulder of the man by her side. “Charles, I believe we should leave.”
“Yes, darling,” he said. He looked at Groteboer. “We will call back when all of this has been resolved. Goodbye.”
And they marched out of the room.
“Sir,” the secretary said, “should I call Mister Dashwood?”
“Yes, Mister Berthelot,” Flint said without turning. “Call the lawyers. Make sure they will be here before the journalists arrive.”
“You can’t do that!” Groteboer gasped.
“Go, Mister Berthelot,” Flint said, his eyes on Groteboer’s.
“No, wait!” The big man was sweating. He looked at Flint. “Let us talk like civilized people.”
Flint made a show of checking his watch. “You have five minutes,” he said.
“Go back to your desk,” Groteboer ordered his secretary. He waited for the door to click closed. Then he took a deep breath. “You do not have the authority–”
“Really?”
This was the moment of truth. The banker was right. The ICPC did not have any authority to arrest the criminals it pursued. But Flint was betting on Groteboer not knowing. Again, he checked his watch.
“Four minutes. The gentlemen from the press will be here soon.”
The banker’s shoulders sagged.
“What do you want? I can pay…”
Flint kept his tone level. The banker’s ego was working to his advantage. “Are you offering money to evade arrest?”
“Everyone has a price,” Groteboer said, a shadow of his arrogance returning.
“In Shanghai, maybe. But I am not the Municipal Police, I am not the Kuomintang. As soon as you are in Foochow Road under lock and key, I will leave this city forever. And you have three minutes.”
“You’ve got this affair all wrong,” Groteboer tried to sound reasonable. “The money that was paid–”
“You admit to it.”
“Yes. It was the ransom of our branch director in Jinan. He had been kidnapped by the local warlord and we–”
“What about Miss Athena Cai Chang?”
“I know nothing about this Cai Chang woman–”
“Wrong answer. We have proof she was abducted by your associate,” he lied. “A comprador by the name of Tzu San Niang.”
The bluff worked. Groteboer had got back some of his color, but now his face turned grey. “Not her!”
“Two minutes.”
“You don’t understand. Tzu San Niang is…” His voice broke. “I cannot.”
Flint just arched his eyebrows, and looked at his watch again. There was a knock on the door.
“Things being so…” he said. As a chess player, he found this poker game both exhilarating and disquieting.
“No, wait. You don’t understand. I cannot give you Tzu San Niang. She would know it’s me–”
“Not if you remain off the record. Tell me where Miss Cai Chang was taken. Help me find her.”
“I cannot. I don’t know.”
Again, someone knocked on the door.
This was the moment of truth. Flint felt like his only hold on the case was about to slip from his fingers. Groteboer read something in his face, and read it wrong.
“She’s got a place in Bubbling Well Road,” he said, and it was like he was deflating. He seemed to sink into his chair. “By the German Church.”
He stared at Flint with haunted eyes. “That’s all I know.”
Without a word, Li Flint turned on his heels and went out, allowing himself a spark of hope.
Past the door, young Berthelot was about to knock one more time. Two men with a bellicose expression and impeccable suits were standing by, talking in hushed tones. The lawyers, Flint imagined. He nodded as he passed by them, and he was in the lift before they could react.
He put a hand in his pocket, caressing the rubber grip of the Webley.
Chen was waiting for him across the road. Next stop, Bubbling Well Road.
The German School and Church in Bubbling Well Road rose just past the Bubbling Well cemetery. Past the border of the International Settlement, and outside of the laws of the West. Here the houses were as elegant as further down the road, but shops and stores were increasingly commonplace, as were machine workshops and warehouses. The general feeling, if not the actual fact, was that this side of the settlement’s border laws were more lenient, easier to break, and such breaches more easily overlooked.
Which gave a modicum of consolation to Flint as he cracked the lock of a side door, and let himself in.
The bright light of noon did not enter this place, and even the skylights had been boarded up and blackened. There was in the air a smell of dust and dereliction, overlaid with the bitter smell of incense. His steps echoed in the vast, empty space. He pulled the gun from his pocket. He had asked Chen to stop along the way, so that Flint could post a note and buy a box of cartridges. Now the extra bullets clicked in his pocket with every step.
The vast space inside the warehouse was empty.
Not simply a physical emptiness, but also, Flint was certain, an emptiness of the spirit, a gaping moral void. It was hard to wrap his intelligence around what his instincts could not deny. The building was purposefully empty, like a space consecrated to Nothingness. It felt like the human warmth of the building had been stripped away, leaving a hole in its place.
And at the center of that hole, in the faint pool of light provided by two tapers, was Athena Cai Chang.
Flint kept scanning the shadows, but increased his pace. The woman was kneeling on the dirty concrete floor of the warehouse, her forehead resting on her hands.
When he was by her side, he called her name, in a low voice. She did not stir.
Squinting in the darkness, he placed a hand on her shoulder. He noticed the tears in her dress, and the broken fingernails. “We need to get out of this place,” he said.
She seemed to wake up, and turned her face towards him. “She’s gone,” she said, an overwhelming anguish in her voice. She did not seem to recognize him.
“And we need to go, too.” He nodded, and tried to pull her to her feet. He could not allow relief to distract him. They needed to get out. The car waiting outside felt like a million miles away.
“I bowed in front of her,” she gasped, grabbing his arm, “but she did not stay…”
Her eyes were wild and unfocused, and Flint imagined she had been dosed with some sort of drug, to break her mind. He felt a stab of guilt. He put his arm around her waist to support her, and turned towards the door. They were halfway there when the minions of Tzu San Niang came for them.
•••
The first aggressor came for him with a knife. Flint sidestepped him, and kicked him in the knee. The articulation cracked like a broken twig and the man crumpled on the ground, screaming. Pushing Athena down, Flint shot the second incoming man in the chest, and the one after him in a leg. This put some caution into the survivors. None of them, apparently, carried a gun, and there were still four bullets in Flint’s Webley; not enough to kill them all, but certainly enough to kill the first four that would come forward. No one felt like being one of those four.
Taking advantage of their hesitation, Flint pulled Athena up, and again started moving towards the door. His companion was regaining some lucidity. Her steps were steadier. She started talking.
“She can’t forgive,” she said. “No one leaves her court. Vengeful, she is. Jealous. Had me kneeling in front of her for… for close to forever.”
The gun in Flint’s hand weighed a ton. The men surrounding them were gathering their courage again. They would rush him en masse, gambling on the likelihood of being shot.
But before the men could make up their minds, with a roar of a revved-up engine, Chen’s car crashed through the main gates of the warehouse, and came in with wheels screeching, undertaking a wide swerve. The radiator was smashed, steam escaping the hood, but the car scattered the minions, and came to a sudden stop where Flint and Athena were. A door swung open.
“What took you so long?” Flint asked. He pushed Athena in, and followed her.
“Traffic.” Chen grinned.
The car started again, doing an ample curve and heading again towards the smashed entrance. One of the Lady’s minions was not fast enough to jump out of the way. Another jumped on the running board, on the passenger’s side. Flint shot him point-blank.
Drunkenly, Athena started singing “Baby Face.”
Flint took it for a sign she was feeling better.
Then they hit Bubbling Well Road, avoided by a hair’s-breadth a collision with a horse-drawn cart, and, trailing smoke, sped towards the International Settlement.
Athena stopped singing, slumped on her seat.
•••
He had selected his hotel in Huangpu Road because it was the sort of place where no questions were asked, but when Flint came in carrying Athena, the old manager gasped and ran over. Like a fussing grandmother, she placed her hand on Athena’s forehead to feel her temperature. She had a doctor they could call, she said. Flint just asked for his key.
Flint laid Athena on the bed, and checked her pulse. Her breathing was steady. Exhaustion, probably.
Later, Chen came in. He had ditched the damaged car, and acquired some provisions. He also had a copy of an evening paper. The fire at the YMCA was on page fifteen. No victims. The disturbance in Bubbling Well Road did not qualify for any coverage. At least not in the news. Flint was not surprised. It was like he had spent the last few days in a dream world. The place where the Lady with the Red Parasol moved was beyond the everyday life of Shanghai. What happened there did not make the news.
“I suggest you keep a low profile,” Chen said.
Flint shook his head. “Tzu San Niang–”
“The Lady with the Red Parasol left the city last night, headed for Hong Kong.” He caught Flint’s frown. “The Foundation’s got someone in the Customs House. And the Lady’s gone.”
“On a union-breaking mission for her rich patrons.” Defeat and humiliation tasted bitter on his tongue.
“Whatever.” Chen shrugged. “But her cut-throats are still out for your blood. And mine. And the girl’s.”
“Commissioner Taylor will not be pleased,” Flint said. The chessboard had been overturned and the pieces scattered. A disaster for which he was the only one responsible.
Chen shrugged. “She is sending in fresh forces. People the Lady’s minions do not know. You, in the meantime, should disappear. The girl too. I do not foresee a bright future for either of you in this city.”
“Can you take care of her?” he asked. Athena had been his guide in the dream world of Shanghai, but she should not be trapped in this nightmare. He owed her that much.
Chen was cautious. “What do you have in mind?”
Flint shrugged. “Can you?”
A brief nod. “We have a safe house in Nanjing. You are both welcome–”
Flint cut him short. “Can you get me tickets on the next steamer to Hong Kong?”
The other man looked at him. “Are you sure it’s a good idea?”
Flint lifted his hands, palms up, and shrugged. “I have some unfinished business.”