Eric van lustbader chi.., p.20
Eric van Lustbader - China Maroc 01, page 20
“Westerners call this pride,” Zilin said calmly. He had not moved. “Or perhaps it is prejudice. I had heard that the Americans were somewhat less provincial in their thinking than their British brethren.”
“The British are no brethren of mine,” the American said quickly.
“No,” Zilin went on, “I imagine not. The English tai pan, with their new, faster steamships are beating you at every turn. Consequently, your profits over the past years have dwindled so drastically that for the last six months you have been paying overhead with bank securities. Now you are having difficulties making your loan payments.”
Sawyer squinted down at him. “You sure know a lot for a little Chinee.”
“I may be small in stature,” Zilin said, “but my mind’s another matter altogether.”
Sawyer stared openmouthed at him for a moment before he burst into a fit of laughter which turned his face so red that Zilin feared blood vessels had burst.
“Ah, ooo.” Sawyer wiped at the corners of his eyes and sat back down beside Zilin. “Well, well, well,” he said, “I do believe we have a rare find here. A Chinee with a real sense of humor.”
Zilin nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “But really, I would prefer it if you called me by my name.” This thinking and speaking like a foreign devil was taxing indeed, he thought.
“All right.” The American tapped his cigar ash. “What’s your business, Mr. Shi? That is, besides clerking.”
“My brothers and I have a certain amount of seed money,” Zilin began, pausing almost immediately to take a breath. Dew neh loh moh, he thought, my heart is beating so fast it is sure to burst. “We would like to use it to buy into your shipping line.”
For a moment Zilin was certain that Sawyer was going to hit him. All color drained from his face, and Zilin was appalled at how ghastly he looked.
“Now look here, Mr. Shi—”
“Naturally,” Zilin hurried on, “there are certain guarantees my brothers and I are prepared to make as our first contribution to the firm … and as a gesture of our goodwill.”
“This is all out of the question,” Sawyer said. “Sawyer and Sons is an American firm, pure and simple. If I sell out, there’ll be nothing for my son, Andrew, and his son after him.”
“If you don’t relinquish part of the firm now, Mr. Sawyer, I fear that your debts will eat it all up long before control passes to young Master Andrew. What kind of a legacy is a bankrupt firm?”
“It’s out of the question.”
“As compensation for the share in Sawyer and Sons,” Zilin went on, “my brothers and I are willing to infuse the company with more than much-needed capital. First, we can guarantee that the firm’s property will not be touched by the Communists or the revolutionaries. There is going to be some kind of explosion throughout the country in the next several years. Quite naturally, foreign concerns will be a primary target of such unrest.
“Second, because I have access to all the harbormaster’s records, Sawyer and Sons will be privy to every shipment offloaded and laded in the port of Shanghai. You will, in effect, know who is shipping what—and how much of it, and to where—before any of your competition.
“Third, we will guarantee the safest and fastest method of bringing opium from the interior of China through Shanghai and into Hong Kong, where you ship it overseas.”
Sawyer spent some time grinding out his cigar. When he next spoke, both his bantering tone and his anger had fled him. “Taking the last first, Mr. Shi. How in the name of hell can you guarantee such a thing?”
Zilin smiled. “My youngest brother makes his living now captaining a lorcha along the rivers. He knows them all, knows the growers, the best fields, and how to get the best prices out of them. Currently he is a freelance, but that will change, of course, when we sign the deal.”
“How much money are you prepared to kick in?”
Zilin told him. Sawyer did some rapid calculations, his pulse racing. Zilin knew the sum to be inadequate. It would just about cover the next two months’ overhead, including loan surcharges and harbor taxes.
Sawyer’s answer was predictable enough. “Sorry, Mr. Shi. Some of the deal sounds fair enough. But the capital falls far short of what I’ll need. In thirty days’ time, I’ll be back in the same position, only the poorer for it, for having signed over to you a percentage of the firm.”
“Not,” Zilin said, “if you get the harbor-dredging concession within the next ten days.”
“Now you’re talking nonsense,” Sawyer said. “Manias and King, the oldest and largest of the British tai pan houses, has that locked up. They’ve done so for as long as I can remember. You can just forget about that one.”
“I’d prefer not to. You see, I am privy to information that even tai pan do not possess.”
Sawyer noted Zilin’s tone and nodded. “We are in your country, Mr. Shi. I take your point. Please continue.”
“The dredging is not yet complete. Tomorrow morning, when the English captains wake, they will find their dredgers deserted. Not a crewman will be found aboard.”
“That won’t stop ‘em for long. Mattias and King know your people. Money buys an awful lot from the coolie, Mr. Shi. He’ll die for an English shilling.”
“Yes, of course he will,” Zilin agreed. “So the captains will find makeshift crews, and taking them on board, they will also take a number of young revolutionaries whose zeal for destruction is frightening in its single-mindedness. In short, there will be fires on board. The dredgers will be lost or surely have to shut down.”
“Pardon me for saying so, Mr. Shi, but the scheme’s not worth its weight in nuisance value. Sure, the tai pan’ll lose money and time.” He shrugged his beefy shoulders. “But so what? They’ll get the ships back in working order sooner or later.”
“Unless it’s sooner—so soon that they will have no chance to do it—the dredging concession rights will revert to the harbormaster. You see, there is a time limit in the contract. It was put there by mutual agreement between Mattias and King and the city when the contract was originally awarded. The job must be done within six days’ time or too much business is lost.
“Once the rights return to my office, the harbormaster will call for sealed bids among the tai pan who are interested. With my assistance, Sawyer and Sons cannot fail to receive the concession. Since the job must be finished immediately, money will be forthcoming within a fortnight of completion.”
The tai pan stared at Zilin as if he had suddenly grown wings. “Well, I’ll be goddamned if you haven’t thought of everything!” He sat down slowly, lost in thought.
When he judged that the American had had sufficient time, he said, “There is one additional provision.”
“I knew it,” the American said. “Now comes the kicker.”
“Nothing of the sort,” Zilin said. “I wish only that you take my middle brother into the firm. You may interview him and so determine which position and at which level you wish to start him. Thereafter, he may move up in the firm solely on his own merit. Within two years, however, if he should prove satisfactory to you, I wish him to be transferred to your offices in Hong Kong.”
“I can live with that,” Sawyer said. “But look, if he slacks off or can’t learn the trade or is caught with his hand in the till or passing company information to a competitor, he’s out on his ear. That’s my decision, as tai pan of Sawyer and Sons.”
Zilin smiled. “I leave his fate in your capable hands, Mr. Sawyer.” He stood up. “A last stipulation of our deal is that the firm’s name shall not be altered in any way. We shall be silent partners at Sawyer and Sons.”
Now the American could not keep the smile off his face. “Hell, let’s go out and get the best meal money can buy, eh, Mr. Shi?” He knew Shi would like that, since that was how the Chinese sealed a successful business deal between themselves. He laughed, and this time it did not seem nearly so loud and coarse to Zilin. “You just may turn out to be the best business partner a man could have.”
Zilin looked up from his work at the harbormaster’s office as he heard a clatter at the front door. Voices were raised. Seeing Mai, he put down his quill. Over the shouts of others, she ran to him. She was out of breath, as if she had been running a long distance.
“Husband,” she gasped, “it is disaster! A total disaster. We are all undone!”
He held her trembling body. “Mai, what has happened?” Everyone in the office was gaping at them.
“Ling Xichu was found murdered late last night. This morning, the authorities arrested Hu Hanmin’s first cousin. He is being accused of political murder.”
“What of Hanmin?”
“You know him as well as I. He just spoke before the central committee. I felt certain that this week they were going to elect him president. Now he has withdrawn his name from nomination.”
There was a breathless silence. “And?”
Mai was weeping. “The worst has happened. Chiang at last spoke up. He denounced all political murders. He spoke out for a strong, united leadership. No one, not even Hu, raised his voice against him. The committee is voting this evening. They want a president and, oh, husband, I am sure it will be Chiang!”
Of course, Mai was quite correct. The central committee of the Guomindang elevated the general, and thereafter, the Canton National Government came under his control.
As had been his intention all along, he consolidated power around himself, and when he judged it sufficient, he announced in June of 1926 the Northern Expedition, Both Mai and Hu tried to oppose him, rationally preaching caution, but the forward momentum that Chiang’s militarism had injected into the movement was too infectious. Thus the long march toward what many hoped was freedom for the Chinese people was begun.
During that year and the beginning of the next, Chiang’s Nationalist army rolled through the central provinces, picking up support as it went. By the beginning of 1927 it had taken an additional three provinces in the east.
All the while, Mai worked with Hu and the Communist Party in trying to ensure that Zhongshan’s ideals would not be lost in the growing imperialism of the general’s victorious army.
Zilin, on the other hand, had steeped himself in his growing assets. In view of the increasing unrest of the country, he prevailed upon his brothers to sell all their land holdings, and though their profits were perhaps not as large as if they had waited longer to divest themselves of these assets, still he felt more secure with their money elsewhere.
That “elsewhere” was an increasingly larger share of Sawyer & Sons. With the Shi brothers’ help, the Sino-American company had prospered to the point where it now outshone all but two of the firms held by the British tai pan.
Zilin’s brother inside the company rose even more quickly than Zilin had anticipated. Sawyer, who Zilin had learned was an excellent judge of character, soon insisted that the young man work directly with him. And when Zilin reminded him of his promise to send the man to Hong Kong, the American was reluctant to do so.
“He’s invaluable to me here, Mr. Shi,” he said.
“Think, then,” Zilin said, “how much more valuable he will be, heading up the Hong Kong offices.”
In the spring of 1927, Chiang returned to Shanghai in triumph. Yet he came back to find that the Guomindang had a new president, elected in his absence. Still, Chiang’s power had increased to such an extent that his return sundered the Guomindang into two separate factions.
Mai was distraught to see the flower of Zhongshan’s dream thus rent, and she did all in her power to bring the two warring sides together. To no avail. Bad blood had been spilled, and there was no way to reverse the tide that was pulling the revolution in two.
Just after the Chinese new year, Zilin awoke in the middle of the night. He had been dreaming, but, as was sometimes the case, he did not remember of what. He was in a sweat. He turned to Mai for comfort, but she was not there.
He got out of bed and, pulling on a robe, went through the rooms. He found her at the front door. Two soldiers and an officer in the Nationalist army were with her.
“What is this?”
“This is nothing to concern you,” the officer said imperiously. “General Chiang wishes to speak with Mrs. Shi.”
“She is my wife,” Zilin said, responding to the look in Mai’s eyes. “Everything that concerns her concerns me.”
“This is the business of the central committee of the Guomindang.” The officer spoke as if by rote. “In the name of the general I enjoin you from interfering.” He turned on his heel. “Now, Mrs. Shi, you will come with me.”
“I wish to speak with my wife before she—”
But the soldiers already had hold of her, and she was out of the apartment.
“Zilin.” He heard Mai’s voice. “My husband.”
“Wait!” he cried. But the officer leveled a pistol at his chest.
“Be good enough to return to sleep, Mr. Shi,” he commanded. “Your wife will be returned home when the general is quite done with her. She is safe in our hands.” He closed the door behind him.
In a moment the paralysis wore off and Zilin rushed to the window. Out in the street he could see the soldiers hustling Mai into the darkness. Just before he, too, slipped from sight, the officer glanced upward. His white teeth gleamed in the streetlight. He lofted the barrel of his pistol as if in salute or warning. Then he was gone.
Zilin was in a fever. His heart was constricted as he rushed into the other room to dress hurriedly. His mind was in such a whirl that it was not until he returned to the front room that he heard the pounding on the door. Thinking that it had all been a mistake, after all, and the officer was returning Mai, he leapt at the door and threw it open.
Hu Hanmin stood there. His face was as white as rice paper. “I have just come from the Party headquarters. We have Chiang’s army at our front door. They are making arrests and gunning people down as they flee. Executions, they are calling them. Chiang’s broken with the Party. He’s taken the Guomindang on its own. Mai’s worst fears have come to pass.” He glanced. “Where is she, Zilin? I fear she’s in danger.”
“Buddha!” Zilin cried. “The army’s taken her!” He grabbed his friend. “Come on, Hanmin, we must stop them before she gets to Chiang!”
They clattered down the steps and ran out into the street. A voice from the shadows halted them in mid-stride.
“Going somewhere, gentlemen?”
Zilin recognized that voice even before he saw the figure of the officer emerge from the shadows of the street. His pistol was pointed at a spot just between the two men.
“In this as well, General Chiang was correct. He felt certain that, given time, Hu Hanmin would show his face here.” He smiled. “And now he has.” He gave a barking command, and his men appeared. They held Mai between them.
“Let her go,” Zilin said. He took a step toward them, but the officer pointed his gun and he stopped.
“Let her go,” Hu echoed. “Let her go, and I will go with you willingly.”
“Those are not my orders,” the officer said, obviously enjoying his position of strength. He smiled. “Besides, I don’t care if you come willingly or otherwise.” He redirected his voice. “Hold her up!”
His men obeyed, tightening their grip on Mai’s wrists. They stood apart from her, and abruptly, Zilin knew that the officer had never had any intention of bringing her to Chiang.
“No!” he cried, springing forward even as the officer discharged his weapon.
Mai’s eyes were upon him, and there was no fear in them as the bullet pierced her heart. Zilin thought she sighed.
“No!” he cried again, breaking into a stumbling run. The officer made no attempt to stop him; he was enjoying Zilin’s grief too much.
Thus he did not see Zilin change direction at the last instant and veer toward him. In his rage, Zilin grabbed the pistol out of the officer’s hand and pulled the trigger point-blank.
The explosion echoed in his ears and he felt the heavy recoil. Then he was staring at what was left of the officer’s face, a raw red pulp. Muscles jumped in useless reflex as the corpse tumbled to the ground.
With the unconscious precision of the cornered animal, Zilin turned and squeezed the trigger twice more as the soldiers let slip their dead charge to come to the aid of their commander. After they fell too, Zilin emptied the weapon into them.
Then he went to where Mai lay in the dust and knelt beside her. Her eyes were closed and there was very little blood.
If he closed his mind, he could pretend that she was merely asleep.
Book Two
WU-WEI
[to refrain from contention]
Hong Kong/Crimea/Beijing/Tsurugi/Tokyo/Washington
SUMMER, PRESENT
Andrew Sawyer awoke with the dream still fresh in his mind. He sat up in bed, stared at himself blankly in the large, marbled mirror on the opposite wall. He saw a long face, his father’s cornflower-blue eyes. The meticulously clipped mustache was as snow white as was the thinning crop of hair on his head.
Vaguely, he ran a liver-spotted hand over his face. When, he wondered, had his hair receded so much? Had it been at the same time his mustache had turned from the dirty blond it had been all his adult life? Where had the years gone?
He rolled over the satin sheets, fumbling for the china carafe of water on the night table. He poured himself a glass and drank thirstily. I must call Peter Ng right away, he thought, as he gulped down the liquid. Peter surely must know a good Sam Ku.
Sawyer put the glass aside. As he did so, his gaze fell upon the back of his hand. How fragile the skin appeared, how marked by time. How deeply the visible veins pulsed, how close to the surface.
He was not a man normally given to thoughts of mortality. As tai pan of Sawyer & Sons for more than forty years, he had always been concerned with the running of the family business. Not even the death of his first wife, Mary, in the ‘48 typhoon had stopped him for long.
Today, at seventy, he would have had no thoughts about the passage of time, had it not been for the dream. And the death of Miki.
