“Yes, in some cases. By the tone of voice.”
Henry thought for a moment. “Sometimes that says it all,” he said, and walked out of the room.
There were plenty of questions I wasn’t supposed to ask him, so he didn’t ask me any either. He would read a book about the American Civil War and then talk to me about it, treating me as an expert on that conflict but never ask me about the South I knew. I would mention a Chinese poet and he would remind me that his education did not extend to literature – except mystery stories, if they count. Being self-invented, he admired their contrivance. Someone had told him that the “fair-play” detective story exists only in English. He regarded that as emblematic of everything he liked about the British: a puzzle that can be solved, rules that can be relied upon.
I liked to believe one puzzle he had needed to solve was me. I told myself, from time to time, that he’d gone away to test me, that he saw in my indolence a talent for command – a talent I was determined to ignore and that he needed to summon. But my gut told me his disappearance had nothing to do with me. If I was a puzzle, I would have to solve it myself.
23
There was a lawyer in my office. Simon had sent him. He radiated authority, and looked very fit, although he was probably twice my age.
“We have lawyers already,” I told him.
“Philip Cooper,” he said, as if that were an answer. “Shall we go for a walk?”
We went up the hill to Hollywood Road, where the antique shops are. “Simon said you had some visitors the other night, at your house.”
“The housekeeper sent them away.”
“How?”
“You would have to know her.”
“I’d like to. But what did they say? What was the exact nature of their threats?”
“They just want me to give up. They say it would be in my interest. They mentioned my sons – one of whom is named Philip, by the way. He is good at catching geckos. The other one is Tommy. He is more artistic…”
“Pardon me, Mr. Lee, but you do not seem sufficiently alarmed.”
“If I told you I was afraid, if I told you I had lost my appetite, if I told you I am having nightmares, could you do anything about it?”
“About being afraid, whiskey helps. About the nightmares, no.”
“You know something about that.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose that’s reassuring. And it is kind of you to come all this way – kind of Simon to send you, or ask you, or whatever.”
“I am interested in your situation, Mr. Lee. I would like to be helpful.”
“O.K. Right. I did not speak to the ‘visitors,’ as you call them, but as Song described them, I would guess they were simply thugs. I do not think they were…intelligence people.” I told him about the dead cats, and also about Zhang Hai Ming, for what that was worth.
“Oh, look,” he said, interrupting my account and pulling me into a shop. “Look back out the window…now,” he said.
“She is an intelligence person,” I said.
“I was speaking of the man across the street. Did you see him?”
“No.”
“Well, you’ll probably get another chance, unfortunately. Who was the girl?”
“She calls herself ‘Pansy.’”
“She must have been following you too, but overran us when we turned into this shop.”
I wondered how much I should be telling him. “Has Simon introduced you to Serena?” I asked.
Philip Cooper turned away from the window and looked directly at me. “He has,” he said. “And she says ‘hello.’”
I hesitated. We were standing in a forest of highly polished wooden chests and cupboards. An obsequious owner lurked on the other side of the shop.
“Why don’t you take me to lunch?” he said.
We hailed one of Hong Kong’s ubiquitous red and white taxis.
“What kind of lawyer are you, by the way – in case I have to introduce you?”
He told me the name of the firm, which I did recognize. “I know far too much about project finance and a useful amount about other things.”
“Developing countries?”
“Exactly.”
So when we got to the Hong Kong Club, and had found a table, I told him about the loans against villas that went into default, and the stream of servants at Wong Castle, all of which he seemed to know already.
“There was one I think you called ‘the intelligent waiter’,” said Philip Cooper. The memory of the man’s eyes came back to me. “He didn’t make it…as I believe you know. He was a deputy governor. Hard for someone like that not to be recognized.” I thought about Amanda complaining when she found him reading the newspapers. He had probably been looking for word of his own disappearance. “His province is something of a battlefield,” he went on. “Or so I am told. I’ve never done business in China. The ‘good guys’, who you and I would probably describe as Party zealots, are under a lot of pressure from the ‘bad guys’, who we would probably call Party hacks. The amount of smuggling is hard to imagine. In Fujian there is even more, being opposite Taiwan. Some of the operations are probably run out of Taiwan, in fact. The money being made is astonishing. Villas in Europe are small change. The political stakes are also very high. The intelligent waiter almost delivered the party secretary of the province to the anti-corruption people. Then he had to bolt.”
“The bad guys got him?”
“His executioners seem to have been local, which is not to say their employers were not from somewhere else. There was someone on the train, who provided a description…as I think you also know.”
“Allegiance?” Philip Cooper was making it very clear that Serena had briefed him on everything she had told me. I wondered if she had told him about the spanking lessons or the plunge pool in Bali.
Philip Cooper presumably had no time for adolescent fantasies. With my sons under threat, I shouldn’t either. That was why I had sent Julia back to New York, or so I liked to tell myself. I needed to stay focused.
“Let’s just say it was someone who talks to us,” he said.
“Too complicated for me,” I said.
“You live here, Mr. Lee. Isn’t Hong Kong the world capital of complicated?”
“Whistle-blowers for ammunition,” I said, but if Philip Cooper understood he didn’t show it. I supposed that proved nothing. He looked like he was a virtuoso at not responding. I had a sudden vision of him sitting in Simon’s office that didn’t look like an office – two alpha males in the same cage. Since they hadn’t killed each other they were presumably brothers.
As the dining room filled up, I pointed out the local chairman of the Hongkong Bank. Also an elderly shipping tycoon, two property billionaires, the Chief Justice, and of course Mercury. Cedric Fung nodded to me, but didn’t come over. Mercury did. I introduced Philip Cooper as “a friend from America.”
Mercury smiled and nodded like a marionette, and then made a serious face. “You are doing this all wrong, Wendy,” he said.
“No business in the Club, Mercury,” I scolded him.
When we went outside again, there was a Mercedes with a driver. “Shall we go up to the Peak?” said Philip.
It occurred to me that he hadn’t told me how to deal with my “visitors.”
“Right,” he said as soon as we were seated in the car. “You will be getting two new servants – by way of Notre Dame and Dartmouth, I am told.”
“To assist the Gurkhas?” I said.
“They will understand each other,” said Philip Cooper.
I thought about our proud but aging Nepalese who ten years earlier had been part of a team that did the 100-kilometre “Trailwalker” in under fifteen hours – and now drove a golf cart up and down the path to May Road to collect the groceries. Henry had hired them years ago when the regiment based in Hong Kong was disbanded
“And about that lane you have to use to get to the front door of the bank…”
“Old-s
tyle Hong Kong,” I said in pidgin. “Shabby entrance indicate man who own bank very tight.”
“Is there another way in?”
“Not really.”
“Well, keep your eyes open. You are big enough to thwart an attack if you are prepared.”
“Dead bodies every few days,” I said. It was a stupid remark, but Philip Cooper had done little to reduce my stress level.
He turned in the seat and looked at me, I assumed as a rebuke. Whatever military chromosomes had found their microscopic way to me came to attention. I shut up and listened. What he said next, however, I wasn’t prepared for.
“I didn’t come out here to tell you to be careful crossing streets, though I would recommend it. I was amused to meet Mr. Chao Mu Bai, whom you handled very well, by the way, but he is hardly vaux le voyage, as Michelin puts it. I do not like to get on airplanes anymore. I am only here for one reason, which I would have gotten to earlier. I needed to deal with the physical threat your housekeeper handled with such determination.”
“She was actually frightened,” I interjected. “She grew up on the mainland. She’s just impossibly brave.”
Philip Cooper said nothing. He pays attention the way Sam Canadian does, I said to myself.
“Excuse me. I owed it to Song to say that. She is exceptional. So why are you here?”
“I knew your father.”
“Is this all some sort of set-up?” The words came out before I thought about them. “First my father-in-law disappears. Then Sam the wise dwarf shows up, bringing a Russian Englishman in high heels and a girl with the smile of a goddess. Then my wife goes up in smoke. So who are you – the sphinx with the riddles?”
“Life will fuck with you sometimes,” he said. “And your heart can be your enemy, by the way.” We did another hairpin turn up the Peak Road in silence. So he was an expert at not responding.
“Your father and I were both in Sog,” he said. “‘Studies and Observation Group’ is what the initials stood for. Typical spook name. Trips into Laos – a questionable concept. We worked with Montagnards and mercenaries. Your dad got caught. We were all sorry. He was a good troop – very good – and very brave as a prisoner of war. Not everything has been declassified.”
“Simon sent you here to tell me that? And by the way, how does this work, you being an American and Simon a British… person?”
“Persons like Simon maintain many friendships. Our two countries have a common interest in China’s stability. Sometimes we can help each other with resources. Simon knows more about the situation to the north of here than I do, but there are things I am in a better position to tell you.”
“What?”
“What do you think?”
Again I answered without knowing what words would come out of my mouth: “I should be so brave?”
“That would be helpful.”
“I thought I was managing pretty well, nightmares not withstanding.”
“It will get worse before it gets better.”
I looked across the harbor at the hills that separate Kowloon from the New Territories and wondered about Henry. I knew the hills were on the Hong Kong side of the border, but they represented “real” China to me – the distant white apartment buildings marching up them like 1920s socialists, dreaming of a perfect future.
“So my father was tortured?” I said.
Sam had implied that, but Philip Cooper made it all real.
“Oh yes. Very diligent, the Vietnamese.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” I said.
“It is important to be realistic. Done correctly, it can even be helpful. It took me about ten years to come to terms with what happened there, so I’m not bragging.”
I looked away because I was having a little temporary difficulty with my emotions – about my newly brave father, I think. There had always been an unspoken suggestion that he was in some way a disappointment.
“Do you know why the Viet Cong gave your father special treatment?”
“No.”
Philip Cooper took a deep breath. “Simon thought that might be the case. Your father was Eurasian – half Chinese. The Vietnamese dislike the Chinese. They even define themselves as “not Chinese,” despite the fact that they eat with chopsticks and used to write with Chinese characters.”
“So I’m a quarter Chinese,” I said.
“Yes. You and Mercury Chao might even be related.”
“Fuck that.”
Philip Cooper smiled a wintry smile. “I can tell you the story if you want. I was allowed to look at the file.”
“O.K.”
I do not any longer remember Philip Cooper’s words. At the time, I was struggling to remember clues I should have picked up as a boy, and imagining what Charleston grandfather, who must have been sworn to silence, would have wanted to say. And since then, I have rehearsed the facts so often it has become a story I tell myself. It goes like this.
Boston grandmother was married to a foreign service officer – a man six or seven years older than she but very much of the same upper-class background. They were posted to Shanghai in 1938, soon after the wedding. It was not easy duty. The Japanese controlled the “Chinese” part of the city, as they did increasing amounts of the country. The foreign community, diplomats and scoundrels, was crowded into the French Settlement and the International Settlement, which was mostly run by the British. When the Nazis defeated France in 1940, the French Settlement became Vichy and officially neutral, with everything that implies. And of course, America was neutral too. The 93rd Marine Regiment remained in Shanghai, amazingly enough, until shortly before Pearl Harbor.
Even without a war in Europe, Shanghai was a desperate place. It was estimated in 1935 that every thirteenth woman in the city was a prostitute. By 1941, the carts from the cemetery were collecting dozens of corpses from the streets every morning. The total for that year was 29,000, and two thirds of them were children. Their parents simply left them outside when they died – or even sooner, when it was clear they couldn’t be saved.
In this unreal world, Boston grandmother, who you will remember celebrated her nineteenth birthday after she arrived in Shanghai, formed a liaison with a “Chinese gentleman.” That was the phrase she used, when I finally got her to talk about it. Whether it was incompatibility with her overworked husband, or anxiety, or honest passion that drove her to it I do not know. In any event, she became pregnant.
This would not have been an insurmountable problem in the Shanghai of that day, but she delayed a little to be sure she needed an abortion, which was a dangerous procedure in a world without antibiotics, and suddenly Pearl Harbor had been attacked, and the American diplomatic staff and families had been confined to the Metropole Hotel. She produced my father in June of 1942. Her husband was mortified. According to Philip Cooper, my father was distinctly Eurasian.
A month later the family got aboard the S.S. Conte Verde, which had been marooned in Shanghai since Italy joined the Axis in 1940, and sailed to Mozambique, which was a Portuguese colony and therefore neutral, to be exchanged for Japanese diplomats. Eventually they got back to America, where my Boston grandfather – we never did have a name for him, actually – my grandmother’s husband obtained a commission in the Navy and succeeded in being killed while serving on a destroyer in the Pacific.
Boston grandmother, meanwhile, moved into what was then her parents’ house in Louisburg Square. She steadfastly referred to my father as “my son.” Everyone politely assumed she’d adopted him in the chaos of Shanghai and was “wonderful.” And he was sent to all the right schools, and made the right friends – until it was his turn to marry too young and go back to Asia to be destroyed.
“No pictures of your father while you were growing up?” I do remember Philip Cooper asking that, as the car made the final ascent up Mount Austin Road, and deposited us in the parking lot at the top of the Peak, beside the ice cream vendor and what I have always thought of as a bandstand.
“Just some medals
.”
“I suppose racial mixing wasn’t something to advertise in Charleston, South Carolina.”
“But everyone would have known,” I said. “Except me.”
“I suppose your mother found your father exotic,” said Philip Cooper. “He graduated from Harvard – and she from Wellesley – in 1964, the year of ‘Mississippi Summer,’ remember?”
“I wasn’t alive then.”
“Read about it some time: Ivy League white kids going south to get sharecroppers registered to vote. Lot of courage. Lot of naïveté. That was the atmosphere in which your mother fell in love with your father.”
“Do you think they were in love?” It was a throwaway line. I’d never thought about the question before.
Philip Cooper didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be examining memories. “To judge by their actions,” he said, “the two or three times I saw them together, I would say they were.”
“Meanwhile my father was joining the Army. I suppose he was trying to be a complete American.”
“That was certainly true,” said Philip Cooper. “I think it is fair to say he was more sincere than the average lieutenant. We were all gung ho or we wouldn’t have been Special Forces, of course, but for example, I went airborne for the money. Or at least I’ve always said I did.”
“‘Gung ho’? That’s Chinese. I’d never thought about the phrase before.”
“I am told that it means ‘work together,’” said Philip Cooper, “and that it was contributed to the American language by the Marines who served in Shanghai.”
“How bizarre.”
“No stranger than Gurkhas in Hong Kong,” said Philip Cooper. “Empire will do that.”
“So what will people say of the American Empire three hundred years from now?”
“Same things we say about the British – or the Romans for that matter – that we were violent and declamatory, with a self-confidence that for a while transformed the world.”
“And the Chinese?”
“Not my field,” said Philip Cooper. “Wheels within wheels. Much older civilization. More cautious.”
“Scarcity will do that,” I said.
The Daughters of Henry Wong Page 19
