Magic pulsed from the orchestra in looping, sinuous waves as dancers pressed together in the dark, and she wondered why she kept coming back to places like this. To torture herself? She would be Du’s for another ten years. She turned her back on the music and hurried out into the street.
At the café, she gave her name as Mrs. Gao, Gao Taitai, according to her instructions. She was always Taitai something or other, since women of her age were almost never unmarried. They seated her in a private room, where she ordered a pot of tea and two cups. When the tea had gone cool, she poured herself a cup and drank it, and after that, another. It was a full half hour past the allotted time when she finally heard footsteps in the corridor and the door rattled for a fraction of a second in its frame before opening.
The irritation she had been nursing died inside her as she looked into the face of Chen Xing. She had met him at the Vienna Garden during her early exposure to Communism; he was the one who had told her about Miss Zhang, the lovely and pregnant dance hostess who had been planted like a water lily, keening and begging Song with her eyes to save her life. Did he know what had happened to the girl?
Since that time she had seen Chen Xing’s name in the press, and knew that he held various civic posts and served as director of some of Shanghai’s biggest banks. He was also a producer of plays, a leader of the League of Left-Wing Theater People, and the host of a radical salon. He was famous for his scandalous affairs with women. But though he was left-leaning, no one knew he was a Party member.
She could see by the flutter in his eyes that he was just as surprised to see her. No doubt he had been told only that he was meeting a member who had come up with not just information but also a diamond. He certainly had not expected it to be someone he knew, and above all not her, someone connected to Du. She caught the note of admiration in his appraisal, and saw him assume she had stolen the diamond from her master. Fool. No one steals from Du.
“Gao Taitai.” His smile was effortlessly smooth and vacant. “So nice to see you.”
She answered politely, “How is the family?”
Steps sounded outside the door. “Ah,” he said, “here is Miss Wu now.” And a girl came in, a child less than eighteen, cheeks firm and round like a honey peach. Who was she? His daughter? But a third person had never attended one of these meetings before.
In the next instant Song saw she was not his daughter, for she sat on his lap and curved her body against him, despite the fact that he was twenty-five years her senior. “Pleased to meet you,” Song said.
“Gao Taitai,” the girl replied, and went right back to simpering in Chen Xing’s ear.
He whispered back to her and fondled her through her clothes as if Song were not even there. She found it shocking. He was not even trying to attend to the business they had come to conduct.
Then abruptly, he pushed the girl off his lap. “Be a good child and go get an extra teacup and a basket of soup dumplings. No, two baskets. Wait for them and bring them back. You have raised my appetite.” And he squeezed the firm round of her behind as she turned away.
Song endured bolts of humiliation as she forced herself to review how much time and care she had expended in dressing before she left the house today. Nervous as a bed of pins, she had tried on a dozen dresses, eventually settling on a plain qipao of gray cotton which made her look left-wing and serious, but still pretty. She wore her hair as usual, sweetly knotted with flowers at the nape, because to have left Rue Wagner any other way would have been to invite notice. In the end the look suited her, and when she walked out the gravel driveway and through the iron gates, she knew she was beautiful, ready for anything. And now she had to stare painfully at Chen Xing nuzzling this child-bauble. Serene. Face of glass. She watched Miss Wu walk to the door with the excessive, untrained switching of a young girl.
By the time the door clicked shut, Song was in control again. “Lovely,” she said neutrally, hoping that now they could talk.
But what happened went beyond her expectations: he changed completely. The sophisticated ennui drained from his face. His spine lifted, his eyes clicked to a different and infinitely more focused shade of black. In one turn of the head she saw the theatrical producer, the salon host, the man of ideas. “She is spoiled and simple,” he said dismissively. His voice had changed too, become level and grainy; gone was the oil-slick politeness she had heard before. “Easy to deceive. I always bring someone who is pretty and wooden-headed, so they can see the places I go and the things I do as I want them to. Forgive the intrusion. It is actually safer this way, and now we have a few minutes alone.”
She stared. Which was the real Chen Xing, the rich, bored man of the theater, or this concentrated, severe figure who now sat across from her? “Any news from the north?” she said. By this she meant the advance of the Japanese, but also Party headquarters, where all major decisions were made. For the past two years, the top leaders had been operating out of caves in Yan’an. The brain trust was there, the future. One day, when she was free, she too would go there.
He leaned closer. “I do have news. Peking is silent as a tomb, everyone just waiting. Japanese troops are massed outside the city. They have taken Tianjin, and Tanggu, the port that serves both those cities.”
“And will our troops protect Peking?”
“No. Chiang has ordered a withdrawal.” It was like a blow to her chest. So Peking would be handed over to Japan without a fight.
“We must comply,” Chen said sadly. “We are a united front with the Nationalists now-and also, Chiang is right. We could never hold them off.”
The injustice of it flamed up, burning her, parching her. “Will they give Shanghai to Japan the same way?”
“No! Here we will kill them one by one, starting with that foul swine Morioka. I heard he showed up at the Royal again, to see that piano player.”
“Yes, I have details.” Though the story terrified her, she kept her voice even as she repeated what she had heard from Lin Ming. “He gave the American a new record, with a saxophone player called Lester Young. He gets them by diplomatic pouch. The American loves the song; I am told he listens to it over and over, and his own saxophone players, two skinny brothers, a couple of drainpipes, they listen to it even more.”
Chen Xing sat back in his chair, momentarily silenced. “A song,” he said, and paused again. “You know, Gao Taitai, you have learned more than the West-ocean language; you understand how they think.”
She was taken aback. “I do my best to serve the cause.”
“I know. You do a good job. Your skills are high. You have been noticed.” She felt her insides chill, for he meant the diamond, as well as her English.
“I will serve in any way. Never speak English again if they want.”
He raised a hand. “Just be careful. Now, the next thing we want you to do is support Du’s plan to kill Morioka. Do anything you can to help it work.”