She had always had a vision of the moment when she would place the little black pouch in his hands. Maybe she would do it on the ship, or maybe when they docked in the Beautiful Country. She loved the scene no matter where she set it, and she lived it again and again like a moving picture, or a favorite dream. It was her portal, and she followed it now to the Xi’an train station and the steaming, belching Number Twenty-one to Shanghai.
Morioka was irritated by the intrusion of his secretary, who clicked his heels and bowed abjectly. “So sorry, Admiral. We pleaded with him to meet with an assistant, but he insists on seeing you. It is the German, Gestapo Colonel Meisinger. He is here, in the outer office.”
“What! Here in Shanghai?” It was Monday morning and he was only halfway through the stack of cables from Tokyo, some of which mentioned this Josef Meisinger wanting to discuss the Jews here in Shanghai. But to arrive here, uninvited…
Now he was trapped. “Show him to the downstairs east parlor,” he said tightly, “and interrupt us after five minutes.”
He pushed back from his desk and saw the calendar-the first of December, 1941. He took a deep breath, steadying himself by imagining the opening bars of the Mozart violin sonata as he had heard it in the lobby of Le Cercle Sportif a few days before. He had to appear normal, smooth, no more agitated than any Admiral in charge of naval operations at the mouth of the Yangtze ought to be. Meisinger must suspect nothing.
Morioka strode into the unfurnished east parlor. If Meisinger found it uncomfortable to stand in the frigid, unheated room, he did not let on. He was blond and solidly built, almost heavy; his features were even and would have been handsome, except for his dissolute mouth.
“Admiral,” said the Colonel jovially, as if they were equals.
Morioka hardened. But his voice was neutral as he spoke in simple English instead of calling a German interpreter, which would raise the risk of whatever they said being repeated. “What I can do for you?”
“I have come on a private mission, my government to yours.”
“Be brief.”
Meisinger blinked, surprised, Morioka’s coolness finally penetrating his blond wall of self-assurance. “It concerns our Jews,” Meisinger said. “Germany’s Jews. The ones in Shanghai.”
“Your Jews? Germany’s Jews?”
“You have twenty-five thousand of them here.”
“They are stateless people. You took away their German citizenship, is it not?”
“We did. But they are still our enemies, and we have a new plan for them now. It won’t be finalized until our Conference at Wannsee next month, but we are ready to build camps. We’ll take care of all the Jews in Europe. We need your help with only one little group-the ones you have here.”
Meisinger leaned forward, and his milky European smell wafted over the Admiral. Batakusai, Morioka thought with distaste, stinks of butter. “What is it you want?”
“For you to kill them,” Meisinger said.
Morioka stared. “All those people?”
The overweight blond man returned his gaze insolently. “Not difficult. They all go to their temples on Rosh Hashanah, and that is when you gather them up. Load them into boats without food and water and send them out to sea, or set up a camp on an island downriver and let them starve.”
Morioka stopped trying to conceal his revulsion. “Why?”
“Because they must be eliminated,” said Meisinger calmly. “So we cannot leave your twenty-five thousand here.” With his words came another gust of sour breath. “You understand.”
Morioka’s eyes shot to the door. He had seven thousand new troops arriving on warships in the next twenty-four hours alone; teams of assistants awaited him.
Why should he kill them when he had a war to fight?
“So you will give me your decision?” said Meisinger.
“In time,” Morioka said, though he had made his decision already, days before, listening to Mozart. You will not harm my Jews. If you want them, you will have to take Shanghai from me to get them.
He had less than a week left until the attack.
Song made it to Shanghai on Saturday the sixth. The dark-skinned Ceylonese gem trader she visited in a small side street off the Bund did not even blink at the mismatch between her bedraggled rural clothes and the fantastic value of the single gem she presented, used as he was to the eccentric habits of the rich. A specialist in anonymous cash transactions, he counted out her money with studied disinterest.
She melted back into the crowd. No one looked twice at her in her plain padded jacket, another war-battered refugee fleeing destruction and starvation in the countryside, and this served her well until she tried to ask the doorman at the Palace Hotel where Greene and Epstein were playing, and he barked her right off the steps. The doorman at the Cathay across the street was kind enough to tell her they would be at the Astor House the next day.
There, the British doorman took one look at her on Sunday afternoon and held up his hand, barring her from entry, but he stepped back quickly enough when she slipped a roll of bills into his hand. She could hear them, playing on the other side of the lobby, and just as it had been since the very first time, she felt everything about her lift at his sound, ordered yet unexpected, opening a higher vista of what life could be, if she had the will to see it and hear it.
And then the song stopped, abruptly-they had seen her. They were staring, and so was everyone else in the lobby.
Thomas was across the floor to her in an instant, David behind. “Are you all right?” he said, touching her filthy face, as if two years of separation were gone in an instant.
She covered his hand with hers. “I am well. It is safer to travel like this.” She looked around the columned lobby, filled with expensively dressed white people. All of you have no idea what is about to happen. “Let’s go someplace to talk.”
The three of them stepped into a small side room where David and Thomas left their hats and overcoats. “Japan is preparing a major assault on Shanghai.”
David and Thomas exchanged glances. “We’ve seen the soldiers,” said Thomas. “And also, I’ve heard things.” He thought of what Anya had told him.
“There are many more soldiers than you can see,” she said. “At least five thousand in a ring around the city, waiting to pounce. I came down here because the opinion of our leaders is that they are preparing to attack the International Settlement. The Gudao. Any day.”
Thomas and David were silent.
“That means British and Americans,” she said. “You cannot be taken prisoner by the Japanese. Do you understand? You must leave. Now.”
“What about David and his family? All the Jews?”
“This attack is not against them. They are already under the control of Japan, and Japan leaves them alone, as they do the French. The only armed forces here are the British and American soldiers protecting the Gudao. If the Imperial Army is sending ten thousand men, it is for them.” She paused. “You must go.”
“I can’t,” Thomas said. “Don’t have the money.”
“But I do. A boat sails at nine thirty tonight for San Francisco. I’ll get the tickets.”
“Stop joking. How could you have enough to buy them?”
“I do,” she said stubbornly. “And I will. You too, if you want,” she turned to David. “And your family. Though I believe you are safe.”
“You are kind, but”-he raised his hands, still holding his violin-“if we sail to the United States, they will send us back to Germany. No, we stay here.” He turned to Thomas, his arms open, and they held each other for a long, speechless minute. “Thank you,” said Thomas, and David refused to hear it, just as Thomas had refused to hear it from Lin Ming.