Tom Bradby - The Master Of Rain

“Where will you go, Chen?”

“I have friends.”

“In the city or elsewhere?”

“In all places.”

Field suddenly understood. “You’re a communist…”

“Whisper it quietly.” Chen smiled.

Field shook his head.

“One day, you may come back to China, Richard. Then you will find no Lu Huangs, no Macleods, no taipans, and foreigners will be welcomed as honored guests.”

Field stared at him. “Who else? There are many-in the force, I mean.”

“They will have their time.” Chen nodded. “The girl waits for you.”

“There are three men at the gate. They followed me from the consulate.”

“Of course.”

“Will you go now?”

“When it is time.”

Field hesitated. “Will Lu keep his word?”

Chen shook his head solemnly. “I do not know.”

Field offered his hand, but Chen waved it away to indicate that it was not the end. Field held his stare until he rounded the corner and was climbing the last few steps to her room.

Natasha was asleep on the bed, in her dressing gown, her head resting on her arm. She was curled up, her hair spilling across the white sheet.

She awoke and pushed herself upright, her eyes bleary. “Richard?”

He sat down beside her.

“You must leave.” Her voice was sleepy. “They will come for me now.”

“It will be all right, Natasha.”

“No, you must-”

“Natasha.” He took hold of her arms fiercely. “It will work. Trust me.”

She pushed herself onto her knees and stared at the empty bed between them. “Alexei is asleep in the next room. I…” She fell toward him, her arms around his neck.

When she released him, she took his face gently between her hands, her mouth close to his. “You have risked everything for me,” she said.

“I have reached an agreement,” he said. “I must leave today, now, but you and Alexei will follow in two weeks, and we will meet in Venice.” He lifted her chin. “Together in Venice, the two-three-of us.”

Hope flared briefly in her eyes, then she lowered her head.

“You’re free, Natasha. Both of you are free.”

“I cannot come to the wharf.”

“I understand.”

She looked at him, tears in her eyes. He moved toward her, but she raised her hand. “You must go.”

Field stood and she came to him, her arms around him, her tears wet on his face. “My love,” he said as he caressed the back of her head.

And then she released him again and turned away, so as not to look at his face. “Good-bye, Richard,” she said with a finality that suggested she was certain she would never see him again.

He waited for her to turn around.

“Please go, Richard.”

His throat was dry. “I cannot.”

“You must.”

Field felt the tears welling in his own eyes and he turned back down the stairs. Chen had gone and Katya was sitting at the kitchen table. He stopped in front of her. “It will be all right,” he said, but as he moved beyond her and stepped onto the path outside, he felt as if he were drowning.

When he calculated that he had gone far enough to be seen from her attic window, he stopped and turned around.

She was not there.

The quayside was busier than Field had seen it, streams of coolies running up and down the gangplanks, loaded with leather trunks, cranes above them swinging cargo onto a steamer moored astern of the Martínez. The sudden hoot of a horn made Field jump.

A coolie bent down to take a hold of his bag.

“No,” Field said, trying to prevent him, before realizing it was hopeless and showing the man his ticket with the cabin number listed above the second-class stamp.

Field followed the man up the gangplank.

Once on deck, they ducked through a door and down a steep companionway to the base of the ship.

Field was sharing a cabin above the engine room, which was all that had been available, and his companion had not yet come aboard. He watched the porter lift his bag onto the lower bunk-it would be cooler below-before turning expectantly. Field shoved a note into the man’s hand; he looked at it but did not move.

Field reached into his pocket and gave the man all the small change he had left, which was not much. After the porter had reluctantly withdrawn, Field shut the door and locked it, then took out and checked his revolver.

He sat down on the bunk and faced the door, then looked around the small cabin, trying to ignore the smell of diesel and oil and remembering how sick he had been in the tiny third-class cabin on the way out. It would, he thought, be simplest for Lu’s men to kill him now. His body wouldn’t be discovered until they were well out to sea.

He stood.

He took out his key, locked the door after him, and climbed quickly up the steps to the deck. He walked to the rail overlooking the quayside, where he was in full view of a hundred people or more.

Field scanned the crowd.

Every face was a disappointment, though he told himself he had not expected her to come.

The sun was sinking slowly over the city, but was still bright enough to make him squint as he watched the plumes of smoke blowing across the rooftops in the gentle, late-afternoon breeze.

The horn on one of the funnels above him let out a series of loud blasts, and Field turned back to the quayside to watch the last of the passengers saying their farewells. His eye was drawn to a smartly dressed woman in a yellow dress and small, fashionable, matching hat, who was saying an emotional farewell to her husband and teenage children.

There was another, longer series of blasts, and the coolies assembled by the gangplanks. They pulled them back, then caught the ropes from the bow and stern as the Martínez drifted slowly out into the current, its engines surging as the propellers began to churn the muddy waters of the river.

And then he saw Penelope, a small, frail figure amid the crowd. She raised her hand to him and he acknowledged it.

She stepped forward, coming to the very edge of the quay, her eyes fixed on his, her hand suspended in midair. He could see that she was crying.

Field raised his own hand as the liner gathered steam and the propellers turned faster and the quayside began to recede, then he walked slowly down to the stern, flicking his cigarette far out into the river. He watched the sampans bobbing up and down in their wake.

“Mr. Field?”

He turned to see a man in uniform, with a gray mustache and a pleasant smile.

“I’m Captain Ferguson.”

They shook hands.

“Mr. Lewis asked me to make sure your voyage is comfortable, so if there is anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to ask. You are down below?”

Field nodded. “Yes.”

“We’d be happy to move you up into a first-class cabin on deck here. We have one available.”

Field hesitated. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be fine where I am.”

The captain looked disappointed. “If you change your mind, please let me know. In the meantime, I hope you will at least do me the honor of dining at my table tonight.”

“Yes, of course.”

Field turned back toward the river. The buildings around them were dwindling in number and size, obscured gradually by the black smoke drifting across the sky from the factories in Pudong.

As they moved around the bend in the river, he watched the Union Jack high above the dome of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank flapping idly in the breeze and faintly heard the clock on the tower of the Customs House striking the hour.

Field watched until they were gone.

Depression settled upon him. It was as though, with his last glimpse of the city, Natasha had slipped away from him, too.

The passengers melted away back to their cabins, and soon the buildings gave way to a patchwork of green paddy fields and small villages, close enough for him to see the children running along the banks of the river, waving.