Tilting the Balance

But since the Lizards mostly stayed in the International Settlement, Bobby Fiore mostly stayed there, too. The job he’d taken on for the Reds was to keep on looking as much like a Chinaman as he could, to keep his ears open, and to report to Nieh Ho-T’ing anything interesting he heard. The Red officer had promised he’d get to go along when the guerrillas tried a raid based on what he’d learned.

So far, that hadn’t happened. “And I’m not gonna worry about it, neither, ” Fiore muttered under his breath. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind nailing a few of those scaly bastards, but I didn’t hire out to be no hero. ”

He walked across the Garden Bridge over Soochow Creek from the Bund to the Hongkew district to the north. Soochow Creek itself was filled with junks and other small Chinese boats whose names Fiore didn’t know: from all he’d heard, people were born and raised and grew up and died on those boats. Some of them made their living fishing on the creek; others worked on land but didn’t have anyplace else to stay.

The Hongkew district, in spite of its Chinese name, was part of the International Settlement. The Lizards had an observation post, and probably a machine-gun nest, in the clock tower of the Head Post Office, which lay along Soochow Creek between Broadway and North Szechuen Road.

Bobby Fiore was tempted to duck into the Temple of the Queen of Heaven just a few yards north of the Garden Bridge, even though the Chinese didn’t mean the Virgin. In the temple’s inner court were the images of the gods Lin Tsiang Ching, who was supposed to see everything within a thousand li of Shanghai, and Ching Tsiang Ching, who was supposed to hear everything within the same distance.

Fiore glanced up toward heaven. “They’re just patron saints, kind of, ” he murmured to the Catholic God he assumed to be glancing down at him. The heavens remained mute. He walked past the Temple of the Queen of Heaven this time, though he’d gone in before.

Streets and sidewalks were crowded. No cars and trucks were running except Lizard models and human-made ones taken over by the Lizards, but people, rickshaws, pedicabs, and draft animals took up the slack. Beggars staked out squares of sidewalk; some of them chalked on the paving stones messages of woe Fiore couldn’t read. They reminded him of the poor out-of-work bastards who’d hawked apples on streetcorners when the Depression was at its worst.

If the streets had been crowded, the Hongkew marketplace, at the corner of Boone and Woosung Roads, was jammed. Fishermen from Soochow Creek, farmers, butchers-all cried their wares at something just over the top of their lungs. If the market in the prison camp where he’d stayed with Liu Han was Fan’s Field in Decatur, this place had to be Yankee Stadium.

Not only locals shopped here, either. Lizards made their skittering, herky-jerky progress from one stall to another. They could simply have taken whatever they, wanted; from what Nieh Ho-T’ing had said, they’d done that at first.

“Now they pay, ” he’d said. “They learn that if they give nothing to get something, it is not in the market square the next time they want it. ”

Sure enough, a Lizard bought a live, kicking lobster and paid the stall keeper in Chinese silver dollars, which, for reasons Fiore could not fathom, were also called Mex dollars. The Lizard’s companion said to him, “These are tasty creatures. Go on, Ianxx, buy several more. We can cook them for the commandant’s midday reception tomorrow. ”

“It shall be done, superior sir, ” said the lobster buyer, presumably Ianxx. He went back to bargaining with the fisherman.

Fiore bent his head down and did his best to look Chinese. The brim of his conical straw hat covered his nose and too-round eyes; he wore drab, dark cottons that reminded him of pajamas, just like most other people. The Lizards should have no reason to notice his skin wasn’t exactly the right color.

They didn’t. They went off with their purchases, holding them carefully to avoid the lobsters’ flailing claws. Bobby Fiore followed them back across the Garden Bridge. The Lizards paid no attention to him; as far as they were concerned, he was just another Big Ugly.

Now which commandant were you talking about? he asked them silently. They went through the Public Garden near the south edge of the Garden Bridge, and then on to the British Consulate. Fiore skinned back his teeth in a fierce grin; that was where the Lizard commandant for all Shanghai had his headquarters.

Not all of the International Settlement was posh buildings full of foreigners-or rather, now, full of Lizards. In an alley off Foochow Road, jammed in between other equally unpretentious erections, was a dilapidated place called the Sweetheart; the door had the name in English and what he presumed to be its equivalent in Chinese characters. When Fiore went inside, he was greeted by a blast of scratchy jazz from a phonograph and by the multilingual chatter of the working girls in the front lounge.

He snorted laughter. Nieh Ho-T’ing was one smart cookie. The Reds had a reputation for being bluenoses. Who would have figured one of their big wheels would set up shop in a whorehouse?

As far as Bobby knew, Nieh didn’t go to bed with any of the girls. He didn’t mind if Fiore enjoyed himself, though, and some of the Russians, girls whose parents had been on the losing side of the Revolution and had to get out one step ahead of Lenin’s bully boys, were simply gorgeous. He wondered what they thought of being in cahoots with a Red now. He hadn’t tried finding out; he’d learned to keep his mouth shut when he wasn’t sure about the person he was talking to.

He opened the door to the lounge. The jazz got louder. The chatter, on the other hand, suddenly stopped. Then the girls recognized him and started gabbing again.