Free Night in Shanghai by Nicole Mones Page A

Japanese Admiral.
    Was this the time to warn Little Greene? The question teased itself into knots as they took their seats and spoke of small things, waiting for the lights to dim. Unquestionably, Lin would have to tell him, despite the danger to himself in subverting any plan of Du’s. But he had to choose the right moment, and so far, there was no immediate threat. Lin’s paid informants had assured him that Morioka listened to jazz only in his apartments, on his gramophone; he had not gone out. Not a single club had seen him cross the doorstep. Lin pondered until the lights fell and the velvet curtains cranked apart, and then it was too late. To bring it up now would only create fear, just as speaking of a tiger makes one pale.
    “Are you coming to the theater?” Thomas asked him after the picture, when they poured out with the rest of the audience onto the rounded corner sidewalk, under the tall, narrow modern-style stacked letters CATHAY . The street down which they watched for a conveyance was lined with Gallic-style four-story conjoined buildings, three ornate brick floors above for apartments, and the first floor a twinkling line of shops, restaurants, and teahouses fronted by plate glass windows all lit up for the evening.
    “Not tonight,” Lin answered him, raising his hand to a rickshaw. “I have others to see to.” It was his habit to excuse himself in this way, and on this night he had reason to be vague, since he was meeting H. H. Kung for dinner. Despite all his wealth and power, Kung remained at Du Yuesheng’s mercy in many ways, and periodic ultra-private conversations with Lin Ming helped him keep up with the master’s leanings.
    “Has he talked about moving his assets yet?” Kung said from across the table at the Sun Ya. They were dining on bird’s nest soup with pigeon eggs, whelk with chicken liver slices, frogs’ legs braised with thin broccoli stalks for bones, and shad steamed in caul fat with a crystal sauce.
    The question startled Lin Ming. Moving assets would mean he accepted that the Japanese would take Shanghai. It was true that it was now impossible to turn on the radio without hearing how close their army was to Peking and Tianjin in the north. And here in Shanghai, there were suddenly Japanese everywhere in the streets, not just soldiers but families, civilians, including many who came into his cabarets and ballrooms at night. But a Japanese invasion? “On that, he has said nothing.”
    “His money and bullion can be moved quickly,” Kung said, “but our situation is different. We are disassembling whole factories and moving them to the interior, trying to keep China on her feet through industry. We cannot wait until they are at our gates.” Kung shrugged as he reached for choice morsels, his hands precise and balletic as he loaded Lin Ming’s plate before his own, like any good friend.
    Lin felt his stomach turn. Duke Kung was twice his age and ten thousand times more powerful, so if he sensed the invasion was near, it probably was. “Is there nothing that can turn them back?”
    “Possibly,” Kung said. “Moscow has floated the idea, tentatively, very
entre nous

, of organizing a group of countries to oppose Japanese aggression. Maybe even the Americans, though no one has approached them yet.” He signaled for more wine. “I leave next week for Moscow, from there to Germany, to discuss it.”
    “Germany?”
    “I went to graduate school in Berlin, did you know that? After Yale. I know people there, I can get things done, arrange meetings at the highest levels. I will meet with Hitler. But I am also going to check on my friends, Schwartz and Shengold, two men I went to school with. Jews. Very powerful bankers. They have not answered my letters. Have you heard anything of the situation of the Jews in Germany?”
    “Nothing clear,” said Lin.
    “My friend Dr. Ho Feng-Shan, the First Secretary of the legation in Vienna, has been updating me. They have passed