The Master of Rain Part 58

"Yes, I can see that."

"You're a policeman, Mr. Field, so perhaps you can appreciate the true nature of this city."

"I believe so, yes."

"Without the orphanage these children would have perished long ago. All of them. Without our benefactor there would be no orphanage."

Field looked at her. For a moment, believing that she was completely aware of the extent and scope of her Faustian pact, he felt like throwing up.

"Alexei Simonov." Field saw immediately that Sister Margaret knew the boy. "Mr. Lu-or his men-brought him here and asked you to give him shelter?"

Sister Margaret did not answer.

"The mother . . ."

"It is a tragedy," she said.

"Of course." He allowed himself a mournful pause.

Sister Margaret raised her hand. "We have had five Russian children in one year," she said, spreading her fingers.

"Five."

"Suicide is against G.o.d's will."

"Yes."

"But it is still a tragedy, of course."

"Of course, yes."

Field reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the photograph he'd kept in his desk. He stood and handed it to Sister Margaret. "This is how Natalya Simonov committed suicide, Sister."

Her face went white. After a few moments she handed it back. She did not catch his eye.

"Would it be possible for me to speak to the boy?"

"Out of the question." She shook her head.

"It's just that-"

"Out of the question." She shook her head again, in case she had not sufficiently emphasized this point. "He has been traumatized."

Field looked out of the window at the boys still playing football in the yard.

"He is not here, Mr. Field."

"Supposing that the boy did turn out to have family, after all, then he would-"

"We are past that point, Mr. Field. Alexei must be allowed to begin his life again. Mr. Lu has his best interests at heart and he was most clear on this point. No one is to see the boy."

"It is touching to hear that Mr. Lu takes so much time to consider the welfare of individual orphans when he must be such a busy man."

She glared at him.

"Sister, Natalya Simonov was stabbed about fifteen times in the v.u.l.v.a and the lower part of her stomach." He looked her in the eye.

Sister Margaret's face was sheet-white again.

"We think Alexei saw his mother's killer. We believe he is the only person who can positively identify him before he does this"-Field held up the photograph-"to another woman."

Sister Margaret's lips tightened. "I cannot allow it," she said. "I cannot."

The children had stopped playing football on the far side of the yard. They were drinking water and splas.h.i.+ng it on their faces. Their hair was damp with sweat. Their uniforms seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, a green cross at the center of each s.h.i.+rt. They sat down against the far wall, talking among themselves.

Field reached for a notepad and took out his father's pen. "This is my number. I leave it up to you." He handed her the piece of paper and left the office.

Field stopped when he reached the central hallway. He could hear the sound of his breathing. A door opened behind him and he turned to see Sister Margaret walking in the opposite direction. He watched her until she reached the far end of the corridor. She did not look round.

The hallway was silent again.

Field half turned and saw that some of the children were watching him silently. There were four of them, all young Chinese or Eurasian boys. They did not move, their gazes solemn.

Field walked out through the entrance hall and into the bright suns.h.i.+ne.

There was a car waiting on the far side of the street, about fifty yards to his left. He watched it for a few moments before setting off, but the car didn't follow him.

Once he'd turned the corner, he stopped beneath the shade of a sycamore tree and leaned back against the iron railings of a large house. He shut his eyes. He'd never felt so tired.

When he opened them again, he looked at his watch, then fumbled in his jacket pocket for Prokopieff's old surveillance notes. He glanced over them, then put them away and began to walk.

It took him only a few minutes to reach Lu's house, but he looked at his watch again to be sure of the time. It was twelve-thirty. If Lu's routine had not changed, he would leave at one o'clock.

Field stood beneath the trees opposite the house before deciding that he was too conspicuous and retreating a few yards.

He took out a cigarette, but then put it back in the packet.

He looked up at the bedroom window. He fought against the idea that she was a willing-even an enthusiastic-prisoner. He thought of her apartment and her elegant clothes and the look that had crept across her face as she had forced him away.

The door opened. Lu's bodyguards came down the steps and surrounded the car. As the blond one, Grigoriev, scanned the street, Field turned quickly and walked away. He kept on going until he was round the next corner, then spun around and came back, keeping in the shadow of the trees.

Field watched as Lu came down the steps with a girl of about thirteen or fourteen. He had a brief glimpse of her frightened face before she was pushed into the back of the car. Lu moved slowly, Grigoriev supporting him as he came down the last step.

Natasha was not with him. Field felt his shoulders sag with relief.

The bodyguards climbed into the car or onto the running boards, and the car moved off in the direction of the Bund. Field looked at his watch again. It was one o'clock exactly.

He stepped farther into the shadow of the trees and lit a cigarette. He glanced up at the bedroom window but saw no movement. Every so often he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Lu returned at five minutes past two. All four bodyguards were on the running boards now. They jumped off before the car had come to a halt, taking up the same positions as they had done earlier. After about thirty seconds Field saw Grigoriev tap the driver's window and another of the men stepped forward to open Lu's door. He went slowly up the steps to the house. The bodyguards followed him and the car drove off. There was still no sign of Natasha.

Field lit another cigarette.

He was about to leave when a rickshaw pulled up outside the house.

Before Field had even had time to retreat farther into the shadows, Lu's door had opened and Field caught a glimpse of the man who had arrived. It was Caprisi. He stepped inside.

For a moment Field stared at the door and the empty street. Then he leaned back against the tree. His shoulders sagged; hope drained from him. Natasha had been right. Everyone and everything was corrupt; nothing here was left untainted.

He could feel his father mocking him, and he realized that to have believed in any kind of purity, to have sought any kind of victory, moral or practical, had been doomed from the beginning.

It made him fortune's fool.

Forty-three.

Caprisi stepped out of Lu's doorway. He lit a cigarette and glanced deliberately up and down the street, as if a.s.suming he was being watched. He looked deflated; the meeting had not gone well. By Field's watch he had been in there exactly half an hour.

The American beckoned to his rickshaw driver, walked down the steps, and climbed in.

Field watched for a few moments before following on foot, occasionally having to break into a run to ensure he did not lose the rickshaw as it turned off toward the Chinese city.

The streets were narrower now, swift progress no longer possible against the oncoming wall of humanity.

They did a series of turns, and Field was soon lost, a stranger still in the dusty, teeming sprawl beyond the European boulevards.

The rickshaw pulled up at an intersection and he ducked back into a doorway as Caprisi got out and put a note into his driver's hand. Field was bent low, beneath a lamp, a baby crying in the open courtyard of the tiny house behind him. He listened to its mother trying to soothe it.

The American began walking, and for fifty yards they were the only two people in sight, then Caprisi turned right into a busier street. Field b.u.mped into a woman herding a group of pigs, and when he looked up, the American was gone.

Field stopped, then turned off to the left.

This alley was dark and much narrower. The dust rose around him as he walked, the only sound that of distant voices. There was no sunlight to penetrate the gloom. He heard the tinkle of a bicycle bell.

A figure came at him from a doorway and knocked him down. The man was onto him as he regained his feet, pus.h.i.+ng him back hard against the wall, a revolver pressing against Field's nose.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing?" Caprisi growled.

Field waited until he'd regained his breath. "Following you."

"Why?"

"I saw you go into Lu's house."

Caprisi held him still, then relaxed his grip and took a step back, without lowering his gun. "You're lucky I didn't kill you."

"So you're on the take, like everyone else?"

The American raised the revolver again so that it was pointing at Field's face. "You holier-than-thou Brits are getting on my nerves."

Suddenly, Caprisi's expression changed. He lowered his gun and put it back in its holster. "All right," he said. "You want to know? I'll show you."

He walked away fast, so that Field had to struggle to keep up. They were in another warren of narrow alleys, where still almost no light penetrated and the smell of sewage and human excrement was overwhelming. A group of children played in an open drain to their right as they turned into a narrow path and ducked through a doorway.

Inside, it took a few seconds for Field's eyes to adjust to the darkness. He heard a hacking cough and followed Caprisi over to the corner, where he was greeting a young woman and holding both her hands. He had crouched down and was taking something out of his satchel-bread and a metal flask of clean water.

"This is a"-he hesitated, looking at Field-"a friend."

Field knelt down and smiled at the girl. She was pretty. In another world, without the dirt on her face and the rags on her back and without the stench in this place, she might even have been beautiful.

There were three children behind her. They stared at him, their eyes hollow with suffering. One, a girl, must have been six or seven; another, four or five; the youngest was a boy of, he guessed, two or three. Behind them a man lay flat on a thin straw mat, s.h.i.+rtless, his head on a small pile of clothes. When he coughed, it shook his entire body, shook the glistening sweat from its place.

Caprisi spoke quickly in Chinese, with his back to Field.

Field looked around the room. The five of them had only a small corner to themselves, and he estimated that there must be six or seven different families living in here, each with no more than a few square feet of floor s.p.a.ce. They were all watching Caprisi and the woman, though most were trying to pretend they were busy with something else.

Field looked back to see the American take something else from his satchel-a bottle that looked like medicine and what could have been a roll of money. He placed the items in the woman's hand and closed his own over it.

Caprisi stood. He touched each of the children on the head, as if blessing them, and then marched out. Field saw, as he pa.s.sed, that he was upset and angry.

The American did not slow down until they were back at the rickshaw. "Do you see now?" he asked.

Field didn't know how to answer.

"You see the great city we're building? We're always f.u.c.king congratulating ourselves on how marvelous it is . . ."

"Would it be any better if we weren't here?"

"Don't hide behind false moral choices, Field. At least it would be their city." Caprisi sighed. "She was begging outside my apartment with all her children, looking even worse than tonight. Her husband is an addict and he stole some opium from one of Lu's men, so if he's found he'll be executed. His family probably will, too, as a warning to others."

"So you went to see Lu."

"They're small-fry, nothing to him. I said I would pay for what he had stolen."

"But he said no?"

Caprisi nodded.

Field looked at his colleague, relief and regret threatening to swamp him. "I'm sorry."

"After all that we've said, you doubted me."