Part 30 (1/2)
Berta held up her hands helplessly. ”Who else could have?”
”Perhaps Dr. Huang needed them for patients outside the hospital?” But Sunny already knew what he had done with them. ”I will speak with him.”
Sunny a.s.sumed that Wen-Cheng would have left the hospital long before, so she was surprised to find him sitting alone at the table in the staff room, smoking a cigarette and staring at the wall.
She sat down across from him. ”The colonel is dead.”
Wen-Cheng showed no response. His gaze was fixed somewhere beyond her.
”He didn't die from his injury,” she continued.
”What then?” Wen-Cheng asked mechanically.
”Morphine toxicity.”
”How can you be certain?”
”I was with him, Wen-Cheng. He stopped breathing. His pupils were constricted. I have seen more than enough opium and morphine poisonings to recognize the signs.”
Wen-Cheng avoided her eyes. ”Accidental narcotic poisoning is a common occurrence on surgical wards.”
”This was no accident.”
”You do not believe so?”
Sunny shook a finger at him. ”You poisoned the colonel!”
Wen-Cheng smoked in silence for several tense seconds. Finally, he met her eyes. ”And it's fortunate for you that I did.”
Sunny leapt to her feet. ”How can you say that?” She struggled to keep her voice low. ”He was a good man. The one decent j.a.panese officer I have ever known.”
”Maybe so, but they wanted him dead.”
”You mean that bitter old man did.”
”More than just him,” Wen-Cheng said. ”Besides, he is a very important man, Soon Yi. A person not to be crossed.”
”I haven't crossed him!”
”Nor did you do as he requested.”
She hung her head. ”No.”
”I meant what I told you, Soon Yi,” he said quietly. ”I will do whatever is necessary to protect you.”
”What does that have to do with Colonel Kubota?”
”The others. They don't know that the targets were brought to our hospital for treatment.” He paused. ”Their targets.”
Sunny nodded, suddenly understanding. ”If the Underground learned that we operated on Kubota. That we saved his life . . .”
”They would come for him.” Wen-Cheng shook his head. ”For you too, I'm afraid.”
”I see.”
”Decent man or not, I do not regret what I did, Soon Yi.”
Sunny realized that Wen-Cheng had poisoned the colonel to protect her. Guilt pressed down on her shoulders as acutely as it had after she had witnessed the deaths of those teenaged boys and Irma, which felt like so long ago now. ”Is it over now?” she asked.
Wen-Cheng looked away again. ”They see only black and white. Either you support them . . .”
”Or what?”
”You are a collaborator.”
”That is what they think I am? A collaborator?”
”The old man, he never believed that you could not get to Kubota. He thought you were protecting the colonel.”
She slumped back into her chair. ”I have heard how the Underground deals with collaborators.”
He sat up straighter and folded his arms. ”I will not let them harm you. No matter what, Soon Yi. I will protect you.”
IV.
CHAPTER 40.
December 18, 1943 Sunny bundled her coat tighter around her, bracing against the biting wind. Her foot slid on a patch of black ice and she barely kept her balance. Her elbow still ached from a fall the day before on the slick pavement.
Winter had descended early on Shanghai. The week before, there had been snow flurries. But Sunny knew that something more dangerous than the bitter chill or the black ice was keeping the sidewalks in Frenchtown as deserted as those inside the ghetto.
She had expected things to deteriorate after Tanaka's murder, but even still, the j.a.panese reprisal was shocking in its vitriol. In the weeks since the a.s.sa.s.sinations, the authorities had launched a ruthless crackdown on all so-called ”hostile” citizens, from Chinese locals to the stateless Jews. No one in the ghetto seemed to know who had replaced Colonel Tanaka, but the Kempeitai's collective paranoia was at an all-time high. The men in the white armbands were ubiquitous, and treacherous. Impromptu arrests, whippings and executions were commonplace.
The refugee community was still reeling from the death of one of its most respected members, Albert Neufeld. The week before, Neufeld had returned from a meeting with a group of Russian Jewish leaders fifteen minutes past curfew. Rather than revoking his pa.s.s for a month-the standard punishment for missing curfew to that point-the soldiers at the checkpoint had gunned Neufeld down in the street.
Sunny felt more vulnerable than ever. She had had no contact with anyone from the Underground, not even Wen-Cheng, in the past seven weeks. He had disappeared after their tense discussion in the staff room. Sunny had not told anyone about his role in poisoning Kubota, but she suspected Wen-Cheng found it too risky to stay on at the hospital. She hoped that he had vanished of his own accord.
Sunny stepped through the doorway of the Cathay Building, hurried across the marble-floored lobby and took the elevator to the ninth floor. Reaching Jia-Li's door, she knocked with the secret signal.
Jia-Li pulled her into the living room with an exuberant embrace. Sunny did a double take at the sight of her best friend. Her face free of makeup, she wore casual trousers and a sweater, and her hair was pulled into a tight bun. She reminded Sunny of the woman in the famous Marxist poster they'd seen throughout their childhood, glorifying the female proletariat. Jia-Li didn't even smell like her old self. Sunny couldn't detect a trace of either her usual jasmine fragrance or her favourite Russian cigarettes.
Charlie was kneeling on the floor of the living room with his crutches at his side. He looked over his shoulder and gave Sunny a quick smile before turning his attention back to the pliers he was using to tighten a screw onto a thin metal cylinder. ”A pencil detonator,” Charlie explained before Sunny could ask. ”It works as a time-delay fuse.”