She shook her head. “No, they tolerate each other. They have to.”
“Lewis doesn’t have to tolerate anyone.”
Penelope shook her head. “You’re wrong. He once told me that he viewed China as a great river. Sometimes you can divert it a little, but mostly you have to swim in the direction it flows. If Lu didn’t exist, someone else would take his place. He, or his kind, cannot be eradicated, and Charlie likes stability. Rather the devil, you know. That is how he keeps himself and Fraser’s where it is.”
Field found himself thinking not of Lewis, but of Granger, using similar words on the sidewalk outside the Cathay Hotel in a world that seemed light-years away. Granger had understood.
He had the uncomfortable sense that he had been responsible in some way for Granger’s death. He wondered if Lu and Geoffrey and Macleod had always intended to dispose of the Irishman, or whether his death had been an accidental by-product of their attempt to eliminate him and Caprisi.
“What will you do, Richard?”
Field looked down at the floor, trying to clear his mind. “I will contact Lewis and ask him to arrange a meeting with Lu. Somewhere safe. Somewhere public. I’ll offer them both exactly what they want, a continuation of the status quo.”
“And what do you want in return?”
“Something that is of no importance to either of them.”
“The girl?”
“The girl, yes. The
“Will you forgive me, Richard?”
He looked at her. She was biting her lip, on the verge of tears again, her face twitching nervously, and he understood her now. “You don’t need me to forgive you,” he said. “You need to forgive yourself.”
Penelope looked down and began to cry again, but he still did not move.
She stood, shaking her head, and went inside. Field lit another cigarette, but barely raised it to his lips, watching the smoke drifting up beneath the eaves and melting into the sky, its blue now flecked with thin shards of gray.
Penelope returned and placed a brown envelope on his lap. “If you’re to stand any chance at all, you will need this.”
Field opened it up reluctantly, then spilled its contents onto the table in front of him.
“I haven’t counted it, but I think there’s more than ten thousand American dollars.”
Field looked up at her.
“It’s for you, Richard, and your Russian girl. I don’t want it now.”
“I cannot accept this.”
“Then take it for her.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Don’t be stubborn, Richard. You have nothing left to prove here. You need to accept help.” Her face softened. “I don’t want the money. If you don’t take it, I’ll throw it away.”
Field stared at the pile of cash spilling across the table in front of him. It was more money than he had seen in his entire life. It was enough money to live an entire life.
“I will take a thousand,” he said, “if you agree to take the rest of the money to an orphanage. I’ll give you the address.”
She knelt in front of him. Her face was serious—soft and sane. “I’m not a bad person, am I, Richard?”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Please.” Her eyes implored him. She placed her head on his lap, like a child. After a few moments Field reached forward and placed the palm of his hand gently on top of her head.
The bedroom window was open, and Field could still hear the sound of the band on the Bund, but the garden was strangely quiet, shielded on all sides by new office buildings that had sprung up in the boom years since the end of the Great War.
There was a light wind up here, just enough to tug at the curtains.
He turned, realizing Penelope had been watching him from the doorway.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Penelope breathed in deeply. “Forgive me if I don’t come to the door.”
“Of course.”
“Good luck, Richard.”
Field walked across the room, his footsteps loud on the wooden floorboards as he passed the foot of the iron- framed bed. He could not help glancing at the section next to the fireplace beneath which he had concealed the pages from Lu’s ledger the previous night. He wondered if she had heard him pulling up the floorboards and understood.
He stood in front of her, their faces close. “What will you do?” he asked.
