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The empty desk with the memo for Zhang Gutai. The drawings of the monster. The shuddering back door, as if somebody had just vacated their desk in feeling the onslaught of a transformation, hurrying outside so nobody would see…
She recalled Qi Ren’s attempt at introducing himself as Zhang Gutai when she and Roma had showed up at his door. She recalled his easy answer, as if he was used to doing so, as if his job was to take the meetings Zhang Gutai did not wish to waste time with. As if he was used to impersonating his superior, acting on his behalf to the clueless foreigners who came knocking for meetings.
“Maybe the Larkspur did not lie,” Juliette said quietly. “Maybe he thought he was telling the truth in revealing Zhang Gutai to be the monster.”
Which would mean Zhang Gutai was never the monster of Shanghai.
Qi Ren was.
Without warning, the building beneath their feet rocked with a hard jolt. The five of them shot up, bracing for attack. Nothing immediately came. But as shouting started from the streets below and the sensation of heat blew into the rain, they realized something was very, very wrong.
Their vantage point up on the rooftop allowed their sights to extend two or three streets in each direction. To the west, a fire was roaring in the yard of a police station. There had been an explosion—that had been the impact felt underneath their feet. It had shaken all the rickety, neighboring buildings, unsettling a fine layer of dust and grit that floated down to the pavements.
And in such dust, workers were pouring into the police station like a colony of ants, all with red rags tied around their right arms, as bright as beacons.
This was not the clean-cut uniform of a foreign army. These were the rags of the people, rising up from within.
“It’s starting here,” Juliette murmured in disbelief. “The protests are starting in the city itself.”
It was genius. There would be too much havoc to put a quick stop to urban protests. The chaos in the city would galvanize those in the outskirts, would incite them to rise up with steel-backed urgency and roaring mayhem.
It is starting.
“The hospital,” Roma gasped. “Benedikt. Marshall. Get to the hospital. Protect Alisa.”
Protect her until they could kill the monster.
“Go home,” Juliette, meanwhile, commanded Kathleen. “Grab all the messengers. Have them warn the factory owners to flee immediately.”
They surely had been warned already to be cautious about an uprising, warned against the mass meetings screaming for an end to gangster rule. But no one could have known it would start with such intensity. They would not be expecting such vigor. They would pay for the miscalculation with their heads.
Kathleen, Benedikt, and Marshall hurried off, sparing no time. Only Roma and Juliette were left for a beat longer on that rooftop, surrounded by fire and bedlam.
“Once more,” Juliette promised. “This time we do it right.”
Thirty-Five
Roma and Juliette thundered up the steps to Zhang Gutai’s apartment, where Qi Ren would be waiting. At some point, Juliette noticed blood still drying in the lines between her fingers. It created handprints on the railings she grasped as they climbed flights and flights of stairs without pause.
When they came upon the top floor, Juliette stopped just short of Zhang Gutai’s door.
“How do we do this?” she asked.
“Like this.”
Roma kicked down the door.
Zhang Gutai’s apartment was a mess. As Roma and Juliette stepped in warily, their shoes sank right into water, which drew a gasp from Juliette and a curse from Roma. The hardwood tiles had flooded from a running water source that sounded like it was coming from the kitchen. The water rose all the way up to their ankles and was only rising more with every second. If not for the high ledge of the doorframe, they would have flooded the rest of the building upon opening the apartment door.
Something was not sitting right with Juliette. She dropped to a crouch and dipped a hand into the water, frowning as the cold seeped into her fingers. The water swirled, danced, lapped. It reminded her of the Huangpu, of the way the current always moved in a dozen different directions, carrying away whatever floated into its tide, carrying away all the dead that collapsed by its side. The gangster clash at the ports. The Russians on their ship.
The first victims of each wave of madness…, Juliette thought suddenly, were they all by the Huangpu River?
“Juliette,” Roma called quietly, summoning her attention. “It appears that there was a fight.”
Juliette stood again, shaking the water off her hand. Deeper into the apartment, there were papers scattered everywhere: thin leaflets of propaganda and thicker sheets of accounts—numbers and letters and characters all bleeding together in the water. As she moved about, Juliette peered over the kitchen counter, finding pots and pans turned upside down, not only floating in the overflowing sink but lying dented on the tables, as if someone had taken the saucepan and repeatedly struck it against something.
“Where is he?” Juliette whispered. The state of this apartment only furthered her confusion. Why would an old man, an assistant of a Communist, turn himself into a monster? Why flood the floors and dent all the kitchen equipment?
