The Last Rose of Shanghai(108)

Each step shook my head and triggered a stabbing pain in my stomach. I kept walking, looking for Ernest sitting by a piano. But it was confusing; my vision was foggy. It seemed there were shadows of early scavengers picking at trash, rickshaw pullers huddling at the poles, and men holding flashlights, cutting the tires of a moored double-decker bus.

The music was still in the air, faint, like a shadow in fog, a leaf in a storm, and now it was familiar, energetic, just like the old times. Elation raced through me. Ernest must be nearby. I could tell because the music grew louder. And louder. And louder.

And all of a sudden the shadows on the street fled—the rickshaws, the men holding flashlights, the scavengers. I froze. What I heard was not the sound of the piano; it was the siren.

And on the edge of the black sky, where the dawn’s light had just squeezed through, a fleet of bombers, like bats, sailed through a bed of pale clouds and dove toward the Huangpu River, the art deco buildings, the Customs House, and the high-rises on the waterfront. American B-29s. Ying hadn’t lied—we must leave Shanghai. I should wake up Little Star before it was too late. But as I was about to turn, the bats roared over the high-rises and veered north.

The siren grew shrill. It came from the north, the Japanese military base.

Panic struck me. Ying had been lying after all. The American planes were not bombing us in Shanghai; they were targeting the Hongkou district, where Ernest was confined.





90


ERNEST


The base was only guarded by a few dozen soldiers, Ying had said, because the majority of the army had been transferred to central China. Once Ernest drove the tank out of the base, Ying would take it from him. He would not be shot, because the Japanese would be distracted and engaged with the incoming American bombers.

At first, it appeared just as Ying had said.

The siren shrieked the moment the fleet of American bombers appeared. Within seconds, harsh and stark lights glared on the military field, and the personnel in khaki and green uniforms—the fighter pilots carrying goggles, belts, and equipment, the soldiers holding rifles—raced across the vast field. The sound of engines revving echoed, shaking the ground.

But there were hundreds of Japanese troops, not dozens, and all acted in a chillingly orderly manner. Ernest crouched in a trench, camouflaged with a flat wooden board, outside the high wire fence of the base. He would enter the base by climbing through the trench, which had been dug for him beneath the fence.

The tank that he needed to steal, Ying had said, was a captured American M18 Hellcat, equipped with a seventy-six-millimeter main gun and a Browning heavy machine gun, a perfect weapon to destroy the warship. But Ernest saw two tanks on the field, one smaller than the other. Both had a star emblazoned on the hull. With all their power, the metal beasts had open tops, no protection of a cupola. He had no idea which one was the Hellcat.

He grew nervous. He needed to crawl through the trench, enter the base, and steal the tank near the crew of pilots and soldiers, then drive it out of the base. It was a mission suitable for a trained soldier, not him. He was not a fast runner and no good at combat; he didn’t know anything about American tanks.

His bottom grew wet from the damp soil; he slipped down, tempted to crawl back, return to his attic, and lie to Ying that something went wrong, that he had tried but failed.

Above the ground, the wire fence rattled; the ground shook. He remembered once he had been close to the barbed wire in an internment camp, trying to see Miss Margolis. That had been three years ago; he’d been twenty-one, determined, unshakable in his faith. It was with Aiyi’s help that he’d finally found Miss Margolis and saved the refugees. He smiled. This was for Aiyi then. Once he stole the tank, he would see her again.

He flipped onto his stomach and crawled. When he reached the other side, he hoisted up and saw that not far from him, near the fence, were five motorcycles with sidecars. Beyond the motorcycles, a file of soldiers cranked two leaf-green Zero fighters’ engines to life, and above the base, a fleet of American B-29 Superfortresses zoomed.

He couldn’t spot the tanks—they had been next to a Zero fighter, but now they were gone. Snapping his head around, he realized a file of Japanese soldiers had blocked them. He climbed out of the trench, and crouching, scurried along the motorcycles for cover. A soldier carrying a fuel hose attached to a fighter was walking toward him. Ernest jerked around before he was spotted and dashed to a nearby staircase and ran down. It was an underground tunnel, fortified with cement, large and spacious, able to fit a double-decker bus. He didn’t know where it led or how deep it was, but he feared that if he ran too deep inside, he might not be able to get out.

He had just turned around when a shout came from deeper in the tunnel. He ran up the stairs and reached the ground, where he saw a soldier climb out of the open top of a tank to bow to an officer on a motorcycle with a sidecar. The engine of the tank was running.

He leaped toward the tank, climbed on one of the seven round wheels, and fumbled for a handle to mount. But there was no handle on the rear slope. Desperate, he dug into a steel roller, hoisted himself up, and tumbled into the lidless turret, his head knocking against the gun mount inside the turret. The massive main gun swiveled; the tank rattled, the wheels digging into the ground.

The soldier who had started the tank and the officer ran toward him. Was that Yamazaki? Ernest’s heart chilled. It was Yamazaki, who pointed at him with the black barrel of a rifle.