Foul Lady Fortune

Silas was already sitting at the food market when Rosalind and Orion arrived that next morning, a bowl of wontons steaming before him. He was distracted, staring off into the distance, but he snapped to attention as soon as Rosalind plopped down in front of him on the other side of the table. She put the crate piece beside their feet.

“Fancy seeing you here, pal,” Orion greeted, closing a hand on Silas’s shoulder before going to sit beside Rosalind.

She felt his presence like every inch of her left side was on supercharge. She did her best to ignore it.

“Where’s our new handler?” Rosalind asked.

Silas looked around. Orion picked up his friend’s spoon and stole one of his wontons.

“I came early. Haven’t seen anyone yet. Maybe he’s waiting to check if we were followed before he approaches.” Silas frowned, flicking Orion away before he tried to steal a second wonton. “No yellow hats nearby thus far.”

Rosalind rested her chin on her hand. Her eyes flickered to a figure three tables over. “There’s Jiemin, though.”

As if hearing his name, Jiemin turned around from his wooden seat, wiping his mouth with a napkin, and waved. Rosalind and Orion waved back, while Silas squinted, staring even when Jiemin resumed eating his food.

“Who is he?”

“A colleague at Seagreen,” Orion answered. “We don’t have him on our lists.”

Silas was still staring.

“Do you recognize him from elsewhere?” Rosalind asked. Perhaps they shouldn’t have been so hasty to decide that he was innocent.

“Well, no,” Silas said. “I’m just curious why there is a yellow hat sticking out of his pocket.”

Rosalind froze. As did Orion, the two of them swiveling fast to survey Jiemin again. He was rising now, tossing his discarded napkin onto his emptied plate, examining the back of his hands after he had wiped them clean. Surely, Rosalind thought, he is leaving and is only walking our way to give a quick farewell.

Instead, Jiemin dropped himself into the seat next to Silas and said, “Lovely to meet you in person, Shepherd.” He nodded to Orion, then Rosalind. “High Tide.”

The table fell silent. Orion dropped the spoon in his hand. It clattered onto the cement ground, loud even above the chatter that surrounded them at the food market. Several tables looked over to see what the commotion had been, but they returned to their own breakfasts after a glance.

“It’s you?” Orion exclaimed. While he squawked, Rosalind bent down to pick up his fallen spoon, closing her dropped jaw before she was upright again. “Why would it be you?”

Jiemin shrugged. “Are you asking for technicalities or logistics? My father is someone important in the Kuomintang.”

“As is mine!”

Rosalind reached over, patting Orion’s arm before he was crowing so loudly that the people one table over could hear him. In her other hand, her fingers were so tight around the handle of the spoon that her knuckles were turning white.

“I know who your father is,” Jiemin said evenly. “It is not the same concept, believe me.”

“So you both make nepotism work for you.” Rosalind tried not to grit her teeth. She put the spoon down. “It still doesn’t answer how an eighteen-year-old got assigned as our handler.”

Jiemin didn’t look bothered by her disparaging tone. He pretended not to see the complete puzzlement on Silas’s face.

“I was implanted a year earlier than the two of you, so they decided I had been working on this task long enough to lead it.” Jiemin pulled the yellow hat out of his pocket and dropped it on the table. It was stitched with the logo of a restaurant in the International Settlement. “How do you think we confirmed that the terror killings were coming from Seagreen Press at all? I infiltrated Japanese social circles first and found the instructions sent to Deoka—instructions about setting up in a warehouse outside the city and starting distribution on an unknown chemical compound. The next task was confirming those chemical compounds were linked to the killings that had started in the city.”

“Then how long have these killings been ongoing?” Rosalind asked. “And why bring us in if you’ve been on the task for over a year?”

Jiemin folded his hands and looked at Rosalind. He remained unspeaking for several long seconds—eyes steady, gaze held—and with that alone, Rosalind knew: he was aware of her true identity.

“The two of you have talents that I do not,” Jiemin answered eventually, when the silence drew on too long. He nodded to Orion. “Particularly that I cannot catch what they say in Japanese. It was faster to recruit and send more agents in than have me learn the language rapidly and misunderstand something.”

“You cannot possibly tell me that you did not have finished lists in the year you were there,” Orion said. “At the very least, you had suspicions—”

“Yes, it’s likely that I’ve already marked down everyone you have,” Jiemin cut in. “But that was never the point. That was the first task, and we needed to ease you in so you could figure out the next part. The why. What good is making arrests if we still don’t know why they are killing our people with chemicals? It’ll merely start again so long as we cannot find the root.”

Orion glanced away, spitting a frustrated curse. Through his explanation, Jiemin’s tone had been level, almost bored. If anyone were to observe them from a distance, no one could have possibly guessed that this boy was supposed to be their handler—their superior—looking so casual and melancholic. He seemed more like one of the restaurant waiters, underpaid and slacking off by sitting at the table with his customers.

“Dao Feng should have told us this to begin with,” Rosalind stated. She was trying very, very hard to keep her tone level too.

Jiemin set his elbows onto the table. “To tell the truth,” he replied, “I’m not sure why he didn’t. When they gave me this task file, I looked over his directives. He was supposed to have presented all of it: arresting the guilty parties at Seagreen Press, tracing the killer, and finding an explanation for the killing method.”

Rosalind had known about this oddity all along. It had prodded at her, had bugged her while she thought through the objective of the mission. But she had shoved it aside because she assumed Dao Feng would have provided the tasks if they were truly important. Now she was to believe that their work up until this point had been redundant, that their true mission had been withheld. They had wasted weeks finding information that Jiemin had already pieced together over the course of a year. What had Dao Feng been playing at? What did he know that they did not?

And why was Jiemin not privy to it either if he was stepping in as this mission’s handler?

“Perhaps Dao Feng thought it would be too overwhelming,” Silas supplied. “That Janie and Liwen needed an adjustment period first.”

“Perhaps,” Rosalind echoed, though she didn’t sound certain in the slightest. “Well—we will have the rest soon, I suppose. Zheng Haidi is the likeliest suspect for the killer. We only need to catch her.”

Jiemin made a sound. “Haidi? The office secretary Haidi?”

Rosalind frowned. “Yes. Don’t underestimate her just because she seems airheaded. She was carrying around the killing weapon. I bet you haven’t gotten your hands on that yet, have you?”

“I have not,” Jiemin confirmed plainly.

“Here.” She reached under the table. On their way over, Orion had scrimmaged up a black plastic bag to put the crate piece in, along with the vial that Silas had retrieved and the vial Rosalind had taken from Burkill Road. Rosalind pushed the bag to Jiemin. “Two vials of the murder weapon, as well as concrete evidence of Deoka’s distribution. Last we saw, the rest of the crates are at a residence at 286 Burkill Road. If we move quickly enough, we might be able to catch the underground imperial base before they move.”

Jiemin took the bag wordlessly. “Are you issuing instructions now, Miss Mead?”

“Yes,” Rosalind said firmly. “The function at Cathay Hotel—let’s close the mission then.”

Orion and Silas both swiveled toward her at once, looking aghast.

“Are you joking?” Silas demanded.

“Did you not hear our prodigious handler?” Orion added. To his credit, he let out only the slightest hint of mockery. “He took a year to get to this point. How are we to finish it by Friday if it has taken this long to get everything else?”

But Rosalind was resolute on the idea. She had thought about this carefully last night when she had nothing better to do than to pace her bedroom floor and try not to let her mind wander to other places.

“It’s our best chance,” she said. “Jiemin, do you remain insistent on not attending the function?”

Jiemin nodded. “There are other ambassadors for the imperial force who will be present, brought in from other branches across Shanghai. Too many people in this city recognize me from previous missions. Once I make an appearance, it will have to be as a Nationalist, not as a Seagreen employee.”

“Fine.” Rosalind cricked her neck. “Then Orion and I will be on the inside undercover. We can run confirmation that all guilty parties are present before the Nationalists rush in to make arrests. When will we get another chance where our every suspect is in one place? No one can hear of what is coming ahead of time to escape. Rush Burkill Road at the same time, and that’s everything wrapped up in a neat bow: suspects and chemicals all together.”

It was far from a neat bow, but no one around the table had the energy to argue with her.

“Very well,” Jiemin said. “Then you have until Friday to figure out their ultimate aim in these killings.” He got to his feet. “I will feed this up our channels. We follow Miss Mead’s plan. The function at Cathay it is.”

Without another word, their new handler waved his goodbye and turned to go.

“See you at work,” Orion muttered to Jiemin’s retreating back.

Alisa left her building from the second-floor hallway window, jumping off the ledge and landing among the back-alley trash bags.

“Gross,” she muttered under her breath, picking herself back up. She wasn’t sure if her fugitive status was serious enough to necessitate jumping out windows, especially knowing how lazy the Municipal Police were, but there was no such thing as being too cautious. The late-morning light prickled her eyes as she exited the alley. A muggy humidity had sunken into the air today.

It was a new day of investigation. Though really, there weren’t many avenues left as far as her investigation went. If Rosalind wanted a better job done, she really should have asked her own sister. Celia was more senior, and Celia had an even more senior agent wrapped around her finger. But since Alisa had been given the task, she supposed she would tie up the last loose end.

Something supernatural, sighted by an old lady. Something to do with why the Communists would want to chase after a couple of Nationalists.

She arrived at Bao Shang Road. The narrow street was hazy with smoke despite the bright blue sky overhead. Alisa bounded up the stairs of the building with a faded 4 affixed to its front, ascending and turning and ascending and turning until her head was dizzy. The memo had said the sixth floor. She had been preparing to knock around until she landed on the right apartment, but when she finished climbing six flights of stairs, one of the doors was already ajar.

“Hello?” Alisa called. She nudged the door as if to test whether the openness was an illusion. With a loud creak, it opened even wider. “The Kuomintang sent me. We were here some time ago to take a statement? I have returned to—” Alisa stepped in; at once she was blinded by a flash of bright light. “Christ!”

“Ah, you have to hold your pose, shǎ gūniáng. It will come out blurry otherwise.”

Alisa blinked rapidly, trying to clear the seared patches in her eyeballs. Slowly the scene before her materialized: a quaint apartment, an old woman in a wheelchair by the window. The woman was holding a box in her hands, which—with some more rapid blinking—Alisa eventually identified as a personal camera.

“How could I be so thoughtless as to drop my pose?” Alisa made a final hard blink to clear the last of the blots. She smiled, refusing to be deterred from making a pleasant introduction. “Please forgive me, but when my superiors sent me here, they did not offer me a name, only an address.”

The old woman pushed her chair away from the window, angling her wheels toward the couch instead. She waved Alisa over. Hesitantly, Alisa shuffled along after the woman and took a seat, perching at the edge of the couch cushions.

“That’s probably because they did not ask for my name the first time,” the old woman replied. “I am Mrs. Guo. Are you Russian?”

“Yes,” Alisa replied. “My name is—” She paused. It wouldn’t be good to use Liza in case it blew her cover with Seagreen. Though she supposed if the Kuomintang caught the Communists impersonating them around the city to get intelligence, there would be bigger problems to worry about. “—Roza.”

Sorry, Rosalind.

The old woman looked her up and down. “And the Kuomintang trust you? They came knocking on my door after hearing of my story from a neighbor, you know. I’m truly beginning to wonder how many people they have recruited in every corner.”

“Oh, I’m only a lowly assistant,” she lied. “But listen to my Chinese—it’s so good that they had to hire me.”

Mrs. Guo considered the matter. Alisa held her breath, wondering if a Russian taken into the ranks of the Kuomintang was simply too far-fetched to believe.

“You do have quite an excellent way of speaking,” the old woman decided.

Alisa grinned. She took out a notepad, her pen poised over the paper. “I won’t take up too much of your time today. I am only confirming a testimony that you gave a while ago.”

“Take up all the time you need,” Mrs. Guo said, leaning back in her chair. “My kids don’t visit me, and I cannot go downstairs to play mahjong anymore.”

Alisa looked around. “Do you eat okay? Do you want me to get you something?”

Mrs. Guo looked amused. “Ah, don’t worry about me. The only thing I might suffer from is utter boredom.”

“Hopefully I won’t bore you with this.” Alisa pretended to consult another page in her notepad, though it was entirely blank. “I need to confirm what you saw through your window. You said it was… supernatural? Some people are having trouble grasping it, you see, so details would be appreciated.”

Mrs. Guo stared at her for a moment. Then: “Details? How many more details do they want other than a serial killer in the alley outside my window?”

Serial killer? Alisa’s eyes widened before she could suppress her reaction. Fortunately, Mrs. Guo was wheeling away, stopping by the table in her adjoined kitchen and sifting through a pile of magazines lying atop the table surface, so she had not caught Alisa’s shock. Did this have to do with Rosalind’s mission after all?

“Anything that you can recall would be wonderful,” Alisa said evenly.

“I was shocked too, of course,” Mrs. Guo went on. “The papers are writing about these killings every day. Corpse found on this road. Corpse found on that road. Holes in their arms. Expressions pulled in terror. I keep warning my daughter not to go outside, and she still goes out every night to dance at a silly wǔtīng.”

“How did you know it was the chemical killings and not a regular criminal?” Alisa asked, scratching her pen down on the paper. “People are assaulted around these parts all the time for petty reasons.”

“I gather other petty criminals are not stabbing syringes into their victims.”

Alisa pressed the pen in harder. “So, you saw the syringe.”

“Better than that.” Mrs. Guo finally found what she was looking for, holding out a strip of photographic film. “Here. I already gave your superiors the photograph that showed the horrible scene, but I suppose information gets lost easily. I have copies of everything else already, so if you need the original dǐpiàn…”

Alisa didn’t hesitate before snatching the strip. She held the negative panels up to the light, trying to discern the blots and shapes. While it was easy to identify the one in the middle as the photograph in question—it looked like it had been taken from above and through a window, with two figures at the bottom—the negative’s tiny size and reversed colors made it impossible to pick out any detail. She needed to print it again as a proper-sized photograph first.

“Have they not made an arrest yet?” Mrs. Guo asked now, pushing herself back into the living room.

“They’re getting around to it.” Alisa waved the strip. “Thank you for this. It’s very helpful.”

Bidding Mrs. Guo goodbye, Alisa left the apartment, closing the door after herself gently. Why were the Communists concerning themselves with this? What did they know at the higher level that she still did not? If these pictures provided evidence of the killer, then the Nationalists could use it to haul Seagreen Press in. Her superiors should have passed the information on. Did the war matter that much? Did the war matter more than saving lives?

Alisa emerged from the building, picking up an urgency in her step. She turned onto the next street, then hurried into the first Russian corner shop she saw.

She held the negative strip out, alongside a wad of cash, and approached the counter.

“Do you have a darkroom?”

Orion was ambushed during his lunch hour while standing in front of a stall paying for dumplings.

“You’re not going to believe this.”

Fortunately, he recognized the voice in an instant, and despite being snuck up on, he didn’t spill his large bag of dumplings in fright. Thank goodness. That would have been rather humiliating.

“Do me a favor, mèimei,” Orion said. He counted his coins patiently to make sure he had the right amount. “Grab the two dòuhuā.”

Phoebe sniffed, taking the two cups of tofu pudding from the shop owner. “Can I have one?”

“Yes, you can have mine. Leave the other one alone or else my wife is going to yell at me.”

They moved to a table by the street side, Phoebe’s attention focused wholly on not spilling the cups. She didn’t dither before digging right in, shaking out a spoon from the utensil boxes in the middle. Orion set the dumpling bag down heavily, rather concerned with his sister’s enthusiasm for the snack. Was Ah Dou feeding her enough?

“So what am I not going to believe?” he prompted.

Phoebe set her spoon down, like she had remembered again why she was here. “Remember when I said I got a glimpse inside Liza Ivanova’s apartment?” With a glance around to make sure no one was watching, Phoebe reached into her bag and pulled out a magazine, setting it in front of Orion. The front cover was a pastel pink, featuring a woman in a lawn chair looking up at the sky. That was all Orion could discern from it. The text itself was written in Russian.

“Did you take this from her?” he asked, concerned.

“No! How irresponsible do you think I am?” Phoebe blew a breath up, getting her bangs out of her eyes. “Liza had hers framed. I thought it was bizarre—so I went around to every magazine shop in Shanghai to find another copy. Described the front cover enough times, and eventually a woman in Zhabei knew what I was talking about. She dug this out from the back for me.”

His sister took another spoonful of the food. “I actually have to run—I need to catch a shoe sale at Sincere. Flip to the tab I made in the back. You won’t be able to read anything substantial, but they printed the names in English with pictures. I have no clue what to make of it. I trust you’ll have a better idea.”

With a clink of her spoon against the cup, Phoebe got to her feet. Then, because she was always determined to be an irritant, she peered into the dumpling bag and took one before she departed.

“Don’t spend too much!” Orion called after her.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” she called back.

Left alone at the table, Orion turned the magazine around and opened it to where Phoebe had marked. The front cover had made the issue seem like it centered on lifestyle, so he was surprised when the page he turned to looked like an obituary.

Roma Montagov. Born 15 July 1907.

“The heir of the White Flowers?” Orion muttered, squinting at the picture. Why was this magazine printing his obituary? He flipped to the next page.

Juliette Cai. Born 15 October 1907.

With those two names together, everything suddenly made sense. Orion flipped faster. These back pages were all gangster obituaries. The magazine must have published them in remembrance shortly after the revolution that dissolved the gangs.

Dimitri Voronin. Born 2 January 1906.

Tyler Cai. Born 25 March 1908.

Kathleen Lang. Born 8 September 1907.

Kathleen Lang? Orion’s hand stilled, his brows knitting together. He knew of Kathleen Lang—most people in this city knew the names of the fallen Scarlet Gang elite. But this picture… was a younger Celia, Oliver’s mission partner. Orion had met her multiple times out in the field. Each time Oliver tried to make nice, Celia was forced to drag him away before Orion could throw a punch at him.

This didn’t make sense. Unless…

“Oh my God,” he whispered. If Celia was once Kathleen Lang, then he knew who Janie was. The connection wouldn’t have occurred to him on his own—why would it?—but when placed in front of him, the resemblance between Celia and Janie was undeniable. He turned the page to the final obituary.

Rosalind Lang. Born 8 September 1907.

And there was Janie, looking exactly the same.

He had always suspected that Janie Mead didn’t exist. Only this was something else entirely. He had assumed she was some other girl in the city. Perhaps with a tricky past, perhaps raised somewhere other than America. But Rosalind Lang—

Orion closed the magazine with a stunned finality. A police officer nearby blew into his whistle, the noise sharp and piercing. It did nothing to disturb Orion. Even as the world shrieked and scurried around him, he remained sitting stock-still, reeling from the bombshell that had landed in front of him.