“So what do you make of Shanghai?” Miles asked. He might have been talking to a tourist just off a long-haul from Heathrow. A few feet behind him, the red flag of China was fluttering in an infrequent breeze and Joe reflected on the irony of the restaurant’s predominantly Western clientele quaffing Martinis and New World Chardonnays beneath an icon of communist repression.
“It’s like a frontier town, isn’t it?” he said, lighting a cigarette. “I’ve been impressed with almost everybody I’ve met. People are ambitious here, sometimes reckless, but the intelligence and energy of the average person you come across is amazing.”
“Han or laowai?”
“Both,” Joe replied. “This is Shanghai’s moment, isn’t it? The feeling of tens of thousands of people-Chinese and foreigners-converging on a single city in search of fame and fortune.”
“Try millions,” Miles replied, as if he were only interested in correcting Joe’s mistakes. Shahpour fixed his gaze at a point beyond Joe’s head and broke his silence.
“I think it’s a city of contradictions,” he said, touching the gold necklace at his throat. “You got rich and poor, locals and laowai, the cultured and the hedonistic. All of it existing side by side. It’s amazing like that.”
Was he stoned? Joe looked at his eyes, dark and swimming, then down at the tense, sculpted jaw. There was evident awkwardness in Shahpour’s relationship with Miles, yet the imbalance between them was so pronounced that Joe began to suspect an element of theatre. “So Miles is your boss?” he asked, trying to draw out more background.
“That’s right. Got me my job, actually. I was working in construction out here and he hired me. Tell me about Quayler.”
The immediate change of subject was telling: Shahpour was uncomfortable under questioning, as if he knew that Joe could quickly unravel his cover. Joe duly broke into his rote speech on pharmaceuticals, a performance with which his dining companions seemed predictably bored.
“Gaining sixteen per cent every year, huh?” Joe had finished talking about sector growth.
“That’s right. Sixteen per cent.”
Shahpour saved them. “So how do you guys know each other?”
“We met long ago in Hong Kong.” Here at last was a subject about which Miles could talk for hours.
“We were good friends.”
“Still are,” he barked, resting a hand on Joe’s back. “Miles was always very enthusiastic about doing business with China.” The grip and sweat of his hand was like a dead weight on Joe’s shoulders. “I’m not surprised he’s lasted as long as he has out here.”
Miles frowned at what was an accurate if harmless observation, and promptly withdrew his arm. An Australian waitress brought three menus to their table and began discussing the specials. Joe ordered seared tuna as a starter followed by fillet steak and went to the bathroom to wash his hands. He wondered if Miles had watchers keeping an eye on him in the restaurant. Setting his cellphone to vibrate, he checked his reflection in the mirror, his thoughts returning time and again to Isabella. He had believed that they were only moments from seeing one another; her absence from the dinner was like a broken promise. His work in Shanghai, he realized, was dangerously entwined in the possibility of their reunion; there were times when Joe felt that he could not rest, nor make progress, without knowing, one way or the other, if they had a future together. Was he mad even to think such things? How was it that a person so calm and objective in every other area of his life was held captive by this unrequited desire? He wanted answers. He wanted hope, or to be free of her and to move on.
Back on the terrace, Joe found three glasses of Chablis on the table and Miles waxing lyrical about the moral bankruptcy of Chinese businessmen. Shahpour seemed slightly more alert.
“You’re just in time,” Miles said with mock weariness.
“In time for what?”
“In time to hear me tell young Shahpour here that China will never succeed on the international stage until the guys doing business learn some manners.”
“Manners?” Joe said, placing his napkin on his lap.
“That’s right. The people here have no respect for us, no interest in our history, no understanding of our culture.”
“Which culture would that be?”
“Mine.” Miles swallowed an inch of wine and wiped his beard. “Let me tell you something about the Chinese, Shahpour. Joe, back me up here. For every man, woman and child in this country, it’s about making money. Nothing else matters.”
“You’ve changed your tune.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ten years ago you were all for it. Let’s make as much dough in China as we can, and to hell with the consequences.”
“That’s because ten years ago I hadn’t experienced Chinese business practices at first hand.” Miles didn’t look too pleased to have been tripped up by forgotten memories of Hong Kong. He directed his next remark at Shahpour. “Fact is the Cultural Revolution stripped out individuality as you or I would understand it. So what are we left with? An organized, upwardly mobile, dedicated workforce that will stop at nothing to get what they want.”
“The American dream,” Shahpour muttered. Joe was beginning to like him.
“Don’t be a smart ass.” Miles gestured towards the glistening gold facade of the Aurora building. “Look at this place. Look at Pudong. What’s it built on?”
“Marshland?” Joe suggested. The vodka was beginning to take effect and he had decided to try to enjoy himself.
“I’ll tell you what it’s built on. Corruption and lies.” Shahpour caught Joe’s eye and there was a shared beat of understanding between them. Both had sat through Miles Coolidge monologues many times before. “A Chinese real-estate developer comes along, he pays a bribe to a city official, then the police forcibly remove all the residents from the area on his behalf. Any people refuse, the developer sends in hired thugs who break their hands. This is happening right across China. Farmers ordered off their land with no compensation. Peasant workers who’ve been farming the same ten acres all their lives suddenly told to move fifty kilometres away where there’s no agriculture, no community, no jobs. If they complain, they get fined or jailed. Then up goes a high-rise development built on soil they’d been working for generations. And who gets the profits? The developer.”
Joe was stunned. In Hong Kong, Miles would have described such injustice as the natural consequences of rapid economic growth. Is that what TYPHOON had done to him? Had he developed a conscience?
“Is this your standard line at the moment?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“In the old days, you always had a theory on every subject. You were like a politician on the stump, trotting out a favourite speech to anyone who would listen.”
Miles did not seem offended. “You wanna talk politics? You wanna talk about capitalism with Chinese characteristics?” Most of Miles Coolidge’s questions were rhetorical and he certainly wasn’t expecting an answer to that one. He gestured towards the infinite skyscrapers of Pudong. “This is what it looks like. It looks like apartments that sell for a hundred dollars per square foot and fuck the men that died building them. Modern China is an entity of supercities built on the sweat of migrant workers who get paid less than ten bucks a day for doing it and told to sleep in a room the size of my bathtub. That’s what they call progress here.”