Brother Betrayed

One

OneBusiness magnate and mine owner Sir John Russell had slept only fitfully when he had retired after saying goodnight to Chung Ting Hon and Beautiful Jade, his exquisite young wife. He’d woken several times and drifted back to sleep, but this time round he knew it was hopeless to wait to fall into torpor — he had too much on his mind to slumber.

He lay curled under a single sheet in the muted midnight light and listened to the usual night noises: the whispering scuttle of ceiling mice, the creaking of the pine rafters as they cooled from the heat of the day. Otherwise a comforting silence mantled Gold House, the big villa filled with out-of-town guests, his revered Chung Ting Hon among them.

He smiled ruefully. The old man who founded Russell & Chung Trading with his father Sir Robert Russell more than thirty years ago was now eighty, but at thirty-eight he was trailing the comprador in vitality. He had been very successful at diversifying and expanding the business his father had founded, but at what cost? He had no wife, no family, and the kinship ties he’d taken for granted were disintegrating around him.

The one bright spot was his recent reunion with his half-brothers Sebastian and Nathan: they had been separated by the Pacific Ocean since their father’s death more than fifteen years ago. Nathan and Seb were just boys when Sir Robert had died; Nathan had gone with his Australian mother to Sydney, Seb to his Boston uncle, and the three brothers had not seen each other again until a few months ago.

He sighed and gave up on the idea of sleep. Instead he rolled onto his back and laced his fingers behind his head, thinking back over the evening’s discussions. He had invited the comprador to stay so they could settle the dangerous rivalry boiling up between Ting Hon’s two sons, the first-born Chung Ji Ming, known to him as Ollie or Oliver, the name his English mother, Amelia Russell, Sir Robert’s sister, had given him, and his half-brother Chung Ji Zeng.

The Chung sons ran not just the China side of the family trading company but also headed the Black Dragon Benevolent Society — one of the six powerful organisations that effectively governed California’s Chinese settlers, recruiting labor for railroad building, policing their movements and completing the essential ritual task of sending their bones back home to China if they died. Part social agency and part business, Black Dragon had grown exponentially in the two decades that men from the Pearl River delta had flooded into Gold Mountain — or Gum Saan, Cantonese for San Francisco — seeking their fortunes in gold and other commodities.

Ji Zeng had always resented his brother, the first son of comprador Chung Ting Hon. After John’s own mother’s death when he was four years old, his Aunt Amelia had been a mother to him as well as to Ollie. They had grown up together, more like brothers than cousins.

But until yesterday, he had not grasped the younger Chung’s escalating ambition, nor his new obsession with returning to opium trading — the commodity that had got Russell & Chung started, but had long ago been discarded. John knew that Ollie would be vehemently opposed, but the discussion had never taken place because he hadn’t appeared at the meeting — and that just wasn’t like him. Ollie put his heart and soul into his role as his father’s successor and he would never stand him up.

Even more mysteriously, no one — including Ollie’s English wife, Selina — had a clue as to where he was. Ji Zeng had floated a fanciful story that he was in Hong Kong on urgent business, but John knew that was pure fantasy. Ollie would never have left without telling Selina his plans. Something just wasn’t right.

He yawned, suddenly feeling weary. In a few hours he would put Ting Hon and Beautiful Jade on the San Francisco stagecoach. He still had faint hopes the patriarch could talk some sense into Ji Zeng, who was adamant that Black Dragon would be left behind unless it followed some of the other Six Societies into opium and prostitution. He rolled onto his side and hugged a pillow close. Despite his restlessness, he was on the verge of dropping off when he smelt the faintest whiff of smoke. He sat bolt upright, his senses on high alert, his eyes stinging. Then he heard a sharp crack, like the snap of wood burning. Galvanized, he was off the bed and to the door in two strides, the sheets trailing behind him.

His eyes were streaming before he got his hand to the door handle. He opened the door slowly, unsure of what lay in store. Dense black smoke was curling up from the hall. He peered down the hallway to where his guests slept, his ears singing with the unmistakable roar of fire, cheeks smarting from a wave of heat that rolled towards him. The guest room door was closed, but an eerie flickering of light from under it confirmed his worst fears.

Grabbing the sheet at his ankles as a mask for his nose and mouth, he sprinted down the passage, wrenched it open and stopped dead. Flames were already creeping onto the ceiling from the wall on the far side of the room. Through the smoke he could see two figures sprawled on the bed, the man on his front, the woman on her back, her face another-worldly white except for the bloody gash at her throat. He sprang to the bed, although instinct told him they were already dead. He had just taken hold of Ting Hon’s wrist when a heart-stopping boom sounded overhead.

He dropped Ting Hon’s limp hand and dodged back to the shelter of the hallway as burning ceiling fragments rained down on the bed, showering him with hot embers. He was standing gawping in disbelief at the burning bed when more debris rained down, striking him heavily down his left side. Pain shot from his knee to his groin and he staggered to remain upright.

Where was everyone? The house was full of family and friends, among them soon-to-be-married Nathan, and the celebrated Maori opera singer Pania Te Awa Hayes, a friend from New Zealand who had lived in California for some years. Where were Mrs Snively the housekeeper, and his Chinese house servants Mr and Mrs Lee?

“Wake up! Fire!” Oblivious to the pain in his leg, he staggered back down the hall, banging on walls and doors, shouting warnings. His voice, which had started as a raw croak, grew louder and more urgent with every step. “Fire!”