“Yes, of course,” I said. “But I think that all Hong Kong people feel that way, to some extent.”

“I can’t give you everything you need,” she said. “Because I don’t have the particularity of your experience. But I’ll give you what I can. The rest, I’m afraid, is up to you.”

CHAPTER 24HORACE’S LEAP

164 Water Street

St. John’s, Newfoundland

August 2, 1937

Dear Iz,

Well, if your story doesn’t make me want to kill those cockroaches, I don’t know what will. Don’t you dare leave. I’m coming out there, and we are going to fight those entitled, arrogant bloodsuckers. I’m gonna do more than put my oar in, I promise you that. I think the Japanese are really coming. That’s Tanaka’s people, right? You tell him to go ahead and fill my order for passage, pronto, and don’t you dare protest. I want the next passage out. How long does the journey take? Three weeks? A month? Tell him to book me the absolute quickest passage he can get.

I love you, my cuz. Never stop fighting.

Revolution!

Morgan

1941

CHAPTER 25STUFFED CRAB

December 25, 1941

It was Christmas Day, but no one was celebrating. Hong Kong was under siege by the Japanese Imperial Army, and had been for the past three weeks. All the cricketers had joined the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, and were out in the territory now, doing their damned best to protect it, along with the 5/7th Battalion, Rajput Regiment; the 2/14th Battalion, Punjab Regiment; the Winnipeg Grenadiers; the Royal Rifles of Canada; the Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artillery; the 2nd Battalion, Royal Scots; and others Cheung didn’t know about. But the small assortment of British planes at the Kai Tak Airfield had been flattened on the first day of the invasion, along with its two flying boats and three outdated torpedo bombers. Fifth columnists, mostly Triad members cultivated by the Japanese, had cut barbed wire and telephone lines, led the Japanese Army through perilous mountain paths to the city, and hoisted a Japanese flag atop the Peninsula Hotel, tricking the Winnipeg Grenadiers into thinking they’d been caught in a pincer movement and laying down their arms before the Japanese army had even arrived. Rapidly and utterly routed, the British had abandoned Kowloon without informing the Chinese populace, and as a result the people understandably ceased to see the war as theirs and abandoned their support positions as amahs, drivers, clerks, and workers. Hong Kong was mercilessly shelled and bombed. Japanese soldiers and Triads alike rampaged, looted, burned, and raped. In the harbour, three bombed-out oil tankers smouldered.