“Never mind, daughter,” Lee said. “Your old man is still a mighty pirate.” He struck a pose to make her laugh.

Ting-Yan gave him a half-hearted smile. She had no laughter in her right now. They had entered into a new kind of time, the kind where anyone could die at any minute, and any time you saw someone you loved might be the last.

“I better get going,” Tak-Tam said. “The Independent Brigade needs to get to those pillboxes before the Japanese do.”

Ting-Yan cast him a look of dismay. If only she didn’t have to look after her friend Sum-Sum and baby Macy. Then, if she couldn’t help her father on the boat, she could be up in the hills looking for cached weapons in British pillboxes and making sure no harm came to Tak-Tam.

“Don’t worry, Ah Yan ahh. We will all be back together soon. I’m only going for a couple of days, and if your old father’s going to be a ferryman between Sai Kung and Tung Ping Chau, well, Chek Keng is a stop along the way. We will all come home soon.”

“I’m not worried for me,” she said. “I’m worried for you. I wish I could come.”

“Another time, daughter,” Siu-Wai said. “You’re needed here now.”

The child had finally settled. Ting-Yan stroked the downy hair on Macy’s giant head. “Poor little girl,” she said. “What a time you’ve been born into.”

1942

CHAPTER 31NOMA WANTS A PARTY

August 26, 1942

The Festival of Hungry Ghosts was more subdued than usual because of the occupation, but there were still some families on the street burning spirit money for their ancestors and for the ghosts who wandered. The scent of smoke and joss swirled through the city. Hong Kong had been occupied for eight months and a day. Emily Mah Wai-Yee had been pregnant for exactly that long, and her belly was out to here. Her father-in-law, Old Steward Cheung, tended the bar at the Hong Kong Cricket Club because that was what he’d been asked to do by Colonel Noma, head of the Kempeitai, housed in the daytime with his men in the Supreme Court Building, which was located behind the clubhouse, on the other side of Jackson Road. Noma’s men were thirsty at the end of a long day, and the colonel had taken a shine to the old steward. It was Cheung’s red face, brimming with its peculiarly pan-Asian sorrow, that Noma wanted to see at the end of each workday. Noma liked Cheung so much that he’d assigned the translator Tanaka Shigeru to stay with him all day, every day, so that he’d be there if Cheung ever needed translation services.