In front of the elevator, Fengshan pressed the button to go up; the voice of Hauptsturmführer Heine, a captain of the police force in the first district in Vienna, echoed in his mind. On the phone, the captain had said his wife had been arrested and detained in the Hotel Metropole, the Nazi Headquarters. She had been charged with breaking the law—sitting on a park bench designated for Aryans.
Fengshan’s first reaction had been disbelief—this must be a mistake. His American wife, Grace Lee, a delicate woman with a soft voice and a shy smile, was frustratingly introverted, forgetful, and, admittedly, growing increasingly erratic and withdrawn with their every move. At twenty-five, she was petite, with the small hands of a child, wearing size five shoes, still a dreamer, still the immature girl she had been when he had first met her four years ago. But she was hardly a meddlesome woman who would get herself arrested.
The timing of Grace’s arrest, if it were true, couldn’t be worse. Since Austria had lost its statehood due to the Anschluss, Fengshan had found himself suddenly straddling unexpected political trenches. The Chinese legation’s diplomatic status was dissolved, the chargé d’affaires of the legation was reassigned, and Fengshan was ordered to take the position as the consul general and establish the consulate of the Republic of China in Austria, now known as Ostmark, a province in Greater Germany.
A similar fate had befallen all other foreign legations in Vienna, which were now forced to operate as consulates, and their ambassadors as consul generals. Several legations were also abolished. The ever-powerful British had closed the doors of their embassy at Metternichgasse 6, and the French, following suit, were busy packing and shipping the expensive silverware back to Paris.
The diplomatic relationships in the new German province had taken a sharp and sinister turn, fraught with tension. The animosity that had hidden under a thin fabric of diplomacy was ripped open by the aggressive, newly empowered Third Reich, who relentlessly prosecuted their political dissidents, the conservatives, the Social Democrats, and the Communists. Only yesterday, the first secretary of the Soviet legation, which was about to be abolished, had secretly pleaded with him to issue a Chinese passport to their Austrian nurse, a Communist, fleeing from the Nazis’ dragnet. Fengshan had no choice but to turn down the request, given the woman’s red hair and blue eyes, obviously non-Chinese features.
His direct superior, Ambassador Chen in Berlin, to whom he reported regularly, had advised him to remain discreet in the face of the Germans’ domestic policies. It was vital, the ambassador said, to maintain a cordial, functional diplomatic tie with Germany’s new regime, even though the Führer’s policies had strained the two countries’ relations. Fengshan concurred. It was confidential information, known only to him and several key officials, that China was relying on Germany to help them fight their enemy, the Japanese who had invaded his beloved homeland. To defeat them, his government needed to upgrade their antiquated weapons, purchase sophisticated fighters, train their pilots, and feed their soldiers, which required financial support from the international community, a loan of five million dollars. Ambassador Chen had already requested the loan from the League of Nations, composed of representatives from Great Britain, France, and Italy, among others. It was currently in process, and Fengshan’s mission was to assist the ambassador and follow his orders. It was Fengshan’s hope that once the loan was approved, they would be able to purchase weapons from Germany, who had promised to sell them the desperately needed sophisticated weaponry. The last thing Fengshan expected, at this crucial moment, was to see his wife, who represented him, arrested by the Geheime Staatspolizei, tarnishing his country’s image. And worse, if she angered the new regime, the weapons deal would fall apart, and his government would plunge into an unimaginable political maelstrom.
Fengshan entered the elevator, and when it stopped on the third floor, he stepped out. At the end of the hallway, he knocked on their bedroom door.
Grace, preferring her solitary time, had been puttering in their bedroom for months. Friendless in a new country whose language she could not understand, she had retreated to her Emily Dickinson, gramophone, and outdated American magazines. He had repeatedly encouraged her to hire a German tutor to learn German, as he had encouraged her to learn Chinese while they had been in China, and French in Istanbul. Still, his dear wife had shown absolutely no interest or talent in foreign languages. Since their arrival in Vienna, she would pick up laundry or go to the park and stores, but after nearly losing her way on K?rntnerstrasse while shopping for a hat, she rarely left the consulate. To his great disappointment, she had even forgotten to walk to school with Monto, his son from his first marriage.
No one answered his knock.
He unlocked the door. The bedroom was empty.
He went downstairs, his mind reeling. With the increasing presence of the German policemen and the Brownshirts on the street, many Chinese citizens had wisely retreated indoors and stayed out of trouble. It was beyond his comprehension why and how Grace would be embroiled with the Geheime Staatspolizei, but if she had been indeed detained, the most urgent matter was to seek her release and ensure her safety. He put on his bowler hat and called for his manservant.
The drive to the Hotel Metropole, located on Morzinplatz near the Danube River, took longer than he expected. It was late in the afternoon. On the distant horizon where the Vienna Woods loomed, darkness was visible, ready to descend on the streets, and the light from the magnificent St. Stephen’s Cathedral flickered, a waning compass.
His car finally stopped in front of the hotel, a fashionable four-story building famous for its opulent dining hall, spotless white silk napkins, and splendid inner court. Fengshan had not had a chance to visit, but he could see the famed hotel was no longer a welcoming place for the rich and the famous. There were no well-dressed guests in hats and suits, no servants carrying luggage, no bellboys pulling carts. The building looked ominous. Near the elaborate stone caryatids were thick metal rods, beneath the meticulously spaced atlantes were dark rooms with drawn curtains, and in front of every window, red flags with the black swastika were planted.
He asked Rudolf, the consulate’s manservant, to park the car by the curb and walked to the hotel. Several men in brown shirts, toting rifles, watched him, and some young women holding cameras studied him coldly. He held his head high, past the impressive Corinthian columns, the motorcycles, the squad cars, and the members of the Geheime Staatspolizei in black uniforms and caps emblazoned with disturbing Totenk?pfe. He was not a superstitious man, but the skull and crossbones seemed macabre to him, and these policemen reminded him of the new man in power, Hitler, the Führer, at the routine meeting he’d attended a month ago. It had been a disheartening event—the man was a hysterical martinet, and the foreign diplomats had left the meeting with low spirits and elevated anxiety. Fengshan had a dreadful feeling that his request for his wife’s freedom would be denied, even with his diplomatic status.
He grasped the brim of his bowler hat, gave it a push, and entered the hotel. In the lobby’s corner, near a potted palm stood two guards holding rifles; under a brilliant chandelier, several women with manila folders passed by, bidding each other auf Wiedersehen—it was after office hours. At the counter where a concierge or receptionist would have sat was a man in the black uniform and the appalling cap.