The Nine Dragons [antikvár]

The little girl felt a surge of water lift them from below. Terrified, imagining the great body of the shark circling under them, she struggled in her father's arms. He begged her not to splash, whispering that it wouldn't bite them if they were still. Something terrible brushed her foot. It was night in the brutal Year of the Ox. Behind them, the China coast was dark. Ahead, a faint red glow marked the electric lights of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, a freewheeling bastion of capitalism that clung to the rugged Kowloon Peninsula and a few small islands in the sea. Soldiers patrolled a double-barbed wire fence across the top of the peninsula to prevent escapes from the Communist People's Republic of China. Tai Pang Bay was the only way out. Her father thought the shark had gone. He swam a slow side stroke, never breaking the surface, and whispering to her in a voice cracked with fear. She held his belt and trailed behind him, glancing fearfully over her shoulder. He had been a teacher before the Red Guards beat him for being an Enemy-Without-A-Gun. He had waited for his wounds to heal so that he wouldn't spill blood in the sea, and he had studied the sharks, concluding that swimmers who splashed made noises like the dying fish that sharks attacked. Tonight he had put his theory to the test, hoisting his daughter in his arms and wading into the dark. He swam for hours, resting when he had to, on an inflated pig bladder round as a balloon that helped them float. At last they passed the four-second flashing channel 15