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at one tenth of the cost it takes our fat lazy work force?’
    ‘You want to pick up our Germans or meet them at the restaurant?’ Shane said over his shoulder.
    ‘We’ll pick them up at their hotel,’ Devlin said. ‘I don’t want our Germans getting lost.’ He looked back at Bill. ‘The Chinese are
united,’
Devlin said, his eyes shining. ‘That’s the thing that nobody gets. They’re
united
. They have a unity of national vision that the West has lacked since, oh, World War Two. That’s why they will win.’
    Shane was telling the Germans that he would see them in the lobby in ten minutes.
    ‘I love the Chinese,’ Devlin said simply, leaning back. ‘I admire them. They believe that tomorrow will be a better day. And if you are going to believe in something, anything, then that’s not a bad thing to believe in.’
    Bill watched the Bund go by, and silently agreed with him.
    The beggars saw them coming.
    At first it seemed to Bill as though every single one of them had an oversized baby in her arms, as though begging without a toddler was forbidden by some local statute, but then he realisedthat there were also old people shambling along at the back of the mob, filthy hands outstretched, and solitary feral children who ducked and dived beneath the women with their toddlers in their arms, the toddlers carried as if they were babies.
    But Bill had not noticed the old people and the big children. He had only noticed the toddlers being carted under the arms of their mothers.
    Because they all seemed to be just a little bit younger than Holly.
    Shane cursed. He had not wanted to walk to the restaurant. He had advised the two Germans that it was better to take the Mercedes and a cab, but they had insisted. They wanted to stroll along on the Bund, and now look what had happened. The beggars were on them, all over them, with their toothless, ingratiating smiles, the rank smell of their clothes and their bodies, all the bewildered faces of the children carried under one arm.
    Shane shoved on ahead, shouting at them in Shanghainese, while Nancy pleaded with them and Devlin gave instructions to the clearly terrified Germans. Only Bill dawdled, stunned by a world where children the same age as Holly were begging in the street.
    He reached for his wallet, and immediately realised his mistake. He had planned to give some money to the women with children but there were just so many of them, too many of them, and suddenly he was overwhelmed, the coins and notes falling from his fingers and the women with toddlers being trampled by the older children. Empty palms were thrust in Bill’s face.
    One of the bigger kids – a weasel-faced runt with a cropped head and the eyes of an old man – grabbed Bill’s jacket and wouldn’t let it go. The child clung on as Bill edged his way through the mob to the building where his colleagues and the Germans were waiting. A uniformed doorman prised the child from Bill’s jacket.
    ‘Better watch your wad around here, mate,’ Shane said. ‘They’re not all driving BMWs and shopping at Cartier. There are stillmillions of the little bastards wiping their arses with their hands.’
    ‘And nobody gets left behind in the West?’ Devlin flared. Then he smiled easily. ‘There’s more upward mobility here than anywhere on the planet.’
    Bill was embarrassed, shaken. The Germans were staring at him. One of them was balding and in a business suit, and the other had the long greying hair and the leather jacket of a wild youth. But they were both all business, and they could have been brothers. They murmured to each other in their own language.
    Bill wiped sweat from his face. As they went up to the restaurant in the lift, Nancy gave him a tissue for the smear of grime that the young beggar had left on his jacket. He thanked her, his face burning, and dabbed at the mark but saw that it would not budge.
    The perfect black print of a child’s hand.
    Bill didn’t understand.
    Their clients,