“Eastern Cloud’s a gift. The information was also a gift. Nelson Trading is no concern of ours, except for passing interest. Everything said was confidential. To my knowledge, we have no records.”
Dunross studied his friend, the high cheekbones and wide, heavy-lidded eyes, straight and unblinking, the face good-looking and well proportioned with thick black eyebrows.
“Did you read this report, Brian?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll understand my dilemma,” he said, testing him.
“Ah, you mean the bit about a police traitor?”
“What was that?”
“You’re right to be cautious. Yes, very correct. You’re referring to the bit about a hostile being possibly at superintendent level?”
“Yes. Do you know who he is?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Do you suspect anyone?”
“Yes. He’s under surveillance now. There’s no need to worry about that, Ian, the back copies’ll just be seen by me and Mr. Crosse. They’ll have top classification never mind.”
“Just a moment, Brian—I haven’t said they exist,” Dunross told him, pretending irritation, and at once he noticed a flash in the eyes that could have been anger or could have been disappointment. The face had remained impassive. “Put yourself in my position, a layman,” he said, his senses fine-honed, continuing the same line, “I’d be pretty bloody foolish to keep such info around, wouldn’t I? Much wiser to destroy it—once the pertinent bits have been acted on. Wouldn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s leave it at that for tonight. Until say ten in the morning.”
Brian Kwok hesitated. Then his face hardened. “We’re not playing parlor games, Ian. It’s not for a few tons of gold, or some stock market shenanigans or a few gray area deals with the PRC however many millions’re involved. This game’s deadly and the millions involved are people and unborn generations and the Communist plague. Sevrin’s bad news. The KGB’s very bad news—and even our friends in the CIA and KMT can be equally vicious if need be. You’d better put a heavy guard on your files here tonight.”
Dunross stared at his friend impassively. “Then your official position is that this report’s accurate?”
“Crosse thinks it could be. Might be wise for us to have a man here just in case, don’t you think?”
“Please yourself, Brian.”
“Should we put a man out at Shek-O?”
“Please yourself, Brian.”
“You’re not being very cooperative, are you?”
“You’re wrong, old chum. I’m taking your points very seriously,” Dunross said sharply. “When did you get the copy and how?”
Brian Kwok hesitated. “I don’t know, and if I knew I don’t know if I should tell you.”
Dunross got up. “Come on then, let’s go and find Crosse.”
“But why do the Gornts and the Rothwells hate the Struans and Dunrosses so much, Peter?” Casey asked. She and Bartlett were strolling the beautiful gardens in the cool of the evening with Peter Marlowe and his wife, Fleur.
“I don’t know all the reasons yet,” the Englishman said. He was a tall man of thirty-nine with fair hair, a patrician accent and a strange intensity behind his blue-gray eyes. “The rumor is that it goes back to the Brocks—that there’s some connection, some family connection between the Gornt family and the Brock family. Perhaps to old Tyler Brock himself. You’ve heard of him?”
“Sure,” Bartlett said. “How did it start, the feud?”
“When Dirk Struan was a boy he’d been an apprentice seaman on one of Tyler Brock’s armed merchantmen. Life at sea was pretty brutal then, life anywhere really, but my God in those days at sea … Anyway, Tyler Brock flogged young Struan unmercifully for an imagined slight, then left him for dead somewhere on the China coast. Dirk Struan was fourteen then, and he swore before God and the devil that when he was a man he’d smash the House of Brock and Sons and come after Tyler with a cat-o’-nine-tails. As far as I know he never did though there’s a story he beat Tyler’s eldest son to death with a Chinese fighting iron.”
“What’s that?” Casey asked uneasily.
“It’s like a mace, Casey, three or four short links of iron with a spiked ball on one end and a handle on the other.”
“He killed him for revenge on his father?” she said, shocked.
“That’s another bit I don’t know yet, but I’ll bet he had a good reason.” Peter Marlowe smiled strangely. “Dirk Struan, old Tyler and all the other men who made the British Empire, conquered India, opened up China. Christ, they were giants! Did I mention Tyler was one-eyed? One of his eyes was torn out by a whipping halyard in a storm in the 1830’s when he was racing his three-masted clipper, the White Witch, after Struan with a full cargo of opium aboard. Struan was a day ahead in his clipper, China Cloud, in the race from the British opium fields of India to the markets of China. They say Tyler just poured brandy into the socket and cursed his sailors aloft to put on more canvas.” Peter Marlowe hesitated, then he continued, “Dirk was killed in a typhoon in Happy Valley in 1841 and Tyler died penniless, bankrupt, in ’63.”
“Why penniless, Peter?” Casey asked.
“The legend is that Tess, his eldest daughter—Hag Struan to be—had plotted her father’s downfall for years—you know she married Culum, Dirk’s only son? Well, Hag Struan secretly plotted with the Victoria Bank, which Tyler had started in the 1840’s and with Cooper-Tillman, Tyler’s partners in the States. They trapped him and brought down the great house of Brock and Sons in one gigantic crash. He lost everything—his shipping line, opium hulks, property, warehouses, stocks, everything. He was wiped out.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know, no one does for certain, but the story is that that same night, October thirty-first, 1863, old Tyler went to Aberdeen—that’s a harbor on the other side of Hong Kong—with his grandson, Tom, who was then twenty-five, and six sailors, and they pirated an oceangoing lorcha—that’s a ship with a Chinese hull but European rigged—and put out to sea. He was mad with rage, so they say, and he hauled up the Brock pennant to the masthead and he had pistols in his belt and a bloody cutlass in his hand—they’d killed four men to pirate the ship. At the neck of the harbor a cutter came after him and he blew it out of the water—in those days almost all boats were armed with cannon because of pirates—these seas have always been infested with pirates since time immemorial. So old Tyler put to sea, a good wind blowing from the east and a storm coming. At the mouth of Aberdeen he started bellowing out curses. He cursed Hag Struan and cursed the island, and cursed the Victoria Bank that had betrayed him, and the Coopers of Cooper-Tillman, but most of all he cursed the tai-pan who’d been dead more than twenty years. And old Tyler Brock swore revenge. They say he screamed out that he was going north to plunder and he was going to start again. He was going to build his House again and then, ‘… and then I be back by God… Abe back and I be vengea and then I be Noble House by God … Abe back….’”
Bartlett and Casey felt a chill go down their backs as Peter Marlowe coarsened his voice. Then he continued, “Tyler went north and was never heard of again, no trace of him or the lorcha or his crew, ever. Even so, his presence is still here—like Dirk Struan’s. You’d better remember, in any dealing with the Noble House you’ve got to deal with those two as well, or their ghosts. The night Ian Dunross took over as tai-pan, Struan’s lost their freighter flagship, Lasting Cloud, in a typhoon. It was a gigantic financial disaster. She foundered off Formosa—Taiwan—and was lost with all hands except one seaman, a young English deckhand. He’d been on the bridge and he swore that they’d been lured onto the rocks by false lights and that he heard a maniac laughing as they went down.”
Casey shivered involuntarily.
Bartlett noticed it and slipped his arm casually through hers and she smiled at him.
He said, “Peter, people here talk about people who’ve been dead a hundred years as t
hough they’re in the next room.”
“Old Chinese habit,” Peter Marlowe replied at once. “Chinese believe the past controls the future and explains the present. Of course Hong Kong’s only a hundred and twenty years old so a man of eighty today’d … Take Phillip Chen, the present compradore, for example. He’s sixty-five now—his grandfather was the famous Sir Gordon Chen, Dirk Struan’s illegitimate son who died in 1907 at the age of eighty-six. So Phillip Chen would have been nine then. A sharp boy of nine’d remember all sorts of stories his revered grandfather would have told him about his father, the tai-pan, and May-may, his famous mistress. The story is that old Sir Gordon Chen was one hell of a character, truly an ancestor. He had two official wives, eight concubines of various ages, and left the sprawling Chen family rich, powerful and into everything. Ask Dunross to show you his portraits—I’ve only seen copies but, my, he was a handsome man. There’re dozens of people alive here today who knew him—one of the original great founders. And my God, Hag Struan died only forty-six years ago. Look over there….” He nodded at a wizened little man, thin as a bamboo and just as strong, talking volubly to a young woman. “That’s Vincent McGore, tai-pan of the fifth great hong, International Asian Trading. He worked for Sir Gordon for years and then the Noble House.” He grinned suddenly. “Legend says he was Hag Struan’s lover when he was eighteen and just off the cattle boat from some Middle Eastern port—he’s not really Scots at all.”
“Come off it, Peter,” Fleur said. “You just made that up!”
“Do you mind,” he said, but his grin never left him. “She was only seventy-five at the time.”
They all laughed.
“That’s the truth?” Casey asked. “For real?”
“Who knows what’s truth and what’s fiction, Casey? That’s what I was told.”
“I don’t believe it,” Fleur said confidently. “Peter makes up stories.”
“Where’d you find out all this, Peter?” Bartlett asked.
“I read some of it. There are copies of newspapers that go back to 1870 in the Law Court library. Then there’s the History of the Law Courts of Hong Kong. It’s as seamy a great book as you’ll ever want if you’re interested in Hong Kong. Christ, the things they used to get up to, so-called judges and colonial secretaries, governors and policemen, and the tai-pans, the highborn and the lowborn. Graft, murder, corruption, adultery, piracy, bribery … it’s all there!
“And I asked questions. There are dozens of old China hands who love to reminisce about the old days and who know a huge amount about Asia and Shanghai. Then there are lots of people who hate, or are jealous and can’t wait to pour a little poison on a good reputation or a bad one. Of course, you sift, you try to sift the true from the false and that’s very hard, if not impossible.”
For a moment Casey was lost in thought. Then she said, “Peter, what was Changi like? Really like?”
His face did not change but his eyes did. “Changi was genesis, the place of beginning again.” His tone made them all chilled and she saw Fleur slip her hand into his and in a moment he came back. “I’m fine, darling,” he said. Silently, somewhat embarrassed, they walked out of the path onto the lower terrace, Casey knowing she had intruded. “We should have a drink. Eh, Casey?” Peter Marlowe said kindly and made it all right again.
“Yes. Thank you, Peter.”
“Linc,” Peter Marlowe said, “there’s a marvelous strain of violence that passes from generation to generation in these buccaneers—because that’s what they are. This is a very special place—it breeds very special people.” After a pause, he added thoughtfully, “I understand you may be going into business here. If I were you I’d be very, very careful.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
11:05 P.M.:
Dunross, with Brian Kwok in tow, was heading for Roger Crosse, chief of Special Intelligence, who was on the terrace chatting amiably with Armstrong and the three Americans, Ed Langan, Commander John Mishauer the uniformed naval officer, and Stanley Rosemont, a tall man in his fifties. Dunross did not know that Langan was FBI, or that Mishauer was U.S. Naval Intelligence, only that they were at the consulate. But he did know that Rosemont was CIA though not his seniority. Ladies were still drifting back to their tables, or chattering away on the terraces and in the garden. Men were lounging over drinks, and the party was mellow like the night. Some couples were dancing in the ballroom to sweet and slow music. Adryon was among them, and he saw Penelope stoically coping with Havergill. He noticed Casey and Bartlett in deep conversation with Peter and Fleur Marlowe, and he would have dearly loved to be overhearing what was being said. That fellow Marlowe could easily become a bloody nuisance, he thought in passing. He knows too many secrets already and if he was to read our book … No way, he thought. Not till hell freezes! That’s one book he’ll never read. How Alastair could be so stupid!
Some years ago Alastair Struan had commissioned a well-known writer to write the history of Struan’s to celebrate their 125 years of trading and had passed over old ledgers and trunks of old papers to him unread and unsifted. Within the year the writer had produced an inflammatory tapestry that documented many happenings and transactions that were thought to have been buried forever. In shock they had thanked the writer and paid him off with a handsome bonus and the book, the only two copies, put in the tai-pan’s safe.
Dunross had considered destroying them. But then, he thought, life is life, joss is joss and providing only we read them, there’s no harm.
“Hello, Roger,” he said, grimly amused. “Can we join you?”
“Of course, tai-pan.” Crosse greeted him warmly, as did the others. “Make yourself at home.”
The Americans smiled politely at the joke. They chatted for a moment about inconsequential things and Saturday’s races and then Langan, Rosemont and Commander Mishauer, sensing that the others wanted to converse privately, politely excused themselves. When they were alone, Brian Kwok summarized exactly what Dunross had told him.
“We will certainly appreciate your help, Ian,” Crosse said, his pale eyes penetrating. “Brian’s right about it possibly being quite dicey—if of course AMG’s other reports exist. Even if they don’t, some nasties might want to investigate.”
“Just exactly how and when did you get the copy of my latest one?”
“Why?”
“Did you get it yourselves—or from a third party?”
“Why?”
Dunross’s voice hardened. “Because it’s important.”
“Why?”
The tai-pan stared at him and the three men felt the power of his personality. But Crosse was equally willful.
“I can partially answer your question, Ian,” he said coolly. “If I do, will you answer mine?”
“Yes.”
“We acquired a copy of your report this morning. An intelligence agent—I presume in England—tipped a friendly amateur here that a courier was en route to you with something that’d interest us. This Hong Kong contact asked us if we’d be interested in having a look at it—for a fee of course.” Crosse was so convincing that the other two policemen who remembered the real story were doubly impressed. “This morning, the photocopy was delivered to my home by a Chinese I’d never met before. He was paid—of course you understand in these things you don’t ask for a name. Now, why?”
“When this morning?”
“At 6:04 if you want an exact time. But why is this important to you?”
“Because Alan Medford Gr—”
“Oh, Father, sorry to interrupt,” Adryon said, rushing up breathlessly, a tall, good-looking young man in tow, his crumpled sacklike dinner jacket and twisted tie and scruffy brown-black shoes out of place in all this elegance. “Sorry to interrupt but can I do something about the music?”
Dunross was looking at the young man. He knew Martin Haply and his reputation. The English-trained Canadian journalist was twenty-five, and had been in the Colony for two years and was now the scourge of the business community. His biting
sarcasm and penetrating exposés of personalities and of business practices that were legitimate in Hong Kong but nowhere else in the Western world were a constant irritation.
“The music, Father,” Adryon repeated, running on, “it’s ghastly. Mother said I had to ask you. Can I tell them to play something different, please?”
“All right, but don’t turn my party into a happening.”
She laughed and he turned his attention back to Martin Haply. “Evening.”
“Evening, tai-pan,” the young man said with a confident, challenging grin. “Adryon invited me. I hope it was all right to come after dinner?”
“Of course. Have fun,” Dunross said, and he added dryly, “There are a lot of your friends here.”
Haply laughed. “I missed dinner because I was on the scent of a dilly.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Seems that certain interests in conjunction with a certain great bank have been spreading nasty rumors about a certain Chinese bank’s solvency.”
“You mean the Ho-Pak?”
“It’s all nonsense though. The rumors. Just more Hong Kong shenanigans.”
“Oh?” All day Dunross had heard rumors about Richard Kwang’s Ho-Pak Bank being overextended. “Are you sure?”
“Have a column on it in tomorrow’s Guardian. Talking about the Ho-Pak though,” Martin Haply added breezily, “did you hear that upwards of a hundred people took all their money out of the Aberdeen branch this afternoon? Could be the beginning of a run and—”
“Sorry, Father … come on Martin, can’t you see Father’s busy.” She leaned up and kissed Dunross lightly and his hand automatically went around her and hugged her.
“Have fun, darling.” He watched her rush off, Haply following. Cocky son of a bitch, Dunross thought absently, wanting tomorrow’s column now, knowing Haply to be painstaking, unbribable and very good at his job. Could Richard be overextended?
“You were saying, Ian? Alan Medford Grant?” broke into his thoughts.
“Oh, sorry, yes.” Dunross sat back at the table, compartmentalizing those problems. “AMG’s dead,” he said quietly.
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