“You like your hole-in-the-balance-sheet theory, don’t you? Perhaps Mercury figures he can ultimately do a share placement with ‘friends,’ and make it a cash deal. Then we don’t get to do due diligence.”
“Why didn’t he make it an all-cash deal in the first place then?”
“Maybe he had to show willing first – mount a challenge, see who attacked him, who came to your defense, see if Henry came rushing back from what turned out to be a fishing trip to Iceland. His public position, as you know, is that the deal is a merger, that it is good for both sets of shareholders, that it is good for Hong Kong, and the fact that Big Wendy doesn’t roll over and play dead just proves he isn’t ‘one of us.’”
“Maybe he counted on my resisting so he could turn to his friends and switch to a cash bid.”
“I’m having second thoughts about that one, Wendy. Even in Hong Kong, two billion U.S. is a lot to raise from friends. My guess is he didn’t think you’d resist. Amanda probably told him she could manage you, one way or another.”
Sam had evidently reached the same conclusion about Mercury and Mrs. Wendy as Julia had.
“Where does Zhang Hai Ming fit in?” I said.
“As you yourself told Simon, he’s just creating options for himself. If it looks like Mercury will prevail, Zhang can be on the winning side. If it looks like you are mounting a good enough defense he can decide to remain loyal. And it may not matter to him who wins. He could be getting into the act just for sport.” Sam paused. “Simon does that sometimes.”
“In a weird way, that makes sense – Zhang being in it for the sport, that is.” I decided I’d better tell Sam about naked Lucy.
“Serena said that had to have been Zhang’s doing,” I concluded.
Sam looked up sharply. “Serena hasn’t told me about this Lucy. Hey, wait. Is that what you’ve been doing the past three days? You’re not fucking Serena, are you?”
“No.”
“I’m seeing warning signs, Wendy. Secrets are a form of sex. You have any more surprises, you tell me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“And leave Serena alone. She’s a very nice girl. I expect she would be pleasant to go to bed with, if you could persuade her to stop talking. But she’s new to all this high finance and designer clothes shit. Simon tells me her father is a milkman or something. Why are you smiling?”
“Sam Canadian the moralist.”
“Sam Canadian, if you look into it, only goes to bed with women who know precisely what they are doing.”
The thought floated by that Serena didn’t know what she was doing, what her heart was doing. Having been trained to be cautious, she therefore slept on the couch. I liked that idea, so I didn’t examine it too closely. Amanda hadn’t known what she was doing when she married me. That was for sure. But then, I’d been pretty confused myself.
“So what do we do about Zhang?” I said finally.
“There’s nothing much we can do. But why not ask that housekeeper of yours? Song’s creepy. I’ve only seen her a couple of times, but it’s creepy the way she can speak in different voices. She’s worked for Henry since 1985, I think you’ve told me. Zhang claims to be Henry’s lao pengyou. Maybe she knows something about him.”
“There’s no question he’s Henry’s old friend,” I said, but left it there. The way the Chinese see it, a friend is someone you can take advantage of. But I didn’t need to lecture Sam about Chinese culture, and I didn’t want to dissect my worry that Song and Zhang were somehow in league. I didn’t want to talk about Song at all.
The thought came to me again that I was the one who was supposed to be in charge. Whatever we did would be my decision even if it was his idea. Or Simon’s. If Henry came back things would be different. But until he did, I was Henry. I thanked Sam for the dim sum, promised to keep him informed, and walked back to my bank.
What would Charleston grandfather recommend? I asked myself, forcibly shifting mental gears.
Carry the attack to the enemy. That’s what he’d say. It made me laugh to imagine asking for his advice. But I followed it. And in the event, it proved to be decisive.
Two hours later I walked into the dining room of Hong Kong Club and saw Mercury having lunch with Charles Pang, head of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. They had a table for four.
“May I join you?” I said, sitting down without waiting for permission. In principle, gentlemen’s clubs are purely social institutions. Business is never discussed. All members are friends. An unclaimed place at a table is open to any member.
“Nice to see you, Wendy,” said Charles. In its capacity as regulator, the HKMA has to approve any merger among Hong Kong’s banks. They were on record as wanting to encourage consolidation, so I never doubted that they would permit the bid to go forward. But having lunch with Mercury in that particular dining room would be seen as signaling that the government favored the deal. Charles was being naughty, letting Mercury use him that way, and he knew it, but he recovered the situation by treating the takeover battle as if it were no more important to any of us than Hong Kong’s annual Rugby Sevens tournament. Sure, there would be a lot of excitement, and some of the players might get injured, but the worst that could happen to the spectators would be sunburn, and three months later no one would remember what happened.
“The Japanese can never make decisions,” I said, just to let them know I wasn’t embarrassed by the item in Mosquito.
“We used to encourage it,” said Charles, “having foreign banks take stakes in the small fry here, back when the world wasn’t so certain of Hong Kong’s fundamental strengths.”
“I know.” I turned to Mercury. “Who was it Chao Bank had? Was it Sanwa or Mitsubishi?”
“They’re out now,” said Mercury thinly. His “strategic investor” had been a godsend. Henry had never needed one. Everyone knew that.
“Yes, that’s right, of course. But, Charles, if you are trying to tell me that the HKMA isn’t as partial to the Japanese as it used to be, don’t worry. They’re going directly to the mainland now. They think Hong Kong is irrelevant.”
I could see that Mercury was about to come to Hong Kong’s defense but I cut him off.
“And, Mercury, I want to thank you for calling on Amanda while I was away. She so enjoys seeing you. These…commercial matters shouldn’t stand in the way of old friendships. I hope that, however this little excitement turns out, you will feel you can continue to…call on her. Her happiness depends upon it.”
In other words, I know what you are doing and you are welcome to her. I have more interesting women in my life.
Charles Pang had a wry smile on his face as I stood up.
“I’ll leave you gentlemen. I expect you want to talk racehorses, and I’m a dunce on that topic, as you know.”
I went to my table and ate lamb cutlets, feeling wicked.
“Her happiness depends upon it” had been over the top but as I had expected, Mercury cut Amanda off. No more calls at the Castle, no more unexplained blocks of time toward the end of the afternoon in Amanda’s schedule.
She began staying in her room until mid-afternoon. She caught a bad cold. She wandered around in a robe and flip-flops, trailing spent Kleenex tissues, which Song collected with chopsticks and a paper bag. Julia described all this to me. Amanda pulled herself together by the time I got home – or refused dinner and stayed in her room.
“Missy lazy,” said Song. I had to agree. Julia had said something about Amanda being “clinically depressed” but I put it down to her soft upbringing.
“Being Henry” involved being watched all day by employees who knew that if I crumbled, many of them would lose their jobs. I’d been looked at all my life, but as a curiosity. This was different.
The staff seemed to like it that I was wearing a normal business suit. I stuck with the crimson braces, though, so as to feel I was still me.
I wasn’t sure what Catherine made of me. I was following Cedric’s advice, and figured he
had somehow been in communication with her. I was initiating simple interchanges with as many employees as possible – but was pointedly polite, and tried to let her know I did not presume I could do it as well as Henry would. And I always implied that he would eventually reappear. She seemed to approve.
Back at the Castle, I thought about how to approach Song. I wanted her advice about Zhang, but I didn’t want her to think I was fearful.
In the end, I just went down the dark stairway, knocked on her door and asked her what she thought of him.
“Very bad man,” she said with a laugh. “Zhang Hai Ming hide in my closet once, maybe ten years ago, before you come. After I turned out the light he came out and got in bed with me. I let him talk some, get his arm around me, and then I bite his ear. Big noise. Ear bleed. Hai Ming kick over table and lamp. Henry still awake, maybe read in library, come to investigate. I tell Hai Ming to hide in my closet and tell Henry I’d been frightened by a rat. He say get rat poison, and go back to bed. I tell Hai Ming he have to wait until morning to leave – otherwise Henry hear him leaving – but he have to sleep on floor. Otherwise I bite other ear. Keep him on floor until morning, just like prison. ‘Go home,’ I say after Henry go to bank. ‘You ugly.’” She paused and laughed with quiet pride. “He still want me. Hai Ming only respect people who can hurt him.”
I wasn’t sure whether Song was laughing at Hai Ming’s pain or at the idea of someone wanting her or to camouflage their true relationship. But I could understand Zhang’s point of view. Her resilience was attractive. She had no fear. Her laugh was both childish and wise.
I told her about Lucy.
“Yes,” she said. “Zhang Hai Ming do that. Very good project. Wendy get lesson. Also girl embarrassed.”
I asked her to explain.
“To survive the Cultural Revolution,” she said, switching to her radio voice, “Zhang Hai Ming had to humiliate himself. Repeatedly.”
It occurred to me that this voice distanced her from the painful memories she was sharing.
“Hai Ming’s father was some sort of Party theoretician, which made the family an early target of the Red Guards. After his parents were killed, Hai Ming himself was abused, starved, beaten. He became a cockroach who can hide in toilets, who can slip through cracks. The only pride he had left was in his ability to survive. Anything that will give him a tiny advantage he will take, he will steal. Any piece of garbage, any scrap of gossip. He likes to embarrass people. He cannot help himself. That is why he owns Mosquito.”
“He does?”
“Who else?”
I’d never asked myself who owned the gossip sheet. To me it was part of Hong Kong – like the weather.
“How do you know this, Song? You were still a child when the Cultural Revolution ended.”
“Hai Ming told me. Hai Ming tell Song everything.” She paused, and it seemed to me that her voice softened briefly as she reverted back to pidgin. “Sit in kitchen, same as you sometimes. Cry when tell.”
“I don’t suppose he ever goes to the China Club?”
“Been once. Don’t like. Red Guards not entertainment.”
I broached the question of how he could be persuaded to oppose Mercury, how he could at least be neutralized.
“Zhang do business with scum. He make sure they fear him. If scum not afraid, they squash you. Zhang must be cockroach again. Feel very bad. Beat up some girl.”
“So he has a psychological and professional need to be in control,” I said.
“Zhang lose dignity, have problem.”
“Could you make him sleep on your floor again?”
I said it in jest, but to make my point. Song took me seriously. “Hai Ming not come down here again.” She paused. “Psychological?” she said. She tapped her chest to indicate the position of her heart.
I tapped my chest, my forehead, and then my heart again.
Song thought about this. Then she laughed. “You very big man. You spank him. Get pictures.”
So despite Song’s understanding of Zhang’s history, her sympathy for his disabilities – not to mention the consequences for some as yet unspecified young woman – she was prepared to see him humiliated again. We needed him in our camp. Psychological violence would be efficient.
“If need,” she said. “Only if need.” And then, as I was leaving: “Very funny.”
14
I wasn’t sure what I thought about spanking a man, so I called Simon. He cut me off almost before I could speak, and said it would be better to talk in person. “I’m going to London,” I told Amanda. “I’m afraid I have to go to London,” I said to Julia.
I asked Sam to take Julia out to dinner while I was away. He seemed to amuse her. “It’s getting a bit tense at the Castle,” I explained.
Sam didn’t ask me why I was going to London, so I assumed he and Simon had already talked. They were more of a team than any of them let on, and I was pretty dim not to have realized it sooner. Sam was a Canadian. Henry’s system delivered escapees to Canada. Serena had ridiculed the idea that “the little pug” could be an intelligence operative, but she would have been trained to mislead people. They trained them for approximately anything, as I soon discovered.
I have to be careful, in telling this story, not to confuse what I knew at the time with what I have come to understand in the years that followed, but it seems to me that I had a fleeting vision, riding out to the airport, of Sam and Simon and Serena, all in long white coats with stethoscopes around their necks, consulting my chart and discussing the patient. “Shall we put him on steroids?” one of them was saying. “I think we may need to,” seemed to be the answer. “His wife is cheating on him and he doesn’t mind.”
In London, I stayed at Claridge’s, where Boston grandmother had taken me the summer I was sixteen. They’d changed it some. I suppose they were entitled to, but I don’t like change. The hall porters’ desk wasn’t where it used to be. The room that wasn’t a bar where you sat to have a drink had been redecorated, and you were encouraged to have a sandwich there because you needed a reservation in the restaurant, which had stopped looking like a set for Downton Abbey and now had a famous chef.
You’re out of date, I told myself. London used to be the affectation capital of the world, and Americans still think it is, but the British have moved on – just as smart Hong Kong Chinese have moved on from pretending to be British.
Simon took me to the Garrick for lunch. I guess he’d figured out I like clubs. Founded by actors and located in the theatre district, the Garrick now includes barristers and journalists and a sprinkling of investment bankers – the other performing professions – most of whom advertise their membership by wearing a distinctive “salmon and cucumber” necktie.
It was essentially impossible to get into the Garrick. You had to have been proposed in the 1980s. If I lived in London, I would want to join. I could never have been an actor, but perhaps my linen suits and conspicuous reading of Chinese newspapers at the Hong Kong Club would help. I wasn’t surprised that Simon was a member.
The walls of the dining room were decorated with paintings. Edwin Booth was holding Yorick’s skull above our heads.
“All the world’s a stage,” I recited, and told Simon I was going back to my linen suits. “Navy blue isn’t me.”
“Perhaps not,” said Simon. “It’s Jaques, by the way – in As You Like It.”
“Really? I always thought it was Hamlet. I suppose I spent too much of my time on Chinese.”
“One man in his time plays many parts,” said Simon. “That’s my favorite line. It’s in the same speech.”
I told him Song’s suggestion.
“Serena can help you,” he said.
“You think I should do it?”
“If you think you can do it, yes.” For the next twenty seconds, he concentrated on spooning mustard onto his plate to go with his sausages, giving me time to reflect. “Serena’s had a lot of training, you know,” he continued. ‘If you can overcome her
defenses, you can handle anyone. Very fit.”
“Sam says her father is a milkman,” I said, surprising myself.
“Our Canadian exaggerates, as usual. What I said to my partners when she came to us was that her father might as well be a milkman for all the money she had, that we’d have to give her an advance on her bonus so she could buy the right sort of clothes.”
“What is her father?”
“Was. She’s an orphan. Useful background for our business. Orphans learn to ingratiate themselves.”
I thought about various responses I could make and decided against all of them. “What I meant was, going back to Zhang, you don’t think Song’s suggestion is crazy?”
“It’s brilliant,” said Simon.
It occurred to me later that wearing high heels, if you cut through all the camp explanations, was Simon’s way of saying he played many parts, to echo Shakespeare. There was the merchant banker role, and there was what he did for Her Majesty. Psmith & Graves was a legitimate and successful business, though with a joke for a name. But for Simon himself, it was a pose. People who were supposed to know that got the point. Once again, I’d been slow.
Sam had listed “charming clients” as one of Simon’s principal activities, which evidently included feeding them gorgeous associates. I needn’t have worried about being charmed by Serena, though. She threw me flat on my back the first three times I went for her. She prodded me with her foot to get up. “I don’t expect Zhang will have the skills I do,” she said, “and he won’t be expecting what you’re going to do, so it should be a lot easier. But I don’t want you to think I’m a pushover.”
We were in a sort of gymnasium in the basement of what I assumed was a safe house, somewhere outside London. It smelled like sweat. I would have expected fluorescent lights, but they were halogen, which make no noise and leave nothing to the imagination. Serena had met me at the door. She was wearing a pair of oversized man’s trousers, held up with a belt.
We were alone, which increased my pulse rate. There were pads on the floor, which made the room quiet. The only furniture was a couple of chairs.
The Daughters of Henry Wong Page 12
