Then again, if the takeover succeeded, perhaps Chao Yinhang’s shares would go down even more. I seemed to have trouble focusing on the details. In any event, I put up my entire personal fortune, and Cedric lent me the extra million I needed on my signature alone. “You are now at war,” he said quietly, as the lawyers did their dance in Sam’s conference room.
“So, where’s the champagne?” said Julia.
“Let’s see if it works,” said Sam.
21
I stayed in bed after eating my congee Tuesday morning, absorbed in Sun-Tzu’s treatise on strategy and self-knowledge. In English, it is given the grandiose title The Art of War, but a better translation of “bing fa” would be “soldier method.” A bing is a private. War should be approached with humility.
Fate, which is based on your own true desire, will determine the outcome of the conflict according to the extent of your own belief and faith…or so Sun-Tzu maintained.
I preferred this particular translation because it sounded like a sensible person speaking, rather than a Westerner trying to sound Chinese. Most Western discussions of the book – including the ridiculous business books you find in airports – emphasize deception, and the superiority of winning without having to do battle. That is certainly in there, but Bing Fa is also about resolve.
We had accumulated the Chao Yinhang shares we were after without affecting the price, which was a matter of professional pride to Sam. He’d called me. I was glad he was happy about something.
Julia came in, followed by Philip and Tommy. The Gurkhas had killed a snake, which they wanted me to come see. Song would not let them bring it inside. I said they should save it very carefully so I could examine it later. The boys disappeared under my bed, presumably hoping to find another snake.
Julia sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hand on my foot. “You don’t have to do this, darling.”
“Do what?”
“Fight this battle. Fight at all. There is plenty of money. There is a world outside Hong Kong to enjoy.” For a moment, she sounded like Amanda.
“Henry lives.” It was the best I could manage. I hadn’t told her about the system, and didn’t plan to.
“Come out,” she called to the boys as she stood up. One twin appeared and then the other. Julia leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I support you in whatever you do. I’m taking the boys to the science museum to be out of the way.”
The morality of the project is essential to the outcome of the project. You must know what it is you wish to accomplish and why…Do YOU believe in yourself as leader?
Helen Fong and her crew arrived at eleven.
We did the interview in the library, in front of a wall of Henry’s books. I briefed Helen before we started. She agreed to an opening statement of sorts.
“A great deal has happened to my family in recent weeks,” I said. “Henry Wong has been missing for more than two months. Earlier this week I buried his beautiful daughter, my wife, Amanda. I have reason to believe Henry is safe. Amanda did not share my confidence.”
Except for what may have been a hint from Serena, I had no basis for saying anything about Henry. The words just came out. Afterwards, I reasoned that if anything had happened to him in China, Mercury would have heard about it and gotten word to Amanda, who would have tried even harder to get control of the family’s shares. Activity would have revived her spirits. Things would be playing out differently.
“In Henry’s absence, the board of Chao Yinhang saw fit to make a takeover proposal in respect of Pearl River Bank, which under Henry Wong’s guidance has grown to be an important local institution. With the help of our merchant bankers, Psmith and Graves,” – I hoped Sam would like having the firm mentioned – “we formally responded to their offer, and each side has published the appropriate statements required under Hong Kong’s securities regulations. Our stated position has been that the offer was not in the best interests of Pearl River Bank’s shareholders.” I paused, allowing Helen to underline what would come next.
“Is that still your view, Mr. Lee?”
“No, Helen, it is not. Now that the market has had an opportunity to digest Chao Yinhang’s increased offer, which is more a merger than a takeover, because the two banks are of roughly equal size and the offer is primarily in shares, it is clear that the consideration Pearl River Bank’s shareholders would receive for each of their current shares is well in excess of the value of those shares.”
I imagined investment bankers and takeover lawyers all over town gasping, because I was throwing away a crucial element in any defense.
“Isn’t the premium justified by the cost savings from putting the two banks together?”
“Up to a point, yes, Helen. If Chao Yinhang wins, no doubt they will close some branches and fire some staff. They will hope that the costs they eliminate are greater than the revenues they will lose. But the premium they are offering exceeds the value of any benefits they could reasonably expect.”
“Why would they offer so much?”
“You’d have to ask the board of Chao Yinhang that question, Helen. Perhaps their pride has blinded them.”
“So are you telling us you now plan to recommend that your shareholders accept their offer?”
“We will do just that. A new statement will be published in tomorrow’s newspapers.”
“So you’re giving up?”
“Ah. I must explain the other part. The combination makes business sense, even if the terms of the transaction are, to put it bluntly, unfair to Chao Yinhang’s shareholders…”
“Excuse me for interrupting, but should you be saying that so directly? What if Chao Yinhang lowers the price it is offering?”
“Under Hong Kong’s securities laws, once a company makes an offer, they can’t reduce it.”
“Please go on.”
“Hong Kong needs a local bank with an ability to operate throughout the Pearl River Delta region, and large enough to compete with our foreign competitors…”
“Hongkong Bank isn’t foreign.”
“It has been for a generation, Helen. They bought a sick bank in Great Britain and moved the headquarters to London.”
“Oh. What about Bank of China?”
“The institution that operates here is Bank of China (Hong Kong), which is a subsidiary of Bank of China, which has its headquarters in Beijing. We need a local bank. I want to help create a local champion for Hong Kong, and since the board of Chao Yinhang has made such a generous offer, we are able to do so. But we want that champion to be well managed. Knitting the two organizations together will be a challenge. So I am also calling an extraordinary general meeting to elect a new Board for the combined institution. The meeting would occur shortly after Chao Yinhang’s offer closes and it takes control – quite possibly in the afternoon of the same day. At that point, our current shareholders will have a substantial interest in Chao Yinhang, and if others share our views on management, our slate of directors will be elected.”
“Wouldn’t it be a meeting of Chao Yinhang’s shareholders?”
“Yes.”
“But how can you call the meeting before you receive the Chao Yinhang shares you’ll get in the takeover?”
“Under the rules, you need one percent of a company’s shares to call a meeting. I bought that amount in the open market over the past two days.”
Helen paused. “So at this meeting, what slate will you propose?”
“We’ll give all the details this afternoon, when we formally issue our proxy statement, but I can tell you that we would want some of the current directors of each bank. Henry Wong would be the chairman. I would be managing director.”
“Excuse me for asking this,” said Helen, “but why do you think you can fill that role?”
“I’ve stayed in the background, Helen, but for eight years Henry Wong has been my teacher.”
“No executive role for Mr. Chao?”
“Well, Mercury’s not much of a banker, is he?”
I stared at the camera.
For a few moments there was silence, and then Helen did a wrap-up.
Julia brought the boys back late in the afternoon. “Sam says you were wonderful.” She was standing at the door to the library, as if waiting to be invited in. “I wish I’d seen it. I wish I’d been here.”
“Thank you. But I was probably better off on my own. And it was really helpful of you to get the little boys out of the way.”
She came over to me. “You look exhausted, darling.”
“I am. There’ve been reporters on the phone from the moment the interview ended. I’ve been speaking on the record in three languages – and trying to get gossip columnists to understand the takeover rules.”
“Sam said to tell you not to get overexposed.”
Maybe he hadn’t liked my mentioning Psmith & Graves. Sam’s attitude could be hard to predict. “He called you? Oh, that’s right, you told me that already.”
“On my cell phone. We were watching little metal balls work their way through a two-story clockwork contraption with shoots and balances and whirly…”
“I’ve seen it.”
“Really?”
“Eight years ago, when I was living in the Mandarin and didn’t know what to do with myself.”
“Tommy particularly liked it. I think he wants to build one. Anyway, that’s where we were at three o’clock when Sam called.”
“A stickler for the rules, our Sam. Psmith and Graves couldn’t legally comment until the proxy statement was filed, which would have happened about that time.”
“Rules are good.”
She left me alone.
In due course we shared a simple supper, and when Philip came running into the dining room demanding a story, she said she’d read them just one.
To me she said, “You get in bed.” I fell asleep in seconds.
22
My next surprise was to send Julia back to New York. I’d thought about it for a week before I raised the idea. I’m still not sure exactly how I came to the decision apart from a sort of notion that the next phase of my journey required abstinence.
“But my votes?” she said.
“You can give me a proxy,” I said, “just for a few weeks. It will be over soon.”
“Why do I need to go?” she said.
I explained that it was about to get really nasty. She would be a lightning rod. Terrible things would be written about her. About us.
Julia said she didn’t give a fig what the newspapers said about her.
“I’m illegitimate, remember. I didn’t even know who my father was until you came to New York and kissed me.”
“Did I kiss you that night?”
“You did, and I was in heaven.”
“Sorry. Very improper of me.”
“I said it was fine,” she said. “Wonderful, in fact. And considering what you’ve done with my body since then, you can hardly plead embarrassment. You are in a fog these days.”
“I have a lot on my mind.”
She proposed taking the little boys, as they would be safer out of Hong Kong. I said “no,” which was the right answer politically – having my sons sent away would show weakness – but irresponsible as a parent.
Two mornings after my television interview, Song had reported when she brought in my coffee that men had pounded on the door in the middle of the night. “I sent them away,” she’d said. “They were not impressive – big, stupid Cantonese.”
Not Taiwanese this time, I said to myself, wondering if this meant I had more than one enemy. “How many were there, Song, and what did they want?”
“Four men. They say forget proxy trick. Otherwise boys.” That was part of why I was in a fog.
When I came home from the office, Julia was gone. There was an envelope on the library table. A single piece of writing paper with a single phrase: “Good luck, darling.” Her proxy was also there. Such a wise and lovely woman.
One of the Chinese newspapers was lying open on the table. Presumably Song had put it there. Presumably she’d translated the lead story for Julia, which perhaps had tipped the balance. Song didn’t want a stranger on her turf any more than Catherine did. The story explained that my father had gone mad and killed himself when I was a little boy, which was why I was so strange – and by extension why it would be a mistake to put the important bank Chao Yinhang would soon become into my foreign hands. There had been other articles like it, but this one reprinted the picture of Julia coming out of the Peninsula in the yellow Shanghai Tang outfit, and repeated the whispers that Julia was actually my half-sister – unbalanced, like me – and was masquerading as Amanda’s half-sister in order to help me steal the bank.
After supper I went into the library again and scanned the shelves for something to read. Song had posted a roster for herself, the two Gurkhas and me – in retrospect, a ridiculously inadequate level of security – and I had the first watch that night.
More Frost? Too depressing. Kipling? Too ironic – though in fact he saw things more clearly than people today, who never read him, automatically assume. I settled on one of Henry’s history books – the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, with fabulous fold-out maps. China had lost, rather ignominiously.
I sat down in my purpose-built chair but then turned down the lamp in order to think. I was almost bereft of relatives now – Amanda and my father dead, Henry missing, Julia banished, a mother one could never talk to and little boys one couldn’t talk to yet.
The thought of my mother brought me up short, made me restless and guilty. She had a life history. I just never wanted to hear it. I suppose I was born that way, and she, sensing that, shared nothing. We were like guests at a large house party, who never needed to become acquainted. If she hadn’t been my mother, if we’d been the same age, we might even have slept together, out of consideration for our hostess, who had taken such trouble to throw us together, but we never would have talked. I had treated Amanda the way I believed my mother had treated me. I had found, in Amanda, a woman beautiful enough to be a conquest, and ignorant enough to disregard. And a soft life. You can map that onto Charleston without much difficulty. One never escapes one’s family.
The thought of family made me think about the Filipinos. Henry, for reasons I now understood, insisted on Chinese servants, but there are more than 100,000 Filipinos in Hong Kong, cooking and cleaning and tending other people’s children, and sending most of their wages home. On Sundays they congregate wherever there is open ground, spreading blankets on sidewalks and on the streets that are closed off for them, sitting on ledges and sleeping beside the path in public gardens, eating rice and unidentifiable food out of plastic containers, braiding each other’s hair, sharing letters and photographs of their children. When I go into Central on Sundays, I must pick my way among the groups and worry about the occasional woman sitting alone. Some employers, I know, abuse their maids. Some maids are continually in debt, trying to satisfy rapacious relatives at home, or “boy friends” they meet at dances. Those wise enough to avoid such entanglements are often lonely. Amanda had a friend whose Filipino maid cried every night, which she found quite annoying. Central on Sunday is like a battlefield, really, with pockets of devastation everywhere.
Sitting in the dark, I brushed these thoughts aside and brought my mind round to Sun-Tzu’s question: was my job to succeed or merely to survive?
Ancestral voices gave me an answer: prevail. That was the word Faulkner used in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which had been recorded, and for a while in a nuclear-frightened world was much admired. Charleston grandmother had been fond of it. Prevail despite one’s second thoughts and inadequacies. Last red sunset on the red sandstone, disputation with the universe, words to that effect – all in a Mississippi accent.
For me, there was a problem with Faulkner’s exhortation. He described triumph as a process one was part of, rather than something one had personally to arrange – perhaps an accurate view of history, but more acceptable to someone
with a famous medal hanging around his neck than to a thirty-year-old castaway with an awkward conscience and murderers in his garden.
I assumed there were murderers in the garden, which is to say in the jungle up the hill. I got the creeps every time I went in or out the door.
A sound down the hall gave me a start: someone coming in a window, rattling the frame? Henry’s room? I picked up a stone carving Henry used as a paperweight, and positioned myself against the wall next to the door. There was a light on a little way down the hall, outside the boys’ room, but I had been sitting in near darkness, which gave me an advantage, I figured: the ability to see. I was ready to kill, I told myself. Who would it be?
“Daddy.” It was Philip.
“Yes.”
“Please come. I have had a dream.”
“I’ll be there right away.”
“Why were you awake, Daddy?” He was standing just inside the door, which he had partly opened.
“Grown-ups sometimes stay up and worry.” As soon as I’d said that I hoped he wouldn’t understand.
“Oh.”
“But there is nothing for you to worry about.” I picked him up and put him back in his bed, then sat down at the end of it, where I could look at him.
“Promise?” he asked.
“Promise.”
“Why did Newmommie go away?
“She was worried about her cat.”
“If she came to live with us, I would feed her cat.”
“I know you would.”
I went back to the library to stand guard. No one tried to get in, but next morning there were four dead cats laid out next to each other on our front porch. They’d been strangled.
It is interesting that I never appropriated Henry’s pistol for “standing guard.” It was loaded. You cannot grow up in the South without knowing about guns. I suppose I didn’t want to violate Henry’s space any more than I had to. Or perhaps I knew, at some mythic level, how the story would end, and had no time for detours.
Henry asked me once, finding me reading, “Can you tell where a poem is coming out when you are halfway through?”
The Daughters of Henry Wong Page 18
