The Secret

by Harold Robbins

  Zhang nodded. “So what does all this have to do with you? What I want is a license to use the Sphere name and the Sphere logo. I am looking for a respected American company to buy a controlling interest in Sphere. I will supply money to buy the stock, most of it anyway. You would have a minimal investment in it. You will recover your investment from my licensing fees.”

  “Why don’t you buy it yourself?”

  Zhang smiled. “Texans don’t like to sell their stock to Chinese investors. It goes against the grain, so to speak.”

  I nodded. “So to speak.”

  “Something more,” he said. “I will ask you to represent our product to American buyers. The Chinese involvement can be minimized. You will be able to label our products ‘Made in U.S.A.’ Sphere has the capacity to attach components to circuit boards. That the components come from China need not be emphasized. Do you see?”

  I did. But at the moment I was seeing something else. The gas in our propane tank had run out, and our fire had gone out. Our waitress brought a new tank and hunkered down to replace old tank with new. As she squatted beside my chair her microskirt crept up and up. She was wearing no underwear, and soon she was hiding nothing at all. For a full two minutes she stayed there, intent on unscrewing and screwing the hoses. She was showing everything she wanted to.

  “There are details to be worked out, but I wonder if this proposition has any interest for you,” said Zhang. “If not, I have other ideas to present that may have more appeal.”

  “I reserve judgment on the Sphere idea,” I said. “Tell me about your other ideas.”

  “We can manufacture Cheeks merchandise in China,” he said smoothly. “We can do it to your quality standards. I know, however, the difficulties you might have with American law, at least with the American news media, if it should get around that you were selling products made according to our standards of labor relations. So? Suppose I were to suggest to you that we manufacture Cheeks products in China for sale only in China?”

  “You can do that without my approval,” I said. “It’s being done to hundreds of American companies.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I could. But there is a great enthusiasm in this country for authentic American goods. Our people know knockoffs from real.”

  “So what is the proposition?”

  “We manufacture here, according to your designs and standards. The merchandise goes out to sea as if it were being exported. But the ship goes only from Guangzhou to Shanghai, say. It enters the port of Shanghai with papers saying the garments were made in the States. Then—”

  “But what have I got to do with this? You can do it without me. Chinese companies do, all the time.”

  “Except…” he said with a new smile. “Except that you, sir, and maybe your father, make appearances in our stores, bringing American models, and you endorse this merchandise as if it had all been made in the States.”

  “Which makes me a shill,” I said. “And my father. I don’t think he’d go for it.”

  “He’s gone for a number of things in his day,” said Zhang. “Do you want to refuse for him?”

  “What’s in it for us?” I asked.

  “We can negotiate,” said Zhang. “Obviously you are going to get a percentage off every sale of every item. Let me assure you right now, I can sell twenty million pairs of crotchless panties in one year. Twenty million! That’s only one pair for every thirty women in China. Mr. Cooper, I can sell more than that. Look at those girls riding on the backs of motorbikes. How they’d love to be wearing Cheeks panties instead of Sears ones! We’ve got a hell of a market here. What would you want? Five percent? Six? Seven?”

  “Ten,” I said.

  Zhang grinned. “We can negotiate.”

  “Frankly,” I told him, “I am more interested in your microprocessors than I am in this. There is too much politics involved in it.”

  Zhang nodded. “Let us, then, focus on technology.”

  The fish he had chosen in the tank came now. I’d had more than I wanted to eat, but the tender white meat of that fish was irresistible. I was glad I’d tried the snake, but the fish was superior.

  When we had finished, Zhang leaned across the table toward me. “Mei-ling let you see her pussy a little while ago. Would you like her for dessert?”

  Maybe I was a fool to decline, but I did. Charlie took her. She spent the night in his room.

  It was afternoon in Fort Lauderdale. I spent an hour on the telephone with my father.

  49

  JERRY

  Maybe I shouldn’t have sent the kid out to the Far East. Maybe he wasn’t old enough. Maybe he wasn’t mature enough.

  On the other hand, hell, what had I been doing when I was his age—that is, in his very early thirties? Trying to sell Plescassier Water—better said, trying to establish a United States franchise for it. Still being screwed by Uncle Harry but already arranging the great final fucking of that old bastard.

  Anyway, Len went over to China and called me to tell me all this stuff about propositions he was getting. I might have just said, “Use your own judgment, son,” except for one thing he told me. Christ Jesus, he ate a snake! What the fuck had happened to lox and bagels with cream cheese?

  Well, what is it they say about the Chinese? That they’re the Jews of the Orient? We hadn’t educated enough Jewishness into Len. His mother’s idea. I’m a Jew. Len understands that and understands he’s a Jew. But …

  Well, what am I talking about? It’s a new world. I suppose it’s got something to do with being treated like Jews over many, many centuries. We had to get cautious. We had to use our brains. That’s what it means to me: being careful, being shrewd. Not getting blindsided. Oh, it happens! We get screwed, like anybody. But maybe it’s a little tougher to screw us than it is to screw most other people, because we’ve got centuries of caution in our genes.

  Therèse was fishing off our dock, in the canal.

  “I think we better make a run out to Hong Kong,” I told her.

  “I am not so much like the place,” she said.

  “I got an idea Len needs help.”

  “Len … how we fly? What airline?”

  We flew to New York and caught a Cathay Pacific flight. Len was back in Hong Kong and met us at the airport.

  Though the two apartments we leased had two kitchens, Vicky rarely cooked dinner and rarely asked the maid to. Instead, they ate out almost every evening, leaving the children with Maria, the faithful Filipino maid and nanny.

  That night Len introduced Therèse and me to a hot-pot restaurant in Kowloon. He did not order a snake or anything of the kind—though I could not help being curious about some of the things that were served to us.

  “I talked to Roger Middleton and Hugh Scheck about Sphere,” I told Len. “I talked to them from Florida, and during our layover at Kennedy, Roger came out and briefed us. There’ll be some more info, E-mail or fax, tomorrow. It’s an interesting company. You’re way beyond me when you talk about acquisitions. You know that. And you’re certainly way beyond me when you talk about computers. But Roger and Hugh don’t think the idea is impossible. They think it may just be possible to acquire control of Sphere. They think Sphere’s people might actually welcome it. They’ve been looking for an infusion of capital.”

  “It’s not so much the acquisition as it is what Zhang Feng wants to do with it that bothers me,” Len said.

  “You mean, just use the name and logo. Well … I’d have to give that a lot of thought, too.”

  “The problem we have in China,” Len said, “is that these new millionaires operate like our own old-time robber barons. There’s no regulation in China. Put it another way. There’s no such thing as business ethics.”

  “Roger and Hugh said pretty much the same thing,” I told him. “It’s a different world, they say.”

  “Could it be as bad as what you encountered with the Boiardos in Philadelphia?” Vicky asked ingenuously. “Do they blow each other to pieces, cut each other
down with lupos?”

  She might have punched me. “How much do you know about that, Vicky?” I asked.

  “I know about Don Enrico and Don Napolitano,” she said.

  “And…?”

  She shook her head. Whether that meant she didn’t know about Filly and Chieppa or she did know and didn’t choose to talk about it, I could not guess.

  “What are you talking about?” Len asked.

  Vicky answered. “A long time ago your father had some trouble in Philadelphia. It was a long time ago, and it’s all over. It’s not worth talking about.”

  I decided to change the subject. “The other idea … our letting them manufacture our line in China and sew in our labels. I could buy it if we had quality control.”

  “They’d find ways around that,” Len said.

  “So what do we do, turn down all these guys? I thought the Far East was supposed to be our future.”

  Len had been thinking. “I figure the Sphere idea may have some merit. Suppose we let Zhang Feng put in some money to help us acquire it. We cooperate on letting him import components into the States to install on circuit boards made by Sphere. Sphere can sell the miniprocessors as ‘Made in U.S.A.’ because nothing in ‘Made in U.S.A.’ says components don’t come from somewhere else.”

  “I see one big problem,” I told him. “You and I don’t know from computers. Either we find a guy at Sphere we can trust absolutely, or we gotta hire somebody.”

  “If we are going to diversify, we’ll have to build a staff that can help us with our new businesses,” he said. He’d been thinking about it, plainly.

  * * *

  The chief thing on my mind that night was how much Vicky knew about Filly and Don Cheap. I had to find a way to have a private word with her.

  I couldn’t that night, but in the morning Len took Therèse up Hollywood Road where there were antiques stores and art shops. Vicky would have gone with them but was sensitive enough to realize that I wanted to talk with her.

  “So,” I said. We sat over tea and slices of fruit in the living room of the first apartment, the one Len had not converted into an office with computers and fax. “You know the story of Don Enrico and Don Napolitano.”

  “You supposed I wouldn’t?”

  Vicky was dressed that morning in odd leggings—black-and-white checkered—with a yellow golf shirt. There were times when I was sorry I had set her up with my son and not with myself—though that would have been impossible at the time. Anyway, she was the best thing I ever did for him.

  “What do you know about the rest of it?”

  “They meant to kill you, and they underestimated you. That was a smooth performance, Jerry. I don’t know how you did it, exactly. Neither does anybody else. But Chieppa and his gorgeous little chippy disappeared. Gone. A lot of people would have liked to know how you did it. The cops didn’t give a damn, frankly, but I have an idea they would never have figured it out even if they had given a damn.”

  “You knew about this when I introduced you to my son.”

  “Everybody knew about it. I mean, everybody who knows anything. You got a whole new level of respect after that. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

  “Len…?”

  “No, my dear friend. He has no idea. And he will never hear anything from me. It’s strange. What does he think?”

  “I hope he hasn’t stopped thinking. He’s out in the fuckin’ world, Vicky. I can’t protect him always.”

  She stood and walked to the window. From the apartment we could see the Bank of China building and much of central Hong Kong, plus some of the harbor. “Challenging damned place to become independent,” she said.

  * * *

  Len and Therèse came back from Hollywood Road carrying purchases. Len had introduced her to an art form called netsuke: a tiny Japanese carving of bone or ivory once used as a sort of button on a man’s sash. Each netsuke was a highly realistic figure of a man, woman, or animal. The little people were engaged in daily activities: business, trades, farming, cooking. Some of them were completely realistic portrayals of men and women copulating or enjoying oral sex.

  Therèse had been fascinated with the netsuke and had bought four of them, two of which were lascivious.

  * * *

  Len wanted me to meet Bai Fuyuan and Zhang Feng, but I did not want to go over to China. Not just yet, anyway. So Zhang Feng came to Hong Kong.

  He wanted to talk about Sphere. Neither Vicky nor Therèse were much interested in the details of that, so they decided not to go with Len and me as we accompanied Zhang Feng to dinner.

  It was an odd evening. Zhang had rented a boat, with crew, and we went out to Lamma Island, south of Hong Kong and a mile or two out in the ocean. Lamma Island is a sort of shopping mall for seafood, featuring restaurants and markets all offering fresh fish.

  By now I would have welcomed a steak with french fries, but still had to concede that the meal was delicious. We had platters of fish that had been selected from big glass tanks as we came in. I didn’t know what all of it was: prawns, shrimp, clams, mussels—everything called by Chinese names, of course. We were favored with an exotic delicacy I quickly learned to appreciate: shark’s-fin soup. Other bits of meats and spices came in little morsels of boiled egg white, and I ate them without asking what they might be.

  “The acquisition of Sphere will involve one obstacle,” Zhang said. “Mr. Tom Malloy. He is like Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak. He created Sphere, company and computer; and he is most reluctant to surrender even a particle of control. He has rejected important opportunities.”

  “I have a question for you, Mr. Zhang,” I said. “If we agree it is a good idea to acquire Sphere as you have suggested, what part of the necessary capital do you propose to contribute?”

  We smiled. He had anticipated the question. I learned soon enough that Zhang anticipated most questions and came to meetings prepared with answers.

  He took up on his chopsticks a morsel of deep-fried fish. “This is calamari,” he said. “The junior Mrs. Cooper would be an afficionado of this Mediterranean speciality, I am sure, and could tell us if this is good. I am thinking it will take some seventy or eighty million dollars to acquire control of Sphere. My own contribution cannot exceed, let us say, twenty million. We will have to negotiate detailed contracts to define our several obligations to the business.”

  Len interrupted. “When we spoke before you suggested you would put up most of the money necessary to take control of Sphere.”

  Zhang smiled and shrugged. “We can negotiate,” he said, as if so saying were enough to dismiss the subject.

  We did agree over that dinner to the general outline of a deal. Gazelle, Incorporated would acquire a controlling interest in Sphere. The acquired company would give up the computer business and devote its technological resources—which remained formidable—to the design and manufacture of microprocessors. The microprocessors would be assembled in Texas and marketed by Americans. The components on the boards would come chiefly from China, from companies controlled by Zhang.

  “Boats,” said Zhang sadly, “must go out more and more miles to fish. The coastal waters of Southeast Asia are becoming more and more polluted. It is a tragedy. This fish we are eating”—he gestured toward the big son of a bitch on a platter before us—“may very well have been taken in the waters of Vietnam.”

  * * *

  Back in the apartments, we found that the fax had been printing away. We were lucky the machine had not run out of paper.

  Part of what had come in from Roger Middleton in New York read:

  Zhang Feng is a billionaire, a beneficiary of the economic policies of Deng Xiaoping. He was once a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army. Although he appears for the moment to be financially sound, having money on deposit in Hong Kong especially but also in Tokyo, San Francisco, London, and Zurich, it must be remembered that a radical change in government could result in worse than his immediate bankruptcy.

  Do no
t forget that the Handover of Hong Kong to the government of the PRC is only a few years away. Deposits in Hong Kong banks promise to be sound after that change, but they will not necessarily be so. For this reason, all financial arrangements must be on the basis of immediate fund transfers to our accounts.

  Tom Malloy is, above all else, a colossal egomaniac. Plus a certifiable genius. The latter probably entitles him to the former.

  He will fight anything likely to cost him any control of Sphere, even to the point of destroying the company before allowing it to slip out of his hands.

  He can afford to do pretty much anything he wants to. Sphere has made him a millionaire many times over. If the whole thing went down the tubes tomorrow, he would land on his feet.

  We continue to investigate every aspect and will keep you informed. Suggest you plan on returning to the States soon.

  I liked the final suggestion. Therèse and I flew back a few days later, and Len and his family returned a week later. They brought with them their Filipino maid and nanny, Maria, having arranged after some difficulty to secure her entry into the States.

  50

  There was nothing to do but go down to Texas and meet this Mr. Tom Malloy.

  I have to confess I had never before been in Texas, and neither had Len or Vicky, nor, of course, Therèse.

  We went with different ideas in mind about what we were going to encounter.

  Therèse went expecting to see cowboys and Indians. She was disappointed when we did not spend an evening at a rodeo. She was impressed, though, with the size of everything, and with the conspicuous presence of money.

  Vicky went with an antecedent hostility. She couldn’t think of anything positive she had ever heard of Texas, even though we were doing business with the Cowboy cheerleaders. As a sports fan, she detested the Cowboys. For one reason, she found the notion of a “Fellowship of Christian Athletes” nauseating. I can remember her asking, “What could those Baptist assholes know about Christianity?” She didn’t like people out-defining other people. And she didn’t like the state where John F. Kennedy had been murdered.