James clavell

"The gold's one thing, your Excellency, that's nothing to do with us," Dunross had said to the consul general of India in Hong Kong, "but to impound our ship's something else!"

"Ah, very so sorry, Mr. Dunross sah. The law is the law and the smuggling of gold into India very serious indeed sah and the law says any ship with smuggled goods aboard may be impounded and sold."

"Yes, may be. Perhaps, Excellency, in this instance you could prevail on the authorities..." But all of his entreaties had been shuttled aside and attempted high-level intercessions over the months, here, in India, even in London, had not helped. Indian and Hong Kong police enquiries had produced no evidence against any member of his crew but, even so, Eastern Cloud was still tied up in Calcutta harbour.

"What about Eastern Cloud?" he asked.

"We think we can persuade the Indian authorities to let her go."

"In return for what?" Dunross asked suspiciously.

Brian Kwok laughed. "Nothing. We don't know who the smugglers are, but we know who did the informing."

"Who?"

"Yes." Dunross remembered that Tsu-yan, also Shanghainese, had suggested it, saying that it would do Struan's a lot of good to extend help to some of their northern refugees. "After all, tai-pan, they're just as good mariners," Tsu-yan had said, "and their wages are very competitive."

"So Struan's signed on a Shanghainese crew into Eastern Cloud—this was the first I believe—-and the Cantonese crew that wasn't hired lost all face so they complained to their triad Red Rod leader wh—"

"Come off it for God's sake, our crews aren't triads!"

"I've said many times the Chinese are great joiners, Ian. All right, let's call the triad with Red Rod rank their union representative—though I know you don't have unions either—but this bugger said in no uncertain terms, oh ko we really have lost face because of those northern louts, I'll fix the bastards, and he tipped an Indian informer here who, for a large part of the reward, agreed of course in advance, and passed on the info to the Indian consulate."

"What?"

"Oh Christ!"

"Yes."

"You have proof?"

"Oh yes, quick as a wink. We really don't approve of triads. They are criminal gangs nowadays and into all sorts of vile occupations. He was off to Taiwan where I believe he won't be welcome at all—seeing as how the northern Shanghainese Green Pang triad society and the southern Cantonese 14K triad society are still fighting for control of Hong Kong. Big Mouth Tuk was a 426 all right—"

"What's a 426?"

"Oh, thought you might know. All officials of triads are known by numbers as well as symbolic titles—the numbers always divisible by the mystical number three. A leader's a 489, which also adds up to twenty-one, which adds up to three, and twenty-one's also a multiple of three, representing creation, times seven, death, signifying rebirth. A second rank's a White Fan, 438, a Red Rod's a 426. The lowest's a 49."

"That's not divisible by three, for God's sake!"

"Yes. But four times nine is thirty-six, the number of the secret blood oaths." Brian Kwok shrugged. "You know how potty we Chinese are over numbers and numerology. He was a Red Rod, a 426, Ian. We caught him. So triads exist, or existed, on one of your ships at least. Didn't they?"

"So it seems." Dunross was cursing himself for not prethinking that of course Shanghainese and Cantonese face would be involved so of course there'd be trouble. And now he knew he was in another trap. Now he had seven ships with Shanghainese crews against fifty-odd Cantonese.

"Christ, I can't fire the Shanghainese crews I've already hired and if I don't there'll be more of the same and loss efface on both sides. What's the solution to that one?" he asked.

"Assign certain routes exclusively to the Shanghainese, but only after consulting with their 426 Red Rod... sorry, with their shop stewards, and of course their Cantonese counterparts—only after consulting with a well-known soothsayer who suggested to you it would be fantastic joss to both sides to do this. How about Old Blind Tung?"

"Old Blind Tung?" Dunross laughed. "Perfect! Brian you're a genius! One good turn deserves another. For your ears only?"

"All right."

"Guaranteed?"

"Yes."

"Buy Struan's first thing tomorrow morning."

"As many as you can afford."

"How long do I hold them?"

"How are your cojones?"

Brian whistled tonelessly. "Thanks." He thought a moment, then forced his mind once more onto the matters in hand. "Back to Eastern Cloud. Now we come to one of the interesting bits, Ian .36,000 taels of gold is legally worth $1,514,520 U.S. But melted down into the smugglers' five-tael bars and secretly delivered on shore in Calcutta, that shipment'd be worth two, perhaps three times that amount to private buyers—say 4.5 million U.S., right?"

"I don't know. Exactly."

"Oh, but I do. The lost profit's over 3 million—the lost investment about one and a half."

"So?"

"That doesn't follow."

"Have you heard from Tsu-yan yet?"

Dunross watched him. "No. Have you?"

"Not yet but we're making enquiries." Brian watched him back. "My first point is that the Green Pang has been mauled and criminals loathe losing their hard-earned money, so Struan's can expect lots of trouble unless you nip the trouble in the bud as I've suggested."

"Not all Green Pang are criminals."

"That's a matter of opinion, Ian. Second point, for your ears only: We're sure Tsu-yan's in the gold-smuggling racket. My third and last point is that if a certain company doesn't want its ships impounded for smuggling gold, it could easily lessen the risk by reducing its gold imports into Macao."

"Come again?" Dunross said, pleasantly surprised to hear that he had managed to keep his voice sounding calm, wondering how much Special Intelligence knew and how much they were guessing.

Brian Kwok sighed and continued to lay out the information that Roger Crosse had given him. "Nelson Trading."

With a great effort, Dunross kept his face impassive. "Nelson Trading?"

"Yes. Nelson Trading Company Limited of London. As you know, Nelson Trading has the Hong Kong Government's exclusive licence for the purchase of gold bullion on the international market for Hong Kong's jewellers, and, vastly more important, the equally exclusive monopoly for transshipment of gold bullion in bond, through Hong Kong to Macao—along with a minor second company, Saul Feinheimer Bullion Company, also of London. Nelson Trading and Feinheimer's have several things in common. Several directors for example, the same solicitors for example."

"Oh?"

"I'm on the board of almost seventy companies," Dunross said.

"True and not all of those are wholly or even partially owned by Struan's. Of course, some could be wholly owned through nominees, secretly, couldn't they?"

"Yes, of course."

"It's fortunate in Hong Kong we don't have to list directors—or holdings, isn't it?"

"What's your point, Brian?"

"Another coincidence: Nelson Trading's registered head offices in the city of London are in the same building as your British subsidiary, Struan London Limited."

"That's a big building, Brian, one of the best locations in the city. There must be a hundred companies there."

"Many thousands if you include all the companies registered with solicitors there—all the holding companies that hold other companies with nominee directors that hide all sorts of skeletons."

"So?" Dunross was thinking quite clearly now, pondering where Brian had got ail this information, wondering too where in the hell all this was leading. Nelson Trading had been a secret, wholly owned subsidiary through nominees ever since it was formed in 1953 specifically for the Macao gold trade—Macao being the only country in Asia where gold importation was legal.

"By the way, Ian, have you met that Portuguese genius from Macao, Signore Lando Mata?"

"Yes. Yes I have. Charming man."

"Yes he is—and so well connected. The rumour is that some fifteen years ago he persuaded the Macao authorities to create a monopoly for the importation of gold, then to sell the monopoly to him, and a couple of friends, for a modest yearly tax: about one U. S. dollar an ounce. He's the same fellow, Ian, who first got the Macao authorities to legalise gambling... and curiously, to grant him and a couple of friends the same monopoly. All very cosy, what?"

Dunross did not answer, just stared back at the smile and at the eyes that did not smile.

"So everything went smoothly for a few years," Brian continued, "then in '54 he was approached by some Hong Kong gold enthusiasts—our Hong Kong gold law was changed in '54—who offered a now legal improvement on the scheme: their company buys the gold bullion legally in the world bullion markets on behalf of this Macao syndicate at the legal $35 an ounce and brings it to Hong Kong openly by plane or by ship. On arrival, our own Hong Kong customs fellows legally guard and supervise the transshipment from Kai Tak or the dock to the Macao ferry or the Catalina flying boat. When the ferry or flying boat arrives in Macao it's met by Portuguese Customs officials and the bullion, all in regulation four-hundred-ounce bars, is transshipped under guard to cars, taxis actually, and taken to the bank. It's a grotty, ugly little building that does no ordinary banking, has no known customers—except the syndicate—never opens its door—except for the gold—and doesn't like visitors at all. Guess who owns it? Mr. Mata and his syndicate. Once inside their bank the gold vanishes!" Brian Kwok beamed like a magician doing his greatest trick. "Fifty-three tons this year so far. Forty-eight tons last year! Same the year before and the year before that and so on."

"That's a lot of gold," Dunross said helpfully.

"Yes it is. Very strangely the Macao authorities or the Hong Kong ones don't seem to care that what goes in never seems to come out. You with me still?"

"Yes."

"Where's all this leading to, Brian?" Dunross sipped his brandy.

Brian Kwok swilled the ancient, aromatic spirit in the huge glass and let the silence gather. At length he said, "We'd like some help."

"We? You mean Special Intelligence?" Dunross was startled.

"Yes."

"Who in SI? You?"

"What help?"

"He'd like to read all your Alan Medford Grant reports."

"Come again?" Dunross said to give himself time to think, not expecting this at all.

Brian Kwok took out a photocopy of the first and last page of the intercepted report and offered it. "A copy of this has just come into our possession." Dunross glanced at the pages. Clearly they were genuine. "We'd like a quick look at all the others."

"I don't follow you."

"I didn't bring the whole report, just for convenience, but if you want it you can have it tomorrow," Brian said and his eyes didn't waver. "We'd appreciate it—Mr. Crosse said he'd appreciate the help."

The enormity of the implications of the request paralysed Dunross for a moment.

"This report—and the others if they still exist—are private," he heard himself say carefully. "At least all the information in them is private to me personally, and to the Government. Surely you can get everything you want through your own intelligence channels."

"Yes. Meanwhile, Superintendent Crosse'd really appreciate it, Ian, if you'd let us have a quick look."

Dunross took a sip of his brandy, his mind in shock. He knew he could easily deny that the others existed and burn them or hide them or just leave them where they were, but he did not wish to avoid helping Special Intelligence. It was his duty to assist them. Special Intelligence was a vital part of Special Branch and the Colony's security and he was convinced that, without them, the Colony and their whole position in Asia would be untenable. And without a marvellous counterintelligence, if a twentieth of AMG's reports were true, all their days were numbered.

Christ Jesus, in the wrong hands...

His chest felt tight as he tried to reason out his dilemma. Part of that last report had leapt into his mind: about the traitor in the police. Then he remembered that Kiernan had told him that his back copies were the only ones in existence. How much was private to him and how much was known to British Intelligence? Why the secrecy? Why didn't Grant get permission? Christ, say I was wrong about some things being farfetched! In the wrong hands, in enemy hands, much of the information would be lethal.

With an effort he calmed his mind and concentrated. "I'll consider what you said and talk to you tomorrow. First thing."

"Sorry, Ian. I was told to in—to impress upon you the urgency."

"Were you going to say insist?"

"Yes. Sorry. We wish to ask for your assistance. This is a formal request for your cooperation."

"And Eastern Cloud and Nelson Trading are barter?"

"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."

"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."

Brian Kwok hesitated. Then his face hardened. "We're not playing parlour games, Ian. It's not for a few tons of gold, or some stock market shenanigans or a few grey 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-grey eyes. "The rumour 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 harbour 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 harbour 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... I be back and I be venged and then I be Noble House by God.... I be 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 though 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."