James clavell

"Son of a bitch!" Rosemont muttered, then wiped the sudden sweat off his face with his hand. "What did he pass over?"

"I don't know exactly. Roger will be able to fill you in on the details."

"Do we get to interrogate... to interview the KGB guy too?"

"Why not discuss that with Roger? The minister's in direct touch with him, too." Sir Geoffrey hesitated. "I, er, I'm sure you'll appreciate..."

"Yes, of course, sorry, sir. I'd... I'd better get going at once." Rosemont's face was chalky and he went off quickly, collecting Ed Langan with him.

Sir Geoffrey sighed. Bloody spies, bloody banks, bloody moles and bloody Socialist idiots who know nothing about Hong Kong. He glanced at his watch. Time to close the party down.

Johnjohn was walking into the anteroom. Dunross was near the bar. "Ian?"

"Oh hello? One for the road?" Dunross said.

"No, thanks. Can I have a word in private?"

"Of course. It'll have to be quick, I was just leaving. I said I'd drop our friendly MPs at the ferry."

"You're on a pink ticket too?"

Dunross smiled faintly. "Actually, old boy, I have one whenever I want it, whether Penn's here or not."

"Yes. You're lucky, you always did have your life well organised,"

Johnjohn said gloomily.

"Joss."

"I know." Johnjohn led the way out of the room onto the balcony. "Rotten about John Chen, what?"

"He left a few minutes ago."

"Ah, that's why you mentioned 'pink ticket'! He's on the town?"

"I don't know."

"How about Lily Su of Kowloon?"

Johnjohn stared at him.

"I hear Paul's quite enamoured."

"How do you do it, know so much?"

Dunross shrugged. He was feeling tired and uneasy and had been hard put not to lose his temper several times tonight when Grey was in the centre of another heated argument with some of the tai-pans.

"By the way, Ian, I tried to get Paul to call a board meeting but it's not in my bailiwick."

"Of course." They were in a smaller anteroom. Good Chinese silk paintings and more fine Persian carpets and silver. Dunross noticed the paint was peeling in the corners of the room and off the fine mouldings of the ceiling, and this offended him. This is the British raj and the paint shouldn't be peeling.

The silence hung. Dunross pretended to examine some of the exquisite snuff bottles that were on a shelf.

"Ian..." Johnjohn stopped and changed his mind. He began again. "This is off the record. You know Tiptop Toe quite well, don't you?"

Dunross stared at him. Tiptop Toe was their nickname for Tip Tok-toh, a middle-aged man from Hunan, Mao Tse-tung's home province, who had arrived during the exodus in 1950. No one seemed to know anything about him, he bothered no one, had a small office in Princes Building, and lived well. Over the years it was evident that he had very particular contacts within the Bank of China and it came to be presumed that he was an official unofficial contact of the bank. No one knew his position in the hierarchy but rumour had it that he was very high. The Bank of China was the only commercial arm of the PRC outside of China, so all of its appointments and contacts were tightly controlled by the ruling hierarchy in Peking.

"What about Tiptop?" Dunross asked, on guard, liking Tiptop—a charming, quiet-spoken man who enjoyed Cognac and spoke excellent English, though, following a usual pattern, nearly always he used an interpreter. His clothes were well cut, though most times he wore a Maoist jacket, looked a little like Chou En-lai and was just as clever. The last time Dunross had dealt with him was about some civilian aircraft the PRC had wanted. Tip Tok-toh had arranged the letters of credit and financing through various Swiss and foreign banks within twenty-four hours. "Tiptop's canny, Ian," Alastair Struan had said many times. "You have to watch yourself but he's the man to deal with. I'd say he was very high up in the Party in Peking. Very."

Dunross watched Johnjohn, curbing his impatience. The smaller man had picked up one of the snuff bottles. The bottles were tiny, ornate ceramic or jade or glass bottles—many of them beautifully painted inside, within the glass: landscapes, dancing girls, flowers, birds, seascapes, even poems in incredibly delicate calligraphy. "How do they do that, Ian? Paint on the inside like that?"

"Oh they use a very fine brush. The stem of the brush's bent ninety degrees. In Mandarin they call it myan huai, 'inside face painting.'"

" Dunross lifted up an elliptical one that had a landscape on one side, a spray of camellias on the other and tiny calligraphy on the paintings.

"Astonishing! What patience! What's the writing say?"

Dunross peered at the tiny column of characters. "Ah, it's one of Mao's sayings: 'Know yourself, know your enemy; a hundred battles, a hundred victories.' Actually the Chairman took it out of Sun Tzu."

Thoughtfully Johnjohn examined it. The windows beyond him were open. A small breeze twisted the neat curtains. "Would you talk to Tiptop for us?"

"About what?"

"We want to borrow the Bank of China's cash."

Dunross gaped at him. "Eh?"

"Yes, for a week or so. They're full to the gills with Hong Kong dollars and there's no run on them. No Chinese'd dare line up outside the Bank of China. They carry Hong Kong dollars as part of their foreign exchange. We'd pay good interest for the loan and put up whatever collateral they'd need."

"This is a formal request by the Victoria?"

"No. It can't be formal. This's my idea, I haven't even discussed it with Paul—only with you. Would you?"

Dunross's excitement crested. "Do I get my 100 million loan tomorrow by 10:00 A.M.?"

"Sorry, I can't do that."

"But Havergill can."

"He can but he won't."

"So why should I help you?"

"Ian, if the bank doesn't stand as solid as the Peak, the market'll crash, and so will the Noble House."

"If I don't get some financing right smartly I'm in the shit anyway."

"I'll do what I can but will you talk to Tiptop at once? Ask him. I can't approach him... no one can officially. You'd be doing the Colony a great service."

"Guarantee my loan and I'll talk to him tonight. An eye for an eye and a loan for a loan."

"If you can deliver his promise of a credit up to half a billion in cash by 2:00 P.M. tomorrow, I'll get you the backing you need."

"How?"

"Give that to me in writing by 10:00 A.M. signed by you, Havergill and the majority of the board and I'll go and see him."

"That's not possible."

"Tough. An eye for an eye and a loan for a loan." Dunross got up. "Why should the Bank of China bale out the Victoria?"

"We're Hong Kong," Johnjohn said with great confidence. "We are. We're the Victoria Bank of Hong Kong and China! We're old friends of China. Without us there's nothing—the Colony'd fall apart and so would Struan's and therefore so would most of Asia."

"Don't bet on that!"

"Without banking, particularly us, China's in bad shape. We've been partners for years with China."

"Then ask Tiptop yourself."

"I can't." Johnjohn's jaw was jutting. "Did you know the Trade Bank of Moscow has again asked for a licence to trade in Hong Kong?" Dunross gasped. "Once they're in we're all on the merry-go- round."

"We've been offered, privately, substantial Hong Kong dollars immediately."

"The board'll vote against it."

"The point is, my dear chap, if you're no longer on the board, the new board can do what the hell it likes," Johnjohn said simply. "If the 'new' board agrees, the governor and the Colonial Office can easily be persuaded. That'd be a small price to pay—to save our dollar. Once an official Soviet bank's here what other devilment could they get up to, eh?"

"You're worse than bloody Havergill!"

"No old chum, better!" The jesting left the banker's face. "Any major change and we become the Noble House, like it or not. Many of our directors would prefer you gone, at any price. I'm just asking you to do Hong Kong and therefore yourself a favour. Don't forget, Ian, the Victoria won't go under, we'll be hurt but not ruined." He touched a bead of sweat away. "No threats, Ian, but I'm asking for a favour. One day I may be chairman and I won't forget."

"Either way."

"Of course, old chum," Johnjohn said sweetly and went to the sideboard. "How about one for the road now? Brandy?"

Robin Grey was seated in the back of Dunross's Rolls with Hugh Guthrie and Julian Broadhurst, Dunross in the front beside his uniformed chauffeur. The windows were fogged. Idly Grey streaked the mist away, enjoying the deep luxury of the sweet-smelling leather.

Soon I'm going to have one of these, he thought. A Rolls of my very own. With a chauffeur. And soon all these bastards'll be crawling, Ian bloody Dunross included. And Penn! Oh yes, my dear sweet sneering sister's going to see the mighty humbled.

"Is it going to rain again?" Broadhurst was asking.

"Yes," Dunross replied. "They think this storm's developing into a full-scale typhoon—at least that's what the Met Office said. This evening I got a report from Eastern Cloud, one of our inbound freighters just off Singapore. She said that the seas were heavy even that far south."

"Will the typhoon hit here, tai-pan?" Guthrie, the Liberal MP asked.

"You never know for certain. They can head for you then veer off at the last minute. Or the reverse."

"I remember reading about Wanda, Typhoon Wanda last year. That was a dilly, wasn't it?"

"The worst I've been in. Over two hundred dead, thousands injured, tens of thousands made homeless." Dunross had his arm across the seat and he was half turned around. "Tai-fun, the Supreme Winds, were gusting to 170 mph at the Royal Observatory, 190 at Tate's Cairn. The eye of the storm came over us at high tide so our tides in places were twenty-three feet over normal."

"Christ!"

"Yes. At Sha Tin in the New Territories these gusts blew the tidal surge up the channel and breached the storm shelter and shoved fishing boats half a mile inland onto the main street and drowned most of the village. A thousand known fishing boats vanished, eight freighters aground, millions of dollars in damage, most of our squatters' areas blown into the sea." Dunross shrugged. "Joss! But considering the enormity of the storm, the seaborne damage here was incredibly small." His fingers touched the leather seat. Grey noticed the heavy gold and bloodstone signet ring with the Dunross crest. "A real typhoon shows you how really insignificant you are," Dunross said.

"Pity we don't have typhoons every day in that case," Grey said before he could stop himself. "We could use having the mighty in Whitehall humbled twice a day."

"You really are a bore, Robin," Guthrie said. "Do you have to make a sour remark every time?"

Grey went back to his brooding and shut his ears to their conversation. To hell with all of them, he thought.

Soon the car pulled up outside the Mandarin. Dunross got out. "The car'll take you home to the V and A. See you all Saturday if not before. Night."

The car drove off. It circled the huge hotel then headed for the car ferry which was slightly east of the Golden Ferry Terminal along Connaught Road. At the terminal a haphazard line of cars and trucks waited. Grey got out. "I think I'll stretch my legs, walk back to the Golden Ferry and go across in one of them," he said with forced bonhomie. "I need the exercise. Night."

He walked along the Connaught Road waterfront, quickly, relieved that it had been so easy to get away from them. Bloody fools, he thought, his excitement rising. Well, it won't be long before they all get their comeuppance, Broadhurst particularly.

When he was sure he was clear he stopped under a streetlamp, creating an eddy in the massed stream of pedestrians hurrying both ways, and flagged a taxi. "Here," he said and gave the driver a typed address on a piece of paper.

The driver took it, stared at it and scratched his head sullenly.

"It's in Chinese. It's in Chinese on the back," Grey said helpfully.

The driver paid him no attention, just stared blankly at the English address. Grey reached over and turned the characters toward him. "Here!"

At once the driver insolently turned the paper back and glared at the English again. Then he belched, let in his clutch with a jerk and eased into the honking traffic.

Rude sod, Grey thought, suddenly enraged.

The cab ground its gears continually as it went into the city, doubling back down one-way streets and narrow alleys to get back into Connaught Road.

At length they stopped outside a dingy old apartment building on a dingy street. The pavement was broken and narrow and puddled, the traffic honking irritably at the parked cab. There was no number that Grey could see. He got out and told the driver to wait and walked back a little to what seemed to be a side door. An old man was sitting on a battered chair, smoking and reading a racing paper under a bare bulb.

"Is this 68 Kwan Yik Street in Kennedy Town?" Grey asked politely.

The old man stared at him as though he was a monster from outer space, then let out a stream of querulous Cantonese.

"68 Kwan Yik Street," Grey repeated, slower and louder, "Ken-ned-dy Town?"

Another flood of guttural Cantonese and an insolent wave toward a small door. The old man hawked and spat and went back to his paper with a yawn.

"Sodding bastard," Grey muttered, his temperature soaring. He opened the door. Inside was a tiny, grimy foyer with peeling paint, a sorry row of mailboxes with names on the boxes. With great relief he saw the name he sought.

At the cab he took out his wallet and carefully looked at the amount on the meter twice before he paid the man.

The elevator was tiny, claustrophobic, filthy and it squeaked as it rose. At the fourth floor he got off and pressed the button of number 44. The door opened.

"Mr. Grey, sir, this's an honour! Molly, his nibs's arrived!" Sam Finn beamed at him. He was a big beefy Yorkshireman, florid, with pale blue eyes, an ex-coal miner and shop steward with important friends in the Labour Party and Trades Union Council. His face was deeply lined and pitted, the pores ingrained with specks of coal dust. "By gum, 'tis a pleasure!"

"Thank you, Mr. Finn. I'm glad to meet you too. I've heard a lot about you." Grey took off his raincoat and gratefully accepted a beer.

"Sit thee down."

The apartment was small, spotlessly clean, the furniture inexpensive. It smelt of fried sausages and fried potatoes and fried bread. Molly Finn came out of the kitchen, her hands and arms red from years of scrubbing and washing up. She was short and rotund, from the same mining town as her husband, the same age, sixty-five, and just as strong. "By Harry," she said warmly, "thee could've knocked us'n down with feather when we heard thee'd be a-visiting "Our mutual friends wanted to hear firsthand how you were doing."

"Grand. We're doing grand," Finn said. '"Course it's not like home in Yorkshire and we miss our friends and the Union Hall but we've a bed and a bit of board." There was the sound of a toilet flushing. "We've a friend we thought thee'd like to meet," Finn said and smiled again.

"Oh?"

"Aye." Finn said.

Grey shook his hand formally. "Pleased to meet you."

"We have some mutual friends, Mr. Grey."

"Oh?"

"Oh! Oh yes!" Grey smiled. "I met him on a Parliamentary Trade Delegation to Czechoslovakia last year."

"How did you like Prague?"

"Very interesting. Very. I didn't like the repression though... or the Soviet presence."

Suslev laughed. "We're invited there, by them. We like to look after our friends. But much goes on I don't approve of either. There, in Europe. Even in Mother Russia."

Sam Finn said, "Sit thee down, please sit thee down."

They sat around the dining room table in the living room that now had a neat white tablecloth with a potted aspidistra on it.

"Of course, you know I'm not a Communist, and never have been one," Grey said. "I don't approve of a police state. I'm totally convinced our British democratic socialism's the way of the future—Parliament, elected officials and all that it stands for—though a lot of Marxist-Leninist ideas are very worthwhile."

"Politics!" Gregor Suslev said deprecatingly. "We should leave politics to politics."

"Mr. Grey's one of our best spokesmen in Parliament, Gregor." Molly Finn turned to Grey. "Gregor's a good lad too, Mr. Grey. He's not one of them nasties." She sipped her tea. "Gregor's a good lad."

"That's right, lass," Finn said.

"Not too good, I hope," Grey said and they all laughed. "What made you take up residence here, Sam?"

"When we retired, Mrs. Finn and me, we wanted to see a bit of the world. We'd put a bit of brass aside and we cashed in a wee coop insurance policy we had, and got a berth on a freighter..."

"Oh, my, we did have a good time," Molly Finn broke in. "We went to so many foreign parts. It were proper lovely. But when we cum here Sam was a bit poorly, so we got off and were to pick up a freighter when she cum back."

"That's right, lass," Sam said. "Then I met a right proper nice man and he offered me a job." He beamed and rubbed the black pits in his face. "I was to be consultant to some mines he was superintendent for, in some place called Formosa. We went there once but no need to stay so we cum back here. That's all there is to it, Mr. Grey. We make a little brass, the beer's good, so Mrs. Finn and me we thought we'd stay. The kids are all growed up...." He beamed again, showing his obviously false teeth. "We're Hong Kongers now.

They chatted pleasantly. Grey would have been totally convinced by the Finns' cover story if he had not read his very private dossier before he left London. It was known only to very few that for years Finn had been a card-carrying member of the BCP, the British Communist Party. On his retirement he had been sent out to Hong Kong by one of their secret inner committees, his mission to be a fountain of information about anything to do with the Hong Kong bureaucracy and legislature.

In a few minutes Molly Finn stifled a yawn. "My my, I'm that tired! If thee will excuse me I think I'll go to bed."

Sam said, "Off thee go, lass."

They talked a little more about inconsequential affairs then he too yawned. "If thee'll excuse me, I think I'll go too," adding hastily, "Now don't thee move, chat to thy heart's content. We'll see thee before thee leaves Hong Kong, Mr. Grey... Gregor."

He shook hands with them and closed the bedroom door behind him. Suslev went over to the television and turned it on with a laugh. "Have you seen Hong Kong TV? The commercials are very funny."

He adjusted the sound high enough so they could talk yet not be overheard. "One can't be too careful, eh?"

"I bring you fraternal greetings from London," Grey said, his voice as soft. Since 1947 he had been an inner-core Communist, even more secretly than Finn, his identity only known to half a dozen people in England.

"And I send them back." Suslev jerked his thumb at the closed door. "How much do they know?"

"Only that I'm left-wing and potential Party material."

"Excellent." Suslev relaxed. Centre had been very clever to arrange this private meeting so neatly. Roger Crosse, who knew nothing of his connection with Grey, had already told him there were no SI tails on the MPs. "We're quite safe here. Sam's very good. We get copies of his reports too. And he asks no questions. You British are very close-mouthed and very efficient, Mr. Grey. I congratulate you."

"Thank you."

"How was your meeting in Peking?"

Grey took out a sheaf of papers. "This's a copy of our private and public reports to Parliament. Read it before I go—you'll get the full report through channels. Briefly, I think the Chinese are totally hostile and revisionist. Madman Mao and his henchman Chou En-lai are implacable enemies to international communism. China is weak in everything except the will to fight, and they will fight to protect their land to the last. The longer you wait the harder it will be to contain them, but so long as they don't get nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems they'll never be a threat."

"Yes. What about trade? What did they want?"

"Heavy industries, oil cracking plants, oil rigs, chemical plants, steel mills."

"How are they going to pay?"

"They said they've plenty of foreign exchange. Hong Kong supplies much of it."

"Did they ask for arms?"

"No. Not directly. They're clever and we didn't always talk or meet as a group. They were well briefed about me and Broadhurst and we weren't liked—or trusted. Perhaps they talked privately to Pennyworth or one of the other Tories—though that won't've helped them. You heard he died?"

"Yes."

"Good riddance. He was an enemy." Grey sipped his beer. "The PRC want arms, of that I'm sure. They're a secretive lot and rotten."

"An intellectual who thinks he's a Socialist. He's the dregs but useful at the moment. Patrician, old school tie," Grey said with a sneer. "Because of that he'll be a power in the next Labour government."

"Labour will get in next time, Mr. Grey?"

"No, I don't think so, even though we're working very hard to help Labour and the Liberals."

Suslev frowned. "Why support Liberals? They're capitalists."

Grey laughed sardonically. "You don't understand our British system, Captain Suslev. We're very lucky, we've a three-party vote with a two-party system. The Liberals split the vote in our favour. We have to encourage them." Happily he finished his beer and got two more from the refrigerator. "If it wasn't for the Liberals, Labour would have never got in, not never! And never will again."

"I don't understand."

"At the best of times the vote for Labour's only about 45 percent of the population, a little under 45 percent. Tory—Conservatives-are about the same, usually a little more. Most of the other 10-odd percent vote Liberal. If there was no Liberal candidate the majority'd vote with the Conservatives. They're all fools," he said smugly. "The British are stupid, comrade, the Liberal Party's Labour's permanent passport to power—therefore ours. Soon the BCP'll control the TUC, and so Labour completely—secretly of course." He drank deeply. "The great British unwashed are stupid, the middle, class stupid, the upper class stupid—it's almost no challenge anymore. They're all lemmings. Only a very few believe in democratic socialism. Even so," he added with great satisfaction, "we pulled down their rotten Empire and pissed all over them with Operation Lion." Operation Lion was formulated as soon as the Bolsheviks had come to power. Its purpose, the destruction of the British Empire. "In just eighteen years, since 1945, the greatest empire the world has ever seen's become nonexistent."

"Except for Hong Kong."

"Soon that will go too."

"I cannot tell you how important my superiors consider your work," Suslev said with pretended open admiration. "You and all our fraternal British brothers." His orders were to be deferential to this man, to debrief him on his Chinese mission, to pass on instructions as requests. And to flatter him. He had read Grey's dossier and the Finns'. Robin Grey had a Beria-KGB classification 4/22/a: "An important British traitor paying lip service to Marxist-Leninist ideals. He is to be used but never trusted, and, should the British Communist Party ever reach power, is subject to immediate liquidation."