Noble House

by James Clavell

“What?”

  “To discredit us.”

  “But why?”

  “Maybe they think they know our battle plan.”

  “But then wouldn’t it have been much wiser for them not to do anything—to sucker us in?”

  “Maybe. But this way they’ve made the opening move. Day One: Knight to King Bishop 3. The attack’s launched on us.”

  “Yes. But by whom—and are we playing White or Black?”

  His eyes hardened and lost their friendliness. “I don’t care, Casey, as long as we win.” He left.

  Something’s up, she told herself. Something dangerous he’s not telling me about.

  “Secrecy’s vital, Casey,” he had said back in the early days. “Napoleon, Caesar, Patton—any of the great generals—often hid their real plan from their staff. Just to keep them—and therefore enemy spies—off balance. If I withhold from you it’s not mistrust, Casey. But you must never withhold from me.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Life’s not fair. Death’s not fair. War’s not fair. Big business is war. I’m playing it like it was war and that’s why I’m going to win.”

  “Win what?”

  “I want Par-Con Industries bigger than General Motors and Exxon combined.”

  “Why?”

  “For my goddamn pleasure.”

  “Now tell me the real reason.”

  “Ah, Casey, that’s why I love you. You listen and you know.”

  “Ah, Raider, I love you too.”

  Then they had both laughed together for they knew they did not love the other, not in the ordinary sense of that word. They had agreed, way back in the beginning, to put aside the ordinary for the extraordinary. For seven years.

  Casey looked out of the window at the harbor and the ships in the harbor.

  Crush, destroy and win. Big Business, the most exciting Monopoly game in the world. And my leader’s Raider Bartlett, Master-craftsman. But time’s running out on us, Linc. This year, the seventh year, the last year ends on my birthday, November 25, my twenty-seventh birthday….

  Her ears heard the half knock and the passkey in the lock and she turned to say come in but the starched houseboy was already in.

  “Morning Missee I’m Number One Houseboy Daytime Chang.” Chang was gray haired and solicitous. He beamed. “Tidy room plees?”

  “Don’t any of you ever wait for someone to say come in?” she asked sharply.

  Chang stared at her blankly. “Missee?”

  “Oh never mind,” she said wearily.

  “Pretty day, heya? Which first, Master’s room or Missee’s?”

  “Mine. Mr. Bartlett hasn’t used his yet.”

  Chang grinned toothily. Ayeeyah, did you and Master tumble together in yours, Missee, before he went out? But there were only fourteen minutes between Master’s arrival and leaving and certainly he did not look flushed when he went away.

  Ayeeyah, first it’s supposed to be two men foreign devils sharing my suite and then one’s a she—confirmed by Nighttime Ng, who of course went through her luggage and found serious proof that she was a true she—proof reconfirmed this morning with great gusto by Third Toiletmaid Fung.

  Golden pubics! How vile!

  And Golden Pubics is not only not the Master’s chief wife—she is not even a second wife, and oh ko, worst of all she did not have the good manners to pretend she was so the hotel rules could be honored and everyone save face.

  Chang chortled, for this hotel had always had astounding rules about ladies in men’s rooms—oh gods what else is a bed for?—and now a female was living openly in barbarian sin! Oh how tempers had soared last night. Barbarians! Dew neh loh moh on all barbarians! But this one is surely a dragon because she stared down the Eurasian assistant manager, and the Eurasian night manager, and even old mealy-mouth, Chief Manager Big Wind himself.

  “No no no,” he had wailed, so Chang had been told.

  “Yes yes yes,” she had replied, insisting that she have the adjoining half of the Fragrant Spring suite.

  It was then that Honorable Mong, chief porter and chief triad and therefore leader of the hotel, solved the unsolvable. “The Fragrant Spring suite has three doors, heya?” he had said. “One for each bedroom, one for the main room. Let her be shown into Fragrant Spring B which is the inferior room anyway, through its own door. But the inner door to the main sitting room and thence to the Master’s quarters shall be tight locked. But let a key be left nearby. If the mealy-mouthed whore unlocks the door herself … what can one do? And then, if there happens to be a mix-up in bookings tomorrow or the next day and our honorable chief manager has to ask the billionaire and his strumpet from the Land of the Golden Mountain to leave, well so sorry never mind, we have bookings enough and to spare and our face to protect.”

  And so it was done.

  The outer door to B was unlocked and Golden Pubics invited in. That she took up the key and at once unlocked the inner door—who is to say? That the door is open now, well, certainly I would never tell any outsider, my lips are sealed. As always.

  Ayeeyah, but though outer doors may be locked and be prudish, the inner ones may be flung wide and be luscious. Like her Jade Gate, he thought pensively. Dew neh loh moh I wonder what it would be like to storm a Jade Gate the size of hers? “Make bed, Missee?” he asked sweetly in English.

  “Go right ahead.”

  Oh how truly awful the sound of their barbarian tongue is. Ugh!

  Daytime Chang would have hawked and cleared the spit god from his mouth, but that was against hotel rules.

  “Heya, Daytime Chang,” Third Toiletmaid Fung said brightly as she came into the bedroom after knocking half heartedly on the suite door long after she had opened it. “Yes, Missee, so sorry, Missee,” in English, then again to Chang in Cantonese, “Haven’t you finished yet? Is her dung so sweet you want to dawdle in her drawers?”

  “Dew neh loh moh in yours, Sister. Watch your tongue or your old father may give you a good drubbing.”

  “The only drubbing your old mother wants, you can’t help me with! Come on, let me help you make her bed quickly. There’s a mah-jong game beginning in half an hour. Honorable Mong sent me for you.”

  “Oh, thank you, Sister. Heya, did you really see her pubics?”

  “Haven’t I told you already? Am I a liar? They’re pure golden, lighter than her head hair. She was in the bath and I was as close as we are now. And, oh yes, her nipples’re pinkish, not brown.”

  “Eeee! Imagine!”

  “Just like a sow’s.”

  “How awful!”

  “Yes. Did you read today’s Commercial Daily?”

  “No, Sister, not yet. Why?”

  “Well their astrologer says this is a very good week for me and today the financial editor says it looks as though there’s a new boom beginning.”

  “Dew neh loh moh you don’t say!”

  “So I told my broker this morning to buy a thousand more Noble House, the same Golden Ferry, 40 of Second Great House and 50 Good Luck Properties. My bankers are generous but now I haven’t a single brass cash left in Hong Kong I can beg or borrow!”

  “Eeeee, you’re plunging, Sister. I’m stretched out myself. Last week I borrowed from the bank on my shares and bought another 600 Noble House. That was Tuesday. I bought in at 25.23!”

  “Ayeeyah, Honorable Chang, they were 29.14 at close last night.” Third Toiletmaid Fung made an automatic calculation. “You’re already 2,348 Hong Kong ahead! And they say Noble House’s going to bid for Good Luck Properties. If they try, it will send their enemies’ rage to boiling point. Ha! The tai-pan of Second Great House will fart dust!”

  “Oh oh oh but meanwhile the shares will skyrocket! Of all three companies! Ha! Dew neh loh moh, where can I get more cash?”

  “The races, Daytime Chang! Borrow 500 against your present winnings and put it on the daily double on Saturday or the double quinella. 4 and 5 are my lucky numbers….”

  They both looked up as Casey came
into the bedroom. Chang switched to English. “Yes Missee?”

  “There’s some laundry in the bathroom. Can you have it picked up, please?”

  “Oh yes I fix. Today six o’clock come by okay never mind.” These foreign devils are so stupid, Chang thought contemptuously. What am I, an empty-headed dung heap? Of course I’ll take care of the laundry if there’s laundry.

  “Thank you.”

  They both watched fascinated as she checked her makeup in the bedroom mirror, preparing to leave.

  “Her tits don’t droop at all, do they, Sister?” Chang said. “Pink nipples heya? Extraordinary!”

  “Just like a sow’s, I told you. Are your ears merely pots to piss in?”

  “In your ear, Third Toiletmaid Fung.”

  “Has she tipped you yet?”

  “No. The Master gave too much and she nothing. Disgusting heya?”

  “Yes. What can you do? People from the Golden Mountain are really very uncivilized, aren’t they, Daytime Chang?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  9:50 A.M.:

  The tai-pan came over the rise and barreled down the Peak Road in his E-Type Jaguar, going east toward Magazine Gap. On the winding road there was but a single lane each side with few places to pass and precipitous on most corners. Today the surface was dry and, knowing the way so well, Ian Dunross rode the bends fast and sweetly, hugging the mountainside, his scarlet convertible tight to the inside curve. He did a racing shift down and braked hard as he swooped a bend and came up to an ancient, slow-moving truck. He waited patiently, then, at the perfect moment, swung out onto the wrong side and was past safely before the oncoming car had rounded the blind corner ahead.

  Now Dunross was clear for a short stretch and could see that the snaking road ahead was empty. He jammed his foot down and slid some corners, usurping the whole of the road, taking the straightest line, using hand and eye and foot and brake and gearshift in unison, feeling the vast power of the engine and the wheels in all of him. Ahead, suddenly, was an oncoming truck from the far corner and his freedom vanished. He geared down and braked in split-second time, hugging his side, regretting the loss of freedom, then accelerated and was away again into more treacherous bends. Now another truck, this time ladened with passengers, and he waited a few yards behind, knowing there was no place to pass for a while. Then one of the passengers noticed his number plate, 1–1010, and she pointed and they all looked, chattering excitedly one to another, and one of them banged on the cabin of the truck. The driver obligingly squeezed off the road onto the tiny shoulder and flagged him on. Dunross made sure he was safe then passed, waving to them with a grin.

  More corners, the speed and the waiting-to-pass and the passing and the danger pleasing him. Then he cut left into Magazine Gap Road, down the hill, the bends trickier, the traffic building up now and slower. He overtook a taxi and jumped three cars very fast and was back in line though still over the speed limit when he saw the traffic motorcycle policemen waiting ahead. He changed down and passed them going the regulation 30 mph. He waved good-naturedly. They waved back.

  “You really must slow down, Ian,” his friend, Henry Foxwell, Senior Superintendent of Traffic, had said recently. “You really should.”

  “I’ve never had an accident—yet. Or a ticket.”

  “Good God, Ian, there’s not a traffic copper on the island who’d dare give you one! You, the tai-pan? Perish the thought. I meant for your own good. Keep that speed devil of yours bottled for Monaco, or your Macao Road Race.”

  “Monaco’s professional. I don’t take chances, and I don’t drive that fast anyway.”

  “67 mph over Wongniechong isn’t exactly slow, old chap. Admittedly it was 4:23 A.M. on an almost empty road. But it is a 30 mph zone.”

  “There’re lots of E-Types in Hong Kong.”

  “Yes, I agree. Seven. Scarlet convertibles with a special number plate? With a black canvas roof, racing wheels and tires, that goes like the clappers of hell? It was last Thursday, old chap. Radar and all that. You’d been to … to visit friends. In Sinclair Road I believe.”

  Dunross had contained his sudden rage. “Oh?” he said, the surface of his face smiling. “Thursday? I seem to remember I had dinner with John Chen then. At his apartment in Sinclair Towers. But I thought I was home long before 4:23.”

  “Oh I’m sure you were. I’m sure the constable got the number plate and color and everything all wrong.” Foxwell clapped him on the back in friendly style. “Even so, slow down a little will you? It’d be so boring if you killed yourself during my term. Wait till I’m transferred back to Special Branch—or the police college, eh? Yes, I’m sure he made a mistake.”

  But there was no mistake, Dunross had said to himself. You know it, I know it, and John Chen would know it and so would Wei-wei.

  So you fellows know about Wei-wei! That’s interesting.

  “Are you fellows watching me?” he had asked bluntly.

  “Good God no!” Foxwell had been shocked. “Special Intelligence was watching a villain who’s got a flat at Sinclair Towers. You happened to be seen. You’re very important here, you know that. I happened to pick it up through channels. You know how it is.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “They say one word to the wise is sufficient, old chap.”

  “Yes they do. So perhaps you’d better tell your Intelligence fellows to be more intelligent in future.”

  “Fortunately they’re very discreet.”

  “Even so I wouldn’t like my movements a matter of record.”

  “I’m sure they’re not. Not a matter of record.”

  “Good. What villain in Sinclair Towers?”

  “One of our important capitalist dogs but suspected secret Commie fellows. Very boring but SI have to earn their daily bread, don’t they?”

  “Do I know him?”

  “I imagine you know everyone.”

  “Shanghainese or Cantonese?”

  “What makes you think he’s either?”

  “Ah, then he’s European?”

  “He’s just a villain, Ian. Sorry, it’s all very hush-hush at the moment.”

  “Come on, we own that block. Who? I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I know. Sorry old boy, but I can’t. However, I’ve another hypothetical idea for you. Say a hypothetical married VIP had a lady friend whose uncle happened to be the undercover deputy chief of the illegal Kuomintang Secret Police for Hong Kong. Say, hypothetically, the Kuomintang wanted this VIP on their side. Certainly he could be pressured by such a lady. Couldn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Dunross had said easily. “If he was stupid.” He already knew about Wei-wei Jen’s uncle and had met him at a number of private parties several times in Taipei. And liked him. No problem there, he had thought, because she’s not my mistress or even a lady friend, however beautiful and desirable. And tempting.

  He smiled to himself as he drove in the stream of traffic down Magazine Gap Road then waited in line to circle the roundabout and head down Garden Road toward Central, half a mile below, and to the sea.

  Now he could see the soaring modern office block that was Struan’s. It was twenty-two stories high and fronted Connaught Road and the sea, almost opposite the Terminal of the Golden Ferries that plied between Hong Kong and Kowloon. As always, the sight pleased him.

  He weaved in and out of heavy traffic where he could, crawled past the Hilton Hotel and the Cricket Ground on his left, then turned into Connaught Road, the sidewalks jammed with pedestrians. He stopped outside his front entrance.

  This’s the big day, he thought. The Americans have arrived.

  And, with joss, Bartlett’s the noose that’ll strangle Quillan Gornt once and for all time. Christ, if we can pull this off!

  “Morning, sir.” The uniformed doorman saluted crisply.

  “Morning, Tom.” Dunross eased himself out of the low-slung car and ran up the marble steps, two at a time, toward the huge glass entrance. Another doorman drove the car off to its undergr
ound parking and still another opened the glass door for him. He caught the reflection of the Rolls drawing up. Recognizing it, he glanced back. Casey got out and he whistled involuntarily. She carried a briefcase. Her sea-green silk suit was tailored and very conservative, but even so, it hid none of the trim of her figure or the dance to her stride and the sea green enhanced the tawny gold of her hair.

  She looked around, feeling his eyes. Her recognition was immediate and she measured him as he measured her and though the instant was short it seemed long to both of them. Long and leisurely.

  She moved first and walked toward him. He met her halfway.

  “Hello, Mr. Dunross.”

  “Hello. We’ve never met, have we?”

  “No. But you’re easy to recognize from your photos. I didn’t expect to have the pleasure of meeting you till later. I’m Cas—”

  “Yes,” he said and grinned. “I had a deranged call from John Chen last night. Welcome to Hong Kong, Miss Tcholok. It is Miss, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I hope my being a woman won’t upset things too much.”

  “Oh yes it will, very much. But we’ll try to accommodate the problem. Would you and Mr. Bartlett care to be my guests at the races on Saturday? Lunch and all that?”

  “I think that would be lovely. But I have to check with Linc—may I confirm this afternoon?”

  “Of course.” He looked down at her. She looked back. The doorman still held the door open.

  “Well, come along, Miss Tcholok, and let battle commence.”

  She glanced at him quickly. “Why should we battle? We’re here to do business.”

  “Oh yes, of course. Sorry, it’s just a Sam Ackroyd saying. I’ll explain another time.” He ushered her in and headed for the bank of elevators. The many people already lined up and waiting immediately moved aside for them to get into the first elevator, to Casey’s embarrassment.

  “Thanks,” Dunross said, not noticing anything out of the ordinary. He guided her in, pressed 20, the top button, noticing absently that she wore no perfume or jewelry, just a thin gold chain around her neck.

  “Why’s the front door at an angle?” she asked.

  “Sorry?”