Noble House

by James Clavell

  “Yes. How about a beer—or better, a very large gin and tonic? I could use one.”

  “Good idea. Your stomach off again?”

  “Yes. Mary says it’s all the good thoughts I keep bottled up.” They laughed together and headed for the door and were in the corridor when the phone rang.

  “Leave the bloody thing, don’t answer it, it’s only trouble,” Armstrong said, knowing neither he nor Brian would ever leave it.

  Brian Kwok picked up the phone and froze.

  It was Roger Crosse, senior superintendent, director of Special Intelligence. “Yes sir?”

  “Brian, would you please come up right away.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Is Armstrong with you?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Bring him too.” The phone clicked off.

  “Yes sir.” He replaced the receiver and felt the sweat on his back. “God wants us, on the double.”

  Armstrong’s heart jumped a beat. “Eh? Me?” He caught up with Brian who was heading for the elevator. “What the hell does he want me for? I’m not in SI now.”

  “Ours not to reason why, ours just to shit when he murmurs.” Brian Kwok pressed the up button. “What’s up?”

  “Got to be important. The Mainland perhaps?”

  “Chou En-lai’s ousted Mao and the moderates’re in power?”

  “Dreamer! Mao’ll die in office—the Godhead of China.”

  “The only good thing you can say about Mao is that he’s Chinese first and Commie second. God-cursed Commies!”

  “Hey, Brian, maybe the Soviets are hotting up the border again. Another incident?”

  “Could be. Yes. War’s coming—yes, war’s coming between Russia and China. Mao’s right in that too.”

  “The Soviets aren’t that stupid.”

  “Don’t bet on it, old chum. I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again, the Soviets are the world enemy. There’ll be war—you’ll soon owe me a thousand dollars, Robert.”

  “I don’t think I want to pay that bet. The killing’ll be hideous.”

  “Yes. But it’ll still happen. Again Mao’s right in that. It’ll be hideous all right—but not catastrophic.” Irritably Brian Kwok punched the elevator button again. He looked up suddenly. “You don’t think the invasion from Taiwan’s launched at long last?”

  “That old chestnut? That old pipe dream? Come off it, Brian! Chiang Kai-shek’ll never get off Taiwan.”

  “If he doesn’t the whole world’s in the manure pile. If Mao gets thirty years to consolidate … Christ, you’ve no idea. A billion automatons? Chiang was so right to go after the Commie bastards—they’re the real enemy of China. They’re the plague of China. Christ, if they get time to Pavlov all the kids.”

  Armstrong said mildly, “Anyone’d think you’re a running dog Nationalist. Simmer down, lad, everything’s lousy in the world which is now and ever shall be normal—but you, capitalist dog, you can go racing Saturday, hill climbing Sunday and there’re lots of birds ready to be plucked. Eh?”

  “Sorry.” They got into the elevator. “That little bastard Meng caught me off balance,” Brian said, stabbing the top-floor button.

  Armstrong switched to Cantonese. “Thy mother on your sorry, Brother.”

  “And thine was stuffed by a vagrant monkey with one testicle in a pail of pig’s nightsoil.”

  Armstrong beamed. “That’s not bad, Brian,” he said in English. “Not bad at all.”

  The elevator stopped. They walked along the drab corridor. At the door they prepared themselves. Brian knocked gently.

  “Come in.”

  Roger Crosse was in his fifties, a thin tall man with pale blue eyes and fair thinning hair and small, long-fingered hands. His desk was meticulous, like his civilian clothes—his office spartan. He motioned to chairs. They sat. He continued to read a file. At length he closed it carefully and set it in front of him. The cover was drab, interoffice and ordinary. “An American millionaire arrives with smuggled guns, an ex-drug peddling, very suspect Shanghainese millionaire flees to Taiwan, and now a VIP kidnapping with, God help us, Werewolves and a mutilated ear. All in nineteen-odd hours. Where’s the connection?”

  Armstrong broke the silence. “Should there be one, sir?”

  “Shouldn’t there?”

  “Sorry sir, I don’t know. Yet.”

  “That’s very boring, Robert, very boring indeed.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Tedious in fact, particularly as the powers that be have already begun to breathe heavily down my neck. And when that happens …” He smiled at them and both suppressed a shudder. “Of course Robert, I did warn you yesterday that important names might be involved.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Now Brian, we’re grooming you for high office. Don’t you think you could take your mind off horse racing, car racing and almost anything in skirts and apply some of your undoubted talents to solving this modest conundrum.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Please do. Very quickly. You’re assigned to the case with Robert because it might require your expertise—for the next few days. I want this out of the way very very quickly indeed because we’ve a slight problem. One of our American friends in the consulate called me last night. Privately.” He motioned at the file. “This is the result. With his tip we intercepted the original in the bleak hours—of course this’s a copy, the original was naturally returned and the …” He hesitated, choosing the correct word, “… the courier, an amateur by the way, left undisturbed. It’s a report, a sort of newsletter with different headings. They’re all rather interesting. Yes. One’s headed, ‘The KGB in Asia.’ It claims that they’ve a deep-cover spy ring I’ve never even heard of before, code name ‘Sevrin,’ with high-level hostiles in key positions in government, police, business—at the tai-pan level—throughout Southeast Asia, particularly here in Hong Kong.”

  The air hissed out of Brian Kwok’s mouth.

  “Quite,” Crosse said agreeably. “If it’s true.”

  “You think it is, sir?” Armstrong said.

  “Really, Robert, perhaps you’re in need of early retirement on medical grounds: softening of the brain. If I wasn’t perturbed do you think I’d endure the unhappy pleasure of having to petition the assistance of the CID Kowloon?”

  “No sir, sorry sir.”

  Crosse turned the file to face them and opened it to the title page. Both men gasped. It read, “Confidential to Ian Dunross only. By hand, report 3/1963. One copy only.”

  “Yes,” he continued. “Yes. This’s the first time we’ve actual proof Struan’s have their own intelligence system.” He smiled at them and their flesh crawled. “I’d certainly like to know how tradesmen manage to be privy to all sorts of very intimate information we’re supposed to know ages before them.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “The report’s obviously one of a series. Oh yes, and this one’s signed on behalf of Struan’s Research Committee 16, by a certain A. M. Grant—dated in London three days ago.”

  Brian Kwok gasped again. “Grant? Would that be the Alan Medford Grant, the associate of the Institute for Strategic Planning in London?”

  “Full marks, Brian, ten out of ten. Yes. Mr. AMG himself. Mr. VIP, Mr. Advisor to Her Majesty’s Government for undercover affairs who really knows onions from leeks. You know him, Brian?”

  Brian Kwok said, “I met him a couple of times in England last year, sir, when I was on the Senior Officers Course at the General Staff College. He gave a paper on advanced strategic considerations for the Far East. Brilliant. Quite brilliant.”

  “Fortunately he’s English and on our side. Even so …” Crosse sighed again. “I certainly hope he’s mistaken this time or we’re in the mire deeper than even I imagined. It seems few of our secrets are secrets anymore. Tiring. Very. And as to this,” he touched the file again, “I’m really quite shocked.”

  “Has the original been delivered, sir?” Armstrong asked.

  �
��Yes. To Dunross personally at 4:18 this afternoon.” His voice became even more silky. “Fortunately, thank God, my relations with our cousins across the water are first class. Like yours, Robert—unlike yours, Brian. You never did like America, did you, Brian?”

  “No sir.”

  “Why, may I ask?”

  “They talk too much, sir, you can’t trust them with any secrets—they’re loud, and I find them stupid.”

  Crosse smiled with his mouth. “That’s no reason not to have good relations with them, Brian. Perhaps you’re the stupid one.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “They’re not all stupid, oh dear no.” The director closed the file but left it facing them. Both men stared at it, mesmerized.

  “Did the Americans say how they found out about the file, sir?” Armstrong asked without thinking.

  “Robert, I really do believe your sinecure in Kowloon has addled your brain. Shall I recommend you for a medical retirement?”

  The big man winced. “No sir, thank you sir.”

  “Would we reveal our sources to them?”

  “No sir.”

  “Would they have told me if I’d been so crass as to ask them?”

  “No sir.”

  “This whole business is very tedious and filled with loss of face. Mine. Don’t you agree, Robert?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good, that’s something.” Crosse leaned back in his chair, rocking it. His eyes ground into them. Both men were wondering who the tipster was, and why.

  Can’t be the CIA, Brian Kwok was thinking. They’d have done the intercept themselves, they don’t need SI to do their dirty work for them. Those crazy bastards’ll do anything, tread on any toes, he thought disgustedly. If not them, who?

  Who?

  Must be someone who’s in Intelligence but who can’t, or couldn’t do the intercept, who’s on good terms, safe terms with Crosse. A consular official? Possible. Johnny Mishauer, Naval Intelligence? Out of his channel. Who? There’s not many … Ah, the FBI man, Crosse’s protégé! Ed Langan. Now, how would Langan know about this file? Information from London? Possible, but the FBI doesn’t have an office there. If the tip came from London, probably MI-5 or -6 would know it first and they’d’ve arranged to get the material at the source and would have telexed it to us, and given us hell for being inept in our own backyard. Did the courier’s aircraft land at Lebanon? There’s an FBI man there I seem to recall. If not from London or Lebanon, the information must have come from the aircraft itself. Ah, an accompanying friendly informer who saw the file, or the cover? Crew? Ayeeyah! Was the aircraft TWA or Pan Am? The FBI has all sorts of links, close links—with all sorts of ordinary businesses, rightly so. Oh yes. Is there a Sunday flight? Yes. Pan Am, ETA 2030. Too late for a night delivery by the time you’ve got to the hotel. Perfect.

  “Strange that the courier came Pan Am and not BOAC—it’s a much better flight,” he said, pleased with the oblique way his mind worked.

  “Yes. I thought the same,” Crosse said as evenly. “Terribly un-British of him. Of course, Pan Am does land on time whereas you never know with poor old BOAC these days—” He nodded at Brian agreeably. “Full marks again. Go to the head of the class.”

  “Thank you sir.”

  “What else do you deduce?”

  After a pause Brian Kwok said, “In return for the tip, you agreed to provide Langan with an exact copy of the file.”

  “And?”

  “And you regret having honored that.”

  Crosse sighed. “Why?”

  “I’ll know only after I’ve read the file.”

  “Brian, you really are surpassing yourself this afternoon. Good.” Absently the director fingered the file and both men knew he was titillating them, deliberately, but neither knew why. “There are one or two very curious coincidences in other sections of this. Names like Vincenzo Banastasio … meeting places like Sinclair Towers … Does Nelson Trading mean anything to either of you?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “All very curious. Commies to the right of us, commies to the left…” His eyes became even stonier. “It seems we even have a nasty in our own ranks, possibly at superintendent level.”

  “Impossible!” Armstrong said involuntarily.

  “How long were you with us in SI, dear boy?”

  Armstrong almost flinched. “Two tours, almost five years sir.”

  “The spy Sorge was impossible—Kim Philby was impossible—dear God Philby!” The sudden defection to Soviet Russia in January this year by this Englishman, this onetime top agent of MI-6—British military intelligence for overseas espionage and counterespionage—had sent shock waves throughout the Western world, particularly as, until recently, Philby had been first secretary at the British Embassy in Washington, responsible for liaison with U.S. Defense, State, and the CIA on all security matters at the highest level. “How in the name of all that’s holy he could have been a Soviet agent for all those years and remain undetected is impossible, isn’t it, Robert?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And yet he was, and privy to our innermost secrets for years. Certainly from ’42 to ’58. And where did he start spying? God save us, at Cambridge in 1931. Recruited into the Party by the other arch-traitor, Burgess, also of Cambridge, and his friend Maclean, may they both toast in hell for all eternity.” Some years ago these two highly placed Foreign Office diplomats—both of whom had also been in Intelligence during the war—had abruptly fled to Russia only seconds ahead of British counterespionage agents and the ensuing scandal had rocked Britain and the whole of NATO. “Who else did they recruit?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Armstrong said carefully. “But you can bet that now they’re all VIP’s in government, the Foreign Office, education, the press, particularly the press—and, like Philby, all burrowed very bloody deep.”

  “With people nothing’s impossible. Nothing. People are really very dreadful.” Crosse sighed and straightened the file slightly. “Yes. But it’s a privilege to be in SI, isn’t it, Robert?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You have to be invited in, don’t you? You can’t volunteer, can you?”

  “No sir.”

  “I never did ask why you didn’t stay with us, did I?”

  “No sir.”

  “Well?”

  Armstrong groaned inwardly and took a deep breath. “It’s because I like being a policeman, sir, not a cloak-and-dagger man. I like being in CID. I like pitting your wits against the villain, the chase and the capture and then the proving it in court, according to rules—to the law, sir.”

  “Ah but in SI we don’t, eh? We’re not concerned with courts or laws or anything, only results?”

  “SI and SB have different rules, sir,” Armstrong said carefully. “Without them the Colony’d be up the creek without a paddle.”

  “Yes. Yes it would. People are dreadful and fanatics multiply like maggots in a corpse. You were a good undercover man. Now it seems to me it’s time to repay all the hours and months of careful training you’ve had at Her Majesty’s expense.”

  Armstrong’s heart missed twice but he said nothing, just held his breath and thanked God that even Crosse couldn’t transfer him out of CID against his will. He had hated his tours in SI—in the beginning it had been exciting and to be chosen was a great vote of confidence, but quickly it had palled—the sudden swoop on the villain in the dark hours, hearings in camera, no worry about exact proof, just results and a quick, secret deportation order signed by the governor, then off to the border at once, or onto a junk to Taiwan, with no appeal and no return. Ever.

  “It’s not the British way, Brian,” he had always said to his friend. “I’m for a fair, open trial.”

  “What’s it matter? Be practical, Robert. You know the bastards’re all guilty—that they’re the enemy, Commie enemy agents who twist our rules to stay here, to destroy us and our society—aided and abetted by a few bastard lawyers who’d do anything for thirty piec
es of silver, or less. The same in Canada. Christ, we had the hell of a time in the RCMP, our own lawyers and politicians were the enemy—and recent Canadians—curiously always British—all socialist trade unionists who were always in the forefront of any agitation. What does it matter so long as you get rid of the parasites?”

  “It matters, that’s what I think. And they’re not all Commie villains here. There’s a lot of Nationalist villains who want to—”

  “The Nationalists want Commies out of Hong Kong, that’s all.”

  “Balls! Chiang Kai-shek wanted to grab the Colony after the war. It was only the British navy that stopped him after the Americans gave us away. He still wants sovereignty over us. In that he’s no different from Mao Tse-tung!”

  “If SI doesn’t have the same freedom as the enemy how are we going to keep us out of the creek?”

  “Brian, lad, I just said I don’t like being in SI. You’re going to enjoy it. I just want to be a copper, not a bloody Bond!”

  Yes, Armstrong thought grimly, just a copper, in CID until I retire to good old England. Christ, I’ve enough trouble now with the god-cursed Werewolves. He looked back at Crosse and kept his face carefully noncommittal and waited.

  Crosse watched him then tapped the file. “According to this we’re very much deeper in the mire than even I imagined. Very distressing. Yes.” He looked up. “This report refers to previous ones sent to Dunross. I’d certainly like to see them as soon as possible. Quickly and quietly.”

  Armstrong glanced at Brian Kwok. “How about Claudia Chen?”

  “No. No chance. None.”

  “Then what do you suggest, Brian?” Crosse asked. “I imagine my American friend will have the same idea … and if he’s been misguided enough to pass on the file, a copy of the file, to the director of the CIA here … I really would be very depressed if they were there first again.”

  Brian Kwok thought a moment. “We could send a specialized team into the tai-pan’s executive offices and his penthouse, but it’d take time—we just don’t know where to look—and it would have to be at night. That one could be hairy, sir. The other reports—if they exist—might be in a safe up at the Great House, or at his place at Shek-O—even at his, er, at his private flat at Sinclair Towers or another one we don’t even know about.”