Noble House

by James Clavell

  “Got it.” Haply grinned and went back to his desk in the main office. He gulped a cold cup of coffee out of a plastic cup and started to type, his desk piled high with reference books, Chinese newspapers and stock market reports. Teletypes chattered in the background. A few silent copy boys and trainees delivered or picked up copy.

  “Hey, Martin! What’s the latest from the stock market?”

  Martin Haply dialed a number without looking at the phone, then called back to the editor. “Ho-Pak’s down to 24.60, four points from yesterday. Struan’s are down a point though there’s been some heavy buying. Hong Kong Lan Tao up three points—the story’s just been confirmed. Dunstan Barre took their money out yesterday.”

  “They did? Then you were right again! Shit!”

  “Victoria’s off half a point—all banks are edgy and no buyers. There’s a rumor a line’s forming outside Blacs and the Victoria’s head office in Central.” Both men gasped.

  “Send someone to check the Vic!” Mac hurried out. Jesus Christ, Toxe thought, his stomach churning, Jesus Christ if a run starts on the Vic the whole sodding island’ll collapse and my sodding savings with it.

  He leaned back in his old chair and put his feet on the desk, loving his job, loving the pressure and immediacy.

  “Do you want me to call her?” his secretary asked. She was round and unflappable.

  “Who? Oh shit, Peg, I’d forgotten. Yes—call the Dragon.”

  The Dragon was the wife of the publisher, Mong Pa-tok, the present head of the sprawling Mong family who owned this paper and three Chinese newspapers and five magazines, whose antecedents went back to the earliest days. The Mongs were supposed to have descended from the first editor-owner-publisher of the paper, Morley Skinner. The story was that Dirk Struan had given Skinner control of the paper in return for helping him against Tyler Brock and his son Gorth by hushing up the killing of Gorth in Macao. It was said Dirk Struan had provoked the duel. Both men had used fighting irons. Once, some years ago, Toxe had heard old Sarah Chen in her cups relate that when the Brocks came to collect Gorth’s body they did not recognize him. The old woman had added that her father, Sir Gordon Chen, had had to mobilize most of Chinatown to prevent the Brocks from setting afire the Struan warehouses. Tyler Brock had set Tai-ping Shan alight instead. Only the great typhoon that came that night stopped the whole city from going up in flames—the same holocaust that had destroyed Dirk Struan’s Great House and him and his secret Chinese wife, May-may.

  “She’s on line two.”

  “Eh? Oh! All right, Peg.” Toxe sighed.

  “Ah Mr. Toxe, I was waiting your call, heya?”

  “What can I do for you, or Mr. Mong?”

  “Your pieces on the Ho-Pak Bank, yesterday and today, that the adverse rumors about the Ho-Pak are untrue and started by tai-pans and another big bank. I see more today.”

  “Yes. Haply’s quite sure.”

  “My husband and I hear this not true. No tai-pans or banks are putting out rumors or have put out rumors. Perhaps wise to drop this attack.”

  “It’s not an attack, Mrs. Mong, just an attitude. You know how susceptible Chinese are to rumors. The Ho-Pak’s as strong as any bank in the Colony. We feel sure the rumors were started by a bi—”

  “Not by tai-pans and not big bank. My husband and I not like this attitude never mind. Please to change,” she said and he heard the granite in her voice.

  “That’s editorial policy and I have control over editorial policy,” he said grimly.

  “We are publisher. It is our newspaper. We tell you to stop so you will stop.”

  “You’re ordering me to stop?”

  “Of course it is order.”

  “Very well. As you order it, it’s stopped.”

  “Good!” The phone went dead. Christian Toxe snapped his pencil and threw it against the wall and began to curse. His secretary sighed and discreetly closed the door and when he was done Toxe opened the door. “Peg, how about some coffee? Mac! Martin!”

  Toxe sat back at his desk. The chair creaked. He mopped the sweat off his cheeks and lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

  “Yes, Chris?” Haply asked.

  “Martin, cancel the piece I asked for and do another on Hong Kong banking and the need to have some form of banking insurance….”

  Both men gaped at him.

  “Our publisher doesn’t like the rumors approach.”

  Martin Haply flushed. “Well screw him! You heard the guys yourself at the tai-pan’s party!”

  “That proves nothing. You’ve no proof. We’re stopping that approach. It’s not proven so I can’t take a stand.”

  “But, lo—”

  Toxe’s neck went purple. “It’s bloody well stopped,” he roared. “Understand?”

  Haply began to say something but changed his mind. Choked with rage he turned on his heel and left. He walked across the big room and jerked the front door open and slammed it behind him.

  Christian Toxe exhaled. “He’s got a lousy bloody temper that lad!”

  He stubbed his cigarette out and lit another. “Christ, I’m smoking too much!” Still seething, his brown eyes watched the older man. “Someone must have called her, Mac. Now what would you like as a return favor if you were Mrs. Dragon Mong?”

  Suddenly Mac beamed. “Na a voting membership of the Turf Club!”

  “Go to the head of the class!”

  Singh, the Indian reporter, came in with a foot of teletype. “You might need this for the extra, Chris.”

  It was a series of Reuters reports from the Middle East. “Teheran 0832 hours: High-level diplomatic sources in Iran report sudden extensive Soviet military maneuvers have begun close to their north border near the oil-rich border area of Azerbaijan where more rioting took place. Washington is reported to have asked permission to send observers to the area.”

  The next paragraph was: “Tel Aviv 0600 hours: The Knesset confirmed late last night that another huge irrigation project had been funded to further divert the waters of the River Jordan into the southern Negev Desert. There was immediate adverse and hostile reaction from Jordan, Egypt and Syria.”

  “Negev? Isn’t Israel’s brand spanking new atomic plant in the Negev?” Toxe asked.

  “Aye. Now there’s another splendid addition to the peace conference tables. Would the water be for that?”

  “I don’t know Mac, but this’s certainly going to parch a few Jordanian and Palestinian throats. Water water everywhere but not a drop to shower in. I wish to Christ it would rain. Singh, tidy up these reports and we’ll put them on the back page. They won’t sell a single bloody paper. Do a follow-up piece on the Werewolves for the front page: ‘The police have a vast dragnet out but the vicious kidnappers of Mr. John Chen continue to elude them. According to sources close to the family of his father, compradore of Struan’s, no ransom note has yet been received but one is expected imminently. The China Guardian asks all its readers to assist in the capture of these fiends …’ That sort of thing.”

  At Aberdeen Spectacles Wu saw the old woman come out of the tenement building, a shopping basket in her hand, and join the noisy crowds in the narrow alley. He followed cautiously feeling very pleased with himself. While he had waited for her to reappear he had struck up a conversation with a street hawker whose permanent place of business was a patch of broken pavement opposite. The hawker sold tea and small bowls of hot congee—rice gruel. Wu had ordered a bowl, and during his meal, the hawker had told him about the old woman, Ah Tam, who had been in the neighborhood since last year. She’d come to the Colony from a village near Canton with the huge waves of immigrants who had flooded over the border last summer. She didn’t have any family of her own and the people she worked for had no sons around twenty, though he had seen her with a young man early this morning. “She says her village was Ning-tok….”

  It was then that Wu had felt a glow at this stroke of luck. Ning-tok was the same village his own parents had come from and he spoke that
dialect.

  Now he was twenty paces behind her and he watched her haggle brilliantly for vegetables, selecting only the very best onions and greens, all just a few hours fresh from the fields in the New Territories. She bought very little so he knew that the family she worked for was poor. Then she was standing in front of the poultry stall with its layers of barely alive, scrawny chickens crammed helplessly into cages, their legs tied. The rotund stall owner bartered with her, both sides enjoying the foul language, insults, choosing this bird, then that, then another, prodding them, discarding them, until the bargain was made. Because she was a good, salty trader, the man allowed his profit to be shaved. Then he strangled the bird deftly without thought, tossing the carcass to his five-year-old daughter, who squatted in a pile of feathers and offal, for plucking and cleaning.

  “Hey, Mr. Poultryman,” Wu called out, “I’d like a bird at the same price. That one!” He pointed at a good choice and paid no attention to the man’s grumbling. “Elder Sister,” he said to her politely, “clearly you have saved me a great deal of cash. Would you like to have a cup of tea while we wait for our birds to be cleaned?”

  “Ah thank you, yes, these old bones are tired. We’ll go there!” Her gnarled finger pointed to a stall opposite. “Then we can watch to make sure we get what we paid for.” The poultry man muttered an obscenity and they laughed.

  She shoved her way across the street, sat down on a bench, ordered tea and a cake and was soon telling Wu how she hated Hong Kong and living among strangers. It was easy for him to butter her up by using the odd word of Ning-tok patois; then pretending to be equally surprised when she switched to that dialect and told him she came from the same village and oh how wonderful it was to find a neighbor after all these months among foreigners! She told him that she had worked for the same family in Ning-tok ever since she was seven. But, sadly, three years ago her mistress—the child that she had brought up, now an old lady like herself—had died. “I stayed in the house but it had fallen on hard times. Then last year the famine was bad. Many in the village decided to come to this place. Chairman Mao’s people didn’t mind, in fact they encouraged us—‘Useless Mouths’ as they called us. Somehow we got split up and I managed to get over the border and found my way to this place here, penniless, hungry, with no family, no friends, nowhere to turn. At length I got a job and now I work as a cook-amah for the family Ch’ung who’re street cleaners. The dog bones pay me nothing but my keep and my food and chief wife Ch’ung’s a maggot-mouthed hag but soon I’ll be rid of all of them! You said your father came here with his family ten years ago?”

  “Yes. We owned a field near the bamboo glade beside the river. His name was Wu Cho-tam an—”

  “Ah, yes I think I remember the family. Yes, I think so. Yes, and I know the field. My family was Wu Ting-top and their family owned the pharmacy at the crossroads for more than a hundred years.”

  “Ah, Honorable Pharmacy Wu? Oh yes of course!” Spectacles Wu did remember the family well. Pharmacy Wu had always been a Maoist sympathizer. Once he had had to flee the Nationalists. In this village of a thousand souls he had been well liked and trusted and he had kept life in the village as calm and as protected from outsiders as he could.

  “So, you’re one of Wu Cho-tam’s sons, Younger Brother!” Ah Tam was saying. “Eeeee, in the early days it was so wonderful in Ning-tok but for the last years … terrible.”

  “Yes. We were lucky. Our field was fertile and we tilled the soil like always but after a few years outsiders came and accused all the landowners—as if we were exploiters! We only tilled our own field. Even so, from time to time some landowners were taken away, some shot, so one night ten years ago my father fled with all of us. Now my father is dead but I live with my mother not far away.”

  “There were many fleeings and famines in the early days. I hear that now it is better. Did you hear too? Outsiders came, wasn’t it? They would come and they would leave. The village is not so bad again, Younger Brother, oh no! Outsiders leave us alone. Yes, they left my mistress and us alone because Father was important and one of Chairman Mao’s supporters from the beginning. My mistress’s name was Fang-ling, she’s dead now. There’s no collective near us so life is like it’s always been, though we all have to study Chairman Mao’s Red Book. The village isn’t so bad, all my friends are there.… Hong Kong is a foul place and my village is home. Life without family is nothing. But now …” Then the old woman dropped her voice and chortled, carried away with pleasure. “But now the gods have favored me. In a month or two I’m going home, home forever. I’ll have enough money to retire on and I’ll buy the small house at the end of my street and perhaps a little field and …”

  “Retire?” Wu said, leading her on. “Who has that sort of money, Elder Sister? You said you were paid nothing th—”

  “Ah,” the old woman replied, puffed up. “I’ve an important friend.”

  “What sort of friend?”

  “A very important business friend who needs my help! Because I’ve been so useful he’s promised to give me a huge amount of money—”

  “You’re making this all up, Elder Sister,” he scoffed. “Am I a foolish stranger wh—”

  “I tell you my friend’s so important he can hold the whole island in thrall!”

  “There are no such persons!”

  “Oh yes there are!” She dropped her voice and whispered hoarsely, “What about the Werewolves!”

  Spectacles Wu gaped at her. “What?”

  She chortled again, delighted with the impact of her confidence. “Yes.”

  The young man took hold of his blown mind and put the pieces quickly back together; if this were true he would get the reward and the promotion and maybe an invitation to join Special Intelligence. “You’re making this up!”

  “Would I lie to someone from my own village? My friend’s one of them I tell you. He’s also a 489 and his Brotherhood’s going to be the richest in all Hong Kong.”

  “Eeeee, how lucky you are, Elder Sister! And when you see him again please ask if perhaps he can use someone like me. I’m a street fighter by trade though my triad’s poor and the leader stupid and a stranger. Is he from Ning-tok?”

  “No. He’s … he’s my nephew,” she said, and the young man knew it was a lie. “I’m seeing him later. Yes, he’s coming later. He owes me some money.”

  “Eeeee, that’s good, but don’t put it in a bank and certainly not in the Ho-Pak or y—”

  “Ho-Pak?” she said suspiciously, her little eyes narrowing suddenly in the creases of her face. “Why do you mention the Ho-Pak? What has the Ho-Pak to do with me?”

  “Nothing, Elder Sister,” Wu said, cursing himself for the slip, knowing her guard was now up. “I saw the queues this morning, that’s all.”

  She nodded, not convinced, then saw that her chicken was packaged and ready so she thanked him for the tea and cake and scuttled off, muttering to herself. Most carefully he followed her. From time to time she would look back but she did not see him. Reassured, she went home.

  The CIA man got out of his car and walked quickly into police headquarters. The uniformed sergeant at the information desk greeted him. “Afternoon, Mr. Rosemont.”

  “I’ve an appointment with Mr. Crosse.”

  “Yes sir. He’s expecting you.”

  Sourly Rosemont went to the elevator. This whole goddamn-piss-poor island makes me want to shit, and the goddamn British along with it.

  “Hello, Stanley,” Armstrong said. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Oh hi, Robert. Gotta meeting with your chief.”

  “I’ve already had that displeasure once today. At 7:01 precisely.” The elevator opened. Rosemont went in and Armstrong followed.

  “I hope you’ve got some good news for Crosse,” Armstrong said with a yawn. “He’s really in a foul mood.”

  “Oh? You in this meeting too?”

  “Afraid so.”

  Rosemont flushed. “Shit, I asked for a private meeting.
”

  “I’m private.”

  “You sure are, Robert. And Brian, and everyone else. But some bastard isn’t.”

  Armstrong’s humor vanished. “Oh?”

  “No.” Rosemont said nothing more. He knew he had hurt the Englishman but he didn’t care. It’s the truth, he thought bitterly. The sooner these goddamn limeys open their goddamn eyes the better.

  The elevator stopped. They walked down the corridor and were ushered into Crosse’s room by Brian Kwok. Rosemont felt the bolts slide home behind him and he thought how goddamn foolish and useless and unnecessary; the man’s a knucklehead.

  “I asked for a private meeting, Rog.”

  “It’s private. Robert’s very private, Brian is. What can I do for you, Stanley?” Crosse was politely cool.

  “Okay, Rog, today I got a long list for you: first, you’re personally 100 percent in the creek with me, my whole department, up to the director in Washington himself. I’m told to tell you—among other things—your mole’s surpassed himself this time.”

  “Oh?”

  Rosemont’s voice was grating now. “For starters, we just heard from one of our sources in Canton that Fong-fong and all your lads were hit last night. Their cover’s gone—they’re blown.” Armstrong and Brian Kwok looked shocked. Crosse was staring back at him and he read nothing in his face. “Got to be your mole, Rog. Got to be fingered from the tai-pan’s AMG papers.”

  Crosse looked across at Brian Kwok. “Use the emergency wireless code. Check it!”

  As Brian Kwok hurried out, Rosemont said again, “They’re blown, the poor bastards.”

  “We’ll check it anyway. Next?”

  Rosemont smiled mirthlessly. “Next: Almost everything that was in the tai-pan’s AMG papers’s spread around the intelligence community in London—on the wrong side.”

  “God curse all traitors,” Armstrong muttered.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought, Robert. Next, another little gem—AMG was no accident.”