Noble House

by James Clavell

  “Didn’t Tsu-yan have an office at Princes Building?”

  “Brian?”

  “We’ve followed him there several times, sir. He visited a business acquaintance.…” Brian Kwok searched his memory. “… Shipping. Name of Ng, Vee Cee Ng, nicknamed Photographer Ng. Room 721. We checked him out but everything was aboveboard. Vee Cee Ng runs Asian and China Shipping and about fifty other small allied businesses. Why?”

  “This address’s 720. Tsu-yan could tie in with John Chen, the guns, Banastasio, Bartlett—even the Werewolves,” Armstrong said.

  Crosse took the paper. After a pause he said, “Robert, take a team and check 720 and 721 right now.”

  “It’s not in my area, sir.”

  “How right you are!” Crosse said at once, heavy with sarcasm. “Yes. I know. You’re CID Kowloon, Robert, not Central. However, Í authorize the raid. Go and do it. Now.”

  “Yes sir.” Armstrong left, red-faced.

  The silence gathered.

  Brian Kwok waited, staring stoically at the desktop. Crosse selected a cigarette with care, lit it, then leaned back in his chair. “Brian. I think Robert’s the mole.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  1:38 P.M.:

  Robert Armstrong and a uniformed police sergeant got out of the squad car and headed through the crowds into the vast maw of the Princes Arcade with its jewelry and curio shops, camera shops and radio shops stuffed with the latest electronic miracles, that was on the ground floor of the old-fashioned, high-rise office building in Central. They eased their way toward a bank of elevators, joining the swarm of waiting people. Eventually he and the sergeant squeezed into an elevator. The air was heavy and fetid and nervous. The Chinese passengers watched them obliquely and uncomfortably.

  On the seventh floor Armstrong and the sergeant got out. The corridor was dingy and narrow with nondescript office doors on either side. He stood for a moment looking at the board. Room 720 was billed as “Ping-sing Wah Developments,” 721 as “Asian and China Shipping.” He walked ponderously down the corridor, Sergeant Yat alongside.

  As they turned the corner a middle-aged Chinese wearing a white shirt and dark trousers was coming out of room 720. He saw them, blanched, and ducked back in. When Armstrong got to the door he expected it to be locked but it wasn’t and he jerked it open just in time to see the man in the white shirt disappearing out of the back door, another man almost jamming him in equal haste to flee. The back door slammed closed.

  Armstrong sighed. There were two rumpled secretaries in the sleazy, untidy office suite of three cramped rooms, and they were gawking at him, one with her chopsticks poised in midair over a bowl of chicken and noodles. The noodles slid off her chopsticks and fell back into the soup.

  “Afternoon,” Armstrong said.

  The two women gaped at him, then looked at the sergeant and back to him again.

  “Where are Mr. Lim, Mr. Tak and Mr. Lo, please?”

  One of the girls shrugged and the other, unconcerned, began to eat again. Noisily. The office suite was untidy and unkempt. There were two phones, papers strewn around, plastic cups, dirty plates and bowls and used chopsticks. A teapot and tea cups. Full garbage cans.

  Armstrong took out the search warrant and showed it to them.

  The girls stared at him.

  Irritably Armstrong harshened his voice. “You speak English?”

  Both girls jumped. “Yes sir,” they chorused.

  “Good. Give your names to the sergeant and answer his questions. Th—” At that moment the back door opened again and the two men were herded back into the room by two hard-faced uniformed policemen who had been waiting in ambush. “Ah, good. Well done. Thank you, Corporal. Now, where were you two going?”

  At once the two men began protesting their innocence in voluble Cantonese.

  “Shut up!” Armstrong snarled. They stopped. “Give me your names!” They stared at him. In Cantonese he said, “Give me your names and you’d better not lie or I will become very fornicating angry.”

  “He’s Tak Chou-lan,” the one with pronounced buckteeth said, pointing at the other.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Er, Lo Tup-sop, Lord. But I haven’t done anyt—”

  “Lo Tup-sop? Not Lo Tup-lin?”

  “Oh no, Lord Superintendent, that’s my brother.”

  “Where is he?”

  The buck toothed man shrugged. “I don’t know. Please what’s go—”

  “Where were you going in such a hurry, Bucktooth Lo?”

  “I’d forgotten an appointment, Lord. Oh it was very important. It’s urgent and I will lose a fortune, sir, if I don’t go immediately. May I now please go, Honored Lo—”

  “No! Here’s my search warrant. We’re going to search and take away any papers th—”

  At once both men began to protest strenuously. Again Armstrong cut them short. “Do you want to be taken to the border right now?” Both men blanched and shook their heads. “Good. Now, where’s Thomas K. K. Lim?” Neither answered so Armstrong stabbed his finger at the younger of the two men. “You, Mr. Bucktooth Lo! Where’s Thomas K. K. Lim?”

  “In South America, Lord,” Lo said nervously.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, sir, he just shares the office. That’s his fornicating desk.” Bucktooth Lo waved a nervous hand at the far corner. There was a messy desk and a filing cabinet and a phone there. “I’ve done nothing wrong, Lord. Foreigner Lim’s a stranger from the Golden Mountain. Fourth Cousin Tak here just rents him space, Lord. Foreigner Lim just comes and goes as it pleases him and is nothing to do with me. Is he a foul criminal? If there’s anything wrong I don’t know anything about it!”

  “Then what do you know about the thieving of funds from the CARE program?”

  “Eh?” Both men gaped at him.

  “Informers have given us proof you’re all thieving charity money that belongs to starving women and children!”

  At once both began protesting their innocence.

  “Enough! The judge will decide! You will go to headquarters and give statements.” Then he switched back into English once more. “Sergeant, take them back to headquarters. Corporal, let’s st—”

  “Honored sir,” Bucktooth Lo began in halting, nervous English, “if I may to talk, in office, plees?” He pointed at the inner, equally untidy and cluttered office.

  “All right.”

  Armstrong followed Lo, towering over him. The man closed the door nervously and began talking Cantonese quickly and very quietly. “I don’t know anything about anything criminal, Lord. If something’s amiss it’s those other two fornicators, I’m just an honest businessman who wants to make money and send his children to university in America an—”

  “Yes. Of course. What did you want to say to me privately before you go down to police headquarters?”

  The man smiled nervously and went to the desk and began to unlock a drawer. “If anyone’s guilty it’s not me, Lord. I don’t know anything about anything.” He opened the drawer. It was filled with used, red, 100-dollar notes. They were clipped into thousands. “If you’ll let me go, Lord …” He grinned up at him, fingering the notes.

  Armstrong’s foot lashed out and the drawer slammed and caught Lo’s fingertips and he let out a howl of pain. He tore the drawer open with his good hand. “Oh oh oh my fornic—”

  Armstrong shoved his face close to the petrified Chinese. “Listen, you dogmeat turd, it’s against the law to try to bribe a policeman and if you claim your fingers’re police brutality I’ll personally grind your fornicating Secret Sack to mincemeat!”

  He leaned back against the desk, his heart pounding, sickness in his throat, enraged at the temptation and sight of all that money. How easy it would be to take it and pay his debts and have more than enough left over to gamble on the market and at the races, and then to leave Hong Kong before it was too late.

  So easy. So much more easy to take than to resist—this time or all the other th
ousand times. There must be 30, 40,000 in that drawer alone. And if there’s one drawer full there must be others and if I lean on this bastard he’ll cough up ten times this amount.

  Roughly he reached out and grabbed the man’s hand. Again the man cried out. One fingertip was mashed and Armstrong thought Lo would lose a couple of fingernails and have plenty of pain but that was all. He was angry with himself that he had lost his temper but he was tired and knew it was not just tiredness. “What do you know about Tsu-yan?”

  “Wat? Me? Nothing. Tsu-yan who?”

  Armstrong grabbed him and shook him. “Tsu-yan! The gun-runner Tsu-yan!”

  “Nothing, Lord!”

  “Liar! The Tsu-yan who visits Mr. Ng next door!”

  “Tsu-yan? Oh him? Gun-runner? I didn’t know he’s a gun-runner! I always thought he was a businessman. He’s another Northerner like Photographer Ng—”

  “Who?”

  “Photographer Ng, Lord. Vee Cee Ng from next door. He and this Tsuyan never come in here or talk to us.… Oh I need a doctor … oh my han—”

  “Where’s Tsu-yan now?”

  “I don’t know, Lord … oh my fornicating hand, oh oh oh.… I swear by all the gods I don’t know him.… oh oh oh….”

  Irritably Armstrong shoved him in a chair and jerked open the door. The three policemen and two secretaries stared at him silently. “Sergeant, take this bugger to HQ, and charge him with trying to bribe a policeman. Look at this …” He beckoned him in and pointed at the drawer.

  Sergeant Yat’s eyes widened. “Dew neh loh moh!”

  “Count it and get both men to sign the amount as correct and take it to HQ with them and turn it in.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Corporal, you start going through the files. I’m going next door. I’ll be back shortly.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Armstrong strode out. He knew that this money would be counted quickly, and any other money in the offices—if this drawer was full others would be—then the amount to be turned in would be quickly negotiated by the principals, Sergeant Yat and Lo and Tak, and the rest split among them. Lo and Tak would believe him to be in for a major share and his own men would consider him mad not to be. Never mind. He didn’t care. The money was stolen, and Sergeant Yat and his men were all good policemen and their pay totally inadequate for their responsibilities. A little h’eung yau wouldn’t do them any harm, it would be a godsend.

  Won’t it?

  In China you have to be pragmatic, he told himself grimly as he knocked on the door of 721 and went in. A good-looking secretary looked up from her lunch—a bowl of pure white rice and slivers of roast pork and jet green broccoli steaming nicely.

  “Afternoon.” Armstrong flashed his ID card. “I’d like to see Mr. Vee Cee Ng, please.”

  “Sorry, sir,” the girl said, her English good and her eyes blank. “He’s out. Out for lunch.”

  “Where?”

  “At his club, I think. He—he won’t be back today until five.”

  “Which club?”

  She told him. He had never heard of it but that meant nothing as there were hundreds of private Chinese lunching or dining or at mah-jong clubs.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Virginia Tong. Sir,” she added as an afterthought.

  “Do you mind if I look around?” He saw her eyes flash nervously. “Here’s my search warrant.”

  She took it and read it and he thought, full marks, young lady. “Do you think you could wait, wait till five o’clock?” she asked.

  “I’ll take a short look now.”

  She shrugged and got up and opened the inner office. It was small and empty but for untidy desks, phones, filing cabinets, shipping posters and sailing schedules. Two inner doors let off it and a back door. He opened one door on the 720 side but it was a dank, evil-smelling toilet and dirty washbasin. The back door was bolted. He slid the bolts back and went onto the dingy back-stairs landing that served as a makeshift fire escape and alternate means of exit. He rebolted it, watched all the time by Virginia Tong. The last door, on the far side, was locked.

  “Would you open it please?”

  “Mr. Vee Cee has the only key, sir.”

  Armstrong sighed. “I do have a search warrant, Miss Tong, and the right to kick the door in, if necessary.”

  She stared back at him so he shrugged and stood away from the door and readied to kick it in. Truly.

  “Just… just a moment, sir,” she stammered. “I … I’ll see if there … if he left his key before he went out.”

  “Good. Thank you.” Armstrong watched her open a desk drawer and pretend to search, then another drawer and another and then, sensing his impatience, she found a key under a money box. “Ah, here it is!” she said as though a miracle had happened. He noticed she was perspiring now. Good, he thought. She unlocked the door and stood back. This door opened directly onto another. Armstrong opened it and whistled involuntarily. The room beyond was large, luxurious, thick-carpeted with elegant suede leather sofas and rosewood furniture and fine paintings. He wandered in. Virginia Tong watched from the doorway. The fine antique rosewood, tooled leather desk was bare and clean and polished, a bowl of flowers on it, and some framed photographs, all of a beaming Chinese leading in a garlanded racehorse, and one of the same Chinese in dinner jacket shaking hands with the governor, Dunross nearby.

  “That’s Mr. Ng?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Top-quality hi-fi and record player were to one side, and a tall cocktail cabinet. Another doorway let off this room. He pushed the half-opened door aside. An elegant, very feminine bedroom with a huge, unmade king-sized bed, mirror-lined ceiling and a decorator’s bathroom off it, with perfumes, aftershave lotions, gleaming modern fittings and many buckets of water.

  “Interesting,” he said and looked at her.

  She said nothing, just waited.

  Armstrong saw that she had nylon-clad legs and was very trim with well-groomed nails and hair. I’ll bet she’s a dragon, and expensive. He turned away from her and looked around thoughtfully. Clearly this self-contained apartment had been made out of the adjoining suite. Well, he told himself with a touch of envy, if you’re rich and you want a private, secret flat for an afternoon’s nooky behind your office there’s no law against that. None. And none against having an attractive secretary. Lucky bastard. I wouldn’t mind having one of these places myself.

  Absently he opened a desk drawer. It was empty. All the drawers were empty. Then he went through the bedroom drawers but found nothing of interest. One cupboard contained a fine camera and some portable lighting equipment and cleaning equipment but nothing suspicious.

  He came back into the main room satisfied that he had missed nothing. She was still watching him, and though she tried to hide it, he could sense a nervousness.

  That’s understandable, he told himself. If I were her and my boss was out and some rotten quai loh came prying I’d be nervous too. No harm in having a private place like this. Lots of rich people have them in Hong Kong. His eye was caught by the rosewood cocktail cabinet. The key in the lock beckoned him. He opened it. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then his sharp, well-trained eyes noticed the untoward width of the doors. A moment’s inspection and he opened the false doors. His mouth dropped open.

  The side walls of the cabinet were covered with dozens of photographs of Jade Gates in all their glory. Each photograph was neatly framed and tagged with a typed name and a date. Involuntarily he let out a bellow of embarrassed laughter, then glanced around. Virginia Tong had vanished. Quickly he scanned the names. Hers was third from the last.

  Another paroxysm of laughter was barely contained. The policeman shook his head helplessly. What some buggers’ll do for fun—and I suppose some ladies for money! I thought I’d seen it all but this … Photographer Ng, eh? So that’s where the nickname came from.

  Now over his initial shock, he studied the photographs. Each of them had been taken with the same lens from the
same distance.

  Good God, he thought after a minute, astounded, there’s really quite a lot of difference between … I mean if you can forget what you’re looking at and just look, well, there’s a fantastic amount of difference in the shape and size of the whole, the position and protuberance of the Pearl on the Step, the quality and quantity of publicity and … ayeeyah there’s one piece bat jam gai. He looked at the name. Mona Leung—now where have I heard that name before? That’s curious—Chinese usually consider lack of publicity unlucky. Now why … oh my God! He peered at the next name tag to make sure. There was no mistake. Venus Poon. Ayeeyah, he thought elatedly, so that’s hers, that’s what she really looks like, the darling of the telly who daily projects such sweet, virginal innocence so beautifully!

  He concentrated on her, his senses bemused. I suppose if you compare hers with, say, say Virginia Tong’s, well she does have a certain delicacy. Yes, but if you want my considered opinion I’d still rather have had the mystery and not seen these at all. None of them.

  Idly his eyes went from name to name. “Bloody hell,” he said, recognizing one: Elizabeth Mithy. She was once a secretary at Struan’s, one of the band of wanderers from the small towns in Australia and New Zealand, girls who aimlessly found their way to Hong Kong for a few weeks, to stay for months, perhaps years, to fill minor jobs until they married or vanished forever. I’ll be damned. Liz Mithy!

  Armstrong was trying to be dispassionate but he could not help comparing Caucasian with Chinese and he found no difference. Thank God for that, he told himself, and chuckled. Even so he was glad the photographs were black and white and not in color.

  “Well,” he said out loud, still very embarrassed, “there’s no law against taking photos that I know of, and sticking them in your own cabinet. The young ladies must’ve cooperated….” He grunted, amused and at the same time disgusted. Damned if I’ll ever understand the Chinese! “Liz Mithy, eh?” he muttered. He had known her slightly when she was in the Colony, knew that she was quite wild, but what could have possessed her to pose for Ng? If her old man knew, he’d hemorrhage. Thank God we don’t have children, Mary and I.