Noble House

by James Clavell

  DeVille shivered in spite of himself and Suslev noticed it. His concern deepened. “Merde, but that would wreck Hong Kong,” deVille said. “Oh, I know the sooner the better but … but being buried so deep, sometimes you forget who you really are.”

  “That’s nothing to worry about. It happens to all of us. You’re in turmoil because of your daughter. What father wouldn’t be? It will pass.”

  “When can we do something? I’m tired, so tired of waiting.”

  “Soon. Listen,” Suslev said to encourage him. “In January I was at a top echelon meeting in Moscow. Banking was high on our list. At our last count we’re indebted to the capitalists nearly 30 billions in loans—most of that to America.”

  DeVille gasped. “Madonna, I had no idea you’d been so successful.”

  Suslev’s smile broadened. “That’s just Soviet Russia! Our satellites are in for another 6.3 billions. East Germany’s just got another 1.3 billion to purchase capitalist rolling mills, computer technology and a lot of things we need.” He laughed, drained his glass and poured another, the liquor oiling his tongue. “I really don’t understand them, the capitalists. They delude themselves. We’re openly committed to consume them but they give us the means to do it. They’re astonishing. If we have time, twenty years—at the most twenty—by that time our debt will be 60, 70 billions and as far as they’re concerned we’ll still be a triple-A risk, never having defaulted on a payment ever … in war, peace or depression.” He let out a sudden burst of laughter. “What was it the Swiss banker said? ‘Lend a little and you have a debtor—lend a lot and you have a partner!’ 70 billions, Jacques old friend, and we own them. 70 and we can twist their policies to suit ourselves and then at any moment of our own choosing the final ploy: ‘So sorry, Mr. Capitalist Zionist Banker, we regret we’re broke! Oh very sorry but we can no longer repay the loans, not even the interest on the loans. Very sorry but from this moment all our present currency’s valueless. Our new currency’s a red ruble, one red ruble’s worth a hundred of your capitalist dollars.…’”

  Suslev laughed, feeling very happy. “… and however rich the banks are collectively they’ll never be able to write off 70 billions. Never. 70 plus by that time with all the Eastern Bloc billions! And if the sudden announcement’s timed to one of their inevitable capitalistic recessions as it will be … they’ll be up to their Hebrew bankers’ noses in their own panic shit, begging us to save their rotten skins.” He added contemptuously, “The stupid bastards deserve to lose! Why should we fight them when their own greed and stupidity’s destroying them. Eh?”

  DeVille nodded uneasily. Suslev frightened him. I must be getting old, he thought. In the early days it was so easy to believe in the cause of the masses. The cries of the downtrodden were so loud and clear then. But now? Now they’re not so clear. I’m still committed, deeply committed. I regret nothing. France will be better Communist.

  Will it?

  I don’t know anymore, not for certain, not as I used to. It’s a pity for all people that there must be some “ism” or other, he told himself, trying to cover his anguish. Better if there were no “isms,” just my beloved Côte d’Azur basking in the sun.

  “I tell you, old friend, Stalin and Beria were geniuses,” Suslev was saying. “They’re the greatest Russians that have ever been.”

  DeVille just managed to keep the shock off his face. He was remembering the horror of the German occupation, the humbling of France, all the villages and hamlets and vineyards, remembering that Hitler would never have dared attack Poland and start it all without Stalin’s nonaggression pact to protect his back. Without Stalin there would have been no war, no holocaust and we would all be better off. “Twenty million Russians? Countless millions of others,” he said.

  “A modest cost.” Suslev poured again, his zeal and the vodka taking him. “Because of Stalin and Beria we have all Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Balkans—Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, all Poland, Prussia, half of Germany, Outer Mongolia.” Suslev belched happily. “North Korea, and footholds everywhere else. Their Operation Lion smashed the British Empire. Because of their support the United Nations was birthed to give us our greatest weapon in our arsenal of many weapons. And then there’s Israel.” He began to laugh. “My father was one of the controllers of that program.”

  DeVille felt the hackles of his neck rise. “What?”

  “Israel was a Stalin-Beria coup of monumental proportions! Who helped it, overt and covert, come into being? Who gave it immediate recognition? We did, and why?” Suslev belched again, “To cement into the guts of Arabia a perpetual cancer that will suppurate and destroy both sides and, along with them, bring down the industrial might of the West. Jew against Mohammedan against Christian. Those fanatics’ll never live at peace with one another even though they could, easily. They will never bury their differences even if it costs them their stupid lives.” He laughed and stared at his glass blearily, swirling the liquid around. DeVille watched him, hating him, wanting to give him the lie back, afraid to, knowing himself totally in Suslev’s power. Once, some years ago, he had balked over sending some routine Struan figures to a box number in Berlin. Within a day, a stranger had phoned him at home. Such a call had never happened before. It was friendly. But he knew.

  DeVille suppressed a shudder and kept his face clear as Suslev glanced up at him.

  “Don’t you agree, tovarich?” the KGB man said, beaming. “I swear I’ll never understand the capitalists. They make enemies of four hundred million Arabs who have all the world’s real oil reserves one day they will need so desperately. And soon we’ll have Iran and the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Then we’ll have a hand on the West’s tap, then they’re ours and no need for war—just execution.” Suslev drained his vodka and poured another.

  DeVille watched him, loathing him now, wondering frantically about his own role. Is it for this that I have been almost a perfect mole, for sixteen years keeping myself prepared and ready, with no suspicion against me? Even Susanne suspects nothing and everyone believes I’m anti-Communist, pro-Struan’s which is the arch-capitalistic creation in all Asia. Dirk Struan’s thoughts permeate us. Profit. Profit for the tai-pan and the Noble House and then Hong Kong in that order and the hell with everyone except the Crown, England and China. And even if I don’t become tai-pan, I can still make Sevrin the wrecker of China that Suslev and Arthur want it to be. But do I want to now? Now that, for the first time, I’ve really seen into this … this monster and all their hypocrisy?

  “Stalin,” he said, almost wincing under Suslev’s gaze. “Did … you ever meet him?”

  “I was near him once. Ten feet away. He was tiny but you could feel his power. That was in 1953 at a party Beria gave for some senior KGB officers. My father was invited and I was allowed to go with him.” Suslev took another vodka, hardly seeing him, swept by the past and by his family’s involvement in the movement. “Stalin was there, Beria, Malenkov … Did you know Stalin’s real name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili? He was the son of a shoemaker, in Tiflis, my home, destined for the priesthood but expelled from the seminary there. Strange strange strange!”

  They touched glasses.

  “No need for you to be so solemn, comrade,” he said, misreading deVille. “Whatever your personal loss. You’re part of the future, part of the march to victory!” Suslev drained his glass. “Stalin must have died a happy man. We should be so lucky, eh?”

  “And Beria?”

  “Beria tried to take power too late. He failed. We in the KGB are like Japanese in that we too agree the only sin is failure. But Stalin … There’s a story my father tells that when at Yalta, for no concession, Roosevelt agreed to give Stalin Manchuria and the Kuriles which guaranteed us dominance over China and Japan and all Asian waters, Stalin had a hemorrhage choking back his laughter and almost died!”

  After a pause, deVille said, “And Solzhenitsyn and the gulags?”

  “We’re at
war, my friend, there are traitors within. Without terror how can the few rule the many? Stalin knew that. He was a truly great man. Even his death served us. It was brilliant of Khrushchev to use him to ‘humanize’ the USSR.”

  “That was just another ploy?” deVille asked, shaken.

  “That would be a state secret.” Suslev swallowed a belch. “It doesn’t matter, Stalin will be returned to his glory soon. Now, what about Ottawa?”

  “Oh. I’ve been in contact with Jean-Charles an—” The phone rang abruptly. A single ring. Their eyes went to it, their breathing almost stopped. After twenty-odd seconds there was a second single ring. Both men relaxed slightly. Another twenty-odd seconds and the third ring became continuous. One ring meant “Danger leave immediately;” two, that the meeting was canceled; three that whoever was calling would be there shortly; three becoming continuous, that it was safe to talk. Suslev picked up the phone. He heard breathing, then Arthur asked in his curious accent, “Is Mr. Lopsing there?”

  “There’s no Lop-ting here, you have a wrong number,” Suslev said in a different voice, concentrating with an effort.

  They went through the code carefully, Suslev further reassured by Arthur’s slight, dry cough. Then Arthur said, “I cannot meet tonight. Would Friday at three be convenient?” Friday meant Thursday—tomorrow—Wednesday meant Tuesday, and so on. The three was a code for a meeting place: the Happy Valley Racecourse at the dawn workout.

  Tomorrow at dawn!

  “Yes.”

  The phone clicked off. Only the dial tone remained.

  Thursday

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  4:50 A.M.:

  About an hour before dawn in the pouring rain Goodweather Poon looked down at the half-naked body of John Chen and cursed. He had been through his clothes carefully and sifted through endless pounds of mud from the grave that the two youths, Kin Pak and Dog-eared Chen, had dug. But he had found nothing—no coins or parts of coins or jewelry, nothing. And Four Finger Wu had said earlier, “You find that half-coin, Goodweather Poon!” Then the old man had given him further instructions and Goodweather Poon was very pleased because that relieved him of any responsibility and he could then make no mistake.

  He had ordered Dog-eared Chen and Kin Pak to carry the body downstairs and had threatened Smallpox Kin, who nursed his mutilated hand, that if the youth moaned once more he would slice out his tongue. They had left Father Kin’s body in an alley. Then Goodweather Poon had sought out the King of the Beggars of Kowloon City who was a distant cousin of Four Finger Wu. All beggars were members of the Beggars’ Guild and there was one king in Hong Kong, one in Kowloon and one in Kowloon City. In olden days begging was a lucrative profession, but now, due to stiff prison sentences and fines and plenty of well-paying jobs, it was not.

  “You see, Honored Beggar King, this acquaintance of ours has just died,” Goodweather Poon explained patiently to the distinguished old man. “He has no relations, so he’s been put out in Flowersellers’ Alley. My High Dragon would certainly appreciate a little help. Perhaps you could arrange a quiet burial?” He negotiated politely then paid the agreed price and went off to their taxi and car that waited outside the city limits, happy that now the body would vanish forever without a trace. Kin Pak was already in the taxi’s front seat. He got in beside him. “Guide us to John Chen,” he ordered. “And be quick!”

  “Take the Sha Tin Road,” Kin Pak said importantly to the driver. Dogeared Chen was cowering in the backseat with more of Goodweather Poon’s fighters. Smallpox Kin and the others followed in the car.

  The two vehicles went northwest into the New Territories on the Sha Tin-Tai Po road that curled through villages and resettlement areas and shantytowns of squatters, through the mountain pass, skirting the railway that headed north for the border, past rich market gardens heavy with the smell of dung. Just before the fishing village of Sha Tin with the sea on their right, they turned left off the main road onto a side road, the surface broken and puddled. In a glade of trees they stopped and got out.

  It was warm in the rain, the land sweet-smelling. Kin Pak took the shovel and led the way into the undergrowth. Goodweather Poon held the flashlight as Kin Pak, Dog-eared Chen and Smallpox Kin searched. It was difficult in the darkness for them to find the exact place. Twice they had begun to dig, before Kin Pak remembered their father had marked the spot with a crescent rock. Cursing and soaked, at length they found the rock and began to dig. The earth was parched under the surface. Soon they had unearthed the corpse which was wrapped in a blanket. The smell was heavy. Though Goodweather Poon had made them strip the body and had searched diligently, nothing was to be found.

  “You sent everything else to Noble House Chen?” he asked again, rain on his face, his clothes soaking.

  “Yes,” the young Kin Pak said truculently. “How many fornicating times do I have to tell you?” He was very weary, his clothes sodden, and he was sure he was going to die.

  “All of you take your manure-infested clothes off. Shoes socks everything. I want to go through your pockets.”

  They obeyed. Kin Pak wore a string around his neck with a cheap circle of jade on it. Almost everyone in China wore a piece of jade for good luck, because everyone knew if an evil god caused you to stumble, the spirit of jade would get between you and the evil and take the brunt of the fall from you and shatter, saving you from shattering. And if it didn’t, then the Jade God was regretfully sleeping and that was your joss never mind.

  Goodweather Poon found nothing in Kin Pak’s pockets. He threw the clothes back at him. By now he was soaked too and very irritable. “You can dress, and dress the corpse again. And hurry it up!”

  Dog-eared Chen had almost 400 HK and a jade bracelet of good quality. One of the men took the jade and Poon pocketed the money and turned on Smallpox Kin. All their eyes popped as they saw the big roll of notes he found in the youth’s pants pocket.

  Goodweather Poon shielded it carefully from the rain. “Where in the name of Heavenly Whore did you get all this?”

  He told them about shaking down the lucky ones outside the Ho-Pak and they laughed and complimented him on his sagacity. “Very good, very clever,” Poon said. “You’re a good businessman. Put your clothes on. What was the old woman’s name?”

  “She called herself Ah Tam.” Smallpox Kin wiped the rain out of his eyes, his toes twisting into the mud, his mutilated hand on fire now and aching very much. “I’ll take you to her if you want.”

  “Hey, I need the fornicating light here!” Kin Pak called out. He was on his hands and knees, fighting John Chen’s clothes into place. “Can’t someone give me a hand?”

  “Help him!”

  Dog-eared Chen and Smallpox Kin hurried to help as Goodweather Poon directed the circle of light back on the corpse. The body was swollen and puffy, the rain washing the dirt away. The back of John Chen’s head was blood-matted and crushed but his face was still recognizable.

  “Ayeeyah,” one of his men said, “let’s get on with it. I feel evil spirits lurking hereabouts.”

  “Just his trousers and shirt’ll do,” Goodweather Poon said sourly. He waited until the body was partially dressed. Then he turned his eyes on them. “Now which one of you motherless whores helped the old man kill this poor fornicator?”

  Kin Pak said, “I already t—” He stopped as he saw the other two point at him and say in unison, “He did,” and back away from him.

  “I suspected it all along!” Goodweather Poon was pleased that he had at last got to the bottom of the mystery. He pointed his stubby forefinger at Kin Pak. “Get in the trench and lie down.”

  “We have an easy plan how to kidnap Noble House Chen himself that’ll bring us all twice, three times what this fornicator brought. I’ll tell you how, heya?” Kin Pak said.

  Goodweather Poon hesitated a moment at this new thought. Then he remembered Four Fingers’s instructions. “Put your face in the dirt in the trench!”

  Kin Pak looked at the inflexible e
yes and knew he was dead. He shrugged. Joss. “I piss on all your generations,” he said and got into the grave and lay down.

  He put his head on his arms in the dirt and began to shut out the light of his life. From nothing into nothing, always part of the Kin family, of all its generations, living forever in its perpetual stream, from generation to generation, down through history into the everlasting future.

  Goodweather Poon took up one of the shovels and because of the youth’s courage he dispatched him instantly by putting the sharp edge of the blade between his vertebrae and shoving downward. Kin Pak died without knowing it.

  “Fill up the grave!”

  Dog-eared Chen was petrified but he rushed to obey. Goodweather Poon laughed and tripped him and gave him a savage kick for his cowardice. The man half-fell into the trench. At once the shovel in Poon’s hands whirled in an arc and crunched into the back of Dog-eared Chen’s head and he collapsed with a sigh on top of Kin Pak. The others laughed and one said, “Eeeee, you used that like a foreign devil cricket bat! Good. Is he dead?”

  Goodweather Poon did not answer, just looked at the last Werewolf, Smallpox Kin. All their eyes went to him. He stood rigid in the rain. It was then that Goodweather Poon noticed the string tight around his neck. He took up the flashlight and went over to him and saw that the other end was dangling down his back. Weighing it down was a broken half-coin, a hole bored carefully into it. It was a copper cash and seemed ancient.

  “All gods fart in Tsao Tsao’s face! Where did you get this?” he asked, beginning to beam.

  “My father gave it to me.”

  “Where did he get it, little turd?”