“Jamie says the fields are to the north and east of Scotland. The port of Aberdeen would be the logical place to bring it ashore. A wise man would start looking at wharfing, real estate, airfields, in Aberdeen. Don’t worry about bad weather, helicopters will be the connecting links to the rigs. Expensive yes, but viable. Further, if you will accept my forecast that Labour will win the next election because of the Profumo scandal…”
The case had filled the newspapers. Six months before, in March, the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, had formally denied that he had ever had an affair with a notorious call girl, Christine Keeler, one of several girls who had suddenly sprung to international prominence with their procurer, Stephen Ward—up to that time just a well-known osteopath in London’s high society. Unsubstantiated rumors began to circulate that the girl had also been having an affair with one of the Soviet attachés, a well-known KGB agent, Commander Yevgeny Ivanov, who had been recalled to Russia the previous December. In the uproar that followed, Profumo resigned, and Stephen Ward committed suicide.
“It is curious that the affair was revealed to the press at the perfect time for the Soviets,” Grant continued. “I have no proof, yet, but it’s not just a coincidence in my opinion. Remember it is Soviet doctrine to fragment countries—North Korea and South, East Germany and West, and so on—then to let their indoctrinated underlings do their work for them. So I think the pro-Soviet Socialists will help fragment Britain into England, Scotland, Wales and south and north Ireland (watch Eire and Northern Ireland which is a ready-made arena for Soviet merrymaking).
“Now for my suggested Contingency Plan One for the Noble House: To be circumspect about England and to concentrate on Scotland as a base. North Sea oil would make Scotland abundantly self-sufficient. The population is small, hardy and nationalistic. As an entity, Scotland would be practical now, and defensible—with an abundant exportable oil supply. A strong Scotland could perhaps help tip the scales and help a tottering England … our poor country, Mr. Dunross! I fear greatly for England.
“Perhaps this is another of my farfetched theories. But reconsider Scotland, Aberdeen, in the light of a new North Sea.”
“Ridiculous!” Dunross exploded and he stopped reading for a moment, his mind swept, then cautioned himself, don’t go off at half cock! AMG’s farfetched sometimes, given to exaggeration, he’s a right-wing imperialist who sees fifteen Reds under every bed. But what he says could be possible. If it’s possible, then it must be considered. If there were a vast worldwide oil shortage and we were prepared, we could make a fortune, he told himself, his excitement growing. It’d be easy to buy into Aberdeen now, easy to begin a calculated retreat from London without hurting anything—Edinburgh has all the modern amenities of banking, communications, ports, airfields, that we’d need to operate efficiently. Scotland for the Scots, with abundant oil for export? Completely viable, but not separate, somehow within a strong Britain. But if the city of London, Parliament and Threadneedle Street become left-wing choked …
The hair on the nape of his neck twisted at the thought of Britain being buried under a shroud of left-wing socialism. What about Robin Grey? Or Julian Broadhurst? he asked himself, chilled. Certainly they’d nationalize everything, they’d grab North Sea oil, if any, and put Hong Kong on the block—they’ve already said they would.
With an effort he tabled that thought for later, turned the page and read on. “Next, I think I’ve identified three of your Sevrin moles. The information was expensive—I may need extra money before Christmas—and I am not certain of the accuracy (I’m trying to cross-check at once, realizing the importance to you). The moles are believed to be: Jason Plumm of a company called Asian Properties; Lionel Tuke in the telephone company; and Jacques deVille in Struan’s …”
“Impossible!” Dunross burst out loud. “AMG’s gone mad! Plumm’s as impossible as Jacques, totally absolutely impossible. There’s no way they co—”
His private phone began ringing. Automatically he picked it up. “Yes?”
“This is the overseas operator calling Mr. Dunross.”
“Who’s calling him please?” he snapped.
“Will Mr. Dunross accept a collect call from Sydney, Australia, from a Mr. Duncan Dunross?”
The tai-pan’s heart missed a beat. “Of course! Hello, Duncan … Duncan?”
“Father?”
“Hello, my son, are you all right?”
“Oh yes, sir, absolutely!” he heard his son say and his anxiety fled. “I’m sorry to call you during the working day, Father, but my Monday flight’s overbooked an—”
“Damnit, you have a confirmed booking, laddie. I’ll get p—”
“No, Father, thank you, that’s perfectly all right. Now I’m on an earlier one. I’m on Singapore Airlines Flight 6 which arrives Hong Kong at noon. Don’t bother to meet me, I’ll get a taxi an—”
“Look for the car, Duncan. Lee Choy will be there. But come to the office before you go home, eh?”
“All right. I’ve validated my tickets and everything.”
Dunross heard the pride in his son’s voice and it warmed him. “Good. Well done. By the way, cousin Linbar will be arriving tomorrow on Qantas at 8:00 P.M. your time. He’ll be staying at the house too.” Struan’s had had a company house in Sydney since 1900 and a permanent office there since the eighties. Hag Struan had gone into partnership with an immensely wealthy wheat farmer named Bill Scragger and their company had flourished until the crash of 1929. “Did you have a good holiday?”
“Oh smashing! Smashing, yes, I want to come back next year. I met a smashing girl, Father.”
“Oh?” Half of Dunross wanted to smile, the other half was still locked into the nightmare possibility that Jacques was a traitor, and if traitor and part of Sevrin, was he the one who supplied some of their innermost secrets to Linc Bartlett? No, Jacques couldn’t have. He couldn’t possibly have known about our bank holdings. Who knows about those? Who wou—
“Father?”
“Yes, Duncan?”
He heard the hesitancy, then his son said in a run, trying to sound manly, “Is it all right for a fellow to have a girlfriend a little older than himself?”
Dunross smiled gently and started to dismiss the thought as his son was only just fifteen, but then he remembered Elegant Jade when he himself was not quite fifteen, surely more of a man than Duncan. Not necessarily, he thought honestly. Duncan’s tall and growing and just as much a man. And didn’t I love her to madness that year and the next year and didn’t I almost die the next year when she vanished? “Well,” he said as an equal, “it really depends on who the girl is, how old the man is and how old the girl is.”
“Oh.” There was a long pause. “She’s eighteen.”
Dunross was greatly relieved. That means she’s old enough to know better, he thought. “I’d say that would be perfect,” he told Duncan in the same voice, “particularly if the fellow was about sixteen, tall, strong and knew the facts of life.”
“Oh. Oh I didn’t … oh! I wouldn’t…”
“I wasn’t being critical, laddie, just answering your question. A man has to be careful in this world, and girlfriends should be chosen carefully. Where did you meet her?”
“She was on the station. Her name’s Sheila.”
Duncan suppressed a smile. Girls in Australia were referred to as sheilas just as in England they were called birds. “That’s a nice name,” he said. “Sheila what?”
“Sheila Scragger. She’s a niece of old Mr. Tom and she’s on a visit from England. She’s training to be a nurse at Guy’s Hospital. She was ever so super to me and Paldoon’s super too. I really can’t thank you enough for arranging such a super holiday.” Paldoon, the Scragger ranch, or station as it was called in Australia, was the only property they had managed to save from the crash. Paldoon was five hundred miles southwest of Sydney near the Murray River in Australia’s rice lands, sixty thousand acres—thirty thousand head of sheep, two thousand acres of wheat a
nd a thousand head of cattle—and the greatest place for a youth to holiday, working all day from dawn to dusk, mustering the sheep or cattle on horseback, galloping twenty miles in any direction and still on your own property.
“Give Tom Scragger my regards and make sure you send him a bottle of whiskey before you leave.”
“Oh I sent him a case, is that all right?”
Dunross laughed. “Well laddie, a bottle would have done just as well, but a case is perfect. Call me if there’s any change in your flight. You did very well to get it organized yourself, very good. Oh by the way, Mama and Glenna went to London today, with Aunt Kathy, so you’ll have to go back to school alone an—”
“Oh jolly good, Father,” his son said happily. “After all, I’m a man now and almost at university!”
“Yes, yes you are.” A small sweet sadness touched Dunross as he sat in his high chair, AMG’s letter in his hand but forgotten. “Are you all right for money?”
“Oh yes. I hardly spent anything on the station except for a beer or two. Father, don’t tell Mother about my girl.”
“All right. Or Adryon,” he said and at once his chest tightened at the thought of Martin Haply together with Adryon and how they went off hand-in-hand. “You should tell Adryon yourself.”
“Oh super, I’d forgotten her. How is she?”
“She’s in good shape,” Dunross said, ordering himself to be adult, wise, and not to worry and it was all quite normal for boys and girls to be boys and girls. Yes, but Christ it’s difficult if you’re the father. “Well, Duncan, see you Monday! Thanks for calling.”
“Oh yes, and Father, Sheila drove me up to Sydney. She … she’s staying the weekend with friends and going to see me off! Tonight we’re going to a movie, Lawrence of Arabia, have you seen it?”
“Yes, it’s just come to Hong Kong, you’ll enjoy that.”
“Oh super! Well, good-bye, Father, have to run … love you!”
“Love you,” he said but the connection was already dead.
How lucky I am with my family, my wife and kids, Dunross thought, and at once added, Please God let nothing happen to them!
With an effort he looked back at the letter. It’s impossible for Jason Plumm or Jacques to be Communist spies, he told himself. Nothing they’ve ever said or done would indicate that. Lionel Tuke? No, not him either. I only know him casually. He’s an ugly, unpopular fellow who keeps to himself but he’s on the cricket team, a member of the Turf Club and he’s been out here since the thirties. Wasn’t he even interned at Stanley between ’42 and ’45? Maybe him, but the other two? Impossible!
I’m sorry AMG’s dead. I’d call him right now about Jacques and …
First finish the letter, then consider the parts, he ordered himself. Be correct, be efficient. Good God! Duncan and an eighteen-year-old sheila! Thank God it wasn’t Tom Scragger’s youngest. How old is Priscilla now? Fourteen, pretty, built much older. Girls seem to mature early Down Under.
He exhaled. I wonder if I should do for Duncan what Chen-chen did for me.
The letter continued, “… As I’ve said, I’m not completely sure but my source is usually impeccable.
“I’m sorry to say the espionage war has hotted up since we uncovered and caught the spies Blake, Vassal—the Admiralty cipher clerk—and Philby, Burgess and Maclean all defected. They’ve all been seen in Moscow by the way. Expect spying to increase radically in Asia. (We were able to peg First Secretary Skripov of the Soviet Embassy in Canberra, Australia, and order him out of the country in February. This broke his Australian ring which was, I believe, tied to your Sevrin and further involved in Borneo and Indonesia.)
“The free world is abundantly infiltrated now. MI-5 and MI-6 are tainted. Even the CIA. While we’ve been naive and trusting, our opponents realized early that the future balance would depend on economic power as well as military power, and so they set out to acquire—steal—our industrial secrets.
“Curiously our free-world media fail dismally to point out that all Soviet advances are based originally on one of our stolen inventions or techniques, that without our grain they starve, and without our vast and ever-growing financial assistance and credits to buy our grains and technology they cannot fuel and refuel their whole military-industrial infrastructure which keeps their empire and people enthralled.
“I recommend you use your contacts in China to cement them to you further. The Soviets increasingly view China as their number one enemy. Equally strangely, they no longer seem to have that paranoiac fear of the U.S. which is, without doubt, now the strongest military and economic power in the world. China, which is economically and militarily weak, except in numbers of available soldiers, really presents no military threat to them. Even so China petrifies them.
“One reason is the five thousand miles of border they share. Another is national guilt over the vast areas of historic Chinese territory Soviet Russia has swallowed over the centuries; another is the knowledge that the Chinese are a patient people with long memories. One day the Chinese will take back their lands. They have always taken back their lands when it was militarily feasible to do so. I’ve pointed out many times that the cornerstone of Soviet (Imperialist) politics is to isolate and fragment China to keep her weak. Their great bugaboo is a tripartite alliance between China, Japan and the U.S. Your Noble House should work to promote that. (Also a Common Market among the U.S., Mexico and Canada, totally essential, in my opinion, to a stable American continent.) Where else but through Hong Kong—and therefore your hands—will all the inward wealth to China go?
“Last, back to Sevrin: I have taken a major risk and approached our most priceless asset in the inner core of the KGB’s ultra-secret Department 5. I have just heard back today that the identity of Arthur, Sevrin’s leader, is Classification One, beyond even his grasp. The only clue he could give was that the man was English and one of his initials is R. Not much to go on I’m afraid.
“I look forward to seeing you. Remember, my papers must never pass into the hands of anyone else. Regards, AMG.”
Dunross committed the Geneva phone number to memory, encoded it in his address book and lit a match. He watched the airmail paper curl and begin to burn.
R. Robert Ralph Richard Robin Rod Roy Rex Rupert Red Rodney and always back to Roger. And Robert. Robert Armstrong or Roger Crosse or—or who?
Holy Christ, Dunross thought, feeling weak.
“Geneva 871–65–65, station to station,” he said into his private phone. Tiredness engulfed him. His sleep last night had been disturbed, his dreams dragging him back to war, back to his flaming cockpit, the smell of burning in his nostrils, then waking, chilled, listening to the rain, soon to get up silently, Penn sleeping soundly, the Great House quiet except for old Ah Tat who, as always, had his tea made. Then to the track and chased all day, his enemies closing in and nothing but bad news. Poor old John Chen, he thought, then made the effort to push his weariness away. Perhaps I can kip for an hour between five and six. I’ll need all my wits tonight.
The operator made the connections and he heard the number ringing.
“Ja?” the gentle voice said.
“Hier ist Herr Dunross im Hong Kong. Frau Gresserhoff bitte,” he said in good German.
“Oh!” There was a long pause. “Ich bin Frau Gresserhoff. Tai-pan?”
“Ah so desu! Ohayo gozaimasu. Anata wa Anjin Riko-san?” he asked, his Japenese accent excellent. Good morning. Your name is also Riko Anjin?
“Hai. Hai, dozo. Ah, nihongo wajotzu desu.” Yes. Oh you speak Japanese very well.
“Iye, sukoshi, gomen nasai.” No, sorry, only a little. As part of his training, he had spent two years in their Tokyo office. “Ah, so sorry,” he continued in Japanese, “but I’m calling about Mr. Gresserhoff. Have you heard?”
“Yes.” He could hear the sadness. “Yes. I heard on Monday.”
“I’ve just received a letter from him. He said you have some, some things for me?” he asked cautiously.
&n
bsp; “Yes, tai-pan. Yes I have.”
“Would it be possible for you to bring them here? So sorry, but I cannot come to you.”
“Yes. Yes of course,” she said hesitantly, her Japanese soft and pleasing. “When should I come?”
“As soon as possible. If you go to our office on Avenue Bern in a couple of hours, say at noon, there will be tickets and money for you. I believe there’s a Swissair connection that leaves this afternoon—if that were possible.”
Again the hesitation. He waited patiently. AMG’s letter writhed in the ashtray as it burned. “Yes,” she said. “That would be possible.”
“I’ll make all the arrangements for you. Would you like someone to travel with you?”
“No, no thank you,” she said, her voice so quiet that he had to cup one hand over his ear to hear better. “Please excuse me for causing all this trouble. I can make the arrangements.”
“Truly, it’s no trouble,” he said, pleased that his Japanese was flowing and colloquial. “Please go to my office at noon.… By the way, the weather here is warm and wet. Ah, so sorry, please excuse me for asking but is your passport Swiss or Japanese, and under what name would you travel?”
An even longer pause. “I would … I think I should … It would be Swiss, my travel name should be Riko Gresserhoff.”
“Thank you Mrs. Gresserhoff. I look forward to seeing you. Kiyoskette,” he ended. Have a safe journey.
Thoughtfully he put the phone back onto its cradle. The last of AMG’s letter twisted and died with a thread of smoke. Carefully he crumbled the ashes into powder.
Now what about Jacques?
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
5:45 P.M.:
Jacques deVille plodded up the marble stairs of the Mandarin Hotel to the mezzanine floor, packed with people having late tea.
He took off his raincoat and went through the crowds, feeling very old. He had just talked to his wife, Susanne, in Nice. The specialist from Paris had made another examination of Avril and thought that her internal injuries might not be as bad as first thought.
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