Noble House

by James Clavell

  The leader had reminded him of his past, that barbarians are only barbarians, that he was needed in Hong Kong where the battle was just beginning, where Mao was still not yet Chairman Mao, not yet victorious, still embattled with Chiang Kai-shek.

  Bitterly he had obeyed, hating being forced, knowing he was in their power and obeying because of their power. But then the heady four years till 1949, and Mao’s incredible, unbelievable total victory. Then burrowing deep again, using his brilliant skills to fight the crime that was anathema to him and a disgrace to Hong Kong and a blot on the face of China.

  Life was very good again now. He was picked for high promotion, the British bound to him, respecting him because he was from a fine English public school with a fine upper-class English accent and an English sportsman like the elite of the Empire before him.

  And now it’s 1963 and I’m thirty-nine and tomorrow … no, not tomorrow, on Sunday, on Sunday it’s the hill climb and on Saturday there are the races and Noble Star—will it be Noble Star or Gornt’s Pilot Fish or Richard Kwok’s, no Richard Kwang’s Butterscotch Lass or John Chen’s outsider, Golden Lady? I think I’d put my money on Golden Lady—every penny I have, yes, all my life’s savings and I’m also gambling the Porsche as well even though that’s stupid but I have to. I have to because Crosse said so and Robert agrees and they both said I’ve got to put up my life as well but Jesus Christ now Golden Lady’s limping in the paddock but the gamble’s settled and now they’re off and running, come on Golden Lady, come on for the love of Mao, don’t mind the storm clouds and the lightning come on, all my savings and my life’s riding on your rotten lousy god-cursed oh Jesus Chairman don’t fail me….

  He was deep in dreams now, bad dreams, drug-assisted dreams, and Happy Valley was the Valley of Death. His eyes did not feel the lights come up gently nor the door swing open.

  It was time to begin again.

  Armstrong looked down at his friend, pitying him. The lights were carefully dimmed. Beside him was Senior Agent Malcolm Sun, an SI guard and the SI doctor. Dr. Dorn was a small, dapper, slightly bald specialist with an animated, birdlike intensity. He took Brian Kwok’s pulse and measured his blood pressure and listened to his heartbeat.

  “The client’s in fine shape, Superintendent, physically,” he said with a faint smile. “His blood pressure and heart beat’re nicely up but that’s to be expected.” He noted his readings on the chart, handed it to Armstrong, who glanced at his watch, wrote down the time and signed the chart also.

  “You can carry on,” he said.

  The doctor filled the syringe carefully. With great care he gave Brian Kwok the injection in the rump with a new needle. There was almost no mark, just a tiny spot of blood that he wiped away. “Dinner time whenever you want,” he said with a smile.

  Armstrong just nodded. The SI guard had added a measure of urine to the pail and that was noted on the chart as well. “Very smart of him to measure the level, didn’t think he’d do that,” Malcolm Sun commented. Infrared rays made it easy to monitor a client’s most tiny movement from spyholes set into the ceiling lights. “Dew neh loh moh, who’d’ve imagined he’d be the mole? Smart, he always was so fornicating smart.”

  “Let’s hope the poor bugger’s not too fornicating smart,” Armstrong told him sourly. “The sooner he talks the better. The Old Man won’t give up on him.”

  The others looked at him. The young SI guard shivered.

  Dr. Dorn broke the uneasy silence. “Should we still maintain the two-hour cycle, sir?”

  Armstrong glanced at his friend. The first drug in the beer had been about 1:30 this afternoon. Since then, Brian Kwok had been on a Classification Two—a chemical sleep-wake-sleep-wake schedule. Every two hours. Wake-up injections just before 4:30 P.M., 6:30, 8:30, and this would continue until 6:30 A.M. when the first serious interrogation would begin. Within ten minutes of each injection the client would be artificially pulled out of sleep, his thirst and his hunger increased by the drugs. Food would be wolfed and the cold tea gulped and the drugs therein would quickly take effect. Deep sleep, very deep very quick assisted by another injection. Darkness and harsh light alternated, metallic voices and silence alternated. Then wake-up. Breakfast. And two hours later, dinner, and two hours later breakfast. To an increasingly disoriented mind twelve hours would become six days—more if the client could stand it, twelve days, every hour on the hour. No need for physical torture, just darkness and disorientation, enough to discover that which you wish to discover from the enemy client, or to make your enemy client sign what you want him to sign, soon believing your truth to be his truth.

  Anyone.

  Anyone after a week of sleep-wake-sleep followed by two or three days of no sleep.

  Anyone.

  Oh Christ almighty, Armstrong thought, you poor bloody bastard, you’ll try to hold out and it won’t do you a bit of good. None.

  But then most of Armstrong’s mind shouted back, but he’s not your friend but an enemy agent, just a “client” and enemy who has betrayed you and everything and everyone for years. It was probably him who shopped Fong-fong and his lads who’re now in some lousy stinking cell having the same but without doctors and monitoring and care. Still, can you be proud of this type of treatment—can any civilized person?

  No. Is it necessary to stuff lousy chemicals into a helpless body?

  No … yes, yes it is, yes it is sometimes, and killing’s necessary sometimes, mad dogs, people—oh yes some people are evil and mad dogs are evil. Yes. You’ve got to use these modern psychic techniques, developed by Pavlov and other Soviets, developed by Communists under a KGB regime. Ah but do you have to follow them?

  Christ I don’t know but I do know the KGB’re trying to destroy us all and bring us all down to their level an—

  Armstrong’s eyes focused and he saw them all staring at him. “What?”

  “Shall we maintain the two-hour cycle, sir?” the doctor repeated, disquieted.

  “Yes. Yes, and at 6:30 we’ll begin the first interview.”

  “Are you doing that yourself?”

  “It’s on the orders, for chrissake,” Armstrong snarled. “Can’t you bloody read?”

  “Oh sorry,” the doctor replied at once. They all knew of Armstrong’s friendship for the client and of Crosse’s ordering him to do the interrogation. “Would you like a sedative, old chap?” Dr. Dorn asked solicitously.

  Armstrong cursed him obscenely and left, angry that he had allowed the doctor to needle him into losing his temper. He went to the top floor, to the officers’ mess.

  “Barman!”

  “Coming up, sir!”

  His usual tankard of beer came quickly but tonight the smooth dark liquid he loved, malt heavy and bitter, did not quench his thirst or cleanse his mouth. A thousand times he had worried what he would do if he was caught by them and put naked into such a cell, knowing most techniques and practices and being on guard. Better than poor bloody Brian, he thought grimly. Poor bugger knows so little. Yes, but does more knowledge help when you’re the client?

  His skin felt clammy with fear-sweat as he thought of what was ahead of Brian Kwok.

  “Barman!”

  “Yes sir, coming up!”

  “Evening Robert, can I join you?” Chief Inspector Donald C. C. Smyth asked.

  “Oh, hello. Yes … sit down,” he told the younger man unenthusiastically.

  Smyth sat on the bar stool beside him and eased his arm that was in a sling more comfortably. “How’s it going?”

  “Routine.” Armstrong saw Smyth nod and he thought how apt his nickname was. The Snake. Smyth was good-looking, smooth, sinuous like a snake with the same deadly quality of danger there, and the same habit of licking his lips from time to time with the tip of his tongue.

  “Christ! It’s still impossible to believe it’s Brian.” Smyth was one of the few in the know about Brian. “Shocking.”

  “Yes.”

  “Robert, I’ve been ordered by the DCID”—Directo
r of Criminal Investigation, Armstrong’s ultimate boss—“to take over the Werewolf case from you while you’re occupied. And any others you might want me to cover.”

  “Everything’s in the files. Sergeant Major Tang-po’s my Number Two … he’s a good detective, very good in fact.” Armstrong quaffed some beer and added cynically, “He’s well connected.”

  Smyth smiled with his mouth. “Good, that’s a help.”

  “Just don’t organize my bloody district.”

  “Perish the thought, old chum. East Aberdeen takes all of my skill. Now, what about the Werewolves? Continue surveillance on Phillip Chen?”

  “Yes. And his wife.”

  “Interesting that before Dianne married that old miser she was Mai-wei T’Chung, eh? Interesting too that one of her cousins was Hummingbird Sung.”

  Armstrong stared at him. “You’ve been doing your homework.”

  “All part of the service!” Smyth added grimly, “I’d like to get those Werewolves right smartly. We’ve already had three panic calls in East Aberdeen from people who have had phone calls from the Werewolves demanding h’eung yau, ‘velly quicklee’ or else a kidnapping. I hear it’s the same all over the Colony. If three frightened citizens called us, you can bet three hundred haven’t had the courage.” Smyth sipped his whiskey and soda. “That’s not good for business, not good at all. There’s only so much fat on the cow. If we don’t get the Werewolves quickly the buggers’ll have their own mint—a few quick phone calls and money’ll be in the mail, the poor bloody victims happy to pay off to escape their attention—and every other bloody villain here with a sense of larceny will have a field day too.”

  “I agree.” Armstrong finished his beer. “You want another?”

  “Let me. Barman!”

  Armstrong watched his beer being drawn. “You think there’s a connection between John Chen and Hummingbird Sung?” He remembered Sung, the wealthy shipping magnate with the oral reputation, kidnapped six years ago, and smiled wryly. “Christ, I haven’t thought about him in years.”

  “Nor me. The cases don’t parallel and we put his kidnappers into pokey for twenty years and they’ll rot there but you never know. Perhaps there’s a connection.” Smyth shrugged. “Dianne Chen must have hated John Chen and I’m sure he hated her back, everyone knows that. Same with old Hummingbird.” He laughed. “Hummingbird’s other nickname, in the trade so to speak, is Nosy-nosy.”

  Armstrong grunted. He rubbed the tiredness out of his eyes. “Might be worth going to see John’s wife, Barbara. I was going to do that tomorrow but … well, it might be worthwhile.”

  “I’ve already got an appointment. And I’m going out to Sha Tin first thing. Maybe those local buggers missed something in the rain.”

  “Good idea.” Uneasily Armstrong watched the Snake sipping his whiskey. “What’s on your mind?” he asked, knowing there was something.

  Smyth looked up at him directly. “There’re a lot of things I don’t understand about this kidnapping. For instance, why was such a huge reward offered by the High Dragons for John’s recapture, curiously, dead or alive?”

  “Ask them.”

  “I have. At least, I asked someone who knows one of them.” The Snake shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” He hesitated. “We’ll have to go back into John’s past.”

  Armstrong felt a shaft of cold that he kept buried. “Good idea.”

  “Did you know Mary knew him? In the POW camp at Stanley?”

  “Yes.” Armstrong drank some beer without tasting it.

  “She might give us a lead—if John was, say, connected with black market in the camp.” His pale blue eyes held Armstrong’s pale blue eyes. “Might be worth asking.”

  “I’ll think about that. Yes, I’ll think about that.” The big man bore the Snake no malice. If he had been the Snake he would have asked too. The Werewolves were very bad news and the first wave of terror had already rushed through Chinese society. How many more people know about Mary and John Chen? he asked himself. Or about the 40,000 that’s still burning a hole in my desk, still burning a hole in my soul. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Yes.”

  Armstrong lifted his beer. “You’ve got your ‘friends’ helping you?”

  “Let’s just say very substantial rewards and payments are being made—paid gratefully, I hasten to add, by our gambling fraternity.” The sardonic smile left Smyth’s face. And the banter. “We’ve got to get those sodding Werewolves very fast or they’ll really upset our applecart.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  9:15 P.M.:

  Four Finger Wu was on the tall poop of the motorized junk that was wallowing in the chop at the rendezvous well out to sea, all lights doused. “Listen, Werewolf turd,” he hissed irritably at Smallpox Kin who lay quivering on the deck at his feet, mindless with pain, trussed with rope and heavy chain. “I want to know who else is in your fornicating gang and where you got the coin from, the half-coin.” There was no answer. “Wake the fornicator up!”

  Obligingly Goodweather Poon poured another bucket of seawater over the prostrate youth. When this had no effect, he leaned down with his knife. At once Smallpox Kin screamed and came out of his stupor. “What, what is it, Lord?” he shrieked. “No more … what is it, what do you want?”

  Four Finger Wu repeated what he had said. The youth shrieked again as Goodweather Poon probed. “I’ve told you everything … everything …” Desperately, never believing that there could be so much pain in the universe, beyond caring, he babbled again who were the members of the gang, all their real names and addresses, even about the old amah in Aberdeen. “… my father gave me the coin … I don’t know where … he gave it to me never saying wh … he got it I swearrrrrr….” His voice trailed away. Once more he fainted.

  Four Fingers spat disgustedly. “The youth of today have no fortitude!”

  The night was dark and an ill-tempered wind gusted from time to time under a lowering overcast, the powerful and well-tuned engine purring nicely, making just enough way to lessen the junk’s inevitable corkscrewing—the rolling pitch and toss. They were a few miles southwest of Hong Kong, just out of the sea-lanes, PRC waters and the vast mouth of the Pearl River just to port, open sea to starboard. All sails were furled.

  He lit a cigarette and coughed. “All gods curse all fornicating triad turds!”

  “Shall I wake him again?” Goodweather Poon asked.

  “No. No, the fornicator’s told the truth as much as he knows.” Wu’s calloused fingers reached up and nervously touched the half-coin that he wore now around his neck under his ragged sweatshirt, making sure it was still there. A knot of anxiety welled at the thought that the coin might be genuine, might be Phillip Chen’s missing treasure. “You did very well, Goodweather Poon. Tonight you’ll get a bonus.” His eyes went to the southeast, seeking the signal. It was overdue but he was not yet worried. Automatically his nose sniffed the wind and his tongue tasted it, tangy and heavy with salt. His eyes ranged the sky and the sea and the horizon. “More rain soon,” he muttered.

  Poon lit another cigarette from his butt and ground the butt into the deck with his horny bare foot. “Will it ruin the races on Saturday?”

  The old man shrugged. “If the gods will it. I think it will be piss heavy again tomorrow. Unless the wind veers. Unless the wind veers we could have the Devil Winds, the Supreme Winds, and those fornicators could scatter us to the Four Seas. Piss on the Supreme Winds!”

  “I’ll piss on them if there are no races. My nose tells me it’s Banker Kwang’s horse.”

  “Huh! That stinky, mealy-mouth nephew of mine certainly needs a change of joss! The fool’s lost his bank!”

  Poon hawked and spat for luck. “Thank all gods for Profitable Choy!”

  Since Four Fingers and his captains and his people had all successfully extracted all their monies from the Ho-Pak, thanks to information from Paul Choy—and since he himself was still enjoying vast profits from his son’s illicit manipulation
of Struan stock, Wu had dubbed him Profitable Choy. Because of the profit, he had forgiven his son the transgression. But only in his heart. Being prudent, the old man had showed none of it outwardly except to his friend and confidant, Goodweather Poon.

  “Bring him on deck.”

  “What about this Werewolf fornicator?” Poon’s horny toe stabbed Kin. “Young Profitable didn’t like him or this matter at all, heya?”

  “Time he grew up, time he knew how to treat enemies, time he knew real values, not ill-omened, stink-wind, fatuous Golden Mountain values.” The old man spat on the deck. “He’s forgotten who he is and where his interests lie.”

  “You said yourself you don’t send a rabbit against a dragon. Or a minnow against a shark. You’ve your investment to consider and don’t forget Profitable Choy’s returned everything he cost you over fifteen years twenty times over. In the money market he’s a High Dragon and only twenty-six. Leave him where he’s best, best for you and best for him. Heya?”

  “Tonight he’s best here.”

  The old seaman scratched his ear. “I don’t know about that, Four Fingers. That the gods will decide. Me, I’d have left him ashore.” Now Goodweather Poon was watching the southeast. His peripheral vision had caught something. “You see it?”

  After a moment Four Fingers shook his head. “There’s plenty of time, plenty of time.”

  “Yes.” The old seaman glanced back at the body trussed with chains like a plucked chicken. His face split into a grin. “Eeeee, but when Profitable Choy turned white like a jellyfish at this fornicator’s first scream and first blood, I had to break wind to release my laughter to save his face!”

  “The young today have no fortitude,” Wu repeated, then lit a new cigarette and nodded. “But you’re right. After tonight Profitable’s going to be left where he belongs to become even more profitable.” He glanced down at Smallpox Kin. “Is he dead?”