“That’s a hard one, Uncle Comrade.”
“I did not say it was easy. As the Chairman teaches: ‘A revolution is not an invitation to a tea party.’ You must learn to be relentless and uncompromising.”
James Sekloong, formally Comrade General Shih Ai-kuo, was mildly aglow with the wine and with his pleasure in baiting the two American officials who were his nephews. His earlier depression dissipated, he smiled when his bodyguard leaned over his shoulder with a long, red-striped envelope. Still smiling, he read the message written in the Premier’s own hand and validated with the Premier’s personal seal:
Comrade Ai-kuo:
I regret to inform you that your wife, Comrade Lu Ping, has been removed from alternate membership in the Central Committee and from the chair of the Woman’s Association. She has volunteered to spend two years on the Red Star People’s Commune in Mongolia to learn from the people and remold her thoughts in order to draw a clear line between our enemies and our friends, as the Chairman directs. Her chief mistake, the Party Surveillance Commission found, was advocating accommodation with the Soviet social-imperialists. There is, at present, no suspicion that you share her errors. You may act as you see best. Destroy this.
The General’s smile did not alter; decades of intra-Party strife had schooled him never to reveal shock or even surprise. But his mind calculated as rapidly—and almost as dispassionately—as a computer ingesting a problem of three-tiered complexity.
That old fox, the Premier, had obviously known of the Party’s decision before his own departure from Peking. The message had assuredly traveled on the same airplane that carried him to Hong Kong—with instructions for its delivery at his mother’s table. The Premier had been either unable or unwilling to safeguard James’s wife from the “ultra-leftists” who were the Premier’s own enemies. The high command of the Liberation Army, itself in disarray, had not looked after its own. Despite the Premier’s reassurance, James could almost feel the noose tightening around his own neck. Yet the Premier was his chief ally and, finally, his only protector. Characteristically, the Premier’s own wishes were not explicitly stated, but they were nonetheless reasonably clear. James knew the Premier feared Muscovite imperialism above all else.
“Do excuse my reading the note,” the General apologized. “A trifling matter an overzealous aide thought I should see now.”
He lifted his bowl and inhaled a skein of birthday noodles, long noodles for long life. His mother’s life had already been long. But his own? He wondered, but the chopsticks in his hand, he observed with grim satisfaction, were quite steady. No tremor betrayed his inner turmoil.
“Your pardon, Comrade,” James’s bodyguard whispered in his ear. “This additional message just came in on The Castle’s Telex. Uncoded and in English.”
IMMEDIATE FOR GENERAL SHIH AIKUO:
YOU ARE AUTHORIZED AT YOUR DISCRETION TO COMMUNICATE THE FOLLOWING UNOFFICIALLY TO UNDERSECRETARY SMITH: PATIENCE OF GOVERNMENT OF PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA IS WEARING THIN. WE CAN NOT REPEAT NOT MUCH LONGER STAND IDLY BY AND WATCH OUR COMPATRIOTS ON TAIWAN SUFFER UNDER OPPRESSION OF CHIANG KAISHEK REMNANT CLIQUE. JUST DEMANDS OF CHINESE PEOPLE, DANGER FROM SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISTS, AND URGENT NEED TO REUNIFY NATIONAL ECONOMY MAY, THEREFORE, REQUIRE THAT WE TAKE MILITARY ACTION TO LIBERATE TAIWAN IF ATTITUDE OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT REMAINS OBDURATE. PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA IS, HOWEVER, ALWAYS PREPARED TO ENTER UPON NEGOTIATIONS UPON ANY ISSUE IF OTHER SIDE IN NEGOTIATIONS IS SINCERE.
FOREIGN MINISTRY
His personal fears forgotten, James’s first reaction was coolly professional. It was, he noted, 11:05 P.M. in Hong Kong, which meant 10:05 P.M. in Peking, where the Premier would be just beginning his night’s work, and 9 A.M. in Washington, where officials kept more conventional hours. There was time for both discussion and exchange of further messages. Though the Telex was signed by the Foreign Ministry, the Premier’s hand was obvious. Only his subtle authority could have insured that the message be sent uncoded so that the American monitors would read it immediately. Only the Premier would have combined a flat threat to attack Taiwan with a clear indication that the attack could be averted by serious negotiation. With the United States apparently bogged down in Vietnam and many American voices demanding closer relations with the People’s Republic, the timing was superb. The prospect of hostilities against Peking would appall Washington, while the hint that Peking might join in a common front against Moscow would evoke great interest. But the message was “unofficial,” its delivery left to James’s “discretion.” Characteristically, the Premier had committed neither himself nor the Chinese Government.
“What were we discussing?” James laid his chopsticks down and obeyed his new instructions. “Ah, yes! The Chairman also points out that the revolution has many twists and turns. The struggle takes many decades, not merely a year or two. Chairman Mao further teaches us that it is sometimes necessary to cooperate with one enemy, perhaps temporarily, in order to defeat the greater enemy.”
The Under Secretary stiffened like a bird-dog that hears a rustle in the underbrush. The Chapmans, father and son, stared—bewildered by James’s abrupt reversal of his position. The Political Commissar had moved in less than five minutes from denouncing American imperialism to hinting at Peking-Washington cooperation against Moscow.
“Under proper circumstances such an arrangement could endure for decades,” James continued. “The revolution must be as determined as a bulldog, yet as flexible as a serpent.”
A pealing bell interrupted James. Old Sir Mosing Way raised a glass of champagne.
“Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, beloved kinsmen and kinswomen, may I again claim the privilege of the second oldest among us? I give you Lady Sekloong. Let us drink to her ninety years of wisdom and love.”
“Thank you, Mosing, my oldest friend.” Lady Mary rose, resting one hand on the table for support. Her light voice gathered strength as she spoke, “My deepest thanks and my love to all of you, to those who have come great distances and to those who have journeyed only a few miles. I am honored by your presence, and I am warmed by your love. Even at ninety, warmth is still more important than honor.”
Laughter bounced around the Great Hall. Only the crew-cut young man who hovered behind Spencer Taylor Smith remained unsmiling as he listened intently to his mini-transceiver. He whispered into the ear of the Under Secretary, who pushed his chair away from the table murmuring, “Excuse me. Urgent phone call. Sorry.”
James Sekloong smiled to himself. Washington’s monitors were even more efficient than he had thought. The Premier’s message had obviously already been read by the Americans, who might already be oscillating between fears of armed confrontation over Taiwan and hopes of reconciliation with Peking. The night, he reflected, should prove interesting—and, in the next instant, reproved himself for his frivolousness. The night could well prove critical to his country, and he was directly in the firing line.
“I have, however, not asked you to come so far merely to warm an old lady who has already outstayed her welcome on this earth,” Lady Mary continued. “I wish to put to you one last request. It is not a demand. Some of you, I know, feel I have always been demanding—and nowadays, excessively tenacious of life.”
Forced laughter dutifully responded to that sally. Taipan Albert Sekloong, at thirty-seven, handsome and lithe as a Thai Buddha, leaned across to remark sotto voce to his dashing older brother, Colonel Sir Henry: “The old girl’s in great form tonight. But who’s she getting at? Me for piling up riches without virtue, or you for playing soldier? What does she want now?”
“She’s twitting neither of us, I dare say,” the proper Colonel answered. “Some other bee in her bonnet.”
Irritated by his brother’s studied nonchalance, the man who directed the Sekloong empire smiled at his slender Japanese wife, Kazuko, whose brother Jiro Matsuyama was a rising power in the great Mitsubishi conglomerate. Aside from his devotion to Kazuko and their two small children,
Albert’s passions were directed entirely to the pursuit of wealth through commerce. Politics bored him.
Lady Mary sipped her champagne. The blue veins stood out on the back of her translucent hand.
“I am not jesting—not wholly,” she said. “However, longevity was not my choice, but the Lord’s, and He may soon rescind His edict. Neither was the exercise of authority my choice, but Sir Jonathan’s command. I have executed my stewardship as best I could. I shall make no apologies. But I did not, as I have already said, ask you here merely to warm an old lady with your love, though I rejoice in that love. Nor do I plan to reprove you.”
A brother and sister exchanged relieved glances. Jonathan III, Sir Henry’s twenty-year-old son who would one day succeed to the title, had inherited the male Sekloong sexual appetite. Lady Mary had twice bought off paternity suits in secret for Jonathan—as much to spare his widowed grandmother Sarah sorrow as to spare him his father’s wrath. His younger sister, Mary Philippa Sekloong, nineteen, who was called “Little Lady Mary” by the family and the servants, had inherited the classic brunette beauty of their English mother, Hermione Duane, but not Hermione’s placid temperament.
Like her namesake, when Little Lady Mary did something foolish, she invariably overdid it. Her escapades with young men—and some older men—raised eyebrows even in the new age of permissiveness. Besides, only her great-grandmother’s intercession had prevented her expulsion from Girton College at Oxford after a casual lesbian experiment with two classmates.
“No, not to reprove you,” Lady Mary repeated.
“I’ll drink to that,” Albert proposed the toast, remembering the dark days in the sixties when he had almost bankrupted the firm. “No vain recriminations.”
“Not recriminations, but sincere regrets, yes.” His uncle, Charles Cardinal Sekloong, amended. “And remembrance, so that we don’t repeat our follies.”
Lady Mary’s violet eyes had noted the exchange of glances between her great-grandchildren. Neither had known their grandfather, her eldest son Jonnie. She remembered her uncomprehending sorrow at Jonnie’s meaningless death after having survived prolonged captivity by the Japanese. The Old Gentleman had arranged for Jonnie to be flown home to Hong Kong on August 29, 1945, a few days after the end of the War in the Pacific. The Royal Air Force pilot had never flown into Kaitak, where aircraft then landed with one wing cocked high to avoid the mountains, and then leveled out at the last moment. The wingtip of Jonnie’s Dakota had brushed the mountainside, and the transport had cartwheeled into the harbor. Jonnie had died gazing at the home he had not seen for four years.
Mary had raged at blind fate in her great grief. Jonnie, the first fruit of her marriage, claimed a special place in her heart. Jonnie, who was independent, loving, and irresistibly charming. Only later had she been stricken by the realization that his death had deprived the House of Sekloong of its natural heir, the man who by both right and talent should have succeeded Sir Jonathan and Charles.
“Some of you laugh at what you call my motto: If you’re going to do something foolish, go the whole hog!” The old lady’s high-pitched voice cut through her descendants’ light mood; the sacrifices and the tragedies must not be in vain. “But some restraint is always necessary, and I fear, we have transgressed certain limits. Bear with me, if you will. I want to talk about the family as it is today.
“It would be hypocritical—worse, stupid—to pretend we are less than we are. False modesty is as destructive as false pride. We are a power in the world—a great power when we all act in concert. We were already very powerful when the Old Gentleman helped Dr. Sun Yat-sen and, later, Chiang Kai-shek to establish the Republic of China and build its economy. Outsiders call us the Sekloong dynasty. But dynasties begin to decline the instant they reach their apogee. Great power and self-indulgence march hand in hand. We have ourselves progressed from selling opium to consuming LSD in five generations.”
The bitter laughter was not forced.
“If we do not employ our power and wealth intelligently, all could vanish in another generation,” Lady Mary continued. “Our unity will be destroyed and our strength dissipated. But it need not be so. The best way to use our power—and to save ourselves—is by striving to benefit others. I would therefore charge you all with one mission. All of you, my children, my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren. We cannot accomplish that task alone, but we can assist greatly.
“As you may know, I married Charles Sekloong in the face of Sir Jonathan’s doubts and my own father’s disapproval. I loved my husband deeply, but I also saw a vision beyond that transcended the two of us. I dreamt that East and West could be united in harmony and in love.
“I still believe in my vision. We Sekloongs are an alloy of two worlds, a wonderful alloy that can be forged into a useful instrument or a deadly weapon. I would have you become a powerful instrument to bring those two worlds together.” Lady Mary paused before adding without stress: “You should know that I am dying. I am told the time is close.”
A wordless lament sighed through the Great Hall. Lady Mary’s head drooped wearily, but she waved away Cardinal Charles’s extended hand.
“My father would have said: ‘Cancer? Stomach cancer? What d’ye expect? All that foreign muck you et—rats’ tails, snakes, puppy dogs, God knows what!’ But ninety-odd is not precisely being carried off in the flower of one’s youth.”
They laughed spontaneously at her macabre jest and her mimicry of Bandmaster John Osgood’s broad Yorkshire accent. She knew then that she held them rapt. Having captured her audience like a great actress, she could make them laugh or cry as she wished.
“You may consider these words a last injunction, though I hope you will consider them a last plea. What I ask must be done out of love, not …”
Lady Mary paused again, neither from weakness nor for effect, but in surprise. Tears marred the skilful make-up of the one professional actress among them. Lady Mary sometimes thought Alaine d’Alivère a clever minx and sometimes an inspired simpleton. Piquantly beautiful at thirty-eight, Charlotte’s daughter Alaine was the reigning queen of the international cinema, despite her advocacy of extreme and presumably unpopular political causes. Yet the obsessively self-centered Alaine was weeping.
“It must be done from love and with all your heart.” Lady Mary’s voice quavered with strain. “It cannot be done grudgingly. And all of you must assist, though some can be much more effective than others. I shall be most specific in a moment.”
Lady Mary sipped her champagne before continuing in firm tones.
“China is in my heart, as China is in your blood. But China still stands apart from the world almost three quarters of a century after I first dreamt my dream. That was 1900, when foreign troops were ravaging Peking. However, my dream is by no means impossible of fulfillment today. My vision, my deepest hope, is that the Chinese should enter fully into the world—to work and strive in company with other peoples.”
The matriarch’s voice quavered, and she leaned on the table. But she smiled to reassure Opal and Sarah, who watched her with open concern.
“The Russians are barbarians who would destroy the civilized world, as Peking has learned. Some call the Americans barbarians. I do not, and I am proud of my American grandchildren. Like the Chinese, the Americans overflow with good will and, occasionally, with anger. But they are civilized, and they are powerful. They are the balance wheel of the world.
“As you know, I have been forced all my life to interest myself in politics, Chinese politics and international politics, though I might have preferred to devote myself exclusively to the family and the firm. Since I could not, I learned a good deal about politics. And I am cheered by the fact that, at this moment, exploratory messages are passing between Peking and Washington.”
Most stared uncomprehendingly at Lady Mary; James Sekloong and Spencer Taylor Smith studied their chopsticks.
“I charge you to strive for reconciliation between the Chinese and the Americans
.” Her voice was again vibrant. “Some of you at this table hold positions of great power—James and Spencer Smith in particular, but also Charles, Avram Barakian, and even Thomas. Those of you who are in positions of influence must endeavor to direct the course of events by your boldness.”
The frail figure drooped, and her words were barely audible.
“Only thus can China become a part of the world—and peace be assured. Only thus can the Sekloongs survive—and become stronger. Strong through service, not weak through self-indulgence.”
She faltered, half-whispering, “Now may I say again: Thank you all! God bless you all!”
Leaning heavily on its gilt arms, Lady Mary sank into her red-cushioned chair. She seemed smaller, as if the intense strain of expressing her deepest emotions had depleted her physically. Her descendants read in each other’s faces the same awe at the matriarch’s undiminished will and her enduring concern for the world from which she must soon depart.
General Shih Ai-kuo and Under Secretary Spencer Taylor Smith avoided each other’s eyes.
Part VII
THE SEKLOONGS AND THE LAO PAI-HSING
November 28, 1950–February 22, 1959
November 28, 1950–July 12, 1951
The spare figure gnarled by great age was cocooned in cashmere shawls against the chill of the crystalline winter afternoon. But the white beard was meticulously trimmed, and the hazel eyes glowed in the wrinkled-parchment face. Those eyes could still flash green in anger, for the mind that animated them was almost as incisively alert as it had been half a century earlier. Though his body, the vessel of his indomitable spirit, had been worn frail by the years, the obsessively superstitious Cantonese of Hong Kong still spoke with awe of the Ancient Dragon in his mountain lair.
On November 28, 1950, some five years after the end of the war in the Pacific and fourteen months following the Communist victory in China, Sir Jonathan Sekloong surveyed his kingdom from the sheltered terrace behind the weathered stone balustrades of The Castle. In the fullness of his ninety-seventh year, he reviewed with gratified detachment the pleasures and sorrows of a life that had spanned some of the most turbulent years in the annals of mankind. He was well prepared to respond to the imminent summons of his Creator, having set all his worldly affairs in order and reaffirmed his faith in the merciful Deity who had been so generous to him. Only one blow could he not yet forgive his God. The heir-presumptive to his kingdom had been called from his side more than five years earlier. Jonnie’s widow Sarah had finally resigned herself to the will of her own stern God, but Jonnie’s grandfather could not reconcile himself to leaving the realm he had created bereft of a successor to Charles and Mary.
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