Washington was already locked into a massive military commitment to the defense of South Vietnam. The Administration’s economists, seeing further than the generals, had preempted a rise in the prices of raw materials like the zinc, rubber, and tin Albert had bought on the futures market by releasing measured quantities from their own vast stockpiles. If the war lasted long enough, he might possibly recoup. But he would in three months’ time be forced to take delivery, warehouse, and pay for large quantities of raw materials for which he could find no market. He had never planned to touch what the trade called “physical commodities,” but to sell his paper options on a rising market.
The single hopeful area was Megalith Housing. Swollen with refugees and the staffs of foreign firms, Hong Kong badly needed more dwellings. But the market was sluggish, construction costs were rising, and money was still tight. The financial community had not recovered from the bank failures, and sensible financiers were waiting to see how the American involvement in Vietnam developed. Albert, nonetheless, rejected offers to sell his Megalith stock at a reasonable profit, since he was confident that the housing market would rebound.
The extraordinary reverses had shaken his self-confidence and almost pushed Albert Sekloong Associates, Ltd. to the wall. The day in late February 1966 when Ah Sek shares dropped to $4.55 was his worst, for he began to believe in the conspiracy he had earlier dismissed as a fantasy. But he forced himself to examine his position dispassionately. Many of his difficulties stemmed from unanticipated technological and political changes. He knew that he had not given due attention to those vital factors because they seemed a dull diversion from his fast-moving commercial operations. He had, he realized, built a towering corporate structure, as Time had noted with admiration. Though constructed in accordance with normal Hong Kong business practices, that structure was flimsy. He had used loans, mortgages, share sales, and pledges to raise new funds for each successive venture. As a result, he was chronically short of cash, though his actual assets had expanded in quantity and increased in value. His splendid edifice was, therefore, extremely vulnerable to shifts in the winds.
Besides, he had angered the Hong Kong trading community by his determination to go it alone. If his competitors had in truth united to attack him, they had been provoked by his obvious disregard for the complex Sino-British network that dominated the Colony through its subtle exchange of favors.
Yet his single gesture to that network was also causing him acute concern. The stock market’s evaluation of Ah Sek shares accurately reflected its current cash position, if not its prospects. By a strict accounting, Albert Sekloong Associates, Ltd. was on the verge of bankruptcy. Most of the receipts from the stock sold to the public had gone to shore up Dragon Plastics and to maintain Borneo Explorations.
How, Albert wondered, could he explain to an angry meeting of shareholders in mid-March why a company that could not pay its first scheduled dividend had disbursed $1.2 million to its Board of Directors for fees, entertainment, club bills, travel, chauffeured automobiles, luxury housing, and “miscellaneous expenses”? He had thought to insure the good will of a predominantly British Board seeded with influential Chinese. Such lavish rewards were acceptable on the part of a high-profit company. They were intolerable in a new firm whose assets had dwindled alarmingly. The payments were legal, but unquestionably irregular.
At the beginning of March 1966, Albert Sekloong sat in his glittering office and contemplated the collapse of all his hopes. If Ah Sek were forced into bankruptcy, it would take his entire personal fortune with it. He would retain only the small, inviolable trust fund Sir Jonathan had provided. He would be destroyed as a businessman and maimed emotionally, since the core of his self-esteem was his confidence in his commercial acumen. Moreover, the family would empty the vials of its wrath on the head of the man who had lost so much money.
Albert slumped in his elephant-hide chair and gazed at the hills of Kowloon cast into dark relief by the violet rays of the twilight sun retreating into China. The red-and-green navigation lights of airliners flashed into the incandescent beams of landing lights as the jets took off and landed on the long concrete runway bisecting Kowloon Bay. Nathan Road in Tsimshatsui was a pyrotechnical extravaganza of winking neon signs with red-and-white streams of automobile lights flowing between them. From Tsimshatsui to Kaitak, yellow lights flickered in a thousand factories and ten thousand tenements. He lifted his hand in a rueful salute to the realm that had, only six months earlier, seemed his undisputed kingdom.
Jiro Matsuyama had done his best, but Jiro could raise no more than $2.5 million, a ludicrous sum in view of Albert’s needs. Jiro was too tightly constrained by the silk-covered steel-cable conventions of Japanese business to offer more than that pittance and his sympathy. Albert could not go to the Hong Kong banks without confessing that, as their managers suspected, he was being driven onto the rocks. He could not obtain refinancing in London or New York unless he pledged the full resources of J. Sekloong and Sons, and he was debarred from that desperate step both legally and morally. The company was not his, but the family’s. He could not offer it as collateral without the family’s approval.
He reluctantly flicked a switch and spoke to his harried secretary.
“Get me Avram Barakian,” he directed. “His yacht’s somewhere between the Persian Gulf and Bombay.”
He swiveled his chair to face the wall adorned with the framed article from Time and waited. Twice his hand crept toward the switch to countermand his instructions, and twice it fell inertly to his side. The Enigmatic Armenian was his last hope, but he hated to appeal to his Aunt Charlotte’s husband. Although he could be as generous in personal matters as a latter-day Maecenas when the whim took him, the super-tycoon was habitually tight-fisted in business dealings. Albert still remembered the Christmas vacation during which he had polished Avram Barakian’s Bentley and Cadillac twice each day. At sixteen, that was the only way he could repay “Uncle Avram” for the damages inflicted by his own Chevrolet convertible in a drunken accident he wanted neither his Aunt Charlotte nor his mother to know about. Albert dreaded pleading with Barakian, but he had no choice.
The chimes of the communications center sounded, and his secretary said: “On line 5, Mr. Sekloong. He’s coming to the phone.”
“Hello, Uncle Avram, how are you?” His lips twisted in a forced smile, which he hoped would infuse his voice with relaxed bonhommie.
Forty-eight minutes later Albert replaced the handset with the gingerly relief of a zoo-keeper returning a coral snake to its cage. After spending more than three-quarters of an hour and $800, he was totally exhausted, prickly with self-loathing, cringing in humiliation—and not a penny better off. He felt soiled and battered. He needed a triple whiskey and a steaming shower.
Avram Barakian had cross-examined him with voluble curiosity. Avram Barakian had expressed willingness to assist his nephew-by-marriage “to the limit of my resources.” He had hedged his generosity with only one condition: effective control of both Albert Sekloong Associates, Ltd., and J. Sekloong and Sons. When Albert protested that he could not bind J. Sekloong, Avram Barakian had explained in detail how he could do so “completely within the law.” Realizing that the Armenian had been plotting that takeover strategy while awaiting his appeal, Albert had forced himself to end the conversation casually: “I’ll think about it, Uncle Avram, and get back to you. Give my love to Aunt Charlotte.”
When the direct line from The Castle flashed its silent summons, he lifted the handset resignedly. He had already been steeling himself to appeal to the court of last resort, his grandmother.
“Albert, it’s time we had a serious talk.” Lady Mary’s high voice was commanding. “I’d like you to come and see me alone after dinner, say nine-thirty. And, Albert, please don’t have more than two drinks.”
His grandmother’s Victorian courtesy was even more humiliating than Avram Barakian’s smooth rapaciousness.
For the first time in his life, Alber
t Sekloong found his formidable grandmother indecisive. Lady Mary hesitated to broach the subject she had summoned him to discuss. For the first time, he fully apprehended the great age of the frail figure in the quilted, red-silk robe. She was almost eighty-six. Her skin was flaccid over her cheekbones; her full mouth was bloodless; and her violet eyes were dim. Even the jade butterfly in her hair drooped dispiritedly. For the first time, he was primarily aware of his responsibility to the House of Sekloong, rather than his determined effort to create a legend surpassing that of Sir Jonathan.
Lady Mary was an old woman in need of reassurance.
“Give me a small glass of champagne, my dear,” she said. “And pour yourself a whiskey. A small one, if you will.”
“No, thank you.” His answer surprised even himself. “I’d better not.”
Her eyes lifted in slow appraisal and shone again.
“You don’t want a drink?” she asked.
“I do, but I’d better not. It’s time I grew up.”
“Yes, it is high time. By the way, you didn’t tell me Kazuko was pregnant.”
“She wanted to tell you herself. And I’ve been obsessed with … with other things.”
“Poor Albert!” Lady Mary’s spirit flared. “All that and impending fatherhood too. You’ve truly played the fool, haven’t you?”
“All the way, the whole hog.”
“So I gather.” She gestured toward the sheaf of telegrams on the coffee table. “The entire family’s screaming in anguish.”
“They might have spared you their complaints.”
“They couldn’t very well, could they? They all say you haven’t answered repeated inquiries.”
“That’s not completely true,” he protested defensively. “I’ve talked with some. I had Alaine, Mademoiselle la Comtesse, on the phone for half an hour today. She was raging. Not only her income, her rightful income reduced, but no backing for her new film, either.”
“She’s quite astigmatic where her own interests are concerned, isn’t she? Her rightful income in an allowance I chose to make her. She has no legal claim. What is the new film?”
“Much like the others.” Albert squirmed. “A little sex and nudity, a sprinkling of politics. The usual.”
“Also anti-American and anti-capitalist, as usual?”
“Well, Grandma, about the same. You remember the one on Dienbienphu? The heroic French nurse who was captured and then saw the light.”
“Yes,” Lady Mary said dryly. “She ended in Algeria helping the National Liberation Front, and the French secret service tortured her. She looked fetching squirming half-naked. I know I’m old-fashioned, but for a granddaughter of mine to …”
“It made money.” Albert was defensively casual. “And the next one was a blockbuster. The poor French model taken up by a multimillionaire megalomaniacal American publisher, exploited and cast aside.”
“And this one?”
“It’s called Love and Death in Saigon. Alaine plays a half-Vietnamese girl who is corrupted by the Americans. But she turns against the Americans and redeems herself.”
“Very pretty!” Lady Mary’s voice was contemptuous. “Someone will certainly provide the money to complete it, perhaps the KGB. And it’ll be a triumph. The simple-minded love anti-Americanism.”
“It sells, Grandma,” Albert protested, wondering why he’d felt the old lady was losing her grip.
“It sells all right. Lenin said something apropos: ‘When the time comes for the Bolsheviks to hang the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie will sell their executioners the rope.’ Why are we determined to destroy ourselves?”
“It’s the vogue, Grandma. Perhaps it’ll pass.”
“Please God!” Coldly vehement, she picked up the telegrams. “And all the others are complaining about your cutting their dividends. Your Uncle Thomas, your brother Henry, your cousins George and Blanche, the whole lot boiling. Only your Uncle James hasn’t added his voice. And your Uncle Charles, of course. He cabled he was praying for you and asked if we needed him here.”
“I don’t see how he could help. I need cash, not prayers.”
“Don’t underestimate prayer. You obviously need prayer too. It is interesting. The only ones not whining like sick puppy-dogs are James and Charles—the commissar and the priest. And, of course, your Aunt Charlotte, who can’t tell six pence from six guineas.”
“I’ve spoken to Barakian,” Albert admitted. “Nothing there. Nothing at all. Oh, he offered unlimited help, all right. In exchange for total control, that is.”
“What did you expect? How do you feel, by the way?”
“Like a fool!” Albert was startled into bitter candor by Lady Mary’s abrupt question. “A damned adolescent fool!”
“That’s a good sign.” She contemptuously dropped the telegrams onto the table. “As for this lot, they’ll just have to manage, make do with last year’s Lincolns and Rollses.”
“And what am I to do?” Albert reverted to his lifelong conviction that she would always find a solution.
“What are we to do, now that you’ve finally confided in me, as you should in the first place.”
“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t till now. I did think of foreclosing Albert Sekloong Associates …”
“Bankruptcy, you mean?”
“I suppose so. I’d be letting my own shares go down the drain. Potentially ten million dollars. But at least I’d be off the hook. It is a limited company.”
“You’ll do as you think best.” Her tone was severe. “I have no financial interest in Ah Sek, but I would advise most strongly against letting it go into bankruptcy.”
“It’s my only hope. With Ah Sek off my back, perhaps I can salvage the other …”
“And be branded forever as a bankrupt.”
“It doesn’t work that way, nowadays, Grandma. Look at Sir Dougal MacFadzean. He let his holding company go into bankruptcy, and today he’s at the top of the heap again.”
“Perhaps I’m behind the times,” Mary conceded. “But I can think of other overwhelming reasons. Apart from what it would do to you, letting Ah Sek go bankrupt would reflect on all the Sekloong companies. Think what they’d say at the Bank or Derwent’s. ‘The Sekloongs are on the way down!’”
“They’re already talking, Grandma. Letting Ah Sek go would help the other enterprises, show we’re still ruthless enough.”
“Albert, the shareholders must come first. They bought Ah Sek because of the Sekloong name. My own amah has two hundred shares. Can you really impoverish thousands like her for your convenience?”
“They’ll lose anyway. Only a miracle can pull Ah Sek out.”
“Then a miracle is necessary. The Old Gentleman would have raged at a Sekloong enterprise going into voluntary bankruptcy. Your father would have been ashamed, deeply ashamed. You cannot abandon the stockholders. Albert, you simply cannot. Besides, it doesn’t fit my plans.”
“Your plans.”
“I have been thinking about the best way to clear up this mess, you know. Though the final responsibility’s yours.”
“I brought the books.” Albert opened his attaché case. “Do you want to glance at …”
“By all means,” she replied sweetly. “I’d very much like to check your figures against my own.”
Lady Mary’s white head bent over the yellow accountants’ work sheets, and the frivolous jade butterfly quivered on its golden spring, ruby eyes flashing. Albert’s dark head was still as his square fingers indicated the key figures, and he jotted brief notes on a foolscap pad. They groped slowly through the labyrinthine problems of the interlinked companies. After three hours, Albert sat upright and rubbed his cramped neck.
“All right, then,” he said. “We have category A, the enterprises where we’ll concentrate our resources. Category B, where we’ll cut back or, if absolutely necessary, let go. Category C, well, we can only hope political or economic conditions will change if we hold on.”
“Then we’re agreed, Albert?” Lad
y Mary’s question was rhetorical. “Dragon Films are definitely B. No more money for Alaine?”
“It’s not important, Grandma, not in the total picture. Just a sideline. But let me reprise.”
“Just one more thing, Albert.” Lady Mary’s excessively sweet tone was an admonition. “Hong Kong Airways must go too.”
“But …” he protested.
“Oh, you’ll get the cash,” she interrupted. “I’ll talk to some people in London, perhaps Washington. We can dispose of the Electras, pay the debts, and still have a small surplus. But you must learn you cannot play a lone hand against the very big boys, and particularly not against governments. Losing those routes was sheer foolishness, just because you couldn’t be bothered to make the proper friends. However, you can’t keep your toy.”
Albert bristled at being reprimanded like a schoolboy, but prudently subsided.
“And the grain futures, the commodities,” Lady Mary continued in the same schoolmistress’s tone. “I think we can manage to dispose of them at a profit, a good profit.”
“How can we possibly? The market’s falling, and no one’s buying.”
“But they will. The harvest in Russia looks bad, I hear. And the Chinese, they’ll be needing grain again soon. Let me drop a few words to Dewey Miller, point out a few obvious facts. The word will spread rapidly enough once the press takes it up.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Albert confessed.
“Business, my dear, is not simply a matter of balance sheets and headlong expansion. You must never overlook the human factors, the political factors. Politics is more than half the game. I learned that a long time ago.”
“And that’s why you’ve always been so immersed in politics?”
“For its own sake, too, Albert. Politics is just people, and people are interesting. But let’s finish your reprise.”
“All right. Dragon Plastics are Category A. Rather than sell at a loss or close down temporarily, we’ll modernize rapidly. Since you insist, we’ll realize on the Electras and let Hong Kong Airways go. They’re definitely Category B. Megalith Housing and Borneo Explorations are C, worth holding on to until the political and economic situations change. But they’ll need a substantial cash input to keep them going.”
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