Noble House

  “Please try it, just for a minute. It’s an important experience for you. You may be caught by them, the other side, some day. You should be prepared. One minute might save your sanity. Test it, for your own safety.”

  So he had agreed. They had closed the door. The room was totally scarlet, small but everything tilted, the lines all wrong, angles all wrong, the floor meeting the ceiling in one corner, perspectives all wrong, no angles ordinary. The tilted ceiling far above was a sheer sheet of scarlet glass. Above the glass, water washed down to be recycled and come down again. Attached to this tilted glass ceiling surface were scarlet chairs and a table and pens and paper casually on the table, scarlet cushions on the chairs, making it seem the floor, a false door nearby, almost ajar …

  Sudden blackness. Then the blinding strobe and the stunning impact of the scarlet. Blackness, scarlet, blackness, scarlet. Involuntarily he groped for the reality of the table and chairs and the floor and door and stumbled and fell, unable to get his bearings, water above, the glass vanished, just insane scarlet water on the floor above. Blackness and now voices pounding and again blood-colored hell. His stomach told him that he was upside down though his mind said it was just a trick and to close your eyes it’s a trick it’s a trick it’s a trick …

  After an eternity, when at length normal lights came on and the real door opened, he was lying on the real floor, retching. “You bastard,” he had snarled at Crosse, barely able to talk. “You said a minute, you lying bastard!” His chest heaved and he fought to his feet, reeling, barely able to stand or to stop vomiting.

  “Sorry, but it was only a minute, Robert,” Crosse said.

  “I don’t believe it….”

  “Honestly, it was,” Sinders said. “I timed it myself. Really! Extraordinary. Most effective.”

  Again Armstrong felt his chest heave at the thought of the water above and the table and chairs. He put those thoughts away and concentrated on Brian Kwok, feeling that he had let the client ramble enough and it was now time to bring him back. “You were saying? You passed over our dossiers to your friend Bucktooth Lo?”

  “Well no, it wasn’t … I’m tired, Robert, tired … what ar—”

  “If you’re tired I’ll leave!” He got up and saw the client blanch. “Next month I’ll se—”

  “No … no … please don’t go … they … no, don’t go. Pleassssssse!”

  So he sat back, continuing the game, knowing it to be unfair, and that with the client so totally disoriented he could be made to sign anything, say anything at whim. “I’ll stay while you talk, old friend. You were saying about Bucktooth Lo—the man in Princes Building? He was the go-between?”

  “No … not … yes in a way … Dr. Meng … Dr. Meng would pick up any package that I left … Meng never knew that I … that it was me … the arrangements were by phone or by letter … he would take them to Lo who was paid … Bucktooth Lo was paid to give them to another man, I don’t know who … I don’t know …”

  “Oh I think you do, Brian, I don’t believe you want me to stay.”

  “Oh Christ I do … I swear it … Bucktooth … Bucktooth would know … or perhaps Ng, Vee Cee Ng, Photographer Ng, he’s on our side, he’s on our side Robert … Ask him, he’ll know … he was with Tsu-yan importing thoriums …”

  “What’re thoriums?”

  “Rare earths for … for atomics, for our atomics … oh yes we’ll have our own A-bombs and H-bombs in a few months….” Brian Kwok went into a paroxysm of laughter. “The first in a few weeks … our first explosion in just a few weeks now oh of course not perfect but the first and soon an H-bomb, dozens, Robert, soon we’ll have ours to defend against those hegemonists who threaten to wipe us out, in a few weeks! Christ, Robert, think of that! Chairman Mao’s done it, he has, he’s done it … yes and then next year H-bombs and then Joe, yes we’ll get back our lands, oh yes, with atomics we cancel out theirs … we will, Joe’s going to help, Joe Yu’s going to … Oh we’ll stop them now, stop them we’ll stop them and take our lands back.” His hand reached out and he held Robert Armstrong’s arm but his grip was weak. “Listen, we’re at war already, us and the Soviets, Chung Li told me, he’s my emergency … em, em contact … there’s a war, a shooting war going on right now. In the north, divisions, not patrols near the Amur they’re they’re killing more Chinese and stealing more land but … but not for long.” He lay back weakly and began to mumble, his mind wandering.

  “Atomics? Next year? I don’t believe it,” Armstrong said, pretending to scoff, his mind blown as he listened to the continued outpouring that was giving chapter and verse and names. Christ, A-bombs in a few months? A few months? The world’s been told that’s ten years away. China with A- and H-bombs?

  Carefully he let Brian Kwok peter out and then he said casually, “Who’s Joe? Joe Yu?”

  “Who?”

  He saw Brian Kwok turn and stare at him, eyes strange, different, boring into him. Instantly he was on guard and he prepared. “Joe Yu,” he said even more offhand.

  “Who? I don’t know any Joe Yu … no.… What, what … what am I doing here? What is this place? What’s happening? Yu? Why … why should I know him? Who?”

  “No reason,” Armstrong said, calming him. “Here, here’s some tea, you must be very thirsty, old chum.”

  “Oh yes … yes I am … where … yes … Christ what’s happ … happening?”

  Armstrong helped him drink. Then he gave him another cigarette and further calmed him. In a few moments Brian Kwok was again deeply asleep. Armstrong wiped his palms and his forehead, exhausted too.

  The door opened. Sinders and Crosse came in.

  “Very good, Robert,” Sinders said excitedly, “very good indeed!”

  “Yes,” Crosse said. “I felt he was coming back too. Your timing was perfect.”

  Armstrong said nothing, feeling soiled.

  “My God,” Sinders chortled, “this client’s gold. The minister will be delighted. Atomics in a few months and a shooting war going on right now! No wonder our Parliamentary Trade Commission made such marvelous progress! Excellent, Robert, just excellent!”

  “You believe the client, sir?” Crosse said.

  “Absolutely, don’t you?”

  “I believe he was telling what he knew. Whether it’s fact, that’s another matter. Joe Yu? Does Joe or Joseph Yu mean anything to you?” The others shook their heads. “John Chancellor?”

  “No.”

  “Chung Li?”

  Armstrong said, “There’s a Chung Li who’s a friend of Br—the client’s, a car enthusiast—Shanghainese, big industrialist—could be him.”

  “Good. But Joe Yu, that triggered something in him. Could be important.” Crosse glanced at Sinders. “Proceed?”

  “Of course.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  1:45 P.M.:

  A roar of excitement went up from fifty thousand throats as the seven entries for the first race, jockeys up, came up the ramp out from under the stands to prance and skitter to the owners’ paddock where trainers and owners waited. The owners and their wives were dressed in their very best, many of the wives laden and over-minked, Mai-ling Kwang and Dianne Chen among them, conscious of the envious stares of the multitude craning to see the horses—and them.

  Either side of the soggy grass paddock and winner’s circle, the packed mass of the crowds went down to the white sparkling rails and the perfectly kept turf of the encircling track. The winning post was opposite and beside it, on the other side of the track, was the huge totalizator that would carry the names of the horses and jockeys and odds, race by race. The totalizator was owned and operated by the Turf Club, as was the course. There were no legal bookmakers here or outside or any legal off-course betting places. This was the only legal form of betting in the Colony.

  The sky was dark and forbidding. Earlier there had been a few sprinkles but now the air was clear.

  Behind the paddock and winner’s circle, on this level, were the jockeys’ cha
nging rooms and the offices of the officials—food concessions and the first banks of betting windows. Above them were the stands, four terraced tiers, each cantilevered floor with its own bank of betting windows. The first tier was for nonvoting members, next for voting members, and the two top floors set aside for the private boxes and radio room. Each box had its own private kitchen. Each of the ten annually elected stewards had a box and then there were some permanent ones: first his Excellency the governor, patron of the club; then the commander-in-chief; one each for Blacs and the Victoria. And last, Struan’s. Struan’s was in the best position, exactly opposite the winning post.

  “Why’s that, tai-pan?” Casey asked.

  “Because Dirk Struan began the Turf Club, set the rules, brought out a famous racing expert, Sir Roger Blore, to be the first secretary of the club. He put up all the money for the first meeting, money for the stands, money to import the first batch of horses from India and helped persuade the first plenipotentiary, Sir William Longstaff, to deed the land to the Turf Club in perpetuity.”

  “Come now, tai-pan,” Donald McBride, the track steward for this meeting, said jovially, “tell it as it happened, eh? You say Dirk ‘helped persuade’? Didn’t Dirk just ‘order’ Longstaff to do it?”

  Dunross laughed with the others still seated at the table he had hosted, Casey, Hiro Toda and McBride, who had just arrived to visit. There was a bar and three round tables in the box, each seating twelve comfortably. “I prefer my version,” he said. “In any event, Casey, the legend is that Dirk was voted this position by popular acclaim when the first stands were built.”

  “That’s not true either, Casey,” Willie Tusk called out from the next table. “Didn’t old Tyler Brock demand the position as the right of Brock and Sons? Didn’t he challenge Dirk to put up the position on a race, man to man, at the first meeting?”

  “No, that’s just a story.”

  “Did those two race, tai-pan?” Casey asked.

  “They were going to. But the typhoon came too soon, so they say. In any event Culum refused to budge so here we are. This’s ours while the course exists.”

  “And quite right too,” McBride said, with his happy smile. “The Noble House deserves the best. Since the very first stewards were elected, Miss Casey, the tai-pan of Struan’s has always been a steward. Always. By popular acclaim. Well, I must be off.” He glanced at his watch, smiled at Dunross. With great formality he said, “Permission to start the first race, tai-pan?”

  Dunross grinned back at him. “Permission granted.” McBride hurried off.

  Casey stared at Dunross. “They have to ask your permission to begin?”

  “It’s just a custom.” Dunross shrugged. “I suppose it’s a good idea for someone to say, ‘All right, let’s begin,’ isn’t it? I’m afraid that unlike Sir Geoffrey, the governors of Hong Kong in the past haven’t been known for their punctuality. Besides, tradition is not a bad thing at all—gives you a sense of continuity, of belonging—and protection.” He finished his coffee. “If you’ll excuse me a moment, I must do a few things.”

  “Have fun!” She watched him go, liking him even more than last night. Just then Peter Marlowe came in and Dunross stopped a moment. “Oh hello, Peter, good to see you. How’s Fleur?”

  “Getting better, thank you, tai-pan.”

  “Come on in! Help yourself to a drink—I’ll be back in a moment. Put your money on number five, Excellent Day, in the first! See you later.”

  “Thanks, tai-pan.”

  Casey beckoned to Peter Marlowe but he did not see her. His eyes had fixed on Grey who was with Julian Broadhurst out on the balcony, haranguing some of the others. She saw his face close and her heart leaped, remembering their hostility, so she called out, “Peter! Hi, come and sit down.”

  His eyes unglazed. “Oh! Oh hello,” he said.

  “Come sit down. Fleur’s going to be fine.”

  “She certainly appreciated your going to see her.”

  “It was a pleasure. Are the kids okay?”

  “Oh yes. You?”

  “Fantastic. This is the only way to go to a race!” Lunch in the Struan box for the thirty-six guests had been a lavish buffet of hot Chinese foods or, if they preferred, hot steak-and-kidney pie and vegetables, with plates of smoked salmon, hors d’oeuvres and cold cuts, cheeses and pastries of all kinds and as a topper, a meringue sculpture of the Struan Building—all prepared in their own kitchen. Champagne, with the best red and white wines, liqueurs. “I’m gonna have to diet for fifty years.”

  “Not you. How goes it?”

  She felt his probing eyes. “Fine. Why?”

  “Nothing.” He glanced off at Grey again, then turned his attention to the others.

  “May I introduce Peter Marlowe? Hiro Toda of Toda Shipping Industries of Yokohama. Peter’s a novelist-screenwriter from Hollywood.” Then all at once his book rushed into her mind and Changi and three and a half years as a prisoner of war and she waited for the explosion. There was a hesitation between both men. Toda politely offered his business card and Peter Marlowe gave his in return, equally politely. He hesitated a moment then put out his hand. “How’re you?”

  The Japanese shook it. “This’s an honor, Mr. Marlowe.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s not often one meets a famous author.”

  “I’m not, no, not at all.”

  “You’re too modest. I liked your book very much. Yes.”

  “You’ve read it?” Peter Marlowe stared at him. “Really?” He sat and looked at Toda, who was much shorter than he, lithe and well built, more handsome and well dressed in a blue suit, a camera hanging on his chair, his eyes equally level, the two men of an age. “Where did you find it?”

  “In Tokyo. We have many English bookshops. Please excuse me, I read the paperback, not the hardback. There was no hardback on sale. Your novel was very illuminating.”

  “Oh?” Peter Marlowe took out his cigarettes and offered them. Toda took one.

  Casey said, “Smoking’s not good for you, you both know that!”

  They smiled at her. “We’ll give them up for Lent,” Peter Marlowe said.

  “Sure.”

  Peter Marlowe looked back at Toda. “You were army?”

  “No, Mr. Marlowe. Navy. Destroyers. I was at the Battle of the Coral Sea in ’42, then at Midway, sub-lieutenant, later at Guadalcanal. I was sunk twice but lucky. Yes, I was lucky, apparently more lucky than you.”

  “We’re both alive, both in one piece, more or less.”

  “More or less, Mr. Marlowe. I agree. War is a curious way of life.” Toda puffed his cigarette. “Sometime, if it would please you and not hurt, I would like to talk about your Changi, about its lessons and our wars. Please?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m here for a few days,” Toda said. “At the Mandarin, back next week. A lunch, or dinner perhaps?”

  “Thank you. I’ll call. If not this time perhaps next. One day I’ll be in Tokyo.”

  After a pause the Japanese said, “We need not discuss your Changi, if you wish. I would like to know you better. England and Japan have much in common. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I should place my bet.” He bowed politely and walked off. Casey sipped her coffee.

  “Was that very hard for you? Being polite?”

  “Oh no, Casey. No, it wasn’t, not at all. Now we’re equal, he and I, any Japanese. The Japanese—and Koreans—I hated were the ones with bayonets and bullets when I had none.” She saw him wipe the sweat off, noticing his twisted smile. “’Mahlu, I wasn’t ready to meet one here.”

  “’Mahlu? What’s that, Cantonese?”

  “Malayan. It means ‘ashamed.’” He smiled to himself. It was a contraction of puki mahlu. Mahlu ashamed, puki a Golden Gulley. Malays grant feelings to that part of a woman: hunger, sadness, kindness, rapaciousness, hesitancy, shame, anger—anything and everything.

  “No need to be ashamed, Peter,” she said, not understanding. “I’m astonished you’d t
alk to any of them after all that POW horror. Oh I really liked the book. Isn’t it marvelous that he’d read it too?”

  “Yes. That threw me.”

  “May I ask you one question?”

  “What?”

  “You said Changi was genesis. What did you mean?”

  He sighed. “Changi changed everyone, changed values permanently. For instance, it gave you a dullness about death—we saw too much of it to have the same sort of meaning to outsiders, to normal people. We’re a generation of dinosaurs, we the few who survived. I suppose anyone who goes to war, any war, sees life with different eyes if they end up in one piece.”

  “What do you see?”

  “A lot of bull that’s worshipped as the be-all and end-all of existence. So much of ‘normal, civilized’ life is bull that you can’t imagine it. For us ex-Changi-ites—we’re lucky, we’re cleansed, we know what life is really all about. What frightens you, doesn’t frighten me, what frightens me, you’d laugh at.”

  “Like what?”

  He grinned at her. “That’s enough about me and my karma. I’ve a hot tip for th—” He stopped and stared off. “Good sweet Christ who’s that?”

  Casey laughed. “Riko Gresserhoff. She’s Japanese.”

  “Which one’s Mr. Gresserhoff?”

  “She’s a widow.”

  “Hallelujah!” They watched her go across the room, out onto the terrace.

  “Don’t you dare, Peter!”

  His voice became Olympian. “I’m a writer! It’s a matter of research!”

  “Baloney!”

  “You’re right.”

  “Peter, they say all first novels are autobiographical. Who were you in the book?”

  “The hero of course.”

  “The King? The American trader?”

  “Oh no. Not him. And that’s quite enough of my past. Let’s talk about you. You sure you’re all right?” His eyes held hers, willing the truth out of her.

  “What?”

  “There was a rumor that you were in tears last night.”

  “Nonsense.”