“Jesus,” Paul Choy muttered, aghast. He had been gauging Gornt very carefully and he had noticed sudden tension and now equally sudden pleasure which surprised him. He pondered a moment, then decided to change tactics and probe. “He wanted to know if you were selling short.”
Gornt said wryly, “He or you, Mr. Choy?”
“Both of us, sir. He’s got quite a portfolio of stocks which he wants me to manage eventually,” the young man said, which was a complete exaggeration. “I was explaining the mechanics of modern banking and the stock market to him—how it ticks and how Hong Kong’s different from Stateside. He gets the message very fast, sir.” Another exaggeration. Paul Choy had found it impossible to break through his father’s prejudices. “He asks if he should sell short?”
“Yes. I think he should. There have been lots of rumors that Ho-Pak’s overextended—borrowing short and cheap, lending long and expensive, mostly on property, the classic way any bank would get into serious difficulties. For safety he should get all his money out and sell short.”
“Next question, sir: Will Blacs, or the Victoria Bank do a bail-out?”
With an effort Gornt kept his face impassive. The old junk dipped slightly as waves from another chugging past lapped her sides. “Why should other banks do that?”
I’m trapped, Gornt was thinking, aghast. I can’t tell the truth to them—there is no telling who else will get the information. At the same time, I daren’t not tell the old bastard and his god-cursed whelp. He’s asking for the return of the favor and I have to pay, that’s a matter of face.
Paul Choy leaned forward in his chair, his excitement showing. “My theory’s that if there’s a real run on the Ho-Pak the others won’t let it crash—not like the East India and Canton Bank disaster last year because it’d create shock waves that the market, the big operators in the market, wouldn’t like. Everyone’s waiting for a boom, and I bet the biggies here won’t let a catastrophe wreck that chance. Since Blacs and the Victoria’re the top bananas it figures they’d be the ones to do a bail-out.”
“What’s your point, Mr. Choy?”
“If someone knew in advance when Ho-Pak stock’d bottom out and either bank, or both, were launching a bail-out operation, that person could make a fortune.”
Gornt was trying to decide what to do but he was tired now and not as sharp as he should be. That accident must have taken more out of me than I thought, he told himself. Was it Dunross? Was that bastard trying to even the score, repay me for the Christmas night or the Pacific Orient victory or fifty other victories—perhaps even the old Macao sore.
Gornt felt a sudden glow as he remembered the white hot thrill he had felt watching the road race, knowing that any moment the tai-pan’s engine would seize up—watching the cars howl past lap after lap, and then Dunross, the leader, not coming in his turn—then waiting and hoping and then the news that he had spun out at Melco Hairpin in a metal screaming crash when his engine went. Waiting again, his stomach churning. Then the news that the whole racing car had exploded in a ball of fire but Dunross had scrambled out unscathed. He was both very sorry and very glad.
He didn’t want Dunross dead. He wanted him alive and destroyed, alive to realize it.
He chuckled to himself. Oh it wasn’t me who pressed the button that put that ploy into operation. Of course I did nudge young Donald Nikklin a little and suggest all sorts of ways and means that a little h’eung yau in the right hands …
His eyes saw Paul Choy and the old seaman waiting, watching him, and all of his good humor vanished. He pushed away his vagrant thoughts and concentrated.
“Yes, you’re right of course, Mr. Choy. But your premise is wrong. Of course this is all theoretical, the Ho-Pak hasn’t failed yet. Perhaps it won’t. But there’s no reason why any bank should do what you suggest, it never has in the past. Each bank stands or falls on its own merits, that’s the joy of our free enterprise system. Such a scheme as you propose would set a dangerous precedent. It would certainly be impossible to prop up every bank that was mismanaged. Neither bank needs the Ho-Pak, Mr. Choy. Both have more than enough customers of their own. Neither has ever acquired other banking interests here and I doubt whether either would ever need to.”
Horseshit, Paul Choy was thinking. A bank’s committed to growth like any other business and Blacs and the Victoria are the most rapacious of all—except Struan’s and Rothwell-Gornt. Shit, and Asian Properties and all the other hongs.
“I’m sure you’re right, sir. But my uncle Wu’d appreciate it if you heard anything, one way or another.”
He turned to his father and said in Haklo, “I’m finished now, Honored Uncle. This barbarian agrees the bank may be in trouble.”
Wu’s face lost color. “Eh? How bad?”
“I’ll be the first in line tomorrow. You should take all your money out quickly.”
“Ayeeyah! By all the gods!” Wu said, his voice raw. “I’ll personally slit Banker Kwang’s throat if I lose a single fornicating cash piece, even though he’s my nephew!”
Paul Choy stared at him. “He is?”
“Banks are just fornicating inventions of foreign devils to steal honest people’s wealth,” Wu raged. “I’ll get back every copper cash or his blood will flow! Tell me what he said about the bank!”
“Please be patient, Honored Uncle. It is polite, according to barbarian custom, not to keep this barbarian waiting.”
Wu bottled his rage and said to Gornt in his execrable pidgin, “Bank bad, heya? Thank tell true. Bank bad custom, heya?”
“Sometimes,” Gornt said cautiously.
Four Finger Wu unknotted his bony fists and forced calmness. “Thank for favor … yes … also want like sister son say heya?”
“Sorry, I don’t understand. What does your uncle mean, Mr. Choy?”
After chatting with his father a moment for appearances, the young man said, “My uncle would consider it a real favor if he could hear privately, in advance, of any raid, takeover attempt or bail-out—of course it’d be kept completely confidential.”
Wu nodded, only his mouth smiling now. “Yes. Favor.” He put out his hand and shook with Gornt in friendly style, knowing that barbarians liked the custom though he found it uncivilized and distasteful, and contrary to correct manners from time immemorial. But he wanted his son trained quickly and it had to be with Second Great Company and he needed Gornt’s information. He understood the importance of advance knowledge. Eeeee, he thought, without my friends in the Marine Police forces of Asia my fleets would be powerless.
“Go ashore with him, Nephew. See him into a taxi then wait for me. Fetch Two Hatchet Tok and wait for me, there, by the taxi stand.”
He thanked Gornt again, then followed them to the deck and watched them go. His ferry sampan was waiting and he saw them get into it and head for the shore.
It was a good night and he tasted the wind. There was moisture on it. Rain? At once he studied the stars and the night sky, all his years of experience concentrating. Rain would come only with storm. Storm could mean typhoon. It was late in the season for summer rains but rains could come late and be sudden and very heavy and typhoon as late as November, as early as May, and if the gods willed, any season of the year.
We could use rain, he thought. But not typhoon.
He shuddered. Now we’re almost into Ninth Month.
Ninth Month had bad memories for him. Over the years of his life, typhoon had savaged him nineteen times in that month, seven times since his father had died in 1937 and he had become Head of the House of the Seaborne Wu and Captain of the Fleets.
Of these seven times the first was that year. Winds of 115 knots tore out of the north/northwest and sank one whole fleet of a hundred junks in the Pearl River Estuary. Over a thousand drowned that time—his eldest son with all his family. In ’49 when he had ordered all his Pearl River-based armada to flee the Communist Mainland and settle permanently into Hong Kong waters, he had been caught at sea and sunk along with ninety j
unks and three hundred sampans. He and his family were saved but he had lost 817 of his people. Those winds came out of the east. Twelve years ago from the east/northeast again and seventy junks lost. Ten years ago Typhoon Susan with her eighty-knot gales from the northeast, veering to east/southeast, had decimated his Taiwan-based fleet and cost another five hundred lives there, and another two hundred as far south as Singapore and another son with all his family. Typhoon Gloria in ’57, one-hundred-knot gales, another multitude drowned. Last year Typhoon Wanda came and wrecked Aberdeen and most of the Haklo sea villages in the New Territories. Those winds came from the north/northwest and backed to northwest then veered south.
Wu knew the winds well and the number of the days well. September second, eighth, second again, eighteenth, twenty-second, tenth, and Typhoon Wanda first day. Yes, he thought, and those numbers add up to sixty-three, which is divisible by the magic number three, which then makes twenty-one which is three again. Will typhoon come on the third day of the Ninth Month this year? It never has before, never in all memory, but will it this year? Sixty-three is also nine. Will it come on the ninth day?
He tasted the wind again. There was more moisture in it. Rain was coming. The wind had freshened slightly. It came from north/northeast now.
The old seaman hawked and spat. Joss! If it’s the third or ninth or second it’s joss never mind. The only certain thing is that typhoon will come from some quarter or other and it will come in the Ninth Month—or this month which is equally bad.
He was watching the sampan now and he could see his son sitting amidships, alongside the barbarian, and he wondered how far he could trust him. The lad’s smart and knows the foreign devil ways very well, he thought, filled with pride. Yes, but how far has he been converted to their evils? I’ll soon find out never mind. Once the lad’s part of the chain he’ll be obedient. Or dead. In the past the House of Wu always traded in opium with or for the Noble House, and sometimes for ourselves. Once opium was honorable.
It still is for some. Me, Smuggler Mo, White Powder Lee, ah, what about them? Should we join into a Brotherhood, or not?
But the White Powders? Are they so different? Aren’t they just stronger opium—like spirit is to beer?
What’s the trading difference between the White Powders and salt? None. Except that now stupid foreign devil law says one’s contraband and the other isn’t! Ayeeyah, up to twenty-odd years ago when the barbarians lost their fornicating war to the fiends from the Eastern Sea, the government monopolized the trade here.
Wasn’t Hong Kong trade with China built on opium, greased only by opium grown in barbarian India?
But now that they’ve destroyed their own producing fields, they’re trying to pretend the trade never happened, that it’s immoral and a terrible crime worth twenty years in prison!
Ayeeyah, how can a civilized person understand a barbarian?
Disgustedly he went below.
Eeeee, he thought wearily. This has been a difficult day. First John Chen vanishes. Then those two Cantonese dogmeat fornicaters are caught at the airport and my shipment of guns is stolen by the fornicating police. Then this afternoon the tai-pan’s letter arrived by hand: “Greetings Honored Old Friend. On reflection I suggest you put Number Seven Son with the enemy—better for him, better for us. Ask Black Beard to see you tonight. Telephone me afterwards.” It was signed with the tai-pan’s chop and “Old Friend.”
“Old Friend” to a Chinese was a particular person or company who had done you an extreme favor in the past, or someone in business who had proved trustworthy and profitable over the years. Sometimes the years went over generations.
Yes, Wu thought, this tai-pan’s an old friend. It was he who had suggested the birth certificate and the new name for his Seventh Son, who suggested sending him to the Golden Country and had smoothed the waters there and the waters into the great university, and had watched over him there without his knowledge—the subterfuge solving his dilemma of how to have one of his sons trained in America without the taint of the opium connection.
What fools barbarians are! Yes, but even so, this tai-pan is not. He’s truly an old friend—and so is the Noble House.
Wu remembered all the profits he and his family had made secretly over the generations, with or without the help of the Noble House, in peace and war, trading where barbarian ships could not: contraband, gold, gasoline, opium, rubber, machinery, medical drugs, anything and everything in short supply. Even people, helping them escape from the Mainland or to the Mainland, their passage money considerable. With and without but mostly with the assistance of the Noble House, with this tai-pan and before him Old Hawk Nose, his old cousin, and before him, Mad Dog, his father, and before him the cousin’s father, the Wu clan had prospered.
Now Four Finger Wu had 6 percent of the Noble House, purchased over the years and hidden with their help in a maze of nominees but still in his sole control, the largest share of their gold transmittal business, along with heavy investments here, in Macao, Singapore and Indonesia and in property, shipping, banking.
Banking, he thought grimly. I’ll cut my nephew’s throat after I’ve fed him his Secret Sack if I lose one copper cash!
He was below now and he went into the seamy, littered main cabin where he and his wife slept. She was in the big straw-filled bunk and she turned over in half-sleep. “Are you finished now? Are you coming to bed?”
“No. Go to sleep,” he said kindly. “I’ve work to do.”
Obediently she did as she was told. She was his tai-tai, his chief wife, and they had been married for forty-seven years.
He took off his clothes and changed. He put on a clean white shirt and clean socks and shoes, and the creases of his gray trousers were sharp. He closed the cabin door quietly behind him and came nimbly on deck feeling very uncomfortable and tied in by the clothes. “I’ll be back before dawn, Fourth Grandson,” he said.
“Yes, Grandfather.”
“You stay awake now!”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
He cuffed the boy gently then went across the gangways and stopped at the third junk.
“Goodweather Poon?” he called out.
“Yes … yes?” the sleepy voice said. The old man was curled up on old sacking, dozing.
“Assemble all the captains. I’ll be back within two hours.”
Poon was immediately alert. “We sail?” he asked.
“No. I’ll be back in two hours. Assemble the captains!”
Wu continued on his way and was bowed into his personal ferry sampan. He peered at the shore. His son was standing beside his big black Rolls with the good luck number plate—the single number 8—that he had purchased for 150,000 HK in the government auction, his uniformed chauffeur and his bodyguard, Two Hatchet Tok, waiting deferentially beside him. As always he felt pleasure seeing his great machine and this overrode his growing concern. Of course, he was not the only dweller in the sea villages who owned a Rolls. But, by custom, his was always the largest and the newest. 8, baat, was the luckiest number because it rhymed with faat which meant “expanding prosperity.”
He felt the wind shift a point and his anxiety increased. Eeeee, this has been a bad day but tomorrow will be worse.
Has that lump of dogmeat John Chen escaped to the Golden Country or is he truly kidnapped? Without that piece of dung I’m still the tai-pan’s running dog. I’m tired of being a running dog. The 100,000 reward for John Chen is money well invested. I’d pay twelve times that for John Chen and his fornicating coin. Thank all gods I put spies in Noble House Chen’s household.
He stabbed his hand shoreward. “Be quick, old man,” he ordered the boatman, his face grim. “I’ve a lot to do before dawn!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
2:23 P.M.:
The day was hot and very humid, the sky sultry, clouds beginning a buildup. Since the opening this morning there had been no letup in the milling, noisy, sweating crowds inside and outside the small Aberdeen branch of the Ho-Pak Bank. br />
“I’ve no more money to pay out, Honorable Sung,” the frightened teller whispered, sweat marking her neat chong-sam.
“How much do you need?”
“$7,457 for customer Tok-sing but there must be fifty more people waiting.”
“Go back to your window,” the equally nervous manager replied. “Delay. Pretend to check the account further—Head Office swore another consignment left their office an hour ago … perhaps the traffic … Go back to your window, Miss Pang.” Hastily he shut the door of his office after her and, sweating, once more got on the phone. “The Honorable Richard Kwang please. Hurry….”
Since the bank had opened promptly at ten o’clock, four or five hundred people had squirmed their way up to one of the three windows and demanded their money in full and their savings in full and then, blessing their joss, had shoved and pushed their way out into the world again.
Those with safety deposit boxes had demanded access. One by one, accompanied by an official, they had gone below to the vault, ecstatic or faint with relief. There the official had used his key and the client his key and then the official had left. Alone in the musty air the sweating client had blessed the gods that his joss had allowed him to be one of the lucky ones. Then his shaking hands had scooped the securities or cash or bullion or jewels and all the other secret things into a briefcase or suitcase or paper bag—or stuffed them into bulging pockets, already full with bank notes. Then, suddenly frightened to have so much wealth, so open and vulnerable, all the wealth of their individual world, their happiness had evaporated and they had slunk away to let another take their place, equally nervous, and, initially, equally ecstatic.
The line had started to form long before dawn. Four Finger Wu’s people took the first thirty places. This news had rushed around the harbor, so others had joined instantly, then others, then everyone with any account whatsoever as the news spread, swelling the throng. By ten, the nervous, anxious gathering was of riot proportions. Now a few uniformed police were strolling among them, silent and watchful, their presence calming. More came as the day grew, their numbers quietly and carefully orchestrated by East Aberdeen police station. By noon a couple of Black Maria police vans were in one of the nearby alleys with a specially trained riot platoon in support. And European officers.