"You mean make it look active?"
"I mean make it look fucking busy."
"So excellent to see you again, Charlie." Mr. Ming nodded slyly as he slipped his soft fingers into Charlie's bony paw a few hours later. The restaurant was packed. Swell place, twenty-dollar appetizers. In the corner, Barbara Walters, pretending you didn't notice her. Toupee-to-implant ratio almost even. "You look very healthy after your visit to Hong Kong."
"I had a good trip."
"Profitable?"
Did Ming know about his speculation on the death of Sir Henry Lai? What didn't he know? "Yes."
Charlie nodded sternly to the maitre d', and he and Ming were conveyed to Charlie's table, past other businessmen being tortured by their moneylenders, past the piles of cheese and vegetables and aging Italian waiters who could discern the relative power of their clientele with the same dispassion they imposed on cuts of steak-and present the check accordingly. Dinner will run five hundred dollars, thought Charlie, as much as Dad made in a month at my age.
Mr. Ming accepted his napkin, then lifted his eyes. Again the fox's smile. After they ordered, he asked, "How is business?"
"We're on track for the next quarter."
"How is the plant construction going?"
"Some delays. The usual stuff."
"How worried are you about Manila Telecom?"
"Worried," said Charlie. "Worried enough."
"Let me show you how worried we are." Ming slipped his hand into his coat. He handed Charlie the sheet. "This is a report generated by our investment division. We have started to examine the telecom supply business as a whole." Teknetrix's market share and supplier relationships have been eroded by Manila Telecom's recent surge, but this trend may be only temporary, as its product development is first-rate and its marketing systems highly developed. Yet Teknetrix remains a viable takeover candidate by a telecom-supplier competitor of equal or greater size because of its superior applications for WAN internetworking interfaces, Internet service provider (ISP) servers, multiplexers, digital access and cross systems, channel banks and cellular base stations. The company is quite an attractive target.
"Your success is your vulnerability," Ming observed. "But so, too, is any weakness."
"We're very aware of Manila Telecom," said Charlie tightly. "I mean, I take their sales reports home with me."
Ming watched him. Don't blink, Charlie thought. He blinked.
"As you know, Charlie, corporate financing in Hong Kong is very dynamic right now." Ming spoke like a man gazing across a calm expanse of water. "Our exposure is huge. And we have recently increased our presence in the Philippines."
"Is the government pressuring you to help Manila Telecom?" asked Charlie. "I mean, hell, let's lay it out here."
"I cannot answer that question directly." Ming slipped a tiny shrimp into his mouth. "But I can say they do not fully appreciate our American lending portfolio."
"Great," answered Charlie. "I understand you loud and clear. The other thing I've heard is that the MT sales reps are promising their customers- our customers-a much larger product line in a year or two, with order-fills getting much faster. We've been assuming they have a lot of capital coming in, either through a new stock offering or a direct loan, or even both."
Ming nodded.
"You're not saying?" Charlie asked, watching Barbara Walters get up from her table, hair as soft-looking as a football helmet.
Ming let his fork rest on his plate. He looked away in thought, as if listening to himself tune an obscure and difficult musical instrument. "I am unable to comment on the financing strategies of the bank's clientele," he said.
Charlie leaned forward, his back hurting. "You're telling me that your bank has opened a new office in the same city where my major competitor is located, that your bank has entered into some kind of stock offering or financing deal with them, money that could be used in the very same hostile buyout that is hinted at by the research generated by your very same bank? Is that what you are telling me?"
Ming lifted the fork to his mouth, his expression unchanged.
"You're fucking telling me that!"
The man sat in awkward silence.
"The situation within our bank is very complicated," Ming said finally. "Let's discuss the Q4 surface-mount transformer."
"It's in goddamn development," Charlie hissed. "You know that."
"You've been saying that for six months."
"It's been true for six months."
"I think it's further along than you explained," Ming said.
"We're pleased," Charlie admitted. "But we're not going to oversell it. We need to test it, size it, figure out the costs."
"If that switch hits the market by April, you will have an advantage on MT."
"Yes, until they copy it," Charlie said bitterly. "And sell a bad version of it at ninety percent of our price."
He wondered if Ming was telling him that the internal politics of the bank put Ming and his loan to Charlie in jeopardy. Or that the bank was quietly betting on the whole sector by supporting both companies. Or that the bank was trying to decide which company to back. Or that he, Ming, knew enough about MT's internal intelligence to know that Charlie could seize an important advantage by accelerating the development of the Q4 switch at all costs. Or, quite differently, that he, Ming, wanted to know the exact status of the Q4 so he'd know how to advise MT on the timing of its attack on Teknetrix.
Mr. Ming's trout arrived, swimming through a bed of rice, one eye turned inquiringly upward. Hooked, poached, and soon to be eaten. That's me, Charlie thought. But he could attack back. They could update their poison pill provisions, they could issue stock to water down whatever MT had accumulated, they could throw themselves at the mercy of another bank, refinance the construction loan, pay off Ming, and ride again. And they could accelerate the Q4, nail the factory's start-up date, jolt forward in market share. Afterburn, he told himself. Time to go into afterburn and get out of trouble.
"I need to fly to Shanghai," he announced to Ellie when he walked in the door to their apartment.
Her mouth dropped. "No."
"Yes."
She'd been sorting the mail. "You just got back."
"I know. But the municipal officials in Shanghai have stopped our construction. Our principal construction guy is supposedly in Shenzhen dealing with concrete, although I suspect that's a lie. There's some other problem. I'll leave Thursday morning."
She tossed the envelopes down. "Charlie, you have people whose job it is to fix these things."
"I'm needed on the other end. It's a one-hour conversation, but it has to be face-to-face."
She breathed angrily. "I need you here."
"My company needs me there."
"Your wife needs you here."
"It's a very quick trip, Ellie."
"Then will you see it when you come back?" she asked. "Please?"
"What?"
"The house. Vista del Mar."
"Maybe there are other places we should look at," he answered. "If this idea means so much to you."
"No, I think this is the place. I've been very-" She looked at him fearfully. "I'm searching for the word."
"Thorough?"
"Yes." She smiled in embarrassment.
"Careful? Comprehensive? Diligent? Scrupulous? Have you been all of those things, too, Ellie?"
She began to cry.
She scares me, he thought. "What? What is it?" He caught Ellie's arm and gently turned her around to face him. Her eyes were unblinking, her mouth was set. "You bought it, didn't you?"
"Yes." She watched his reaction. "Yes, Charlie, I did."
"How much?"
"A lot. I put down the deposit. I signed all the papers."
"Couldn't you have discussed it?"
"You would have said no."
He eased down into one of the dining-room chairs. "There's no going back?"