Now the two of them were alone in the cabin.
The old man was sitting on an upturned keg. He lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply, coughed and spat loudly on the deck floor. Paul Choy watched him, the sweat running down his back, more from fear than from the heat. Around them were some old desks, filing cabinets, rickety chairs and two phones, and this was Four Fingers's office and communications center. It was mostly from here that he sent messages to his fleets. Much of his business was regular freighting but wherever the Silver Lotus flag flew, his order to his captains was: Anything, shipped anywhere, at any time—at the right price.
The tough old man coughed again and glared at him under shaggy eyebrows. "They teach you curious ways in the Golden Mountain, heya?"
Paul Choy held his tongue and waited, his heart thumping, and wished he had never come back to Hong Kong, that he was still Stateside, or even better in Honolulu surfing in the Great Waves or lying on the beach with his girl friend. His spirit twisted at the thought of her.
"They teach you to bite the hand that feeds you, heya?"
"No, Honored Father, sorr—"
"They teach that my money is yours, my wealth yours and my chop yours to use as you wish, heya?"
"No, Honored Lord. I'm sorry to displease you," Paul Choy muttered, wilting under the weight of his fear.
This morning, early, when Gornt had jauntily come into the office from the meeting with Bartlett, it was still before the secretaries were due so Paul Choy had asked if he could help him. Gornt had told him to get several people on the phone. Others he had dialed himself on his private line. Paul Choy had thought nothing of it at the time until he happened to overhear part of what was, obviously, inside information about Struan's being whispered confidentially over the phone. Remembering the Bartlett call earlier, deducing that Gornt and Bartlett had had a meeting—a successful one judging by Gornt's good humor—and realizing Gornt was relating the same confidences over and over, his curiosity peaked. Later, he happened to hear Gornt saying to his solicitor, ". . . selling short … No, don't worry, nothing's going to happen till I'm covered, not till about eleven…. Certainly. I'll send the order, chopped, as soon as . . ."
The next call he was asked to make was long distance to the manager of the Bank of Switzerland and Zurich that, discreetly, he listened to. ". . . I'm expecting a large draft of U.S. dollars this morning, before eleven. Phone me the instant, the very instant it's in my account . . ."
So, bemused, he had put the various pieces of the equation together and come up with a theory: If Bartlett has arranged a sudden secret partnership with Gornt, Struan's known enemy, to launch one of his raids, if Bartlett also takes part of the risk, or most of it —by secretly putting large sums in one of Gornt's numbered Swiss accounts to cover any sell-short losses—and lastly, if he's talked Gornt into being the front guy while he sits on the fence, the stuff is going to hit the fan in the exchange and Struan's stock has got to go down.
This precipitated an immediate business decision: Jump in quickly and sell Struan's short before the big guys and we'll make a bundle.
He remembered how he had almost groaned aloud because he had no money, no credit, no shares and no means to borrow any. Then he recalled what one of his instructors at Harvard Business School had kept drumming into them: A faint heart never laid a lovely lady. So he'd gone into a private office and phoned his newfound friend, Ishwar Soorjani, the moneylender and dealer in foreign exchange whom he had met through the old Eurasian at the library. "Say, Ishwar, your brother's head of Soorjani Stockbrokers, isn't he?"