Noble House

Dunross was looking at the young man. He knew Martin Haply and his reputation. The English-trained Canadian journalist was twenty-five, and had been in the Colony for two years and was now the scourge of the business community. His biting sarcasm and penetrating exposes of personalities and of business practices that were legitimate in Hong Kong but nowhere else in the Western world were a constant irritation.
"The music, Father," Adryon repeated, running on, "it's ghastly. Mother said I had to ask you. Can I tell them to play something different, please?"
"All right, but don't turn my party into a happening."
She laughed and he turned his attention back to Martin Haply. "Evening."
"Evening, tai-pan," the young man said with a confident, challenging grin. "Adryon invited me. I hope it was all right to come after dinner?"
"Of course. Have fun," Dunross said, and he added dryly, "There are a lot of your friends here."
Haply laughed. "I missed dinner because I was on the scent of a dilly."
"Oh?"
"Yes. Seems that certain interests in conjunction with a certain great bank have been spreading nasty rumors about a certain Chinese bank's solvency."
"You mean the Ho-Pak?"
"It's all nonsense though. The rumors. Just more Hong Kong shenanigans."
"Oh?" All day Dunross had heard rumors about Richard Kwang's Ho-Pak Bank being overextended. "Are you sure?"
"Have a column on it in tomorrow's Guardian. Talking about the Ho-Pak though," Martin Haply added breezily, "did you hear that upwards of a hundred people took all their money out of the Aberdeen branch this afternoon? Could be the beginning of a run and—"
"Sorry, Father… come on Martin, can't you see Father's busy."
She leaned up and kissed Dunross lightly and his hand automatically went around her and hugged her.
"Have fun, darling." He watched her rush off, Haply following. Cocky son of a bitch, Dunross thought absently, wanting tomorrow's column now, knowing Haply to be painstaking, unbribable and very good at his job. Could Richard be overextended?
"You were saying, Ian? Alan Medford Grant?" broke into his thoughts.
"Oh, sorry, yes." Dunross sat back at the table, compartmentalizing those problems. "AMG's dead," he said quietly.
The three policemen gaped at him. "What?"
"I got a cable at one minute to eight this evening, and talked to his assistant in London at 9:11." Dunross watched them. "I wanted to know your 'when' because it's obvious there'd be plenty of time for your KGB spy—if he exists—to have called London and had poor old AMG murdered. Wouldn't there?"
"Yes." Crosse's face was solemn. "What time did he die?"
Dunross told them the whole of his conversation with Kiernan but he withheld the part about the call to Switzerland. Some intuition warned him not to tell. "Now, the question is: was it accident, coincidence or murder?"
"I don't know," Crosse said. "But I don't believe in coincidences."
"Nor do I."
"Christ," Armstrong said through his teeth, "if AMG hadn't had clearance … Christ only knows what's in those reports, Christ and you, Ian. If you've got the only existing copies this makes them potentially more explosive than ever."
"If they exist," Dunross said.
"Do they?"
"I'll tell you tomorrow. At 10 o'clock." Dunross got up. "Will you excuse me, please," he said politely with his easy charm. "I must see to my other guests now. Oh, one last thing. What about Eastern Cloud?"
Roger Crosse said, "She'll be released tomorrow."
"One way or the other?"
Crosse appeared shocked. "Good Lord, tai-pan, we weren't bartering! Brian, didn't you say we were just trying to help out?"
"Yes sir."
"Friends should always help out friends, shouldn't they, tai-pan?"
"Yes. Absolutely. Thank you."
They watched him walk away until he was lost.
"Do they or don't they?" Brian Kwok muttered.
"Exist? I'd say yes," Armstrong said.
"Of course they exist," Crosse said irritably. "But where?" He thought a moment, then added more irritably and both men's hearts skipped a beat, "Brian, while you were with Ian, Wine Waiter Feng told me none of his keys would fit."
"Oh, that's bad, sir," Brian Kwok said cautiously.
"Yes. The safe here won't be easy."
Armstrong said, "Perhaps we should look at Shek-O, sir, just in case."
"Would you keep such documents there—if they exist?"
"I don't know, sir. Dunross's unpredictable. I'd say they were in his penthouse at Struan's, that'd be the safest place."
"Have you been there?"
"No sir."
"Brian?"
"No sir."
"Neither have I." Crosse shook his head. "Bloody nuisance!"
Brian Kwok said thoughtfully, "We'd only be able to send in a team at night, sir. There's a private lift to that floor but you need a special key. Also there's supposed to be another lift from the garage basement, nonstop."
"There's been one hell of a slipup in London," Crosse said. "I can't understand why those bloody fools weren't on the job. Nor why AMG didn't ask for clearance."
"Perhaps he didn't want insiders to know he was dealing with an outsider."
"If there was one outsider, there could have been others." Crosse sighed, and, lost in thought, lit a cigarette. Armstrong felt the smoke hunger pangs. He took a swallow of his brandy but that did not ease the ache.
"Did Langan pass on his copy, sir?"
"Yes, to Rosemont here and in the diplomatic bag to his FBI HQ in Washington."
"Christ," Brian Kwok said sourly, "then it'll be all over Hong Kong by morning."
"Rosemont assured me it would not." Crosse's smile was humorless. "However, we'd better be prepared."
"Perhaps lan'd be more cooperative if he knew, sir."
"No, much better to keep that to ourselves. He's up to something though."
Armstrong said, "What about getting Superintendent Foxwell to talk to him, sir, they're old friends."
"If Brian couldn't persuade him, no one can."
"The governor, sir?"
Crosse shook his head. "No reason to involve him. Brian, you take care of Shek-O."
"Find and open his safe, sir?"
"No. Just take a team out there and make sure no one else moves in. Robert, go to HQ, get on to London. Call Pensely at MI-5 and Sinders at MI-6. Find out exact times on AMG, everything you can, check the tai-pan's story. Check everything—perhaps other copies exist. Next, send back a team of three agents here to watch this place tonight, particularly to guard Dunross, without his knowledge of course. I'll meet the senior man at the junction of Peak Road and Culum's Way in an hour, that'll give you enough time. Send another team to watch Struan's building. Put one man in the garage—just in case. Leave me your car, Robert. I'll see you in my office in an hour and a half. Off you both go."
The two men sought out their host and made their apologies and gave their thanks and went to Brian Kwok's car. Going down Peak Road in the old Porsche, Armstrong said what they both had been thinking ever since Dunross had told them. "If Crosse's the spy he'd have had plenty of time to phone London, or to pass the word to Sevrin, the KGB or who the hell ever."
"Yes."
"We left his office at 6:10—that'd be 11:00 A.M. London time-so it couldn't've been us, not enough time." Armstrong shifted to ease the ache in his back. "Shit, I'd like a cigarette."
"There's a packet in the glove compartment, old chum."
"Tomorrow—I'll smoke tomorrow. Just like AA, like a bloody addict!" Armstrong laughed but there was no humor in it. He glanced across at his friend. "Find out quietly who else's read the AMG file today—apart from Crosse—quick as you can."
"My thought too."
"If he's the only one who read it … well, it's another piece of evidence. It's not proof but we'd be getting there." He stifled a nervous yawn, feeling very tired. "If it's him we really are up shit's creek."
Brian was driving very fast and very well. "Did he say when he gave the copy to Langan?"
"Yes. At noon. They had lunch."
"The leak could be from them, from the consulate—that place's like a sieve."
"It's possible but my nose says no. Rosemont's all right, Brian— and Langan. They're professionals."
"I don't trust them."
"You don't trust anyone. They've both asked their HQs to check the Bartlett and Casey Moscow frankings."
"Good. I think I'll send a telex to a friend in Ottawa. They might have something on file on them also. That Casey's a bird amongst birds, isn't she though? Was she wearing anything underneath that sheath?"
"Ten dollars to a penny you never find out."
"Done."
As they turned a corner, Armstrong looked at the city below and the harbor, the American cruiser lit all over tied up at the dockyard, Hong Kong side. "In the old days we'd have had half a dozen warships here of our own," he said sadly. "Good old Royal Navy!" He had been in destroyers during the war, lieutenant R.N. Sunk twice, once at Dunkirk, the second time on D-Day plus three, off Cherbourg.
"Yes. Pity about the Navy, but, well, time marches on."
"Not for the better, Brian. Pity the whole bloody Empire's up the spout! It was better when it wasn't. The whole bloody world was better off! Bloody war! Bloody Germans, bloody Japs …"
"Yes. Talking about Navy, how was Mishauer?"
"The U.S. Naval Intelligence fellow? He was okay," Armstrong said wearily. "He talked a lot of shop. He whispered to the Old Man that the U.S.'re going to double their Seventh Fleet. It's so superse-cret he didn't even want to trust the phone. There's going to be a big land expansion in Vietnam."
"Bloody fools—they'll get chewed up like the French. Don't they read the papers, let alone intelligence reports?"
"Mishauer whispered also their nuclear carrier's coming in the day after tomorrow for an eight-day R and R visit. Another top secret. He asked us to double up on security—and wet-nurse all Yankees ashore."
"More bloody trouble."
"Yes." Armstrong added thinly, "Particularly as the Old Man mentioned a Soviet freighter 'limped in" for repairs on the evening tide."
"Oh Christ!" Brian corrected an involuntary swerve.
"That's what I thought. Mishauer almost had a coronary and Rosemont swore for two minutes flat. The Old Man assured them of course none of the Russian seamen'll be allowed ashore without special permission, as usual, and we'll tail them all, as usual, but a couple'll manage to need a doctor or whatever, suddenly, and may-haps escape the net."
"Yes." After a pause Brian Kwok said, "I hope we get those AMG files, Robert. Sevrin is a knife in the guts of China."
"Yes."
They drove in silence a while.
"We're losing our war, aren't we?" Armstrong said.
"Yes."
16
11:25 P.M. :
The Soviet freighter, Sovetsky Ivanov