“I’ve no idea. If I had, he’d’ve been neutralized long since.”
“What are you going to do about General Jen and his Nationalist undercover agents?”
“I’m going to leave them alone—they’ve been pegged for months. Much better to leave known enemy agents in situ than to have to ferret out their replacements.”
“I agree—they’d certainly all be replaced. Theirs, and ours. Sad, so sad! We do it and they do it. So sad and so stupid—this world’s such a paradise, could be such a paradise.”
A bee hummed in the bay windows then flew back to the garden again as Sir Geoffrey eased the curtain aside. “The minister asked me to make sure our visiting MPs—our trade delegation to China that returns tomorrow—to make sure their security was optimum, judicious, though totally discreet.”
“Yes sir. I understand.”
“It appears that one or two of them might be future cabinet ministers if the Labour Party get in. It’d be good for the Colony to create a fine impression on them.”
“Do you think they’ve a chance next time? The Labour Party?”
“I don’t comment on those sort of questions, Roger.” The governor’s voice was flat, and reproving. “I’m not concerned with party politics—I represent Her Majesty the Queen—but personally I really do wish some of their extremists would go away and leave us to our own devices for clearly much of their left wing socialist philosophy is alien to our English way of life.” Sir Geoffrey hardened. “It’s quite obvious some of them do assist the enemy, willingly—or as dupes. Since we’re on the subject, are any of our guests security risks?”
“It depends what you mean, sir. Two are left-wing trades unionists back-benchers, fire-eaters—Robin Grey and Lochin Donald McLean. McLean openly flaunts his B.C.P.—British Communist Party—affiliations. He’s fairly high on our S-list. All the other Socialists are moderates. The Conservative members are moderate, middle-class, all ex-service. One’s rather imperialist, the Liberal Party representative, Hugh Guthrie.”
“And the fire-eaters? They’re ex-service?”
“McLean was a miner, at least his father was. Most of his Communist life’s been as a shop steward and unionist in the Scottish coalfields. Robin Grey was army, a captain, infantry.”
Sir Geoffrey looked up. “You don’t usually associate ex-captains with being fire-eating trades unionists, do you?”
“No sir.” Crosse sipped his sherry, appreciating it, savoring his knowledge more. “Nor with being related to a tai-pan.”
“Eh?”
“Robin Grey’s sister is Penelope Dunross.”
“Good God!” Sir Geoffrey stared at him, astounded. “Are you sure?”
“Yes sir.”
“But why hasn’t, why hasn’t Ian mentioned it before?”
“I don’t know, sir. Perhaps he’s ashamed of him. Mr. Grey is certainly the complete opposite of Mrs. Dunross.”
“But … Bless my soul, you’re sure?”
“Yes sir. Actually, it was Brian Kwok who spotted the connection. Just by chance. The MPs had to furnish the usual personal information to the PRC to get their visas, date of birth, profession, next of kin, etcetera. Brian was doing a routine check to make sure all the visas were in order to avoid any problem at the border. Brian happened to notice Mr. Grey had put ‘sister, Penelope Grey’ as his next of kin, with an address, Castle Avisyard in Ayr. Brian remembered that that was the Dunross family home address.” Crosse pulled out his silver cigarette case. “Do you mind if I smoke, sir?”
“No, please go ahead.”
“Thank you. That was a month or so ago. I thought it important enough for him to follow up the information. It took us relatively little time to establish that Mrs. Dunross really was his sister and next of kin. As far as we know now, Mrs. Dunross quarreled with her brother just after the war. Captain Grey was a POW in Changi, caught in Singapore in 1942. He got home in the later part of 1945—by the way their parents were killed in the London blitz in ’43. At that time she was already married to Dunross—they’d married in 1943, sir, just after he was shot down—she was a WAAF. We know brother and sister met when Grey was released. As far as we can tell now, they’ve never met again. Of course it’s none of our affair anyway, but the quarrel must have been—”
Crosse stopped as there was a discreet knock and Sir Geoffrey called out testily, “Yes?”
The door opened. “Excuse me, sir,” his aide said politely, “Lady Allison asked me to tell you that the water’s just gone on.”
“Oh, marvelous! Thank you.” The door closed. At once Crosse got up but the governor waved him back to his seat. “No, please finish, Roger. A few minutes won’t matter, though I must confess I can hardly wait. Would you like to shower before you go?”
“Thank you, sir, but we’ve our own water tanks at police HQ.”
“Oh yes. I forgot. Go on. You were saying—the quarrel?”
“The quarrel must have been pretty serious because it seems to have been final. A close friend of Grey told one of our people a few days ago that as far as he knew, Robin Grey had no living relatives. They really must hate each other.”
Sir Geoffrey stared at his cup, not seeing it. Suddenly he was remembering his own rotten childhood and how he had hated his father, hated him so much that for thirty years he had never called him, or written to him, and, when he was dying last year, had not bothered to go to him, to make peace with the man who had given him life. “People are terrible to each other,” he muttered sadly. “I know. Yes. Family quarrels are too easy. And then, when it’s too late, you regret it, yes, you really regret it. People are terrible to each other …”
Crosse watched and waited, letting him ramble, letting him reveal himself, cautious not to make the slightest movement to distract him, wanting to know the man’s secrets, and skeletons. Like Alan Medford Grant, Crosse collected secrets. Goddamn that bastard and his god-cursed files! God curse Dunross and his devilry! How in the name of Christ can I get those files before Sinders?
Sir Geoffrey was staring into space. Then the water gurgled delightedly in the pipes somewhere in the walls and he came back into himself. He saw Crosse watching him. “Hmmm, thinking aloud! Bad habit for a governor, eh?”
Crosse smiled and did not fall into the trap. “Sir?”
“Well. As you said, it’s really none of our business.” The governor finished his drink with finality and Crosse knew that he was dismissed. He got up. “Thank you, sir.”
When he was alone the governor sighed. He thought a moment then picked up the special phone and gave the operator the minister’s private number in London.
“This is Geoffrey Allison. Is he in please?”
“Hello, Geoffrey!”
“Hello, sir. I’ve just seen Roger. He assures me that the hiding place and Dunross will be completely guarded. Is Mr. Sinders en route?”
“He’ll be there on Friday. I presume there have been no repercussions from that seaman’s unfortunate accident?”
“No sir. Everything seems to be under control.”
“The P.M. was most concerned.”
“Yes sir.” The governor added, “About the 1–4a … perhaps we shouldn’t mention anything to our friends, yet.”
“I’ve already heard from them. They were distressingly irritated. So were our fellows. All right, Geoffrey. Fortunately it’s a long weekend this week so I’ll inform them Monday and draft his reprimand then.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Geoffrey, that American senator you have with you at the moment. I think he should be guided.”
The governor frowned. Guided was a code word between them, meaning “watched very carefully.” Senator Wilf Tillman, a presidential hopeful, was visiting Hong Kong en route to Saigon for a well-publicized fact-finding mission.
“I’ll take care of it as soon as I’m off the phone. Was there anything else, sir?” he asked, impatient now to bathe.
“No, just give me a private minute on what the senato
r’s program has been.” Program was another code which meant to furnish the Colonial Office with detailed information. “When you’ve time.”
“I’ll have it on your desk Friday.”
“Thank you, Geoffrey. We’ll chat at the usual time tomorrow.” The line went dead.
The governor replaced the phone thoughtfully. Their conversation would have been electronically scrambled and, at either end, unscrambled. Even so, they were guarded. They knew the enemy had the most advanced and sophisticated eavesdropping equipment in the world. For any really classified conversation or meeting he would go to the permanently guarded, concrete, cell-like room in the basement that was meticulously rechecked by security experts for possible electronic bugs every week.
Bloody nuisance, Sir Geoffrey thought. Bloody nuisance all this cloak-and-dagger stuff! Roger? Unthinkable, even so, once there was Philby.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
6:20 P.M.:
Captain Gregor Suslev waved jauntily to the police at the dockyard gates in Kowloon, his two plainclothes detectives fifty yards in tow. He was dressed in well-cut civilians and he stood by the curb a moment watching the traffic, then hailed a passing taxi. The taxi took off and a small gray Jaguar with Sergeant Lee, CID, and another plainclothes CID man driving, followed smartly.
The taxi went along Chatham Road in the usual heavy traffic, southward, skirting the railway line, then turned west along Salisbury Road on the southmost tip of Kowloon, passing the railway terminus, near the Golden Ferry Terminal. There it stopped. Suslev paid it off and ran up the steps of the Victoria and Albert Hotel. Sergeant Lee followed him as the other detective parked the police Jag.
Suslev walked with an easy stride and he stood for a moment in the immense, crowded foyer with its high ceilings, lovely and ornate, and old-fashioned electric fans overhead, and looked for an empty table among the multitude of tables. The whole room was alive with the clink of ice in cocktail glasses and conversation. Mostly Europeans. A few Chinese couples. Suslev wandered through the people, found a table, loudly ordered a double vodka, sat and began to read his paper. Then the girl was standing near him.
“Hello,” she said.
“Ginny, doragaya!” he said with a great beam and hugged her, lifting her off her little feet to the shocked disapproval of every woman in the place and the covert envy of every man. “It’s been a long time, golubchik.”
“Ayeeyah,” she said with a toss of her head, her short hair dancing, and sat down, conscious of the stares, enjoying them, hating them. “You late. Wat for you keep me wait? A lady no like wait in Victoria by her self, heya?”
“You’re right, golubchik!” Suslev pulled out a slim package and gave it to her with another beam. “Here, all the way from Vladivostok!”
“Oh! How thank you?” Ginny Fu was twenty-eight and most nights she worked at the Happy Drinkers Bar in an alley off Mong Kok, half a mile or so to the north. Some nights she went to the Good Luck Ballroom. Most days she would pinch-hit for her friends behind the counter of tiny shops within shops when they were with a client. White teeth and jet eyes and jet hair and golden skin, her gaudy chong-sam slit high on her long, stockinged thighs. She looked at the present excitedly. “Oh thank, Gregor, thank very much!” She put it in her large purse and grinned at him. Then her eyes went to the waiter who was strolling up with Suslev’s vodka, along with the smug, open contempt reserved by all Chinese for all young Chinese women who sat with quai loh. They must of course be third-class whores—who else would sit with a quai loh in a public place, particularly in the foyer of the Vic? He set down the drink with practiced insolence and stared back at her.
“Dew neh loh moh on all your pig-swill ancestors,” she hissed in gutter Cantonese. “My husband here is a 489 in the police and if I say the word he’ll have those insignificant peanuts you call your balls crushed off your loathsome body an hour after you leave work tonight!”
The waiter blanched. “Eh?”
“Hot tea! Bring me fornicating hot tea and if you spit in it I’ll get my husband to put a knot in that straw you call your stalk!”
The waiter fled.
“What did you say to him?” Suslev asked, understanding only a few words of Cantonese, though his English was very good.
Ginny Fu smiled sweetly. “I just ask him bring tea.” She knew the waiter would automatically spit in her tea now, or more probably, for safety, get a friend to do it for him, so she would not drink it and thus cause him to lose even more face. Dirty dog bone! “Next time no like meet here, lotsa nasty peoples,” she said imperiously, looking around, then crinkled her nose at a group of middle-aged Englishwomen who were staring at her. “Too much body stinky,” she added loudly, tossing her hair again, and chortled to herself seeing them flush and look away. “This gift, Gregy. Thank so very!”
“Nothing,” Suslev said. He knew she would not open the gift now—or in front of him—which was very good, sensible Chinese manners. Then, if she did not like the gift or was disappointed or cursed aloud that what was given was the wrong size, or wrong color, or at the miserliness of the giver or bad taste or whatever, then he could not lose face and she could not lose face. “Very sensible!”
“Wat?”
“Nothing.”
“You looks good.”
“You too.” It was three months since his last visit and though his mistress in Vladivostok was a Eurasian with a White Russian mother and Chinese father, he enjoyed Ginny Fu.
“Gregy,” she said, then dropped her voice, her smile saucy. “Finish drink. We begin holiday! I got vodka … I got other things!”
He smiled back at her. “That you have, golubchik!”
“How many day you got?”
“At least three but…”
“Oh!” She tried to hide her disappointment.
“… I’m back and forth to my ship. We’ve tonight, most of it, and tomorrow and all tomorrow night. And the stars will shine!”
“Three month long time, Gregy.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
“Yes.” Ginny Fu put away her disappointment and became pragmatic again. “Finish drink and we begin!” She saw the waiter hurrying with her tea. Her eyes ground into the man as he put it down. “Huh! Clearly it’s cold and not fresh!” she said disgustedly. “Who am I! A dirty lump of foreign devil dogmeat? No, I’m a civilized person from the Four Provinces who, because her rich father gambled away all his money, was sold by him into concubinage to become Number Two Wife for this chief of police of the foreign devils! So go piss in your hat!” She got up.
The waiter backed off a foot.
“What’s up?” Suslev asked.
“Don’t pay for teas, Gregy. Not hot!” she said imperiously. “No give tip!”
Nonetheless Suslev paid and she took his arm and they walked out together, eyes following them. Her head was high, but inside she hated the looks from all the Chinese, even the young, starched bellboy who opened the door—the image of her youngest brother whose life and schooling she paid for.
Dunross was coming up the steps. He waited for them to pass by, an amused glint in his eyes, then he was bowed in politely by the beaming bellboy. He headed through the throng for the house phone. Many noticed him at once and eyes followed him. He walked around a group of tourists, camera bedecked, and noticed Jacques deVille and his wife Susanne at a corner table. Both were set-faced, staring at their drinks. He shook his head, wearily amused. Poor old Jacques has been caught again and she’s twisting his infidelity in its well-worn wound. Joss! He could almost hear old Chen-chen laugh. “Man’s life is to suffer, young Ian! Yes, it’s the eternal yin warring on our oh so vulnerable yang….”
Normally Dunross would have pretended not to notice them, leaving them to their privacy, but some instinct told him otherwise.
“Hello, Jacques—Susanne. How’re things?”
“Oh hello, hello, tai-pan.” Jacques deVille got up politely. “Would you care to join us?”
“No thanks, can
’t.” Then he saw the depth of his friend’s agony and he remembered the car accident in France. Jacques’s daughter Avril and her husband! “What’s happened? Exactly!” Dunross said it as a leader would say it, requiring an instant answer.
Jacques hesitated. Then he said, “Exactly, tai-pan: I heard from Avril. She phoned from Cannes just as I was leaving the office. She, she said, ‘Daddy … Daddy, Borge’s dead.… Can you hear me? I’ve been trying to reach you for two days … it was head-on, and the, the other man was … My Borge’s dead … can you hear me….’” Jacques’s voice was flat. “Then the line went dead. We know she’s in the hospital at Cannes. I thought it best for Susanne to go at once. Her, her flight’s delayed so … so we’re just waiting here. They’re trying to get a call through to Cannes but I don’t hope for much.”
“Christ, I’m so sorry,” Dunross said, trying to dismiss the twinge that had rushed through him as his mind had substituted Adryon for Avril. Avril was just twenty and Borge Escary a fine young man. They had been married just a year and a half and this was their first holiday after the birth of a son. “What time’s the flight?”
“Eight o’clock now.”
“Susanne, would you like us to look after the baby? Jacques, why not get on the flight—I’ll take care of everything here.”
“No,” Jacques said. “Thanks but no. It’s best that Susanne go. She’ll bring Avril home.”