Noble House by James Clavell
“He says we have to be patient,” Susanne had told him in her gushing Parisienne French. “But Mother of God, how can we be? The poor child’s distraught and losing her mind. She keeps saying, ‘But I was the driver, it was me, Mumma, me, but for me my Borge would be alive, but for me….’ I fear for her, chéri!”
“Does she know yet that her … about her inside?”
“No, not yet. The doctor says not to tell her until he’s sure.” Susanne had begun to cry.
In agony he had calmed her as best he could and said he would call her back in an hour. For a while he had considered what he should do, then he had made arrangements and had left his office and come here.
The public phone booth near the newsstand was occupied so he bought an afternoon paper and glanced at the headlines. Twenty killed in resettlement mud slides above Aberdeen … Rain to continue … Will Saturday’s Great Race Day be canceled? … JFK warns Soviets not to interfere in Vietnam … Atom Test Ban Treaty signed in Moscow by Dean Rusk, Andrei Gromyko and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, rejected by France and China … Malayan Communists step up offensive … Kennedy’s second son, born prematurely, dies … Manhunt for the British Great Train Robbers continues … Profumo scandal damages Conservative Party …
“Excuse me, sir, are you waiting for the phone?” an American woman asked from behind him.
“Oh, oh yes, thank you, sorry! I didn’t see that it was empty.” He went into the booth, closed the door, put in the coin and dialed. The ringing tone began. He felt his anxiety rising.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Lop-sing please,” he said, not sure of the voice yet.
“There’s no Mr. Lop-ting here. Sorry, you have a wrong number.”
“I want to leave a message,” he said, relieved to recognize Suslev’s voice.
“You have a wrong number. Look in your phone book.”
When the code was completed correctly, he began, “Sorry to c—”
“What is your number?” interrupted him harshly.
Jacques gave it at once.
“Is it a phone booth?”
“Yes.” Immediately the phone clicked off. As he hung up he felt a sudden sweat on his hands. Suslev’s number was only to be used in an emergency but this was an emergency. He stared at the phone.
“Excuse me, sir,” the American woman called out through the glass doors. “Can I use the phone? I won’t be a moment.”
“Oh! Oh I’m—I won’t be a second,” Jacques said, momentarily flustered. He saw that three Chinese were waiting impatiently behind her now. They stared at him balefully. “I’m … I’ll just be a second.” He re-closed the door, sweat on his back. He waited and waited and waited and then the phone rang. “Hello?”
“What’s the emergency?”
“I … I just heard from Nice.” Carefully Jacques told Suslev about his conversation with his wife without mentioning any names. “I’m going there at once on the evening flight—and I thought I’d better tell you personally so the—”
“No, this evening’s too soon. Book tomorrow, on the evening flight.”
Jacques felt his world collapse. “But I talked to the tai-pan a few minutes ago and he said it was all right for me to go tonight. I’m booked. I can be back in three days, she really sounded awful on the phone. Don’t you th—”
“No!” Suslev told him more sharply. “I will call you tonight as arranged. This could all have waited till then. Don’t use this number again unless there’s a real emergency!”
Jacques opened his mouth to answer hotly but the phone was already dead. He had heard the anger. But this is an emergency, he told himself, enraged, beginning to redial. Susanne needs me there and so does Avril. And the tai-pan was all for it.
“Good idea, Jacques,” Dunross had said at once. “Take all the time you need. Andrew can cover for you.”
And now … Merde, what do I do? Suslev’s not my keeper!
Isn’t he?
DeVille stopped dialing, his sweat chilling, and hung up.
“Are you finished, sir?” the American woman called out with her insistent smile. She was in her fifties, her hair fashionably blue. “There’s a line waiting.”
“Oh … oh yes, sorry.” He fought the door open.
“You forgot your paper, sir,” she said politely.
“Oh, oh thank you.” Jacques deVille reached back for it and came out in misery. At once all the Chinese, three men and a woman, surged forward, elbowing him and the American lady out of the way. A heavyset matron got to the door first and slammed it shut behind her, the others crowding to be next.
“Hey … it was my turn,” the American woman began angrily but they paid no attention to her except to curse her and her antecedents openly and with great vulgarity.
Suslev was standing in the sleazy Kowloon apartment that was one of Arthur’s safe houses, his heart still thumping from the suddenness of the call. There was a damp, musky, soiled smell of ancient cooking in the room and he stared down at the phone, furious with Jacques deVille. Stupid motherless turd. Jacques is becoming a liability. Tonight I’ll tell Arthur what should be done with him. The sooner the better! Yes, and the sooner you calm down yourself the better, he cautioned himself. Angry people make mistakes. Put away your anger!
With an effort, he did just that and went out onto the dim, paint-peeled landing, locking the door behind him. Another key unlocked Ginny Fu’s door next to his.
“You want vodka?” she asked with her saucy smile.
“Yes.” He grinned back, pleased to look at her. She was sitting cross-legged on the old sofa and wore only a smile. They had been kissing when his phone had rung the first time. There were two phones in her apartment. Hers and the other one, the secret one in the cupboard that only he used and answered. Arthur had told him it was safe, bootlegged, unlisted and impossible to bug. Even so, Suslev only used the other apartment and its phone for emergencies.
Matyeryebyets, Jacques, he thought, still edgy from the sudden shrilling of his private phone.
“Drink, tovarich,” Ginny said, offering the glass. “Then drink me, heya?”
He grinned back, took the vodka and ran an appreciative hand over her cute little rump. “Ginny, golubushka you’re a good girl.”
“You bet! I best girl for you.” She reached up and fondled his earlobe. “We jig-jig heya?”
“Why not?” He drank the fiery liquid sparingly, wanting it to last. Her tiny nimble fingers were undoing his shirt. He stopped her for a moment and kissed her, she welcoming his kiss and returning it equally. “Wait till clothes off, heya?” she chuckled.
“Next week I go, eh?” he said, holding her in his bear hug. “How about you coming too, eh? The holiday I’ve always promised you?”
“Oh? Oh truly?” Her smile was immense. “Wen? Wen? You no tease?”
“You can come with me. We’ll stop in Manila, our first stop’s Manila, then north and back here in a month.”
“Oh a real month … oh Gregy!” She hugged him with all her might. “I make best ship’s captain girl all China!”
“Yes, yes you will.”
“Wen go … wen we go?”
“Next week. I’ll tell you when.”
“Good. Tomorrow I go get passport th—”
“No, no passport, Ginny. They’ll never give it to you. Those vïblyadoks’ll stop you. They won’t ever let you come with me … oh no, golubushka, those dirty police will never let you come with me.”
“Then wat I do, heya?”
“I’ll smuggle you aboard in a chest!” His laugh was rich. “Or perhaps on a magic carpet. Eh?”
She peered up at him, her dark eyes wide and brimming and anxious. “True you take me? True? One month on your ship, heya?”
“At least a month. But don’t tell anyone. The police watch me all the time and if they know, you won’t be able to come with me. Understand?”
“All gods bear witness not tell a weevil, not even my mother,” Ginny swore vehemently, then hugged hi
She used her fingers and her lips expertly, probing and touching and withdrawing and moving against him, concentrating on her task until he cried out and became one with the gods in the Clouds and the Rain. Her hands and lips stayed on him, not leaving while the last tiny fraction of pleasure remained. Then she ceased and curled against him and listened to the deepness of his breathing, very contented that she had done her job well. She, herself, she had not experienced the Clouds and the Rain though she had pretended to several times, to increase his pleasure. Only twice in all the times that they had pillowed had she reached the zenith and both times she had been very drunk and not really sure if she had or if she had not. It was only with Third Nighttime Sandwich Cook Tok at the Victoria and Albert that she would zenith every time. All gods bless my joss, she thought happily. With one month holiday and the extra money Gregor will give me, and, with joss, one more year with him, we’ll have enough money to open our own restaurant and I can have sons and grandsons and become one with the gods. Oh how lucky I am!
She was tired now for she had had to work hard, so she curled more comfortably against him, closed her eyes, liking him, thankful to the gods that they had helped her to overcome her distaste for his size and his white, toadlike skin and his rancid body smell. Thank all gods, she thought happily as she wafted into sleep.
Suslev was not sleeping. He was just drifting, his mind and his body at peace. The day had been good and a little very bad. After meeting with Crosse at the racetrack he had returned to his ship, appalled that there could be a security leak from the Ivanov. He had encoded Crosse’s information about Operation Dry Run and all the other things and sent it off in the privacy of his cabin. Incoming messages told him that Voranski would not be replaced until the next visit of the Sovetsky Ivanov, that the special psychochemical expert, Koronski, was available to arrive from Bangkok at twelve hours’ notice, and that he, Suslev, was to assume direction of Sevrin and liaise with Arthur directly. “Do not fail to obtain copies of the AMG files.”
He remembered how a chill had gone through him at that “do not fail.” So few failures, so many successes, but only the failures remembered. Where was the security leak aboard? Who read the AMG file apart from me? Only Dimitri Metkin, my second-in-command. It could not be him. The leak must be from elsewhere.
How far to trust Crosse?
Not far, but that man’s clearly the most priceless asset we have in the capitalistic camp of Asia and must be protected at all costs.
The feel of Ginny against him was pleasing. She was breathing softly, a tiny jerk from time to time, her breasts rising and falling. His eyes went through the doorway to the old-fashioned clock that stood in a niche of one of the untidy kitchen shelves among all the half-used bottles and tins and containers. The kitchen was in an alcove off the living room. Here in the only bedroom, the bed was huge and almost filled the room. He had bought it for her when he had begun with her two, almost three years ago. It was a good bed, clean, soft but not too soft, a welcome change from his bunk aboard.
And Ginny, she was welcome too. Pliant, easygoing, no trouble. Her blue-black hair was cut short and straight across her high forehead, the way he liked it—such a contrast to Vertinskaya, his mistress in Vladivostok, her with her sloe, hazel eyes, long wavy dark brown hair and the temper of a wildcat, her mother a true Princess Zergeyev and her father an insignificant half-caste Chinese shopkeeper who had bought the mother at an auction when she was thirteen. She had been on one of the cattle trucks of children fleeing Russia after the holocaust of ’17.
Liberation, not holocaust, he told himself happily. Ah, but it’s good to bed the daughter of a Princess Zergeyev when you’re the grandson of a peasant off Zergeyev lands.
Thinking of the Zergeyevs reminded him of Alexi Travkin. He smiled to himself. Poor Travkin, such a fool! Would they really release the Princess Nestorova, his wife, to Hong Kong at Christmas? I doubt it. Perhaps they will and then poor Travkin will die of shock to see that little old hag of the snows, toothless, wrinkled and arthritic. Better to spare him that agony, he thought compassionately. Travkin’s Russian and not a bad man.
Again he looked at the clock. Now it read 6:20. He smiled to himself. Nothing to do for a few hours but sleep and eat and think and plan. Then the oh so careful meeting with the English MP and, late tonight, seeing Arthur again. He chuckled. It amused him very much to know secrets Arthur did not know. But then Arthur holds back secrets too, he thought without anger. Perhaps he already knows about the MPs. He’s smart, very smart, and doesn’t trust me either.
That’s the great law: Never trust another—man, woman or child—if you want to stay alive and safe and out of enemy clutches.
I’m safe because I know people, know how to keep a closed mouth and know how to further State policy purely as part of my own life plan.
So many wonderful plans to effect. So many exciting coups to precipitate and be part of. And then there’s Sevrin …
Again he chuckled and Ginny stirred. “Go to sleep, little princess,” he whispered soothingly as to a child. “Go to sleep.”
Obediently she did not truly awaken, just brushed her hair out of her eyes and snuggled more comfortably.
Suslev let his eyes close, her body sweet against him. He let his arm rest across her loins. The rain had lessened during the afternoon. Now he noticed it had stopped. He yawned as he went into sleep, knowing the storm had not yet ended its work.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
6:25 P.M.:
Robert Armstrong drained his beer. “Another,” he called out blearily, feigning drunkenness. He was in the Good Luck Girlfriend, a crowded, noisy Wanchai bar on the waterfront, filled with American sailors from the nuclear carrier. Chinese hostesses plied the customers with drink and accepted banter and touch and watered drinks in return at high cost. Occasionally one of them would order a real whiskey and show it to her partner to prove that this was a good bar and they were not being cheated.
Above the bar were rooms but it was not wise for sailors to go to them. Not all of the girls were clean or careful, not from choice just from ignorance. And, late at night, you could be rolled though only the very drunk were robbed. After all, there was no need: sailors were ready to spend everything they had.
“You want jig-jig?” the overpainted child asked him.
Dew neh loh moh on all your ancestors, he wanted to tell her. You should be home in bed with some schoolbooks. But he did not say it. That would do no good. In all probability her parents had gratefully arranged this job for her so that all the family could survive just a little better. “You want drink?” he said instead, hiding that he could speak Cantonese.
“Scottish, Scottish,” the child called out imperiously.
“Why not get tea and I’ll give you the money anyway,” he said sourly.
“Fornicate all gods and the mothers of gods I not a cheater!” Haughtily the child offered the grimy glass the waiter had slapped down. It did contain cheap but real whiskey. She drained it without a grimace. “Waiter! Another Scottish and another beer! You drink, I drink, then we jig-jig.”
Armstrong looked at her. “What’s your name?”
“Lily. Lily Chop. Twenty-five dollars short time.”
“How old are you?”
“Old. How old you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Huh, coppers always lie!”
“How’d you know I’m a copper?”
“Boss tell me. Only twenty dollar, heya?”
“Who’s the boss? Which one’s he?”
“She. Behind the bar. She mama-san.”
Armstrong peered through the smoke. The woman was lean and scrawny and in her fifties, sweating and working hard, keeping up a running vulgar banter with the sailors as she filled t
Again Lily shrugged. “Listen, she tell me keep you happy or I out in street. We go upstairs now, heya? On house, no twenty dollar.” The child got up. He could see her fear now.
“Sit down,” he ordered.
She sat, even more afraid. “If I not pleeze she throw m—”
“You please me.” Armstrong sighed. It was an old ploy. If you went, you paid, if you didn’t go, you paid and the boss always sent a young one. He passed over fifty dollars. “Here. Go and give it to the mama-san with my thanks. Tell her I can’t jig-jig now because I’ve got my monthly! Honorable Red’s with me.”
Lily gawked at him then cackled like an old woman. “Eeeee, fornicate all gods that’s a good one!” She went off, hard put to walk on her high heels, her brassy chong-sam slit very high, showing her thin, very thin legs and buttocks.
Armstrong finished his beer, paid his bill and got to his feet. At once his table was claimed and he pushed through the sweating, shouting sailors for the door.
“You welcome anytime,” the mama-san called out as he passed her.
“Sure,” he called back without malice.
The rain was just a thin drizzle now and the day growing dark. On the street were many more raucous sailors, all of them American—British sailors had been ordered out of this area for the first few days by their captains. His skin felt wet and hot under his raincoat. In a moment he left Gloucester Road and the waterfront and strolled through the crowds up O’Brien Road, splashing through the puddles, the city smelling good and clean and washed. At the corner he turned into Lochart Road and at length found the alley he sought. It was busy, as usual, with street stalls and shops and scrawny dogs, chickens packed into cages, dried fried ducks and meats hanging from hooks, vegetables and fruits. Just inside the mouth of the alley was a small stall with stools under a canvas overhang to keep off the drizzle. He nodded at the owner, chose a shadowed corner, ordered a bowl of Singapore noodles—fine, lightly fried vermicelli-like noodles, dry, with chili and spices and chopped shrimps and fresh vegetables—and began to wait.