The Secret (41 page)

Inside the ponderous iron-bound oak front door we waited in a cavernous foyer. Lighted glass showcases covered all the stone walls, displaying a varied collection of things someone thought worth collecting and displaying. Some of the items were Western in origin, and others were Chinese.

Charlie pointed out a set of cups. “Wine cups,” he said. “Solid gold.” He explained why each cup had in the center a stem capped with a gold ball. “The ball would hit your nose if you tried to tip the cup all the way back and drink all the wine at once. You would have to
sip
the wine. It was a way of keeping people from getting drunk.”

Another case displayed a set of trophies won in yacht races. This confirmed my suspicion that the house had been British.

Still another case contained antique knives and pistols, also an apparently genuine steel chastity belt.

Most fascinating was an enameled crown, turquoise-colored, set with precious and semiprecious jewels, topped with a gold fringe of dragons. Ropes of pearls hung from the heads of the outermost dragons and would have fallen over the wearer’s shoulders.

“Yasheng Lin,” Charlie said under his breath as a door opened and a small Chinese gentleman came toward us.

“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, Mr. Cooper Senior, and Miss McAllister. Welcome. It is good to see you again, Charlie. Come with me.”

Yasheng Lin was, I suppose, sixty to sixty-five years old. His face was what I would call Oriental, with slanting dark eyes and a shiny, faintly yellow complexion. He wore a dark blue double-breasted suit and a white silk shirt.

By gesture he directed us to an adjoining room where we found a bar and a buffet of hors d’oeuvres.

When I was in Paris, Giselle had taken me out to see the Palace of Versailles. This room was like the rooms in that palace: gleaming parquet floors, walls covered in pale yellow silk, graceful antique French furniture …

Two little Chinese girls served us. They might have been twins. Each wore a form-fitting knee-length cheongsam with skirts slit to their hips, showing and then concealing their sleek legs as they walked. These were made of silk, one green and one red, and they were embroidered with gold and silver thread. One girl brought us little plates and offered hors d’oeuvres from a tray. The other took our orders for drinks. I asked for a Scotch and soda.

“Well … Misters Cooper. You have learned to like Hong Kong, have you not?”

“I have,” I said. “Very much. I’m impressed just now with the dresses your young women are wearing. I was thinking that maybe we should sell dresses like those in our shops in the States.”

“Cheongsams,” said Yasheng. “Yes. I have visited your shops. You could perhaps have them made up in sheer fabrics.”

“I think they would sell made just as they are. They are very attractive.”

“Well … perhaps they would be a—how shall I say?—a little pricey for the retail trade.”

“You can’t buy those in stores,” said Charlie. “Mr. Yasheng has them made. If I had one made up like that—that quality silk, that embroidery—I’d have to charge you … say, two thousand dollars for it. I mean American dollars.”

“You saw the one given to me in Shenzhen,” said Vicky. “How much is it worth?”

Charlie Han turned down the corners of his mouth. “More than that,” he said quietly.

Vicky frowned. “I suppose it’s rude of me to ask the price of a gift,” she said.

“Anyway, they are pretty, are they not?” Yasheng asked.

“Beautiful,” said Vicky.

A servant—another little girl in a cheongsam—came into the room and spoke to Yasheng.

He rose. “A friend of ours has come. I will welcome him.” He went out to the foyer and in a moment returned with a smiling and bowing Bai Fuyuan.

I began to wonder if this evening was not for some purpose other than to show us how a Hong Kong billionaire lived.

Bai greeted us all with great—I thought exaggerated—cordiality. He accepted champagne and sat down. He was wearing the white suit that seemed to be his trademark.

The conversation quickly turned to business. “You understand, I believe,” said Bai Fuyuan, “that the honorable Mr. Yasheng is an investor in our enterprise.”

“We didn’t know that,” Len told him curtly.

“Yes. To manufacture such a variety of goods in such quantities and to open the kind of stores you have seen requires a substantial injection of capital. Mr. Yasheng has provided.”

“That would not be a loan, I imagine,” my son said. “Mr. Yasheng owns your company.”

“Quite so,” said Yasheng. “I should say, however that the relationship is more subtle than that.”

“Then we are dealing with you, sir,” I said to Yasheng. “And not with Mr. Bai.”

“No. You continue to deal with him. He will represent me in everything.”

“I suppose the merchandise goes to Shanghai in your ships,” said Len.

“And sometimes is flown to the States in my airplanes,” said Yasheng. “Yasheng companies have invested in many enterprises.”

So. The man was a taipan. I tried to remember what I had read about them. They exercised enormous economic power. With complete autonomy. This one might be one of the few left. Powerful though they were, there was little room in the world for their kind anymore.

“Then in a sense, at least,” said Len, “we are partners.” He was speaking to Yasheng. “Do you know the meaning of the term ‘ripped off,’ Mr. Yasheng?”

“I do indeed.”

“In some sense we are being ripped off, probably in a minor way. Mr. Bai manufactures Cheeks merchandise to Cheeks specifications. He does it very well. It would be difficult to distinguish a garment made in China from one made in Hong Kong or in the States. Except for one thing. The colors don’t exactly match. Now—”

“This is true?” Yasheng asked Bai.

“It is true. The differences are subtle, but we have had difficulty matching the dyes. Black is black, of course, but—”

“The dyes are standard,” Len interrupted. “The colors vary, not by chance, but for some reason. We are not complaining about that, not yet anyway, but there is something else.”

“And what is that, Mr. Cooper?” Yasheng asked grimly.

“When we went to the store in Beijing we noticed that some of the merchandise in the showcases was Mr. Bai’s colors and some was ours. In other words, not everything being sold in Beijing originated in China. Some of it came from somewhere else—Hong Kong, I imagine. Someone is selling—”

“Stolen goods,” Yasheng interjected ominously.

“That thought had occurred to us,” said Len, though it had occurred to him alone, not to me.

“Why do the colors vary?” Yasheng asked Bai.

Bai hesitated for a moment, then said, “So the inspectors can see that what we are selling in China is in fact made in China. That makes a great difference—”

“In the payoffs,” said Yasheng.

Bai nodded.

I was surprised that they did not lapse into Chinese and leave us out of the conversation. Charlie glanced back and forth between Yasheng and Bai, looking apprehensive—in fact, miserable.

“Very well,” said Yasheng. “Then what is the origin of the merchandise
not
made in China?”

“I don’t know,” said Bai. “The merchandise is examined well before it reaches the stores. The inspectors are satisfied, adjustments are made, and we stock the stores.”

“Somebody is paying for the non-Chinese merchandise,” said Yasheng. “Who is buying it?”

“I will make it my business to find out,” said Bai. “I have no doubt I can do so.”

“Do that.”

We went in to dinner shortly. I cannot tell you what I ate. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I have been told that birds’-nest soup has nothing to do with twigs and straw but comes from birds’ saliva. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Nothing we were fed was nauseating. The flavors were subtle. Bai and Charlie oohed and aahed over some of the dishes and pronounced them exquisite. I ate whatever it was that was exquisite. I complimented Yasheng and said the meal was wonderful.

*   *   *

No one said anything in the car as we descended from the Peak to Arbuthnot Street. We sat down in the living room of the first apartment—Len and I, Vicky and Liz. From the windows we could see the lighted tower of the Bank of China Building, lights that were so bright through our windows that we needed not switch on night lights to go to the bathrooms. We poured nightcaps and sat sipping them. We turned on the TV and without sound glanced from time to time at the Chinese television programs coming in from Guangzhou. Oddly, perhaps, the new government had not squelched the broadcasting from the BCC or CNN, but we did not want to watch or hear the news just then.

“I have an odd feeling,” said Len. He was leaning back so far on his sofa that his head touched the wall. “Tonight.… Tonight the shit hit the fan.”

I nodded. “There’s been something wrong all the time.”

“Someplace in all this there’s larceny,” Len said. “There has to be.”

“We knew that and risked it,” I said.

“I’m not sure we’re the victims,” Len said.

“We weren’t invited up to the Peak just to see how a Hong Kong billionaire lives,” I said. “Charlie was
told
to deliver us up there. And Christ, Jesus, when Meyer Lansky said his crowd was bigger than United States Steel, he couldn’t have imagined—Yasheng has got to be
enormously
wealthy.”

“I was appraising,” said Liz. “I don’t know the value of things, much, but I’ll tell you, the wealth up there is
tremendous.
”

“Be a hell of a town to do business in,” said Vicky.

“Under the Brits,” Len said, “the maximum income-tax rate was sixteen percent. And it’s not in Beijing’s interest to raise it.”

“So what do
we
do?” I asked.

“Sleep on it,” said Liz.

So we did. Only I didn’t sleep much.

That night Liz did not wear her teddy but stripped to the crotchless panties, nipple-baring bra, black garter belt, and dark stockings she had been wearing all evening. She knew that was more erotic than nudity. If she had been a smaller, more handsome girl, she could have been a showgirl. She had the instincts for it.

She also knew I was distressed and knew how to relieve.

Afterward we felt a want for one final brandy, and she put on a robe and went to get the bottle and snifters. Returning, she threw aside the robe and poured small drinks. We fluffed up the pillows and sat with our backs to the head of the bed, sipping placidly. I fondled her gently, and she fondled me.

“Forgive me,” she said, “if I venture to meddle in something that’s really none of my business; but I can’t help but believe I know who’s ripping off whom.”

“Your opinion will be as good as mine,” I said.

“Okay. It’s Charlie Han.”

“Charlie has been a damned good friend of mine since … well, since before you were born, Liz.”

“I’m sorry, Jerry. But think about it. He rips off some of the merchandise he’s having made for you here. Instead of sending it to the States, he sends it to China. He sells it there, probably for not much after he makes what were this evening called ‘adjustments,’ and pockets a profit. He’s a hustler. I think I know the type.”

“So am I. I ought to know the type.”

“So you think he’s not?”

“No, he is. You’re right. But it’s really hard for me to believe that Charlie Han is stealing from
me.
”

“He’s your agent. He counts the merchandise.”

“Liz, really … don’t ask me to believe this. Or … don’t ask me to believe it until I see the proof.”

“Well. Okay, I’ve said too much already.”

She reached behind her back and unhooked the bra and then the garter belt. She was going to sleep nude. We always did.

As she slipped her stockings down, she whispered to me. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’ve brought me out here. It’s the experience of a lifetime.”

“I need hardly say that the pleasure has been mine.”

“I dread going home. I won’t see you anymore.”

“We’ll arrange it so we see each other,” I told her. “We’ll arrange it.”

58

LEN

We breakfasted together the next morning. It was a Sunday, so Catherine did not have to be driven to school, and Maria had the day off, as all Filipino maids did that one day of each week. We decided that this would be a good day to take Catherine and J. J. for a drive to the south side of the island, where we would see Repulse Bay and have lunch in a restaurant in Stanley. Because the Toyota could not carry all of us, someone had to do something different. Liz volunteered for that. She said she wanted to see the famous shopping street Nathan Road in Kowloon. My father said he would go with Liz.

That is how we spent Sunday. Our driver suggested after lunch that we might like to see something of the New Territories. He drove us through a tunnel to Kowloon and from there out into the country. We went, in fact, within a mile of the border. We were close enough to the border to see the towers of Shenzhen. Though Hong Kong was now part of China, the border remained heavily guarded to prevent unwanted immigration. At one point we encountered a roadblock, and a Chinese soldier courteously but firmly ordered a U-turn.

When we got home Catherine wanted to know where Grandpa was. We told her he was taking a nap. Where was Miss McAllister? She was taking a nap, too.

*   *   *

On Monday morning Vicky went with the driver to take Catherine to school. Maria took J. J. for a walk and Chinese lesson. As they walked, she would point out things and call them by their Chinese names. My father, and Liz, and I remained in the apartment. We had some E-mail and three faxes to scan and answer.

About 9:30 a call came up from the reception desk. An Inspector Kung Yuk-kam of the Hong Kong Police wanted to see us. I met him as he stepped off the elevator. My father was just behind me. Knowing that a police inspector had come to see us, he was as anxious as I was to know why.

“You are, I imagine, Mr. Leonard Cooper,” he said politely. “And this gentleman would be Mr. Jerry Cooper.”

“Yes. What can we do for you, Inspector?”

“I’m afraid I have some distressing news for you, Mr. Cooper.”