High up in the Hong Kong tower that he owned by special agreement with the People’s Administrative Committee of Hong Kong, Jonas Breem of Caloil surveyed Victoria harbor and the clustering of high-rise apartments and business offices, and imagined what it might be like ten years hence. Breem, gesturing with his large scotch and ice to his concubine, Mi Yin, said, “Beijing will make a mint.”
“Maybe not,” proffered Mi Yin, a diminutive five feet, the sheen of her black hair catching a reflection from Breem’s opulent bar.
Breem didn’t turn his head, but kept looking out the enormous tinted plate-glass window, swirling the ice in his drink. “And what the shit would you know about it?” he said. “You’re paid to fuck, not forecast.”
She shrugged, apparently not bothered by his vulgar outburst. “I was just thinking,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Well don’t,” he cautioned. “Get your ass over here.”
She got up from the couch, the midnight blue qi pao she was wearing amply split at the thigh, revealing a brown slash of flesh that Breem always found enticing. His drink in his right hand, he steered her in front of him with his left, unzipped the qi pao and slid his hand around, following the line of her bra, cupping her breasts, squeezing them tightly.
“You like that?” he asked.
“Yes,” she lied, and wondered how it was that such a man had risen to the top of the heap in his cutthroat business yet was so stupid about women as to think a woman liked having her breasts squeezed tightly. Maybe he knew very well they didn’t like it, but he kept doing it anyhow, control of any situation being his nirvana.
Breem called her just one of his Hong Kong “fringe benefits,” though he knew she was highly intelligent as well as beautiful, her sense of irony as subtle as her perfume, her timing deft as a lover of long experience. He was also sure Mi Yin was an operative of the Gong An Bu, the Chinese secret police — sent to keep tabs on him — her “accidental” meeting with him no doubt carefully arranged by Beijing. Well, he’d screw her on behalf of the people, he resolved, and she wouldn’t get any more out of him than he wanted to give. He was convinced that after she’d taken off the sexy, thigh-split qi pao and made love, and he lay back snoring, she’d be quickly checking his briefcase for the seismic and drill reports he received daily by fax from the various drill sites scattered throughout the countries of Southeast Asia. In one of those quirky war situations not known to the general public, the Chinese had taken over all the drill sites, moving all the American experts to a concentration camp, yet the daily drill reports from the skeleton-staffed Chinese drill site crews were still faxed to Breem in Hong Kong as the head of Chical Enterprises and Caloil.
“Why, I wonder?” Mi Yin had asked. “I mean with America and China fighting—”
“For Chrissake, you can’t—” He began unclipping her bra and peeling, sliding the qi pao down over her shoulders and buttocks. “—be that stupid.”
“What d’you mean?” she asked like a petulant schoolgirl.
“China’s one of the biggest goddamn investors on the Hong Kong exchange. That’s one reason why they don’t want this war to drag on. They’re looking for a knockout punch early in the game to show the Vietnamese who owns what.” He slid his hand down inside her magenta pink panties. “It’s one reason they don’t want to upset the agreement between Caloil and Beijing. C’mon, let’s get into the sack.”
“How about all the Americans from the drill ships?” she asked. “The ones taken prisoner.”
“Hey, what the fuck is this — an interrogation? Since when do you give a shit who’s taken prisoner? Anyway, the guys that came out to work the Caloil sites knew what the fuck they were doing. They got extra money.”
“You don’t care about them.”
“Much as I care about you, sweetheart,” which Mi Yin knew was not at all. “C’mon,” he commanded. “Take off your drawers.”
“Close the drapes,” she said.
“Why? I want the whole of Hong Kong to see us fuck.”
He was bluffing and she knew it. As chief executive officer of Caloil, he had to obey, at least publicly, the social mores of Hong Kong. He had to toe the line a bit more regarding sex. But even that didn’t faze him because in the end, when the party’s political purists, the cadres, had their say about good socialistic behavior, it would be the same old story — all a question of money, in this case Hong Kong dollars.
“C’mon,” he said, “go down on me!” She sat on the huge water bed, its surface undulating like a small sea as she pulled her hair back and reached across his hairy body for a condom on the bedside table, her breasts brushing his face. He bit at her nipple.
“Ow—”
“C’mon, you beauty — you love it, right? Or would you like to be having it off with all these saps?”
She cocked her head prettily, like some rare and beautiful bird of paradise. “Saps? What does it mean?”
“You serious?”
“Yes,” she said unapologetically. “I don’t know what ‘saps’ means.”
“Losers,” he said. “All the losers the Chinese are putting in that camp.”
“You really don’t care about them,” she said again, looking puzzled — or was she just putting on a Miss Goody Two-Shoes act? he wondered.
“No, I don’t care,” he answered. “Why should I? They’re all over twenty-one, sugar. They don’t know what makes the world go around by now, it’s tough tit for them — right?”
She shrugged noncommittally.
“What do you think of that?” he asked, looking down at his erection. “That’s what makes my world go round. That and money. Right? You don’t do it for free, do you?”
Mi Yin didn’t answer.
“You love me?” he asked. His laugh was hard and scornful. “You’re a hooker, Mi Yin — an expensive one, but you’re a hooker, right? But listen,” he said, propping himself up on an elbow, grabbing her wrist, “just remember you’re my hooker. Bought and paid for. Right?”
She nodded.
He fell back on the water bed, causing a wild wave in the water bed, which shivered before it started settling down. “But man, are you built.” He grabbed her ponytail down over the front of her head and pulled her down on him. Her mouth was too dry. He reached out and poured from his drink.
“Now—” He laughed, struck by what he thought was a terrific pun. “—have a scotch on the cock!”
The things she did for Beijing — the safety of her parents in the balance.
So let her go through his briefcase, he thought, checking the seismic and drill reports he received daily by fax from the drill ships, making sure that he wasn’t pulling a fast one — drilling, finding gas or oil, but giving Beijing a different seismic profile from somewhere else in the South China Sea, where there was little if any promise of gas or oil. The trick was to give them a seismic profile made in the same depth as where you’d found good promise of oil, and to return to the true position of the find later on, until ownership of all claims in the South China Sea islands had been settled either by the international court in The Hague or by what busy law professors were calling a “prevailing military presence”—which meant, CEO Breem had told his EOs, “which army in the area has the biggest fucking guns.”
Those that might be involved besides the Vietnamese and the People’s Liberation Army were Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, all of whom claimed part of the islands and reefs scattered over the 35-million-square-kilometer South China Sea, nearly four times bigger than the United States, including Alaska. Breem dismissed Malaysia and the Philippines. The Malaysians didn’t have the balls to start anything with Beijing, not with thirty-six percent of Malaysia’s population being Chinese.
Then there were the Philippines, but Breem thought they had enough trouble at home trying to handle their terminally ill economy. Besides, they’d kicked out the Americans from the big base at Subic Bay and the American jets from Clark Field. “Stupid!” Breem had told his executives. No, the fight, if there was to be any, would be between the big military muscle in the region: China and such traditional rivals and enemies as the Vietnamese and the Taiwanese, with North Korea always a wild card.
Then again, it wasn’t clear whether Taiwan and Beijing might not subsume enough of their differences to team up, making a joint claim for the islands, so rumor had it, along a proposed fifty-one, forty-nine percent China-Taiwan split.
And now the ex-Soviet republics were having a basement sale of everything from the upgraded MiG-29s to submarines, the PLA was modernizing, and part of the ex-Soviets’ sales ploy was throwing in pilot training for the MiG-29s to sweeten the deal. “Smart move,” Breem told his executives, noting that the Vietnamese navy was strictly brown water — coastal patrol — but since China had started purchasing more submarines from Russia to go blue water, so had Vietnam. With the forced withdrawal of U.S. naval forces from the Philippines, Breem said, “The whole region is a goddamn powder keg!” But he was sure he’d backed the right horse. China would win.