A million U.S. dollars does not buy a house on Hong Kong Island, not even a small one; almost everyone lives in apartment blocks. The few remaining houses, old colonial constructions (built by the taipans of yesteryear high up on the Peak and away from the cholera and malaria that made nineteenth-century Asia a threat to expatriate health), tended to be owned by international corporations and used by their top executives to entertain and impress. To own privately one of the three- or four-story mansions that clung to the side of the mountain was proof of membership in the local aristocracy, a demonstration of wealth staggering even by Hong Kong standards.
Jonathan Wong had organized the conveyancing when Emily first bought hers six years before. She had been excited, full of plans for improvements and visions of the many parties she was going to give. Since then she had hardly stopped adding wings, demolishing walls, changing decor. Her swimming pool was the largest private one in the territory, almost Olympic size, shaped in an oblong with Roman columns and terra-cotta tiles on the perimeter. The house faced southwest so that the view was not of the harbor but of the dense green drop to the Lamma Channel and the wide-open sea beyond.
A large awning close to the swimming pool gave some shade. She was sitting in a fawn bathrobe and Gucci sunglasses when her maid showed him in.
He pecked her on the cheek, sat down opposite her at the marble table.
“I’ve got the cook to give us Italian for once. Antipasto misto, spaghetti al funghi followed by fruit. I found some reasonable strawberries in Oliver’s that you can have with cream à l’anglais if you like. Or have you given up cream along with every other middle-class male approaching forty?”
Wong took off his jacket, undid his tie. “I still eat cream. I hold the view that it’s stress, not cholesterol, that kills. Anyway, I don’t have the strength of character to give up cream.”
She wasn’t smiling today at his jokes. She even seemed irritated that he’d removed his tie. The stock market hadn’t crashed; it must be a particularly heavy period.
He waited until the maid had brought an ice bucket with a bottle of Perrier. “So, you have more work to burden me with?”
“If it’s not too much to ask.” She studied him for a moment. “I’m afraid it’s just a tad controversial, but I want you to do it anyway. Let’s be frank: You owe me, and I need you to do this thing.”
Under his smile Wong quaked. He couldn’t tell how closely she was looking at him through the black lenses. “Shoot, this poor slave is only too eager to be of assistance.” He was surprised at how little sarcasm he was able to invest in the words.
“You remember the Zedfell purchase of Chancery Towers?”
Wong shot her a sharp glance. “How could I forget?”
It had been about three years ago. Emily had introduced an important piece of conveyancing into his firm. As usual, she had channeled it through Wong, although he was not a conveyancer himself. He had assumed that the transaction was proceeding normally when his conveyancing partner had demanded a meeting with Wong and Rathbone, the senior partner. The conveyancing partner had been nervous.
“Cash! They want to buy a whole office tower in cash! It’s bent, and I’m not prepared to carry on unless I get the full support of all the partners.”
Wong had had to admit the conveyancing partner had a point. Zedfell Incorporated, the would-be purchaser of a substantial apartment building, was, on examination, owned entirely by an offshore company, which in turn was owned by sixteen Chinese men, all domiciled in the PRC. The problem arose from some recent legislation intended to crack down on money laundering. Nobody doubted that the sixteen gentlemen who owned Zedfell were corrupt Communist cadres who had accumulated a great deal of spare cash and needed to hide it. Nobody doubted either that Emily was helping them because she owed them favors.
Rathbone had found a way of describing the transaction that seemed to take it outside the antilaundering legislation. But the firm had looked on Emily in a different light from then on. In banking parlance she was no longer Triple A, and by extension neither was Wong.
Emily took off her sunglasses, looked him in the eye. “Well, Zedfell want to buy another three apartment blocks, two on Kowloon, near Castle Peak, one at North Point. They’ve also successfully negotiated for an office block in Kennedy Town.”
“I see.”
“Total price for all four transactions is in the region of five hundred million U.S. Payment will be in cash. Your firm will receive the money itself and bank it.”
Wong took a sip of Perrier. Even under the awning it was hot. He was sweating and wished he’d brought his sunglasses.
He swallowed hard. “No, Emily. I’m sorry.”
She replaced her sunglasses, stared out over the Lamma Channel. For a full two minutes he had her in profile, the jutting chin, the black glasses, the bathrobe.
“Emily?”
She turned back to him, pushed the sunglasses up onto the top of her head. He thought she was smiling until he saw it was a grimace. In all the years she had never shown him this side of herself, the side other people talked about, the killer instinct finely honed.
“We all have to grow up sometime, Johnny. I’ve helped you put it off for long enough. You were my innocence, but I can’t afford you anymore. And anyway, I’ve made you lazy and dumb. So listen. You’re going to do this thing. Understand? Of course you’ll be paid your usual exorbitant fees, whatever they are.”
Wong opened some more buttons on his shirt, wiped his palms on the Kent and Curwen jacket that he’d slung across a chair. In one of the pockets he found a cigarette, lit it. She had turned away from him again, presented him with her stubborn profile. He let the silence continue. Open defiance would only make her more determined. If he soothed her somehow, she would see how ridiculous she was being.
He lit a second cigarette from the first, stood up, walked around the table, knelt by her chair. To his surprise she put a hand down without looking at him, stroked his face.
“I’ve always loved you, Johnny, like the brother I never had.”
“I love you too, like a sister.”
“You’ll do it?”
“Emily, listen, it’s out of the question. Five hundred million U.S.? We only just got away with the Zedfell thing last time. And that was only about thirty million. I’m not going to ask questions about where this money is coming from, but you know and I know that it’s hot. A sum like that gets onto the front pages of Time and Asiaweek. My firm would be blown away in the scandal. Remember what happened to Freeman’s in the Nabian debacle?”
Wong remembered. So did every other lawyer of his generation. A senior partner who committed suicide after fleeing to London, two other partners arrested and unable to work for two years until the trial, when they’d got off by the skin of their teeth, the loss of major banking and other Triple A clients. All because of an illegal conveyance considerably less sinister than the one Emily was proposing. It had taken Freeman’s ten years to return to genuine profitability, and even now it was doomed to remain in the second league.
She sighed, withdrew her hand. “I see.”
He forced a smile, stood behind her chair, started to massage her neck. She liked that.
“Oh, I know you’re the empress of Hong Kong and not in the habit of being defied, but frankly, you don’t own our firm. You give us a lot of work, you’re one of our most valued clients, but if the partners were forced to choose between ruining our reputation by taking on these conveyances and losing your business, they’d choose to let you go, I’m afraid. You see, if we took it on, we’d be in danger of losing all our other clients. No one would understand, no one. It’s as if Morgan Grenfell were to open a pawnshop; it just doesn’t happen.”
Emily let her head fall back until she was looking directly into his eyes. She pulled the sunglasses down to the tip of her nose. “It’s only your partners you’re worried about-nothing else?”
“I swear, nothing else.” He half smirked. “Except that the whole thing scares me shitless.”
She smiled. “Tell me about it, Johnny. You think just because I’m a filthy rich bitch I don’t wake up in a cold sweat most nights?”
“You? You’re pure Teflon.”
She let her head drop further backward so that she was looking at the awning. “But the terror, my friend, is the cloud that always comes when there’s a silver lining. Those deals where the green balls slide down your back every time you think about what you’re about to do-those deals are the ones that really pay off. Because those are the ones nobody else will have the guts for. See?”
“If you say so. I don’t have your nerve, Emily, we both know that. I don’t even know why you carry on. God knows you have enough.”
“Oh, but you do know why. You once said it better than I ever could. Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
“During your first year at Oxford, my dear. I remember getting a very distressed telephone call-”
“Don’t, Emily-”
“A very distressed telephone call. A bunch of brutal English thugs after a night in a pub to which you should never have gone, wasn’t that it? It was not so much the physical damage, though God knows they really beat you up. It was the psychological scars that remained with you-to this day, I would guess.”
“All right, you’ve made your point.”
“The point is that it was not your daddy or me who persuaded you to give up your dreams. It was racist England. Or simple human reality, whatever. I’ve never forgotten your words: ‘If one must be Chinese, it is important to be a rich Chinese.’ That’s when you changed to law. The terror of big money is nothing compared to the terror of no money-especially for someone like you. Am I right?”
“Probably. You’ve said enough.” He allowed himself to look annoyed. He didn’t want to be reminded of the humiliation or of the deeper lesson that he’d been too ashamed to tell Emily about. After his wounds had healed, he had paid some thugs from a local Chinese restaurant who claimed to be part-time triads to avenge him. He remembered a garage late at night, four big beef-faced young Englishmen squeaking like pigs, actually shitting themselves in terror of the eight yellow men with steel pipes, bicycle chains, knives and, of course, meat cleavers, while he stood shaking with something truly awful: the realization that survival requires power and if you have no natural authority of your own, why, then, you must buy it.
It was after the night of his revenge that he’d told Emily of his vow to be a rich Chinese, leaving out the squalid details that lurked behind it. The whole chain of events lay so far outside his normal, mild-mannered approach to life that he preferred to look on it most of the time as an aberration. But the fact was, he was no different from her. With his back against the wall or his ego threatened he would cut, maim, murder; artistic aspirations were no help at all. He turned back to her and forced a smile. Her eyebrows were raised.
“So, if your partners can be persuaded, you’ll accept?”
“Reluctantly, and with green balls already running down my back, yes.”
“Then here’s why they’ll let you take the case.”
When Emily finished, she handed Wong a cordless telephone with which to call Rathbone. True to his work ethic, Rathbone was in his office eating a sandwich. Wong set up the meeting for two-thirty with Rathbone, Savile and Watson, the Australian commercial partner, and Ng, the Chinese litigation partner. Then he had Emily’s maid bring him a Bloody Mary. He took a pad and pen out of his briefcase.
“I’d better write down the names of the companies you mentioned. And those people you talked about-I’d had no idea.”
Without referring to any documents Emily recited the names of more than one hundred companies and personnel without a pause.
“And they’re all owned by or work for these sixteen men who own Zedfell?”
“All of them. I think you’ll find that something in the region of sixty percent of your turnover last year was generated one way or another in the PRC and came through one or more of these companies. You’re right to say that I don’t own your firm. They do.”
As Wong rose to leave, Emily put the tip of her sunglasses in her mouth and said, “By the way, I have a confession. I think I really do fancy the pants off your brother-in-law.”
Wong forced a smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”