Jade Woman

34

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THE day the sky fell down, the South China Morning Post started by frightening me to death. I rushed back to the stall and shakily got a copy. And there she was, Janie, smiling from the middle of the front page. Mr. Markham, international merchant broker, whose firm co-sponsored entrants in the Macao motor and motorcycle races, was seen here arriving at Kai Tak Airport. Mrs. Markham was expected to do the honors and start a big event in three days’ time. I was so shaken I skulked into a taxi and zoomed out of Central District.

Go to Little Hong Kong—“Aberdeen” to most—where the harbor road runs between a steepish hillside and the vast motionless fleet of sampans locked in sediment. On the landward pavement open-air barbers work away under canvas awnings. I’d just been finished, hot towels and all, paid the man (watch out—it’s twice the price at festivals) and followed the team of dragon-boaters to see the launching.

All year the local dragon boat hangs on a wall by the barbers, until the famous races, when the water villages pick their strongest paddlers, most garish team colors, and argue nonstop about which offerings to which gods will bring most luck on race day. I’ll bet you’ve never seen a boat so long and thin. A zillion spectators gathered to exclaim in admiration. I’d a hundred dollars on the nose.

Dragon boats can’t go without a noisy drummer and exploding firecrackers and gong music encouraging any passing spirit to lend a metaphysical hand. I watched the team’s paddles making splendid flurry as the craft moved off. The crew, two abreast, generated more spray than forward motion but I was optimistic. I’d got three to one after spying on the Wan Chai boat.

“Don’t back them, Lovejoy. They’re to come in sixth.”

“Wotcher, Titch. They’ll do it, you see.” He’d positioned himself by a junk builder’s slipway. “No message for me about a certain lady, you idle sod?”

“She’s not in Hong Kong anymore. She’s gone to USA.”

A bad day getting worse. I looked away. “She okay?”

“They say so.”

“Thanks, Titch.” I pulled out money to pay him. “Any further news, let me know, eh?” I stared back at the scudding dragon boat, the jerky files of paddles. “It isn’t that I miss her, Titch. I mean, a bird’s only a bird, but…”

He trundled off among the pedestrians. A street market began a few yards away, his natural habitat. I shrugged about Marilyn. Good luck, love, glad you’re out of it. Here’s likely to worsen. I’d make sure of that.

A taxi driver fetched an urgent message long before my team had rowed the distance.

Steerforth, seven-thirty, cruise liner at the Ocean Terminal. “Clients BG,” he’d scribbled.

I was so anxious trying to pump the driver for information about odds on the New Territories’ dragon boats that we’d reached Kennedy Town before the penny dropped.

Brookers Gelman. Lulu back in town?

Leung and Ong were waiting for me when I emerged from the Treble Gold Bathorama.

I hurt Leung’s feelings by spurning his proffered sunflower seeds. The venue was a building I’d never seen before. “Major Money Hotel,” Ong translated the neon entrance sign. I wondered if these blokes ever got tired. I couldn’t imagine them resting, doing anything other than marshaling cars, signaling their hoodlums to go there, do that, phone ahead. I admired them.

Inside was plush, shady cool. I was conducted to a conference room by a pretty hostess. Chairs were arranged in an oval, oddly no table or papers. A conference was already in progress. Dr. Chao in his traditional garb, Ling Ling blinding me in yellow with heart-stealing pale jade earrings older than the world, two of her women fashioneers, Sim, Fatty wheezing away, Ramone, Sun Sen, and about a dozen others, Chinese men in dark suits arranged like a jury. Another score or so, diverse nationalities, sat facing them. All were new to me. Leung, Ong, and sundry fokis stood by doors. Amahs fetched drinks to tiny individual stands by each chair. My chirpiness left the instant I sat because they were speaking in English and nobody stopped talking. Previously, they’d used Cantonese. I felt my knees tremble. The Triad was in session.

“We’ve the emerald problem solved,” a dapper South American titch was saying.

From Ling Ling: “Does any official Colombian government contractor obtain more than thirty percent of the excavated emeralds? It would be troublesome to buy them out.”

“Not for two years, Little Sister. In diamonds, which lost four-fifths of their value in a five-year downturn, we’ve seen a strong recovery sustained since 1987.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Chao said. “Now, aeroplane components?”

A surprisingly matronly European lady, Italian my guess, quickly summarizing the state of play in holding airlines and air forces to ransom over spare parts. She spoke with determination, a schoolmarm threatening detention.

“A seven percent increment,” she said, adding quickly as the listeners stirred unhappily,

“but we predict an annual nineteen points next year. National labor difficulties—”

“Thank you.” Dr. Chao wanted no details. “Medical?”

An Oxford-accented Cantonese told us precisely how new outbreaks of meningitis in the Middle East had helped enormously in cornering markets in certain antibiotics, how fake chemotherapeutics and vaccines had improved cash flow from Southeast Asia and the USA… I switched off.

Most of the taipans were Cantonese, Chinese at least. The rest were assorted. One looked Filipino, two were Mediterranean, one bloke a Nordic giant the size of Leung, an Indian woman, a couple were Latin Americans. Why no Negroes? I jolted back, all ears.

“Antiques?” Dr. Chao had just said.

“Brokerage continues our main problem,” the Hindu lady said. “But our lawyers report that they can now bypass all national laws that restrict export. Asset-stripping of major national collections is now routine.” There rose a murmur of appreciation. “However, attempts to levy our charge on the auction houses’ intakes failed in USA and UK. It works well in the Continent and Australasia, but costs are high, forty percent of the gross.”

Feet shuffled. Dr. Chao murmured at Ling Ling, who did not hesitate. “Mix purchase takeover with new-start auction businesses in the difficult countries, Tai Tai. Then buy out the easier places.”

“Immediately, Little Sister?” The Hindu lady was disturbed.

“Yes.”

The matronly Italian cut in. “Little Sister. What percentage of outlay would be recovered in the first year?”

“Without other considerations, twenty-two percent. With, nearly forty.”

“Don’t let’s do it,” the Nordic god said impatiently.

“Your comment is worthy of thought, Mr. Van Demark,” Dr. Chao said with profound calm. “In your sector, of tourist concessions, expenditure of a million dollars brings in one eighty thousand. Antiques are currently engaged in laying out twenty thousand for a return of six million per annum. Compare the ratios of the two sectors. The profitabilities are… ?”

“Point one eight, three hundred.” From Ling Ling without a calculator. “One thousand, six hundred and sixty-six point six recurring times more profitability in the antiques sector.”

Van Demark reddened. The Hindu lady smiled and went on, “Our antiques have had notable successes. Theft recycling continues at a steady thirty percent of gross. The insurance and investment brokers still pay us four percent on all purchased items for market tranquillity. Museum-protection income has risen a quarter…”

I listened, gaping. I thought it was going to be a list of Cologne fake Roman glass, Italian porcelains, and who had enough nerve these days to market English hammered silver coins. Instead, I was hearing how the world was run. Normally I’d have been enthralled, but as the minutes ticked by, I sank further into despond. There was a message here. I’d been allowed to sit in on the Triad’s think tank. I was doomed.

They burbled on—drugs, extortion, shipping, insider share trading. Ling Ling herself did the bars and bar girls; her two women accounted for hotels and, surprisingly, sports concessions in Southeast Asia. My depressed neurons switched off. One thing: No hidey-hole screens were visible, so everybody, good and bad, was here in this room.

As the meeting broke up I tried to reach the Italian woman but was fingered by Ong and conducted to a separate room, in fact an auditorium. A group of Cantonese blokes huddled on the stage broke into smiles and fists— together gestures of jubilation when Ling Ling entered.

“Picture show, Lovejoy,” Ong said. I settled back as the first slide came on. Proving sessions—“proofies” to the trade—always make me nervous. Every good fake, even genuine antiques, undergoes this trial. Think of it as a screen test, where a knowledgeable jury tries to find defects in the pack of lies which the public will be told.

I ogled the projection.

It was beautiful, my Song Ping complete with frame. One of the men described the artistic features “as cataloged,” and was followed by a scientist who snapped us straight into high-pressure liquid chromatographic analyses of God knows what, seasick graphs, scanning electron micrographs of pollen grains found in the paint. An inorganic chemist showed us photometric and emission studies. An entomologist talked of spiders’ webs on the frame. Somebody had analyzed the glues, varnishes, the canvas, hey-noney-no.

It passed superbly, to my pride. Three others took over and dealt with exhibition of artifacts representing poor Song Ping’s hard times in old Canton. I especially enjoyed this bit, the old street photographs, maps of the city, grainy black-and-whites of Song Ping himself outside a shop, tickets, passes, fragments of a Chinese diary. It was lovely, a whole authenticated account of a life in old Canton. The printers had excelled themselves, producing faded catalogs of first twenty, then fifty-eight, then a hundred and sixty, paintings. Some goon read them all out in Cantonese, measurements and all, the maniac. My brain wasn’t up to Ling Ling’s, but producing one every two months would see me free in about forty years. Four decades.

“The Song Ping exhibition will begin tomorrow,” Dr. Chao announced, concluding the proceedings. “It will be a prodigious success. The painting will be on view one week from now.”

My vision misted, self-pity, as the know-alls babbled on. It wasn’t fair. Sentenced to forty years for naught, a caring compassionate bloke like me. I was so sorry for myself.

I’d now never see East Anglia, where even the future is filled with bygones.

But by the time Ling Ling rose with murmured thanks to the experts, I too was smiling and nodding with the best, a picture of elation. Sod imprisonment, and sod the Triad as well. I’d get on with my private holocaust.

Tempting the gods, I even smiled at my victims, Sim and Fatty. The gods thunderbolted me instantly. Ling Ling left to hostess the important visitors, and Dr. Chao summoned me aside.

From midnight on I was to go into exile. Well, even jail can improve living standards.