Tai-Pan

CHAPTER ONE

“A pox on this stinking island,” Brock said, staring around the beach and up at the mountains. “The whole of China at our feets and all we takes be this barren, sodding rock.”

He was standing on the foreshore with two of his fellow China traders. Scattered about them were other clusters of traders, and officers from the expeditionary force. They were all waiting for the Royal Navy officer to begin the ceremony. An honor guard of twenty marines was drawn up in two neat lines beside the flagpole, the scarlet of their uniforms a sudden splash of color. Near them were the untidy knots of sailors who had just fought the flagpole into the stony soil.

“Eight bells were time to raise the flag,” Brock said, his voice rasping with impatience. “It be an hour past. Wot’s godrotting delay for?”

“It’s bad joss to curse on a Tuesday, Mr. Brock,” Jeff Cooper said. He was a lean, hook-nosed American from Boston, his frock coat black and his felt top hat set at a jaunty angle. “Very bad!”

Cooper’s partner, Wilf Tillman, stiffened slightly, feeling the underlying edge to the younger man’s nasal voice. He was thickset and ruddy, and came from Alabama.

“I’ll tell thee right smartly, this whole godrotting flyspeck be bad joss!” Brock said. “Joss” was a Chinese word that meant Luck and Fate and God and the Devil combined. “Godrotting bad.”

“It better not be, sir,” Tillman said. “The future of the China trade’s here now—good joss or bad joss.”

Brock stared down at him. “Hong Kong’s got no future. It’s open ports on the China mainland we be needing, and you knowed it, by God!”

“The harbor’s the best in these waters,” Cooper said. “Plenty of room to careen and refit all our ships. Plenty of room to build our homes and warehouses. And no Chinese interference at long last.”

“A colony’s got to have arable land and peasants to work the land, Mr. Cooper. An’ revenue,” Brock said impatiently. “I be walking all over and so have you. Not a crop’ll grow here. There be no fields or streams, no grazing land. So no meat and no spuds. Everything we be needing’ll have to come by sea. Think of the cost. Why, even the fishing be rotten. An’ who’s to pay upkeep of Hong Kong, eh? Us and our trade, by God!”

“Oh, that’s the sort of colony you want, Mr. Brock?” Cooper said. “I thought the British Empire”—he spat deftly to windward—“had enough of that sort of colony.”

Brock’s hand strayed near his knife. “Be you spitting to clear yor throat, or spitting on the Empire?” Tyler Brock was nearing fifty, a big, one-eyed man as hard and as permanent as the iron he had been forced to peddle in Liverpool as a youth, and as strong and as dangerous as the fighting merchant ships he had escaped to and at length had come to rule as head of Brock and Sons. His clothes were rich and the knife at his belt was jeweled. His beard was graying like his hair.

“It’s a cold day, Mr. Brock,” Tillman said quickly, inwardly angry at his young partner’s loose tongue. Brock was no man to bait, and they could not afford open enmity with him yet. “Plenty of chill on the wind, eh, Jeff?”

Cooper nodded briefly. But he did not take his eyes off Brock. He had no knife, but there was a derringer in his pocket. He was of a height with Brock but slighter, and unafraid.

“I be givin’ thee piece of advice, Mr. Cooper,” Brock said. “Best not spit too often after saying ‘British Empire.’ There be some wot baint be givin’ thee benefit of doubt.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brock, I’ll remember,” Cooper replied easily. “And I’ll give you some advice: It’s bad joss to curse on a Tuesday.”

Brock suppressed his temper. Eventually he would crush Cooper and Tillman and their company, the biggest of the American traders. But now he needed them as allies against Dirk and Robb Struan. Brock cursed joss. Joss had made Struan and Company the greatest house in Asia, and so rich and powerful that the other China traders had named it in awe and jealousy

The Noble House—noble because it was first in riches, first in largess, first in trade, first in clippers, but mostly because Dirk Struan was Tai-Pan,

the Tai-Pan among all the tai-pans of Asia. And joss had cost Brock an eye seventeen years ago, the year that Struan had founded his empire.

It had happened off Chushan Island. Chushan was just south of the huge port of Shanghai, near the mouth of the mighty Yangtse River. Brock had beaten up through the monsoon with a huge cargo of opium—Dirk Struan a few days astern, also carrying opium. Brock had reached Chushan first, sold his cargo and turned around, knowing happily that now Struan would have to go farther north and try a new coast with fresh risks. Brock had sped south for home—Macao—his coffers filled with bullion, the full wind astern. Then a great storm had suddenly swooped out of the China seas. The Chinese called these storms

tai-fung, the Supreme Winds. The traders called them typhoons. They were terror incarnate.

The typhoon had battered Brock’s ship mercilessly, and he had been pinned by the falling masts and spars. A shorn halyard, caught by the winds, had flailed him as he lay helpless. His men had cut him loose but not before the broken shackle-ended rope had gouged out his left eye. The ship had been on her beam ends and he helped them cut the rigging and spars adrift, and by some miracle she had righted herself. Then he had poured brandy into the bleeding socket; he could still remember the pain.

And he recalled how he had limped into port long after he had been given up for lost, his fine three-masted clipper no more than a hulk, the seams sprung, masts and guns and rigging gone. And by the time Brock had replaced spars and rigging and masts and cannon and powder and shot and men, and bought another cargo of opium, all the profits of this voyage had vanished.

Struan had run into the same typhoon in a small lorcha—a boat with a Chinese hull, English-rigged and used for coastal smuggling in fine weather. But Struan rode out the storm and, elegant and untouched as usual, had been on the dock to greet Brock, his strange green eyes mocking him.

Dirk and his cursed joss, Brock thought. Joss be letting Dirk build that one stinking lorcha into a fleet of clippers and hundreds of lorchas, into warehouses and bullion to spare. Into godrotting Noble House. Joss pushed Brock and Sons into godrotting second place. Second. And, he thought, joss’s given him ear of our godrotting weak-gutted plenipotentiary, the Honorable Godrotting Longstaff, all these years. An’ now, together, they’ve sold us out. “A

pox on Hong Kong and a

pox on Struan!”

“If it weren’t for Struan’s plan, you’d never have won your war so easily,” Cooper said.

The war had begun at Canton two years before, when the Chinese emperor, determined to bring the Europeans to heel, tried to eliminate the opium smuggling which was essential to British trade. Viceroy Ling had surrounded the foreign settlement at Canton with troops, and demanded every case of opium in Asia to ransom the lives of the defenseless English traders. At length, twenty thousand cases of opium had been given over and destroyed, and the British were allowed to retreat to Macao. But the British could not take lightly either interference with its trade or threats to its nationals. Six months ago the British Expeditionary Force had arrived in the Orient and ostensibly had been placed under the jurisdiction of Longstaff, the Captain Superintendent of Trade.

But it was Struan who conceived the inspired plan to bypass Canton, where all the trouble had started, and instead send the expeditionary force north to Chushan. To take that island without loss would be simple, Struan had theorized, for the Chinese were unprepared and helpless against any modern European army or fleet. Leaving a small holding force at Chushan and a few ships to blockade the Yangtse, the expeditionary force could sail north to the mouth of the Pei Ho River and threaten Peking, the capital of China, which was only a hundred miles upstream. Struan knew that only so direct a threat would make the emperor immediately sue for peace. A superb conception. And it had worked brilliantly. The expeditionary force had arrived in the Orient last June. By July Chushan had been taken. By August it was moored at the Pei Ho. In two weeks the emperor had sent an official to negotiate peace—the first time in history that any Chinese emperor had officially acknowledged any European nation. And the war had ended with almost no loss to either side.

“Longstaff was very wise to follow the plan,” Cooper said.

“Any China trader knowed how to bring the Chinee to their knees,” Brock said, his voice rough. He pushed his top hat farther back on his forehead and eased his eye patch. “But why did Longstaff and Struan agree to negotiate back at Canton, eh? Any fool knowed ‘negotiate’ to a Chinee means to play for time. We should’ve stayed north at the Pei Ho till peace were signed. But no, we brung back the fleet and for the last six month we be waiting and waiting for the buggers to set pen to paper.” Brock spat. “Stupid, crazy stupid. An’ all that waste of time and money for this stinking rock. We should’ve kept Chushan. Now, there be island worth having.” Chushan was twenty miles long and ten wide and its land fertile and rich—a good port and a big city, Tinghai. “Space for a man to breathe in there, right enough. Why, from there three or four frigates can blockade the Yangtse at the drop of a topper. An’ who controls that river controls the heart of China. That’s where we should settle, by God.”

“You still have Chushan, Mr. Brock.”

“Yus. But it baint deeded in godrotting treaty, so it baint our’n.” He stamped his feet against the growing chill wind.

“Perhaps you should mention it to Longstaff,” Cooper said. “He’s susceptible to advice.”

“Not to mine, he baint. As thee rightly knowed. But I’ll tell thee, when Parliament hear about the treaty, there be hell to pay, I’ll be bound.”

Cooper lit a cheroot. “I’m inclined to agree. It is an astonishing piece of paper, Mr. Brock. For this day and age. When every European power is land-grabbing and power-hungry.”

“And I suppose the United States baint?” Brock’s face tightened. “Wot about yor Indians? The Louisiana Purchase? Spanish Florida? You be havin’ eyes on Mexico and Russian Alaska. The last mails told you be even trying to steal Canada. Eh?”

“Canada’s American, not English. We’re not going to war over Canada—she’ll join us of her own free will,” Cooper said, hiding his worry. He tugged at his muttonchop whiskers and pulled his frock coat tighter around his shoulders against the sharpening wind. He knew that war with the British Empire would be disastrous at this time, and would ruin Cooper-Tillman. God damn wars. Even so, he knew that the States would have to go to war over Mexico and Canada unless there was a settlement. Just as Britain had had to go to war with China.

“There won’t be a war,” Tillman said, trying to quiet Cooper diplomatically. He sighed and wished himself back in Alabama. A man can be a gentleman there, he thought. There you don’t have to deal with the damned British every day, or with blasphemous, foulmouthed scum like Brock, or a devil incarnate like Struan—or even with an impetuous young man and senior partner like Jefferson Cooper, who thinks Boston the center of the earth. “And this war’s over, for better or worse.”

“Mark my words, Mr. Tillman,” Brock said. “This godrotting treaty be no good for us’n and no good for they. We’ve to keep Chushan and open ports on mainland China. We be at war again in a few weeks. In June when the wind be ripe and the weather be ripe, the fleet’ll have to sail north to Pei Ho again. An’ if we be at war again, how we going to get season’s teas and silks, eh? Last year almost no trade because of war—the year before no trade at all an’ they stole all our opium to boot. Eight thousand cases from me alone. Two million taels of silver that cost me. Cash.”

“That money’s not lost,” Tillman said. “Longstaff ordered us to give it up. To ransom our lives. He gave us paper on the British Government. And there’s a settlement in the treaty. Six million taels of silver to pay for it.”

Brock laughed harshly. “Thee think Parliament be honoring Longstaff’s paper? Why, any Government’d be throwed out of office the moment they asked for the brass to pay for opium. An’ as to the six million—that be paying for the cost of the war. I knowed Parliament better’n you. Kiss yor half million taels goodbye be my advice to you both. So if we be at war again this year, there be no trade again. An’ if we baint trading this year, we be all bankrupt. You, me, every China trader. An’ even the godrotting Noble House.” He jerked out his watch. The ceremony was to have started an hour ago. Time be running out, he thought. Yus, but not on Brock and Sons, by God. Dirk’s had seventeen-year run of good joss, and now be time for change.

Brock reveled in the thought of his second son, Morgan, who capably—and ruthlessly—controlled all their interests in England. He wondered if Morgan had been successful in undermining Struan’s influence in Parliament and in banking circles. We be going to wreck thee, Dirk, he thought, and Hong Kong along with thee. “Wot the hell be the delay for?” he said, hastening toward the naval officer who was striding up and down near the marines.

“What’s the matter with you, Jeff? You know he’s right about Hong Kong,” Tillman said. “You ought to know better than to bait him.”

Cooper smiled his thin smile. “Brock’s so goddam sure of himself. I couldn’t help it.”

“If Brock’s right about the half million taels, we’re ruined.”

“Yes. But Struan will lose ten times that if there’s no payment. He’ll get paid, never fear. So we’ll get ours.” Cooper looked after Brock. “Do you think he knows about our deal with Struan?”

Tillman shrugged. “I don’t know. But Brock’s right about the treaty. It’s stupid. It’ll cost us a pretty penny.”

For the last three months Cooper-Tillman had been acting as secret agents for The Noble House. British warships had been blockading Canton and the Pearl River, and British traders were forbidden to trade. Longstaff—at Struan’s bidding—had put the embargo on as another measure to force the peace treaty, knowing that the Canton warehouses were bulging with teas and silks. But since America had not declared war on China, American ships could go through the blockade freely and thumb their noses at the warships. So Cooper-Tillman had bought four million pounds of tea from Chen-tse Jin Arn—or Jin-qua, as he was nicknamed—the richest of the Chinese merchants, and shipped it to Manila, supposedly for Spanish merchants. The local Spanish official, for a considerable bribe, had issued the necessary import and export licenses, and the tea was transferred—duty free—into Struan’s clippers and rushed to England. Payment to Jin-qua was a shipload of opium delivered secretly by Struan somewhere up the coast.

A perfect plan, Cooper thought. Everyone’s richer and gets the trade goods he wants. But we would have made a fortune if our ships could have taken the teas direct to England. And he cursed the British Navigation Acts that forbade any but British ships to bring goods into English ports. Goddam them, they own the world.

“Jeff!”

Cooper followed his partner’s glance. For a moment he could not pick out what Tillman wanted him to see in the crowded harbor. Then he saw the longboat pulling away from the flagship and in it the tall, redheaded Scotsman who was so powerful that he could twist Parliament to his purposes and put the greatest nation on earth to war.

“It would be too much to hope that Struan’d drown,” Tillman said.

Cooper laughed. “You’re wrong about him, Wilf. Anyway, the sea’d never dare.”

“Maybe it will, Jeff. It’s time enough. By all that’s holy.”

Dirk Struan stood in the prow of the longboat, riding the twist of the waves. And though he was already late for the ceremony, he did not hurry his oarsmen. He knew that there would be no starting until he arrived.

The longboat was three hundred yards offshore and the bosun’s “Steady as she goes” mixed nicely with the crisp northeast monsoon. Far aloft, the wind gathered strength and scudded cumulus off the mainland over the island and out to the ocean beyond.

The harbor was crowded with shipping, all British but for a few American and Portuguese vessels, merchantmen of every size. Before the war the merchantmen would have been anchored at Macao, the tiny Portuguese settlement on a tip of the mainland, forty miles southwest across the huge mouth of the Pearl River. Or off the island of Whampoa, thirteen miles south of Canton. This was the nearest that any European ship was allowed, by Chinese law, to approach Canton. By imperial decree all European trade was restricted to this city. Legend said that over a million Chinese lived within its walls. But no European knew for certain, for none had ever walked its streets.

Since antiquity the Chinese had had rigid laws excluding Europeans from their country. The inflexibility of these laws, the lack of freedom for Europeans to go where they pleased and trade as they pleased, had caused the war.

As the longboat passed near a merchantman, some children waved at Struan and he waved back. It’ll be good for the bairns to have their own homes at long last, on their own soil, he thought. When the war had begun, all British citizens had been evacuated onto the ships for safety. There were approximately a hundred and fifty men, sixty wives, eighty children. A few of the families had been aboard one ship or another for almost a year.

Surrounding the merchantmen were the warships of the British Expeditionary Force: ships of the line, 74-guns, 44’s, 22’s, brigs, frigates, a small part of the mightiest navy the world had ever known. And dozens of troopships with four thousand British and Indian soldiers aboard, part of the strongest army on earth.

And among these ships were the beautiful rake-masted opium clippers, the fleetest ships ever built.

Struan felt a glow of excitement as he studied the island with its dominating mountain that soared eighteen hundred feet almost sheer from the sea.

He had never set foot on the island even though he knew more about it than any man. He had sworn not to go ashore until it was British-owned. It pleased him to be so imperious. But this had not prevented him from sending his captains and his younger brother Robb ashore to survey the island. He knew the reefs and the rocks and the glens and hills, and he knew where he was going to build his warehouses and the Great House, and where the road would be.

He turned to look at his clipper,

China Cloud, 22 guns. All of Struan and Company’s clippers were surnamed “Cloud” to honor his mother, a McCloud, who had died years ago. Seamen were painting and cleaning an already sparkling vessel. Guns were being examined and rigging tested. The Union Jack fluttered proudly aft and the company flag atop the mizzen.

The flag of The Noble House was the royal red lion of Scotland entwined with the imperial green dragon of China. It flew on twenty armed clippers scattered over the oceans of the world, on a hundred swift-sailing armed lorchas that smuggled opium up the coast. It flew on three huge opium supply depot ships—converted hulks of merchantmen which were presently anchored in Hong Kong harbor. And it flew over

Resting Cloud, his vast semi-stationary headquarters vessel that contained bullion strong rooms, offices, luxurious suites and dining rooms.

You’re a bonny flag, Struan thought proudly.

The first ship that had flown the flag had been an opium-laden pirate lorcha that he had taken by force. Pirates and corsairs infested the coasts, and the Chinese and Portugese authorities offered a silver bounty for pirates. When the winds had forbidden opium smuggling or when he had no opium to sell, he had scoured the China seas. The bullion he gained from the pirates he invested in opium.

Godrot opium, he thought. But he knew that his life was inexorably tied to opium—and that without it neither The Noble House nor the British Empire could exist.

The reason could be traced back to 1699, when the first British ship traded peacefully with China and brought back silks and, for the first time, the peerless herb called tea—which China alone on earth produced cheaply and in abundance. In exchange, the emperor would take only silver bullion. And this policy had persisted ever since.

Within fifty-odd years tea became the most popular drink of the Western world—particularly of Britain, the major trading nation on earth. In seventy years tea was the single major source of internal tax revenue for the British Government. Within a century the outpouring of wealth to China had critically depleted the British treasury and the unbalanced tea-bullion trade was a national catastrophe.

Over the century, the British East India Company—the gigantic semiprivate, semipublic firm which possessed, by Act of Parliament, a total monopoly on Indian and Asian trade—had offered everything and anything with growing desperation—cotton goods, looms, even guns and ships—in place of bullion. But the emperors imperiously refused. They considered China self-sufficient, were contemptuous of “barbarians,” as they called all non-Chinese, and regarded all the nations of the earth as no better than vassal states of China.

And then, thirty years ago, a British merchantman, the

Vagrant Star, had sailed up the Pearl River and anchored off Whampoa Island. Its secret cargo was opium, which British Bengal produced cheaply and in abundance. Although opium had been used in China for centuries—but only by the very rich and by those in Yunnan Province where the poppy also flourished—it was contraband. The East India Company had clandestinely licensed the captain of

Vagrant Star to offer the opium. But only for bullion. The Chinese Guild of Merchants, which by imperial decree monopolized all Western Trade, bought the cargo and sold it secretly at a great profit. The captain of the

Vagrant Star privately turned over the bullion to the Company’s officers in Canton and took his profit in bank paper on London and rushed back to Calcutta for more opium.

Struan remembered the

Vagrant Star well. He had been a cabin boy aboard her. It was in this vessel that he had become a man—and had seen Asia. And had sworn to destroy Tyler Brock, who at the time was the

Vagrant Star’s third mate. Struan was twelve, Brock eighteen and very strong. Brock had hated him on sight and delighted in finding fault, cutting his food ration, ordering him extra watches, sending him aloft in foul weather, baiting him, goading him. The slightest mistake and he had Struan tied to the rigging and lashed with the cat-o’-nine-tails.

Struan had stayed with the

Vagrant Star for two years. Then one night she struck a reef in the Malacca Strait and went down. Struan had swum ashore and made his way to Singapore. Later he learned that Brock had survived too and this made him very happy. He wanted revenge, in his own way, in his own time.

Struan had joined another ship. By now the East India Company was secretly licensing many carefully selected independent captain-traders, and continuing to sell them exclusively Bengal opium at advantageous prices. The Company began to make huge profits and acquire vast quantities of silver bullion. The Chinese Guild of Merchants and the mandarins turned blind eyes to the illicit trade, for they too made huge profits. And these profits, being secret, were not subject to imperial squeeze.

Opium became the inbound staple of trade. The Company quickly monopolized the world supply of opium outside Yunnan Province and the Ottoman Empire. Within twenty years the bullion traded for smuggled opium equaled the bullion that was owed for teas and silks.

At last trade balanced. Then overbalanced, for there were twenty times more Chinese customers than Western customers, and there began a staggering outpouring of bullion that even China could not afford. The Company offered other trade goods to stem the tide. But the emperor remained adamant: bullion for tea.

By the time Struan was twenty he was captain-owner of his own ship on the opium run. Brock was his chief rival. They competed ruthlessly with each other. Within six years Struan and Brock dominated the trade.

The opium smugglers became known as China traders. They were an intrepid, tough, vital group of individualistic owner-captains—English, Scots, and some Americans—who casually drove their tiny ships into unknown waters and unknown dangers as a way of life. They went to sea to trade peacefully: to make a profit, not to conquer. But if they met with a hostile sea or a hostile act, their ships became fighting ships. And if they did not fight well, their ships vanished and were soon forgotten.

The China traders soon realized that while they were taking all the risks, the Company was taking most of the profit. And, too, they were totally excluded from the legitimate—and hugely profitable—tea and silk trade. So although they continued to compete fiercely, at Struan’s persuasion they began to agitate collectively against the Company to break its monopoly. Without the monopoly the traders could convert opium into bullion, bullion into tea, then ship the tea home and sell it directly to the markets of the world. The China traders would themselves control the world tea trade and their profits would become gigantic. Parliament became their forum for agitation. Parliament had given the Company its exclusive monopoly two centuries ago, and only Parliament could take it away. So the China traders gambled heavily, buying votes, supporting members of Parliament who believed in free competition and free trade, writing to newspapers and to members of the Government. They were determined, and as their wealth increased so did their power. They were patient and tenacious and indomitable—as only men trained by the sea can be.

The Company was furious at the insurgents and reluctant to lose its monopoly. But it desperately needed the China traders to supply the bullion to pay for the teas, and by now it depended heavily on the huge revenue from the sale of Bengal opium. So it fought back carefully in Parliament. Parliament was equally trapped. It decried the sale of opium but needed the revenue from the teas and the Indian Empire. Parliament tried to listen to the China traders and to the Company, and satisfied neither.

Then the Company decided to make an example of Struan and Brock, its chief antagonists. It withdrew their opium licenses and broke them.

Brock was left with his ship, Struan with nothing. Brock went into secret partnership with another China trader and continued to agitate. Struan and his crew fell on a pirate haven south of Macao, laid it waste, and took the fastest lorcha. Then he became a clandestine opium runner for other traders and relentlessly took more pirate ships, and made more and more money. In consort with the other China traders, he gambled ever more heavily, buying ever more votes and continuing to harass and exhort until Parliament was howling for the total destruction of the Company. Seven years earlier Parliament had passed the Act that eliminated the Company’s monopoly on Asia and opened it to free trade. But it allowed the Company to retain the exclusive right to trade with British India—and the world monopoly of opium. Parliament deplored the sale of opium. The Company did not wish to trade with opium. The China traders themselves would have preferred another—though equally profitable—staple. But they all knew that without the tea-bullion-opium balance the Empire would be wrecked. It was a fact of life of world trade.

With freedom to trade, Struan and Brock became merchant princes. Their armed fleets expanded. And rivalry honed their enmity even keener.

To replace the political vacuum left in Asia when the Company’s control was nullified and trade freed, the British Government had appointed a diplomat, the Honorable William Longstaff, as Captain Superintendent of Trade to protect its interests. The interests of the Crown were an ever-expanding volume of trade—to gain more tax revenue—and the continued exclusion of all other European powers. Longstaff was responsible for the safety of trade and of British nationals, but his mandate was vague and he was given no real power to enforce a policy.

Poor little Willie, Struan thought without malice. Even with all my patient explanations over the last eight years, our “exalted” Excellency, the Captain Superintendent of Trade, still canna see his hand afore his face.

Struan looked at the shore as the sun crested the mountains and bathed the men gathered there with sudden light: friends and enemies, all rivals. He turned to Robb. “Would you na say they’re a welcoming committee?” All his years away from Scotland had not completely erased his Scots brogue.

Robb Struan chuckled and set his felt hat at a crisper angle. “I’d say they all hope we’ll drown, Dirk.” He was thirty-three, dark-haired, clean-shaven, with deep-set eyes, thin nose, and heavy muttonchop whiskers. His clothes were black except for a green velvet cloak and white ruffled shirt and white cravat. His shirt and cuff buttons were rubies. “Good God, is that Captain Glessing?” he asked, peering at the shore.

“Aye,” Struan said. “I thought it apt that he should be the one to read the proclamation.”

“What did Longstaff say when you suggested it?”

“ ’Pon me word, Dirk, all right, if you think it wise.’ ” He grinned. “We’ve come a long way since we started, by God!”

“

You have, Dirk. It was all done when I came out here.”

“You’re the brains, Robb. I’m just the muscle.”

“Yes, Tai-Pan. Just the muscle.” Robb knew well that his stepbrother was Tai-Pan of Struan and Company, and that in Asia Dirk Struan was

the Tai-Pan. “A beautiful day for the flag raising, isn’t it?”

“Aye.”

Robb watched him as he turned back to the shore. He looked so huge, standing there in the prow, bigger than the mountains and just as hard. I wish I were like him, Robb thought.

Robb had gone opium smuggling only once, shortly after he arrived in the Orient. Their ship had been attacked by Chinese pirates and Robb had been terrified. He was still ashamed, even though Struan had said, “Nae harm in that, laddie. The first time in battle is always bad.” But Robb knew that he was not a fighter, not brave. He served his half brother in other ways. Buying teas and silks and opium. Arranging loans and watching the bullion. Understanding the ever more complicated modern procedures of international trading and financing. Guarding his brother and the Company and their fleet and making them safe. Selling teas in England. Keeping the books and doing all the things that made a modern company function. Yes, Robb told himself, but without Dirk you’re nothing.

Struan was studying the men on the beach. The longboat was still two hundred yards offshore. But he could see the faces clearly. Most of them were looking at the longboat. Struan smiled to himself.

Aye, he thought. We’re all here on this day of destiny.

The naval officer, Captain Glessing, was waiting patiently to begin the flag-raising ceremony. He was twenty-six, a captain of a ship of the line, the son of a vice-admiral, and the Royal Navy was part of his bloodstream. It was getting lighter rapidly on the beach, and far to the east on the horizon the sky was threaded with clouds.

There’ll be a storm in a few days, Glessing thought, tasting the wind. He took his eyes off Struan and automatically checked the lie of his ship, a 22-gun frigate. This was a monumental day in his life. It was not often that new lands were taken in the name of the queen, and for him to have the privilege of reading the proclamation was fortunate for his career. There were many captains in the fleet senior to him. But he knew that he had been chosen because he had been in these waters the longest, and his ship, H.M.S.

Mermaid, had been heavily involved in the whole campaign. Not a campaign at all, he thought with contempt. More of an incident. It could have been settled two years ago if that fool Longstaff had had any guts. Certainly, if I’d been allowed to take my frigate up to the gates of Canton. Dammit, I sank a whole bloody fleet of war junks, and the way was clear. I could have bombarded Canton and taken that heathen devil Viceroy Ling and hung him at the yardarm.

Glessing kicked the beach irritably. It’s not that I mind the heathen stealing the damned opium. Quite right to want to stop smuggling. It’s the insult to the flag. English lives ransomed by heathen devils! Longstaff should have allowed me to proceed forthwith. But no. He meekly retreated and evacuated everyone onto the merchant fleet and then hamstrung me. Me, by God, who had to protect the whole merchant fleet. Damn his eyes! And damn Struan, who leads him by the nose.

Well, he added to himself, even so you’re lucky to be here. This is the only war we’ve got at the moment. At least, the only seaborne war. The others are mere incidents: the simple taking over of the heathen Indian states—by gad, they worship cows and burn widows and bow down before idols—and the Afghan wars. And he felt a surge of pride that he was part of the greatest fleet on earth. Thank God he had been born English!

Abruptly he noticed Brock approaching and was relieved to see him intercepted by a short, fat, neckless man in his thirties, with a huge belly that overflowed his trousers. This was Morley Skinner, proprietor of the

Oriental Times, the most important of the English papers in the Orient. Glessing read every edition. It was well written. Important to have a good newspaper, he thought. Important to have campaigns well recorded to the glory of England. But Skinner’s a revolting man. And all the rest of them. Well, not all of them. Not old Aristotle Quance.

He glanced at the ugly little man sitting alone on a bank overlooking the beach, on a stool in front of an easel, obviously painting away. Glessing chuckled to himself, remembering the good times he had had in Macao with the painter.

Apart from Quance, Glessing liked no one on the beach except Horatio Sinclair. Horatio was the same age as he, and Glessing had come to know him quite well in the two years he had been in the Orient. Horatio was also an aide to Longstaff, his interpreter and secretary—the only Englishman in the Orient who could speak and write fluent Chinese—and they had had to work together.

Glessing scanned the beach and saw, distastefully, that Horatio was down by the surf chatting with an Austrian, Wolfgang Mauss, a man whom he despised. The Reverend Mauss was the only other European in the Orient who could write and speak Chinese. He was a huge, black-bearded man—a renegade priest, Struan’s interpreter and opium runner. There were pistols in his belt, and the tails of his frock coat were mildewed. His nose was red and bulbous and his long, black-gray hair matted and wild like his beard. His few remaining teeth were broken and brown, and his eyes dominated the grossness of his face.

Such a contrast to Horatio, Glessing thought. Horatio was fair and frail and clean as Nelson, for whom he had been named—because of Trafalgar and because of the uncle he had lost there.

Included in their conversation was a tall, lithe Eurasian, a young man that Glessing knew only by sight: Gordon Chen, Struan’s bastard.

By gad, Glessing thought, how can Englishmen flaunt half-caste bastards so openly? And this one dressed like all the bloody heathens in a long robe with a damned queue hanging down his back. By gad! If it weren’t for his blue eyes and his fair skin, you couldn’t tell he had any English blood in him at all. Why the devil doesn’t he cut his hair like a man? Disgusting!

Glessing turned away from them. I suppose the half-caste’s all right, not his fault. But that damned Mauss is bad company. Bad for Horatio and bad for his sister, dear Mary. Now, there’s a young lady worth knowing! She’d make a good wife, by gad.

He hesitated in his walk. This was the first time that he had actually considered Mary as a possible mate.

Why not? he asked himself. You’ve known her for two years. She’s the toast of Macao. She runs the Sinclair house impeccably and treats Horatio as a prince. The food’s the best in town and she rules the servants beautifully. Plays the harpsichord like a dream and sings like an angel, by jove. She obviously likes you—why else would you have an open invitation to dine whenever you and Horatio are in Macao? So why not as wife, eh? But she’s never been home. She’s spent all her life among heathens. She has no income. Parents are dead. But what does that matter, eh? The Reverend Sinclair was respected throughout Asia when he was alive, and Mary’s beautiful and just twenty. My prospects are excellent. I’ve five hundred a year and I’ll inherit the manor house and the lands eventually. By gad, she could be the one for me. We could get married in Macao at the English church and rent a house until this commission’s up and then we’ll go home. When the time’s ripe I’ll say to Horatio, “Horatio, old boy, there’s something I want to talk to . . .”

“Wot be all the delay, Cap’n Glessing?” Brock’s rough voice shattered his reverie. “Eight bells were time to raise the flag and it be an hour past.”

Glessing whirled around. He was not used to a belligerent tone of voice from anyone less than a vice-admiral. “The flag gets raised, Mr. Brock, when one of two things happen. Either when His Excellency comes ashore or when there’s a signal cannon from the flagship.”

“An’ when be that?”

“I notice that you’re not fully represented yet.”

“You mean Struan?”

“Of course. Isn’t he Tai-Pan of The Noble House?” Glessing said it deliberately, knowing it would irritate Brock. Then he added, “I suggest you possess yourself with patience. No one ordered any of you tradesmen ashore.”

Brock reddened. “You’d better be learning difference twixt merchants an’ tradesmen.” He moved his tobacco quid in his cheek and spat on the stones beside Glessing’s feet. A few flecks of spittle marred the polish of the silver-buckled shoes. “Beg pardon,” Brock said with mock humility and strode away.

Glessing’s face froze. But for the “Beg pardon” he would have challenged him to a duel. Rotten low-class sod, he thought, filled with contempt.

“Beggin’ yor pardon, sorr,” the master-at-arms said, saluting, “signal from the flagship.”

Glessing squinted his eyes against the sharpening wind. The signal flags read: “All captains to report aboard at four bells.” Glessing had been present last night at a private meeting of the admiral and Longstaff. The admiral had said that opium smuggling was the cause of all the trouble in Asia. “Goddamme, sir, they’ve no sense of decency,” he had exploded. “All they think of is money. Abolish opium and we’ll have no more damned trouble with the damned heathen or with the damned tradesmen. The Royal Navy will enforce your order, by God!” And Longstaff had agreed, rightly. I suppose the order will be announced today, Glessing thought, hard put to contain his delight. Good. And about time. I wonder if Longstaff has just told Struan that he’s issuing the order.

He glanced back at the longboat which was approaching leisurely. Struan fascinated him. He admired him and loathed him—the master mariner who had conned ships on every ocean in the world, who wrecked men and companies and ships to the glory of The Noble House. So different from Robb, Glessing thought; I like Robb.

He shuddered in spite of himself. Perhaps there was truth in the tales whispered by sailormen the China seas over, tales that Struan worshiped the Devil in secret, and that in return the Devil had given him power on earth. How else could a man of his age look so young and be so strong, with white teeth and all his hair and the reflexes of a youth, when most men would be infirm and used up and near death? Certainly the Chinese were terrified of Struan. “Old Green-eyed Rat Devil” they had nicknamed him, and had put a reward on his head. All Europeans had rewards on their heads. But the Tai-Pan’s was a hundred thousand taels of silver. Dead. For no one would catch him alive.

Glessing irritably tried to ease his toes in his buckled shoes. His feet hurt and he was uncomfortable in his gold-braided uniform. Damn the delay! Damn the island and the harbor and the waste of good ships and good men. He remembered his father’s saying, “Blasted civilians. All they think of is money or power. They’ve no sense of honor, none. Watch your backside, son, when there’s a civilian in command. And don’t forget that even Nelson had to put his telescope to his blind eye when there was an idiot in command.” How can a man like Longstaff be so stupid? The man’s from a good family, well-bred—his father was a diplomat at the court of Spain. Or was it Portugal?

And why did Struan push Longstaff into stopping the war? Certainly we get a harbor that can anchor the fleets of the world. But what else?

Glessing studied the ships in the harbor. Struan’s 22-gun ship,

China Cloud. The

White Witch, 22-guns, pride of Brock’s fleet. And the American Cooper-Tillman 20-gun brig,

Princess of Alabama. Beauties, all of them. Now, they’d be worth fighting, he thought. I know I could sink the American. Brock? Hard, but I’m better than Brock. Struan?

Glessing pondered about a sea battle with Struan. Then he knew that he was afraid of Struan. And because of his fear he was filled with anger and sick of the pretense that Struan and Brock and Cooper and all the China traders were not pirates.

By God, he swore to himself, as soon as the order’s official, I’ll lead a flotilla that’ll blast them all out of the water.

Aristotle Quance sat moodily in front of the half-finished painting on his easel. He was a tiny man with gray-black hair. His clothes, about which he was incredibly fastidious, were in the latest fashion: tight gray trousers and white silk socks and black bow-tied shoes. Pearl satin waistcoat and black wool frock coat. High collar and cravat and pearl pin. Half English and half Irish, he was, at fifty-eight, the oldest European in the Orient.

He took off his gold spectacles and began to clean them with an immaculate French lace kerchief. I’m sorry to see this day, he thought. Damn Dirk Struan. If it weren’t for him there’d be no damned Hong Kong.

He knew that he was witness to the end of an era. Hong Kong will destroy Macao, he thought. It will steal away all the trade. All the English and American tai-pans will move their headquarters here. They will live here and build here. Then all the Portuguese clerks will come. And all the Chinese who live off Westerners and Western trade. Well, I’m never going to live here, he swore. I’ll have to come here to work from time to time to earn money, but Macao will always be my home.

Macao had been his home for more than thirty years. He alone, of all the Europeans, thought of the Orient as home. All the others came for a few years and then left. Only those who died stayed. Even then, if they could afford it, they would provide in their wills for their bodies to be shipped back “home.”

I’ll be buried in Macao, thank God, he told himself. Such good times I’ve had there, we all have. But that’s finished. God damn the Emperor of China! Fool to wreck a structure so cleverly constructed a century ago.

Everything was working so well, Quance thought bitterly, but now it’s over. Now we’ve taken Hong Kong. And now that the might of England is committed in the East and the traders have had a taste of power, they won’t be content with just Hong Kong. “Well,” he said involuntarily aloud, “the emperor will reap what he has sown.”

“Why so glum, Mr. Quance?”

Quance put on his spectacles. Morley Skinner was standing at the foot of the bank.

“Not glum, young man. Sad. Artists have a right—yes, an obligation—to be sad.” He put the unfinished painting aside and set a clean piece of paper on his easel.

“Quite agree, quite agree.” Skinner lumbered up the bank, his pale brown eyes looking like the dregs of ancient beer. “Just wanted to ask you your opinion of this momentous day. Going to put out a special edition. Without a few words from our senior citizen the edition wouldn’t be complete.”

“Quite correct, Mr. Skinner. You may say, ‘Mr. Aristotle Quance, our leading artist, bon vivant and beloved friend, declined to make a statement as he was in the process of creating another masterpiece.’ ” He took a pinch of snuff and sneezed hugely. Then with his kerchief he dusted the excess snuff off his frock coat and the flecks of sneeze off the paper. “Good day to you sir.” Once more he concentrated on the paper. “You are disturbing immortality.”

“Know exactly how you feel,” Skinner said with a pleasant nod. “Exactly how you feel. Feel the same when I’ve something important to write.” He plodded away.

Quance did not trust Skinner. No one did. At least no one with a skeleton in his past, and everyone here had something he wanted to hide. Skinner enjoyed resurrecting the past.

The past. Quance thought about his wife and shivered. Great thunderballs of death! How could I have been so stupid to think that Irish monster could make a worthy mate? Thank God she’s back in the loathsome Irish bog, never to darken my firmament again. Women are the cause of all man’s tribulations. Well, he added cautiously, not all women. Not dear little Maria Tang. Ah, now, there’s a luscious coleen if ever I saw one. And if anyone knows an impeccable cross of Portuguese and Chinese, you do, dear clever Quance. Damn, I’ve had a wonderful life.

And he realized that though he was witnessing the end of an era, he was also part of a new one. Now he had new history to eyewitness and record. New faces to draw. New ships to paint. A new city to perpetuate. And new girls to flirt with and new bottoms to pinch.

“Sad? Never!” he roared. “Get to work, Aristotle, you old fart!”

Those on the beach who heard Quance chuckled one to another. He was hugely popular and his company sought after. And he was given to talking to himself.

“The day wouldn’t be complete without dear old Aristotle,” Horatio Sinclair said with a smile.

“Yes.” Wolfgang Mauss scratched the lice in his beard. “He’s so ugly he’s almost sweet-faced.”

“Mr. Quance is a great artist,” Gordon Chen said. “Therefore he is beautiful.”

Mauss shifted his bulk and stared at the Eurasian. “The word is ‘handsome,’ boy. Did I teach you for years so that you still don’t know the difference between ‘handsome’ and ‘beautiful,’

hein? And he’s not a great artist. His style is excellent and he is my friend, but he has not the magic of a great master.”

“I meant ‘beautiful’ in an artistic sense, sir.”

Horatio had seen the momentary flash of irritation pass through Gordon Chen. Poor Gordon, he thought, pitying him. Of neither one world nor the other. Desperately trying to be English yet wearing Chinese robes and a queue. Though everyone knew he was the Tai-Pan’s bastard by a Chinese whore, no one acknowledged him openly—not even his father. “I think his painting wonderful,” Horatio said, his voice gentle. “And him. Strange how everyone adores him, yet my father despised him.”

“Ah, your father,” Mauss said. “He was a saint among men. He had high Christian principles, not like us poor sinners. May his soul rest in peace.”

No, Horatio thought. May his soul burn in hellflre forever.

The Reverend Sinclair had been one of the first group of English missionaries to settle in Macao thirty-odd years ago. He had helped in the translating of the Bible into Chinese, and had been one of the teachers in the English school that the mission had founded. He had been honored as an upstanding citizen all his life—except by the Tai-Pan—and when he had died seven years ago, he had been buried as a saintly man.

Horatio was able to forgive his father for driving his mother into an early grave, for the high principles that had given him a narrow, tyrannical approach to life, for the fanaticism of his worship of a terrifying God, for the obsessive single-mindedness of his missionary zeal, and for all the beatings he had inflicted on his son. But even after all this time he could never forgive him the beatings he had given Mary or the curses he had heaped on the Tai-Pan’s head.

The Tai-Pan had been the one who had found little Mary when at the age of six she had run away in terror. He had soothed her and then taken her home to her father, warning him that if he ever laid a finger on her again he would tear him out of his pulpit and horsewhip him through the streets of Macao. Horatio had worshiped the Tai-Pan ever since. The beatings had stopped, but there had been other punishments. Poor Mary.

As he thought of Mary, his heart quickened and he looked out at the flagship where they had their temporary home. He knew that she would be watching the shore and that, like him, she would be counting the days until they were back safe in Macao. Only forty miles away, south, but so far. He had lived all his twenty-six years in Macao except for some schooling at home in England. He had hated school, both at home and in Macao. He had hated being taught by his father; he had tried desperately to satisfy him but never had been able to. Not like Gordon Chen, who had been the first Eurasian boy accepted in the Macao school. Gordon Chen was a brilliant scholar and had always been able to satisfy the Reverend Sinclair. But Horatio did not envy him: Mauss had been Gordon Chen’s torturer. For every beating his father had given him, Mauss gave Gordon Chen three. Mauss was also a missionary; he had taught English, Latin and history.

Horatio eased the knot in his shoulders. He saw that Mauss and Gordon Chen were again staring fixedly at the longboat, and he wondered why Mauss had been so harsh with the young man at school—why he had demanded so much of him. He supposed it was because Wolfgang hated the Tai-Pan. Because the Tai-Pan saw through him and offered him money and the post of interpreter on opium-smuggling voyages up the coast. In return for allowing Wolfgang to distribute Chinese Bibles and tracts and to preach to the heathen wherever the ship stopped—but only after the opium trading was completed. He supposed Wolfgang despised himself for being a hypocrite and a party to such an evil. Because he was forced to pretend that the end justified the means when he knew it did not.

You’re a weird man, Wolfgang, he thought. He remembered going to Chushan Island last year when it had been occupied. With the Tai-Pan’s approval, Longstaff had appointed Mauss temporary magistrate to enforce martial law and British justice.

Against custom, strict orders had been issued on Chushan forbidding sacking and looting. Mauss had given every looter—Chinese, Indian, English—a fair, open trial and then he had sentenced each of them to be hanged, using the same words: “

Gott im Himmel, forgive this poor sinner. Hang him.” Soon the looting ceased.

Because Mauss was given to reminiscing freely in court between hangings, Horatio had discovered that he had been married three times, each time to an English girl; that the first two had died of the flux and his present one was poorly. That while Mauss was a devoted husband, the Devil still tempted him successfully with the whorehouse and gin cellars of Macao. That Mauss had learned Chinese from the heathen in Singapore where he had been sent as a young missionary. That he had lived twenty of his forty years in Asia and had never been home in all that time. That he carried pistols now because “You can never tell, Horatio, when one of the heathen devils will want to kill you or heathen pirates will try to rob you.” That he considered all men sinners—himself above all. And that his one aim in life was to convert the heathen and make China a Christian nation.

“What’s in your mind?” broke into Horatio’s thoughts.

He saw Mauss studying him. “Oh, nothing,” he said quickly. “I was just . . . just thinking.”

Mauss scratched his beard thoughtfully. “I also. This is a day to think,

hein? Nothing in Asia will ever be the same again.”

“No. I suppose not. Will you move from Macao? Build here?”

“Yes. It will be good to own land, have our own soil away from that papist cesspool. My wife will like that. But me? Me, I do not know. I belong there,” Mauss added, filled with longing, and he waved a huge fist at the mainland.

Horatio saw the eyes of Mauss deepen as he looked into the distance. Why is China so fascinating? he asked himself.

He scanned the beach wearily, knowing that there was no answer. I wish I were rich. Not as rich as the Tai-Pan or Brock. But rich enough to build a fine house and entertain all the traders and take Mary on a luxurious trip home through Europe.

He enjoyed being interpreter to His Excellency, and his private secretary, but he needed more money. One had to have money in this world. Mary should have ball gowns and diamonds. Yes. But even so, he was glad he didn’t have to earn their daily bread like the traders. The traders had to be ruthless, too ruthless, and the living was too precarious. Many who thought they were wealthy today would be broken in a month. A ship lost and you could be wiped out. Even The Noble House was hurt occasionally. Their ship

Scarlet Cloud was already a month overdue, perhaps a battered hulk careening and refitting on some uncharted island between here and Van Diemen’s Land two thousand miles off course. More likely at the bottom of the sea with half a million guineas’ worth of opium in her gut.

And the things you had to do as a trader, to men and to friends, in order to survive, let alone prosper. Dreadful.

He saw Gordon Chen’s fixed stare on the longboat and wondered what he was thinking. It must be terrible to be a half-caste, he thought. I suppose, if the truth were known, he hates the Tai-Pan too, even though he pretends otherwise. I would . . .

Gordon Chen’s mind was on opium and he was blessing it. Without opium there would be no Hong Kong—and Hong Kong, he thought exultantly, is the most fantastic opportunity for making money I could ever have and the most unbelievable stroke of joss for China.

If there had been no opium, he told himself, there would be no China trade. If there had been no China trade, then the Tai-Pan would never have had money to buy my mother from the brothel and I would never have been born. Opium paid for the house Father gave Mother years ago in Macao. Opium paid for our food and clothes. Opium paid for my schooling and English-speaking tutors and Chinese-speaking tutors, so that now, today, I am the best-educated youth in the Orient.

He glanced across at Horatio Sinclair, who was looking around the beach with a frown. He felt a shaft of envy that Horatio had been sent home to school. He had never been home.

But he pushed away his envy. Home will come later, he promised himself happily. In a few years.

He turned to watch the longboat again. He adored the Tai-Pan. He had never called Struan “Father” and had never been called “my son” by him. In fact, he had spoken to him only twenty or thirty times in his life. But he tried to make his father very proud of him and he always thought of him secretly as “Father.” He blessed him again for selling his mother to Chen Sheng as third wife. My joss has been huge, he thought.

Chen Sheng was compradore of The Noble House, and was almost a father to Gordon Chen. A compradore was the Chinese agent who bought and sold on behalf of a foreign establishment. Every item, large or small, would pass through the compradore’s hands. By custom, on every item he would add a percentage. This became his personal profit. But his earnings depended on the success of his house, and he had to cover bad debts. So he had to be very cautious and clever to become rich.

Ah, Gordon Chen thought, to be as rich as Chen Sheng! Or better still as rich as Jin-qua, Chen Sheng’s uncle. He smiled to himself, finding it amusing that the British had such difficulty with Chinese names. Jin-qua’s real name was Chen-tse Jin Arn, but even the Tai-Pan, who had known Chen-tse Jin Arn for almost thirty years, still could not pronounce the name. So years ago the Tai-Pan had nicknamed him “Jin.” The “qua” was a bad pronunciation of the Chinese word that meant “Mr.”

Gordon Chen knew that Chinese did not mind their nicknames. It only amused them, being another example, to them, of barbarian lack of culture. He remembered years ago as a child he had been watching Chen-tse Jin Arn and Chen Sheng secretly through a hole in the garden wall when they were smoking opium. He had heard them laughing together about His Excellency—how the mandarins in Canton had nicknamed Longstaff “Odious Penis,” which was a joke on his name, and how the Chinese characters for the Cantonese translation had been used on official letters addressed to Longstaff for more than a year—until Mauss had told Longstaff about it and spoiled a wonderful jest.

He looked covertly at Mauss. He respected him for being a merciless teacher and was grateful to him for forcing him to be the best student in the school. But he despised him for his filth, for his stench and for his cruelty.

Gordon Chen had liked the mission school and liked learning and liked being one of the children. But one day he had discovered he was different from the other children. In front of them, Mauss had told him what “bastard” and “illegitimate” and “half-caste” meant. Gordon Chen had fled home in horror. And he had seen his mother clearly for the first time and had despised her for being Chinese.

Then he had learned from her, through his tears, that it was good to be even part Chinese, for the Chinese were the purest race on earth. And he had learned that the Tai-Pan was his father.

“But why do we live here, then? Why is Chen Sheng ‘Father’?”

“Barbarians have only one wife and they don’t marry Chinese, my son,” Kai-sung explained.

“Why?”

“It is their custom. A stupid one. But that is the way they are.”

“I hate the Tai-Pan! I hate him! I hate him!” he had burst out.

His mother had hit him across the face, savagely. She had never struck him before. “Get down on your knees and beg forgiveness!” she had said in rage. “The Tai-Pan is your father. He gave you life. He is my god. He bought me for himself, then blessed me by selling me to Chen Sheng as

wife. Why should Chen Sheng take a woman with an impure two-year-old son as

wife when he could buy a thousand virgins if it wasn’t because the Tai-Pan wanted it so? Why should the Tai-Pan give me property if he didn’t love us? Why should the rent come to me and not to Chen Sheng if the Tai-Pan didn’t order it so? Why should Chen Sheng treat me so well, even in old age, if it wasn’t for the Tai-Pan’s perpetual favo? Why does Chen Sheng treat you like a son, you ungrateful halfwit, if it wasn’t for the Tai-Pan? Go to the temple and kowtow and beg forgiveness. The Tai-Pan gave you life. So love him and honor him and bless him like I do. And if you ever say that again, I’ll turn my face from you forever!”

Gordon Chen smiled to himself. How right Mother was, and how wrong and stupid I was. But not as stupid as the mandarins and the cursed emperor to try to stop the sale of opium. Any fool knows that without it there’s no bullion for teas and silks.

Once he had asked his mother how it was made, but she did not know, nor did anyone in the house. The next day he had asked Mauss, who had told him that opium was the sap—the tears—of a ripened poppy seedpod. “The opium farmer makes a delicate cut in the pod, and from this cut a tear of white liquid seeps,

hein? The tear hardens in a few hours and changes from white to dark brown. Then you scrape off the tear and save it and make a new, delicate cut. Then scrape off the new tear and make a new cut. You collect the tears together and mold them into a ball—ten pounds is the usual weight. The best opium comes from Bengal in British India,

hein? Or from Malwa. Where’s Malwa, boy?”

“Portuguese India, sir!”

“It

was Portuguese, but now it belongs to the East India Company. They took it to complete their world monopoly of all opium and thus ruin the Portuguese opium traders here in Macao. You make too many mistakes, boy, so get the whip,

hein?”

Gordon Chen remembered how he had hated opium that day. But now he blessed it. And he thanked his joss for his father and for Hong Kong. Hong Kong was going to make him rich. Very rich.

“Fortunes are going to be made here,” he said to Horatio.

“Some of the traders will prosper,” Horatio said absently, staring at the approaching longboat. “A few. Trading’s a devilish tricky business.”

“Always thinking of money, Gordon,

hein?” Mauss’s voice was rough. “Better you think of your immortal soul and salvation, boy. Money’s not important.”

“Of course, sir.” Gordon Chen hid his amusement at the man’s stupidity.

“The Tai-Pan looks like a mighty prince come to claim his kingdom,” Horatio said, almost to himself.

Mauss looked back at Struan. “Isn’t he,

hein?”

The longboat was in the foreshore waves.

“Oars ho!” the bosun shouted, and the crew shipped the oars and slipped over the side and dragged the boat smartly above the surf.

Struan hesitated. Then he leaped off the prow. The moment his seaboots touched the shore he knew that the island was going to be the death of him.

“Good sweet Christ!”

Robb was beside him and saw the sudden pallor. “What’s amiss, Dirk?”

“Nothing.” Struan forced a smile. “Nothing, laddie.” He brushed the sea spray off his forehead and strode up the beach toward the flagpole. By the blood of Christ, he thought, I’ve sweated and planned years to get you, Island, and you’re not going to beat me now. No, by God.

Robb watched him and his slight limp. His foot must be paining him, he thought. He wondered what the ache of half a foot was like. It had happened on the only smuggling voyage Robb had made. In saving Robb’s life when he had been helpless and paralyzed with fear, Struan had been fallen on by the pirates. A musket ball had carried away the outside of his anklebone and two small toes. When the attack had been beaten off, the ship’s doctor had cauterized the wounds and had poured molten pitch over them. Robb could still smell the stench of the burning flesh. But for me, he thought, it would never have happened.

He followed Struan up the beach, consumed with self-disgust.

“Morning, gentlemen,” Struan said as he joined some of the merchants near the flagpole. “Beautiful morning, by God.”

“It be cold, Dirk,” Brock said. “And it be right mannerly of thee to be so prompt.”

“I’m early. His Excellency’s not ashore yet, and the signal gun’s not been fired.”

“Yes, an’ a hour an’ a half late, an’ all arranged twixt you and that weakgutted lackey, I’ll be bound.”

“I’ll thank you, Mr. Brock, not to refer to His Excellency in those terms,” Captain Glessing sputtered.

“An’ I’ll thank you to keep yor opinions to yorself. I’m not in the navy and baint under yor command.” Brock spat neatly. “Better you think about the war yo’re not fighting.”

Glessing’s hand tightened on his sword. “I never thought I’d see the day when the Royal Navy was called on to protect smugglers and pirates. That’s what you are.” He looked across at Struan. “All of you.”

There was a sudden hush and Struan laughed. “His Excellency does na agree with you.”

“We’ve Acts of Parliament, by God, the Navigation Acts. One of them says, ‘Any unlicensed armed ship can be taken as prize by any nation’s navy.’ Is your fleet licensed?”

“Lots of pirates in these waters, Captain Glessing. As you’re aware,” Struan said easily. “We’ve arms to protect oursel’. No more, no less.”

“Opium’s against the law. How many thousand cases have you smuggled into China up the coast against the laws of China and humanity? Three thousand? Twenty thousand?”

“What we do here is well known in all the courts of England.”

“Your ‘trade’ brings dishonor to the flag.”

“You’d better thank God for the trade, for without it England’ll have no tea and no silk, but a universal poverty that’ll tear her very heart out.”

“Right you are, Dirk,” Brock said. Then he turned on Glessing again. “You’d better be getting it through thy head that without merchants there baint no British Empire and no taxes to buy warships and powder.” He looked at Glessing’s immaculate uniform and white knee breeches and white stockings and buckled shoes and cocked hat. “An’ no brass to pay muckles to captain ’em!”

The marines winced and some of the sailors laughed, but very cautiously.

“You’d better thank God for the Royal Navy, by God. Without it there’s no place to merchant in.”

A signal gun from the flagship boomed out. Abruptly, Glessing marched to the flagpole. “Present arms!”

He took out the proclamation and a hush fell over the crowd. Then, when his anger had lessened a little, he began to read: “By order of His Excellency the Honorable William Longstaff, Her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria’s Captain Superintendent of Trade in China. In accordance with the document known as the Treaty of Chuenpi, signed on January 20th, this year of Our Lord, by His Excellency on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, and by His Excellency Ti-sen, Plenipotentiary of His Majesty Tao Kuang, Emperor of China, I, Captain Glessing, RN, do hereby take possession of this Island of Hong Kong on behalf of Her Britannic Majesty, her heirs and assigns, in perpetuity without let or hinderance, on this day the 26th of January, year of Our Lord 1841. This island soil is now English soil. God Save the Queen!”

The Union Jack broke clear at the top of the flagpole, and the honor guard of marines fired a volley. Then the cannons roared throughout the fleet and the wind became thick with the tang of gunpowder. Those on the beach gave three cheers for the queen.

Now it’s done, Struan thought. Now we’re committed. Now we can begin. He left the group and went down to the surf, and for the first time he turned his back on the island and looked out into the great harbor at the land beyond: to mainland China, a thousand yards away.

The mainland peninsula was low-lying, with nine squat hills, and jutted into the harbor that hooped around it. It was named “Kau-lung”—“Kowloon” the traders pronounced it—“Nine Dragons.” And to the north lay the limitless and unknown expanse of China.

Struan had read all the books ever written by the three Europeans who had been to China and returned. Marco Polo nearly six hundred years ago, and two Catholic priests who had been permitted in Peking two hundred years ago. The books had revealed almost nothing.

For two hundred years no Europeans had been permitted into China. Once—against the law—Struan had gone a mile inland from the coast up near Swatow when he was selling opium, but the Chinese were hostile and he was alone but for his first mate. It wasn’t the hostility that had turned him back. Just the enormousness of their numbers and the limitlessness of the land.

God’s blood! he thought. We know nothing about the most ancient and the most populated nation on earth. What’s inside?

“Is Longstaff coming ashore?” Robb asked as he joined him.

“No, laddie. His Excellency has more important things to do.”

“What?”

“Things like reading and writing dispatches. And making private agreements with the admiral.”

“To do what?”

“To outlaw the opium trade.”

Robb laughed.

“I’m na joking. That’s why he wanted to see me—with the admiral. He wanted to get my advice on when to issue the order. The admiral said the navy’d have no trouble enforcing it.”

“Good God! Is Longstaff mad?”

“No. Just simple in the head.” Struan lit a cheroot. “I told him to issue the order at four bells.”

“That’s madness!” Robb burst out.

“It’s very wise. The navy’s not to enforce the order for a week: ‘to give the China traders time to dispose of their supplies.’ ”

“But then what do we do? Without opium we’re finished. China trade’s finished. Finished.”

“How much cash do we have, Robb?”

Robb looked around to make sure there was no one near and lowered his voice. “There’s the bullion in Scotland. One million one hundred thousand pounds sterling in our bank in England. About a hundred thousand in silver bullion here. We’re owed three million for the seized opium. We’ve two hundred thousand guineas of opium in

Scarlet Cloud at present market price. There’s—”

“Write off

Scarlet Cloud, lad. She’s lost.”

“There’s still a chance, Dirk. We’ll give her another month. There’s about a hundred thousand guineas’ worth of opium in the hulks. We owe nine hundred thousand in sight drafts.”

“What will it cost us to run for the next six months?”

“A hundred thousand guineas’ll pay for ships and salaries and squeeze.”

Struan thought a moment. “By tomorrow there’ll be a panic among the traders. Na one of ’em—except Brock, perhaps—can sell their opium in a week. You’d better ship all our opium up the coast this afternoon. I think—”

“Longstaff’s got to change the order,” Robb said with growing anxiety. “He’s got to. He’ll ruin the exchequer and—”

“Will you na listen? When the panic’s on, tomorrow, take every tael we’ve got and every tael you can borrow and buy opium. You should be able to buy at ten cents on the dollar.”

“We can’t sell all of ours in a week, let alone more.”

Struan tapped the ash off his cheroot. “A day before the order’s to be enforced, Longstaff’s going to cancel it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A matter of saving face, Robb. After the admiral had left, I explained to Longstaff that banning opium would destroy all trade. God’s blood, how many times do I have to explain? Then I pointed out that he could na very well immediately cancel the order without losing face and making the admiral—who is well-meaning but knows nothing about trade—lose face. The only thing to do was to give the order, then, to save the admiral’s face and job—

and his own—to cancel it. I promised to explain ‘trade’ to the admiral in the meantime. Also the order will look good to the Chinese and put them at a disadvantage. There’s another meeting with Ti-sen in three days. Longstaff agreed completely and asked me to keep the matter private.”

Robb’s face lit up. “Ah, Tai-Pan, you’re a man among men! But what’s to guarantee Longstaff’ll cancel the order?”

Struan had in his pocket a signed proclamation dated six days hence that canceled the order. Longstaff had pressed it on him. “Here, Dirk, take it now, then I can forget it. Damme! All this paper work, you know—dreadful. But better keep it private until the time.”

“Would you na cancel such a stupid order, Robbie?”

“Yes, of course.” Robb could have hugged his brother. “If it’s six days and no one else knows for certain, we’ll make a fortune.”

“Aye.” Struan let his eyes drift to the harbor. He had found it twenty-odd years ago. The outer edge of a typhoon had caught him far out to sea, and though he had prepared for storm he could not escape and had been driven relentlessly into the mainland. His ship had been scudding under bare poles, taking the seas heavily, the day sky and horizon obliterated by the sheets of water the Supreme Winds clawed from the ocean and hurled before them. Then, close by shore in monstrous seas, the storm anchors had given way and Struan knew that the ship was lost. The seas took the ship and threw it at the shore. By some miracle a wind altered her course a fraction of a degree and drove her past the rocks into a narrow, uncharted channel, barely three hundred yards wide, that the eastern tip of Hong Kong formed with the mainland—and into the harbor beyond. Into safe waters.

The typhoon had wrecked much of the merchant fleet at Macao and sunk tens of thousands of junks up and down the coast. But Struan and the junks sheltering at Hong Kong weathered it comfortably. When the storm had passed, Struan sailed around the island, charting it. Then he had stored the information in his mind and begun secretly to plan.

And now that you’re ours, now I can leave, he thought, his excitement warming. Now Parliament.

For years Struan had known that the only means of protecting The Noble House and the new colony lay in London. The real seat of power on earth was Parliament. As a member of Parliament, supported by the power the huge wealth of The Noble House gave him, he would dominate Asian foreign policy as he had dominated Longstaff. Aye.

A few thousand pounds will put you in Parliament, he told himself. No more working through others. Now you’ll be able to do it yoursel’. Aye, at long last, laddie. A few years and then a knighthood. Then into the Cabinet. And then, then, by God, you’ll set a course for the Empire and Asia and The Noble House that will last a thousand years. Robb was watching him. He knew that he had been forgotten but he did not mind. He liked watching his brother when his thoughts were far away. When the Tai-Pan’s face lost its hardness and his eyes their chilling green, when his mind was swept with dreams he knew he could never share, Robb felt very close to him and very safe. Struan broke the silence. “In six months you take over as Tai-Pan.”

Robb’s stomach tensed with panic. “No. I’m not ready.”

“You’re ready. Only in Parliament can I protect us and Hong Kong.”

“Yes,” Robb said; then he added, trying to keep his voice level, “But that was to be sometime in the future—in two or three years. There’s too much to be done here.”

“You can do it.”

“No.”

“You can. And there’s no doubt in Sarah’s mind, Robb.”

Robb looked at

Resting Cloud, their depot ship, where his wife and children were living temporarily. He knew that Sarah was too ambitious for him. “I don’t want it yet. There’s plenty of time.”

Struan thought about time. He did not regret the years spent in the Orient away from home. Away from his wife Ronalda and Culum and Ian and Lechie and Winifred, his children. He would have liked them to be with him, but Ronalda hated the Orient. They had been married in Scotland when he was twenty and Ronalda sixteen, and they had left immediately for Macao. But she had hated the voyage out and hated Macao. Their first son had died at birth, and the next year when their second son, Culum, was bom, he too became sickly. So Struan had sent his family home. Every three or four years he had returned on leave. A month or two in Glasgow with them and then he was back to the Orient, for there was much to do and a Noble House to be built.

I dinna regret a day, he told himself. Na a day. A man has to go out into the world to make what he can of it and himself. Is that na the purpose of life? Even though Ronalda’s a bonny lass and I love my children, a man must do what he has to do. Is that na why we’re born? If the laird of the Struans had not taken all the clan lands and fenced them and thrown us off—us, his kinsmen, us who had worked the lands for generations—then I might have been a crofter like my father before me. Aye, and content to be a crofter. But he sent us off into a stinking slum in Glasgow and took all the lands for himself to become Earl of Struan, and broke up the clan. So we almost starved and I went to sea and joss saved us and now the family’s well-off. All of them. Because I went to sea. And because The Noble House came to pass.

Struan had learned very quickly that money was power. And he was going to use his power to destroy the Earl of Struan and buy back some of the clan lands. He regretted nothing in his life. He had found China, and China had given him what his homeland never could. Not just wealth—wealth for its own sake was an obscenity. But wealth and a purpose for wealth. He owed a debt to China.

And he knew that though he would go home and become a member of Parliament and a Cabinet minister and break the earl and cement Hong Kong as a jewel into the crown of Britain, he would always return. For his real purpose—secret from everyone, almost secret from himself most of the time—would take years to fulfill.

“There’s never enough time.” He looked at the dominating mountain. “We’ll call it ‘the Peak,’ ” he said absently, and again he had the strange sudden feeling that the island hated him and wanted him dead. He could feel the hatred surrounding him and he wondered, perplexed, Why?

“In six months you rule The Noble House,” he repeated, his voice harsh.

“I can’t. Not alone.”

“A tai-pan is always alone. That’s the joy of it and the hurt of it.” Over Robb’s shoulder he saw the bosun approaching. “Yes, Mr. McKay?”

“Beggin’ yor pardon, sorr. Permission to splice the main brace?” McKay was a squat, thickset man, his hair tied in a tarred, ratty pigtail.

“Aye. A double tot to all hands. Set things up as arranged.”

“Aye, aye, sorr.” McKay hurried away. Struan turned back to Robb, and Robb was conscious only of the strange green eyes that seemed to pour light over him. “I’ll send Culum out at the end of the year. He’ll be through university by then. Ian and Lechie will go to sea, then they’ll follow. By then your boy Roddy will be old enough. Thank God, we’ve enough sons to follow us. Choose one of them to succeed you. The Tai-Pan is always to choose who is to succeed him and when.” Then with finality he turned his back on mainland China and said, “Six months!” He walked away.

Robb watched him go, suddenly hating him, hating himself and the island. He knew he would fail as Tai-Pan.

“Will you drink with us, gentlemen?” Struan was saying to a group of the merchants. “A toast to our new home? There’s brandy, rum, beer, dry sack, whisky and champagne.” He pointed to his longboat, where his men were unloading kegs and laying out tables. Others were staggering under loads of cold roast meat—chickens and haunches of pig and twenty suckling pigs and a side of beef—and loaves of bread and cold salt pork pies and bowls of cold cabbage cooked with ham fat and thirty or forty smoked hams and hands of Canton bananas and preserved fruit pies, and fine glass and pewter mugs, and even buckets of ice—which lorchas and clippers had brought from the north—for the bottles of champagne. “There’s breakfast for any that are hungry.”

There was a cheer of approval, and the merchants began to converge on the tables. When they all had their glasses or tankards, Struan raised his glass. “A toast, gentlemen.”

“I be drinking with you, but not to this poxy rock. I be drinking to yor downfall,” Brock said, holding up a tankard of ale. “On second thoughts, I be drinking to yor little rock as well. An’ I give it a name: ‘Struan’s Folly.’”

“Aye, it’s little enough,” Struan replied. “But big enough for Struan’s and the rest of the China traders. Whether it’s big enough for both Struan’s and Brock’s—that’s another question.”

“I be tellin’ thee right smartly, Dirk, old lad: The whole of China baint.” Brock drained the mug and hurled it inland. Then he stalked to his longboat. Some of the merchants followed him.

“ ’Pon me word, dreadful manners,” Quance said. Then he called out in the laughter, “Come on, Tai-Pan, the toast! Mr. Quance has an immortal thirst! Let history be made.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Struan,” Horatio Sinclair said. “Before the toast wouldn’t it be fitting to thank God for the mercies He has shown us this day?”

“Of course, lad. Foolish of me to forget. Will you lead the prayer?”

“The Reverend Mauss is here, sir.”

Struan hesitated, caught off guard. He studied the young man, liking the deep humor that lurked behind the sky-gray eyes. Then he said loudly, “Reve’n’d Mauss, where are you? Let’s have a prayer.”

Mauss towered above the merchants. He haltingly moved in front of the table and set down his empty glass and pretended that it had always been empty. The men took off their hats and waited bareheaded in the cold wind.

Now it was quiet on the beach. Struan looked up at the foothills to an outcrop where the kirk would be. He could see the kirk in his mind’s eye and the town and the quays and warehouses and homes and gardens. The Great House where the Tai-Pan would hold court over the generations. Other homes for the hierarchy of the house and their families. And their girls. He thought about his present mistress, T’chung Jen May-may. He had bought May-may five years ago when she was fifteen and untouched.

Ayeeee yah, he said to himself happily, using one of her Cantonese expressions, which meant pleasure or anger or disgust or happiness or helplessness, depending on how it was said. Now, there’s a wildcat if ever there was one.

“Sweet God of the wild winds and the surf and the beauty of love, God of great ships and the North Star and the beauty of home, God and Father of the Christ child, look at us and pity us.” Mauss, his eyes closed, was lifting his hands. His voice was rich, and the depth of his longing swooped around them. “We are the sons of men, and our fathers worried over us as You worried over your blessed Son Jesus. Saints are crucified on earth and sinners multiply. We look at the glory of a flower and see You not. We endure the Supreme Winds and know You not. We measure the mighty oceans and feel You not. We reap the earth and touch You not. We eat and drink, yet we taste You not. All these things You are and more. You are life and death and success and failure. You are God and we are men . . .”

He paused, his face contorted, as he struggled with his agonized soul. Oh God, forgive me my sins. Let me expiate my weakness by converting the heathen. Let me be a martyr to your Holy Cause. Change me from what I am to what I was once . . .

But Wolfgang Mauss knew that there was no turning back, that the moment he had begun to serve Struan, his peace had left him and the needs of his flesh had swamped him. Surely, oh God, what I did was right. There was no other way to go into China.

He opened his eyes and stared around helplessly. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I know not the words. I can see them—great words to make you know Him as once I knew Him—but I cannot the words say any more. Forgive me. Oh Lord, bless this island. Amen.”

Struan took a full glass of whisky and gave it to Mauss. “I think you said it very well. A toast, gentlemen. The Queen!”

They drank, and when their glasses were drained, Struan ordered them refilled.

“With your permission, Captain Glessing, I’d like to offer your men a tot. And you, of course. A toast to the queen’s newest possession. You’ve passed into history today.” He called out to the merchants, “We should honor the captain. Let’s name this beach ‘Glessing’s Point.’ ”

There was a roar of approval.

“Naming islands or a part of an island is the prerequisite of the senior officer,” Glessing said.

“I’ll mention it to His Excellency.”

Glessing nodded curtly and snapped at the master-at-arms: “Sailors one tot, compliments of Struan and Company. Marines none. Stand easy.”

In spite of his fury at Struan, Glessing could not help glorying in the knowledge that as long as there was a Colony of Hong Kong his name would be remembered. For Struan never said anything lightly.

There was a toast to Hong Kong, and three cheers. Then Struan nodded to the piper, and the skirl of the clan Struan filled the beach.

Robb drank nothing. Struan sipped a glass of brandy and ambled through the throng, greeting those he wished to greet and nodding to others.

“You’re not drinking, Gordon?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Struan.” Gordan Chen bowed in Chinese fashion, very proud to be noticed.

“How are things going with you?”

“Very well, thank you, sir.”

The lad’s grown into a fine young man, Struan thought. How old is he now? Nineteen. Time goes so fast.

He remembered Kai-sung, the boy’s mother, fondly. She had been his first mistress and most beautiful. Ayee yah, she taught you a lot.

“How’s your mother?” he asked.

“She’s very well.” Gordon Chen smiled. “She would wish me to give you her prayers for your safety. Every month she burns joss sticks in your honor at the temple.”

Struan wondered how she looked now. He had not seen her for seventeen years. But he remembered her face clearly. “Send her my best wishes.”

“You do her too much honor, Mr. Struan.”

“Chen Sheng tells me you are working hard and are very useful to him.”

“He is too kind to me, sir.”

Chen Sheng was never kind to anyone who did not more than earn his keep. Chen Sheng’s an old thief, Struan thought, but, by God, we’d be lost without him.

“Well,” Struan said, “you could na have a better teacher than Chen Sheng. There’ll be lots to do in the next few months. Lots of squeeze to be made.”

“I hope to be of service to The Noble House, sir.” Struan sensed that his son had something on his mind, but he merely nodded pleasantly and walked off, knowing that Gordon would find a way to tell him when the time was ripe.

Gordon Chen bowed and after a moment wandered down to one of the tables and waited politely in the background until there was space for him, conscious of the stares but not caring; he knew that as long as Struan was

the Tai-Pan he was quite safe.

The merchants and sailors around the beach ripped chickens and suckling pigs to pieces with their hands and stuffed themselves with the meat, grease running down their chins. What a bunch of savages, Gordon Chen thought, and thanked his joss that he had been brought up as a Chinese and not a European.

Yes, he thought, my joss has been huge. Joss had brought him his secret Chinese Teacher a few years ago. He had told no one about the Teacher, not even his mother. From this man he had learned that not all that the Reverends Sinclair and Mauss had taught was necessarily true. He had learned about Buddha and about China and her past. And how to repay the gift of life and use it to the glory of his motherland. Then last year the Teacher had initiated him into the most powerful, most clandestine, most militant of the Chinese secret societies, the Hung Mun Tong, which was spread all over China and was committed by the most sacred oaths of blood brotherhood to overthrow the hated Manchus, the foreign Ch’ings, the ruling dynasty of China.

For two centuries under various guises and names the society had fostered insurrection. There had been revolts all over the Chinese Empire—from Tibet to Formosa, from Mongolia to Indochina. Wherever there was famine or oppression or discontent, the Hung Mun would band the peasants together against the Ch’ings and against their mandarins. All the insurrections had failed and had been put down savagely by the Ch’ings. But the society had survived.

Gordon Chen felt honored that he, only part Chinese, had been considered worthy to be a Hung Mun. Death to the Ch’ings. He blessed his joss that he had been born in this era in history, in this part of China, with this father, for he knew that the time was almost ripe for all China to revolt.

And he blessed the Tai-Pan, for he had given the Hung Mun a pearl beyond price: Hong Kong. At long last the society had a base safe from the perpetual oppression of the mandarins. Hong Kong would be under barbarian control, and here on this little island he knew that the society would flourish. From Hong Kong, safe and secret, they would probe the mainland and harass the Ch’ings until the Day. And with joss, he thought, with joss I can use the power of The Noble House in the cause.

“Hop it, you bloody heathen!”

Gordon Chen looked up, startled. A squat, tough little sailor was glaring at him. He had a haunch of suckling pig in his hands and he was ripping at it with broken teeth.

“Hop it, or I’ll twist yor pigtail around yor bleedin’ neck!”

Bosun McKay hurried over and shoved the sailor aside. “Hold yor tongue, Ramsey, you poxy sod,” he said. “He don’t mean no harm, Mr. Chen.”

“Yes. Thank you, Mr. McKay.”

“You want grub?” McKay stabbed a chicken with his knife and offered it.

Gordon Chen carefully broke off the end bone of the chicken wing, appalled by McKay’s barbarian manners. “Thank you.”

“That all you’ll have?”

“Yes. It’s the most delicate part.” Chen bowed. “Thank you again.” He walked off.

McKay went over to the sailor. “You all right, mate?”

“I oughta cut yor bugger heart out. Is he yor Chinee doxy, McKay?”

“Keep yor voice down, mon. That Chinee’s to be left alone. If you want to pick on a heathen bastard, there’s plenty others. But not him, by God. He’s the Tai-Pan’s bastard, that’s what.”

“Then why don’t he wear a bleeding sign—or cut his bleeding hair?” Ramsey dropped his voice and leered. “I hear tell they’s different—Chinee doxies. Built different.”

“I don’t know. Never be’d near one of th’ scum. There’s enough of our own kind in Macao.”

Struan was watching a sampan anchored offshore. It was a small boat with a snug cabin fashioned from thin mats of woven rattan stretched over bamboo hoops. The fisherman and his family were Hoklos, boat people who lived all their lives afloat and rarely, if ever, went ashore. He could see that there were four adults and eight children in the sampan. Some of the infants were tied to the boat by ropes around their waists. These would be sons. Daughters were not tied, for they were of no value.

“When do you think we can return to Macao, Mr. Struan?”

He turned around and smiled at Horatio. “I imagine tomorrow, laddie. But I suppose His Excellency will need you for the meeting with Ti-sen. There’ll be more documents to translate.”

“When’s the meeting?”

“In three days, I believe.”

“If you have a ship going to Macao, would you give my sister passage? Poor Mary’s been aboard for two months.”

“Glad to.” Struan wondered what Horatio would do when he found out about Mary. Struan had learned the truth about her a little over three years ago . . .

He had been in a crowded marketplace at Macao, and a Chinese had suddenly pushed a piece of paper into his hand and darted away. It was a note written in Chinese. He had shown the paper to Wolfgang Mauss.

“They’re directions to a house, Mr. Struan. And a message: “ ‘The Tai-Pan of The Noble House needs special information for the sake of his house. Come secretly to the side entrance at the Hour of the Monkey.’ ”

“When’s the Hour of the Monkey?”

“Three o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Where’s the house?”

Wolfgang told him and then added, “Don’t go. It’s a trap,

hein? Remember there’s a hundred thousand taels’ reward on your head.”

“The house is na in the Chinese quarter,” Struan had said. “In daylight it’d na be a trap. Get my boat’s crew together. If I’m na out safely in one hour, come and find me.”

So he had gone, leaving Wolfgang and the armed boat’s crew close by and ready if necessary. The house was joined to others in a row on a quiet, tree-lined street. Struan had entered through a door in the high wall and found himself in a garden. A Chinese woman servant was awaiting him. She was neatly dressed in black trousers and black coat, and her hair was arranged in a bun. She bowed and motioned him to be quiet and to follow her. She led the way through the garden and into the house and up a flight of private stairs and into a room. He followed cautiously, ready for trouble.

The room was richly furnished and the paneled walls were hung with tapestries. There were chairs and a table and Chinese teak furniture. The room smelled strangely clean with the faintest suggestion of a subtle incense. There was one window which overlooked the garden.

The woman went to the far end of a side wall and carefully moved a strip of paneling. There was a tiny peephole in the wall. She peered through it, then motioned him to do the same. He knew that it was an old Chinese trick to dupe an enemy into putting his eye to such a hole in a wall while someone waited on the other side with a needle. So he kept his eye a few inches from the hole. Still he could see the other room clearly.

It was a bedroom. Wang Chu, the chief mandarin of Macao, was on the bed nude and corpulent and snoring. Mary was naked beside him. Her head was propped on her arms and she was staring at the ceiling.

Struan watched with fascinated horror. Mary langourously nudged Wang Chu and stroked him awake and laughed and talked with him. Struan had been unaware that she could speak Chinese, and he knew her as well as anyone—except her brother. She rang a small bell, and a maid came in and began to help the mandarin dress. Wang Chu could not dress himself for his nails were four inches long and protected with jeweled sheaths. Struan turned away filled with loathing.

There was a sudden chatter of singsong voices from the garden and he cautiously looked out the window. Wang’s guards were assembling in the garden; they would block his exit. The servant woman motioned him not to worry but to wait. She went to the table and poured him tea; then she bowed and left.

In half an hour the men left the garden and Struan saw them form up in front of a sedan chair on the street. Wang Chu was helped into the sedan chair and carried away.

“Hello, Tai-Pan.”

Struan spun around, drawing his knife. Mary was standing in a doorway which had been concealed in the wall. She wore a gossamer robe which hid none of her. She had long, fair hair and blue eyes and a dimpled chin; long legs and tiny waist and small, firm breasts. A priceless piece of carved jade hung from a gold chain around her neck. Mary was studying Struan with a curious, flat smile.

“You can put the knife away, Tai-Pan. You’re in no danger.” Her voice was calm and mocking.

“You ought to be horsewhipped,” he said.

“I know all about whipping, don’t you remember?” She motioned to the bedroom. “We’ll be more comfortable in here.” She went to a bureau and poured brandy into two glasses.

“What’s the matter?” she said with the same perverse smile. “Haven’t you been in a girl’s bedroom before?”

“You mean a whore’s bedroom?”

She handed him a glass and he took it. “We’re both the same, Tai-Pan. We both prefer Chinese bedmates.”

“By God, you damned bitch, you—”

“Don’t play the hypocrite; it doesn’t suit you. You’re married and you’ve children. Yet you’ve many other women. Chinese women. I know all about them. I’ve made it my business to find out.”

“It’s impossible for you to be Mary Sinclair,” he said half to himself.

“Not impossible. Surprising, yes.” She sipped her brandy calmly. “I sent for you because I wanted you to see me as I am.”

“Why?”

“First you’d better dismiss your men.”

“How do you know about them?”

“You’re very careful. Like me. You wouldn’t come here secretly without a bodyguard.” Her eyes were mocking him.

“What are you up to?”

“How long did you tell your men to wait?”

“An hour.”

“I need more of your time. Dismiss them.” She laughed.

“I’ll wait.”

“You’d better. And put some clothes on.”

He left the house and told Wolfgang to wait for another two hours and then to come and find him. He told him about the secret door but not about Mary.

When he returned, Mary was lying on the bed. “Please close the door, Tai-Pan,” she said.

“I told you to put some clothes on.”

“I told you to close the door.”

Angrily he slammed it. Mary took off the filmy robe and tossed it aside. “Do you find me attractive?”

“No. You disgust me.”

“You don’t disgust me, Tai-Pan. You’re the only man I admire in the world.”

“Horatio should see you now.”

“Ah, Horatio,” she said cryptically. “How long did you tell your men to wait this time?”

“Two hours.”

“You told them about the secret door. But not about me.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“I know you, Tai-Pan. That’s why I trust you with my secret.” She toyed with the brandy glass, her eyes lowered. “Had we finished when you looked through the peephole?”

“God’s blood! You’d better—”

“Be patient with me, Tai-Pan,” she said. “Had we?”

“Aye.”

“I’m glad. Glad and sorry. I wanted you to be sure.”

“I dinna understand.”

“I wanted you to be sure that Wang Chu was my lover.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve information that you can use. You’d never believe me unless you’d seen that I was his woman.”

“What information?”

“I’ve lots of information you can use, Tai-Pan. I’ve many lovers. Chen Sheng comes here sometimes. Many of the mandarins from Canton. Old Jin-qua once.” Her eyes frosted and seemed to change color. “I don’t disgust them. They like the color of my skin and I please them. They please me. I have to tell you these things, Tai-Pan. I’m only repaying my debt to you.”

“What debt?”

“You stopped the beatings. You stopped them too late, but that wasn’t your fault.” She got up from the bed and put on a heavy robe. “I won’t tease you any more. Please hear me out and then you can do what you like.”

“What do you want to tell me?”

“The emperor has appointed a new viceroy to Canton. This Viceroy Ling carries an imperial edict to stop opium smuggling. He will arrive in two weeks, and within three weeks he will surround the Settlement at Canton. No European will be let out of Canton until all the opium has been surrendered.”

Struan laughed contemptuously. “I dinna believe it.”

“If the opium is given up and destroyed, anyone with cargoes of opium outside of Canton will make a fortune,” Mary said.

“It will na be given up.”

“Say the whole Settlement was ransomed for opium. What could you do? There are no warships here. You’re defenseless. Aren’t you?”

“Aye.”

“Send a ship to Calcutta with orders to buy opium, all you can, two months after it arrives. If my information is false, that gives you plenty of time to cancel the order.”

“Wang told you this?”

“Only about the viceroy. The other was my idea. I wanted to repay my debt to you.”

“You owe me nothing.”

“You were never whipped.”

“Why did you na send someone to tell me secretly? Why bring me here? To see you like this? Why make me go through this—this horror?”

“I wanted to tell you. Myself. I wanted someone other than me to know what I was. You’re the only man I trust,” she said with an unexpected, childlike innocence.

“You’re mad. You should be locked up.”

“Because I like going to bed with Chinese?”

“By the Cross! Do you na understand what you are?”

“Yes. A disgrace to England.” Anger swept her face, hardening it, aging it. “You men do what you please, but we women can’t. Good Christ, how can I go to bed with a European? They couldn’t wait to tell others and shame me before all of you. This way no one’s harmed. Except me, perhaps, and that happened a long time ago.”

“What did?”

“You’d better know a fact of life, Tai-Pan. A woman needs men just as much as man needs women. Why should we be satisfied with one man? Why?”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Since I was fourteen. Don’t be so shocked! How old was May-may when you bought her?”

“That was different.”

“It’s always different for a man.” Mary sat down at the table in front of the mirror and began to brush her hair. “Brock is secretly negotiating with the Spaniards in Manila for the sugar crop. He’s offered Carlos de Silvera ten percent for the monopoly.”

Struan felt a surge of fury. If Brock could work that trick with sugar, he could dominate the whole Philippine market. “How do you know?”

“His compradore, Sze-tsin, told me.”

“He’s another of your—clients?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else you want to tell me?”

“You could make a hundred thousand taels of silver from what I’ve told you.”

“Have you finished?”

“Yes.”

Struan got up.

“What are you going to do?”

“Tell your brother. You’d better be sent back to England.”

“Leave me to my own life, Tai-Pan. I enjoy what I am and I’ll never change. No Europeans—and few Chinese—know I speak Cantonese and Mandarin except Horatio and now you. But only you know the real me. I promise I will be very, very useful to you.”

“You’re off home, out of Asia.”

“Asia is my home.” Her brow furrowed and her eyes seemed to soften. “Please leave me as I am. Nothing has changed. Two days ago we met on the street and you were kind and gentle. I’m still the same Mary.”

“You’re na the same. You call all this nothing?”

“We’re all different people at the same time. This is one me, and the other girl—the sweet, innocent virgin nothing, who makes silly conversation and adores the Church and the harpsichord and singing and needlework—is also me. I don’t know why, but that’s true. You’re Tai-Pan Struan—devil, smuggler, prince, murderer, husband, fornicator, saint and a hundred other people. Which is the real you?”

“I’ll na tell Horatio. You can just go home. I’ll give you the money.”

“I’ve money enough for my own passage, Tai-Pan. I earn many presents. I own this house and the one next door. And I’ll go when I choose in the manner I choose. Please, leave me to my own joss, Tai-Pan. I am what I am, and nothing you can do will change it. Once you could have helped me. No, that’s not honest either. No one could have helped me. I like what I am. I swear I will never change. I will be what I am: either secretly, and no one knowing except you and me—or openly. So why hurt others? Why hurt Horatio?”

Struan looked down at her. He knew that she meant what she said. “Do you know the danger you’re in?”

“Yes.”

“Say you have a child.”

“Danger adds spice to life, Tai-Pan.” She looked deeply at him, a shadow in her blue eyes. “Only one thing I regret about bringing you here. Now I can never be your woman. I would like to have been your woman.”

Struan had left her to her joss. She had a right to live as she pleased, and exposing her to the community would solve nothing. Worse, it would destroy her devoted brother.

He had used her information to immense profit. Because of Mary, The Noble House had almost a total monopoly of all opium trade for a year, and more than made back the cost of their share of the opium—twelve thousand cases—that had ransomed the Settlement. And Mary’s information about Brock had been correct and Brock had been stopped. Struan had opened a secret account for Mary in England and paid into the account a proportion of the profit. She had thanked him but had never seemed interested in the money. From time to time she gave him more information. But she would never tell him how she started her double life, or why. Great God in Heaven, he thought, I’ll never understand people . . .

And now, on the beach, he was wondering what Horatio would do when he found out. Impossible for Mary to keep her second life secret—she was sure to make a mistake.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Struan?” Horatio said.

“Nothing, lad. Just thinking.”

“Do you have a ship leaving today or tomorrow?”

“What?”

“Going to Macao,” Horatio said with a laugh. “To take Mary to Macao.”

“Oh, yes. Mary.” Struan collected himself. “Tomorrow, probably. I’ll let you know, lad.”

He shoved his way through the merchants, heading for Robb, who was standing near one of the tables, staring out to sea.

“What’s next, Mr. Struan?” Skinner called out.

“Eh?”

“We’ve the island. What’s the next move of The Noble House?”

“Build, of course. The first to build’ll be the first to profit, Mr. Skinner.” Struan nodded good-naturedly and continued his way. He wondered what the other merchants—even Robb—would say if they knew he was the owner of the

Oriental Times and that Skinner was his employee.

“Na eating, Robb?”

“Later, Dirk. There’s time enough.”

“Tea?”

“Thanks.”

Cooper wandered over to them and lifted his glass. “To ‘Struan’s Folly’?”

“If it is, Jeff,” Struan said, “you’ll all come down the sewer with us.”

“Aye,” Robb said. “And it’ll be an expensive sewer if Struan’s has anything to do with it.”

“The Noble House does do things in style! Perfect whisky, brandy, champagne. And Venetian glass.” Cooper tapped the glass with his fingernail, and the note it made was pure. “Beautiful.”

“Made in Birmingham. They’ve just discovered a new process. One factory’s already turning them out a thousand a week. Within a year there’ll be a dozen factories.” Struan paused a moment. “I’ll deliver any number you want in Boston. Ten cents American a glass.”

Cooper examined the glass more closely. “Ten thousand. Six cents.”

“Ten cents. Brock’ll charge you twelve.”

“Fifteen thousand at seven cents.”

“Done—with a guaranteed order for thirty thousand at the same price a year from today and a guarantee you’ll only import through Struan’s.”

“Done—if you’ll freight a cargo of cotton by the same ship from New Orleans to Liverpool.”

“How many tons?”

“Three hundred. Usual terms.”

“Done—if you’ll act as our agent in Canton for this season’s tea. If necessary.”

Cooper was instantly on guard. “But the war’s over. Why should you need an agent?”

“Is it a deal?”

Cooper’s mind was working like a keg of weevils. The Treaty of Cheunpi opened up Canton immediately to trade. On the morrow they were all going back to the Settlement in Canton to take up residence again. They would take over their factories—or hongs, as their business houses in the Orient were called—and stay in the Settlement as always until May when the season’s business was over. But for The Noble House to need an agent now in Canton was as foolish as saying the United States of America needed a royal family.

“Is it a deal, Jeff?”

“Yes. You’re expecting war again?”

“All life’s trouble, eh? Is that na what Wolfgang was trying to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“How soon will your new ship be ready?” Struan asked abruptly.

Cooper’s eyes narrowed. “How did you find out about that? No one knows outside our company.”

Robb laughed. “It’s our business to know, Jeff. She might be unfair competition. If she sails like Dirk thinks she’ll sail, perhaps we’ll buy her out from under you. Or build four more like her.”

“It’d be a change for the British to buy American ships,” Cooper said tensely.

“Oh, we would na buy them, Jeff,” Struan said. “We’ve already a copy of her lines. We’d build where we’ve always built. Glasgow. If I were you, I’d rake her masts a notch more and add top ta’ gallants to the main and mizzen. What’re you going to call her?”

“

Independence.”

“Then we’ll call ours

Independent Cloud. If she’s worthy.”

“We’ll sail you off the seas. We beat you twice in war, and now we’ll beat you where it really hurts. We’ll take away your trade.”

“You haven’t a hope in hell.” Struan noticed that Tillman was leaving. Abruptly his voice hardened. “An’ never when half your country’s based on slavery.”

“That’ll change in time. Englishmen started it.”

“Scum started it!”

Yes, and madmen are continuing it, Cooper thought bitterly, remembering the violent private quarrels he was always having with his partner, who owned plantation slaves and trafficked in them. How could Wilf be so blind? “You were in the trade up to eight years ago.”

“Struan’s was never in human cargo, by God. And by the Lord God, I’ll blow any ship out of the sea I catch doing it. In or out of British waters. We gave the lead to the world. Slavery’s outlawed. God help us, it took till 1833 to do it, but it’s done. Any ship, remember!”

“Then do another thing. Use your influence to let us buy opium from the goddam East India Company. Why should everyone but British traders be totally excluded from the auctions, eh? Why should we be forced to buy low-quality Turkish opium when there’s more than enough from Bengal for all of us?”

“I’ve done more than my share to wreck the Company, as you well know. Spend some money, laddie. Gamble a little. Agitate in Washington. Push your partner’s brother. Isn’t he a senator from Alabama? Or is he too busy looking after four godrotting blackbirders and a couple of ‘markets’ in Mobile?”

“You know my opinion on that, by God,” Cooper snapped. “Open up the opium auctions and we’ll trade you off the earth. I think you’re all afraid to compete freely, if the truth was known. Why else keep the Navigation Acts in force? Why make it law that only English ships can carry goods into England? By what right do you monopolize the biggest consuming market on earth?”

“Na by divine right, laddie,” Struan said sharply, “which seems to permeate American thinking and foreign policy.”

“In some things we’re right and you’re wrong. Let’s compete freely. Goddam tariffs! Free trade and free seas—that’s what’s right!”

“Struan’s is with you there. Do you na read the newspapers? I dinna mind telling you we buy ten thousand votes a year to support six members who’ll vote free trade. We’re trying hard enough.”

“One vote, one man. We don’t buy votes.”

“You’ve your system and we’ve ours. And I’ll tell you something else. The

British were na for the American wars, either of them. Or for those godrotting Hanoverian kings. You did na win the wars, we lost ’em. Happily. Why should we war on kith and kin? But if the people of the Isles ever decide to war on the States, watch out, by God. Because you’re finished.”

“I think a toast is in order,” Robb said.

The two men tore their eyes off each other and stared at him. To their astonishment he poured three glasses.

“You’ll na drink, Robb,” Struan said, his voice a lash.

“I will. First time on Hong Kong. Last time.” Robb handed them glasses. The whisky was golden-brown and distilled exclusively for The Noble House at Loch Tannoch where they were born. Robb needed the drink; he needed the keg.

“You swore a holy oath!”

“I know. But it’s bad luck to toast in water. And this toast’s important.” Robb’s hand shook as he raised his glass. “Here’s to our future. Here’s to

Independence and

Independent Cloud. To freedom o’ the seas. To freedom from any tyrants.”

He took a sip and held the liquor in his mouth, feeling it burn, his body twisting with the need of it. Then he spat it out and poured the remainder on the pebbles.

“If I ever do that again, knock it out of my hand.” He turned away, nauseated, and walked inland.

“That took more strength than I have,” Cooper said.

“Robb’s sick in the head to tempt the Devil like that,” Struan said.

Robb had begun to drink to the point of insanity six years ago. The preceeding year Sarah had come to Macao from Scotland with their children. For a time everything had been grand, but then she had found out about Robb’s Chinese mistress of years, Ming Soo, and about their daughter. Struan remembered Sarah’s rage and Robb’s anguish, and he was sad for both of them. They should have been divorced years ago, he thought, and he damned the fact that a divorce could be obtained only by Act of Parliament. At length Sarah had agreed to forgive Robb, but only if he would swear by God to immediately rid himself forever of his adored mistress and their daughter. Hating himself, Robb had agreed. He had secretly given Ming Soo four thousand taels of silver, and she and their daughter had left Macao. He had never seen them or heard of them again. But though Sarah relented, she never forgot the beautiful girl and child and continued to salt the ever-open wound. Robb had begun drinking heavily. Soon the drink ruled him and he was besotted for months on end. Then one day he had disappeared. Eventually Struan had found him in one of the stinking gin cellars in Macao and had carried him home and sobered him; then he had given him a gun.

“Shoot yoursel’ or swear by God you’ll na touch drink again. It’s poison to you, Robb. You’ve been drunk for almost a year. You’ve the children to think of. The poor bairns are terrified of you and rightly; and I’m tired of pulling you out of gutters. Look at yoursel’, Robb! Go on!”

Struan had forced him to look into a mirror. Robb had sworn, and then Struan had sent him to sea for a month with orders that he was to be given no liquor. Robb had almost died. In time he had become himself again, and he had thanked his brother and lived with Sarah again and tried to make peace. But there was never peace again between them—or love. Poor Robb, Struan thought. Aye, and poor Sarah. Terrible to live like that, husband and wife.

“What the devil made Robbie do that?”

“I think he wanted to break up a quarrel,” Cooper said. “I was getting angry. Sorry.”

“Dinna apologize, Jeff. It was my fault. Well,” Struan added, “let’s na waste Robb’s guts, eh? His toast?”

They drank silently. All around the shore the merchants and sailors were roistering.

“Hey, Tai-Pan! And you, you blasted colonial! Come over here!”

It was Quance, seated near the flagpole. He waved at them and shouted again. “Blast it, come over here!” He took a pinch of snuff, sneezed twice and dusted himself impatiently with a French lace kerchief.

“By God, sir,” he said to Struan, peering up at him over rimless spectacles, “how the blasted hell can a man work with all this din and tumult? You and your blasted liquor!”

“Did you try the brandy, Mr. Quance?”

“Impeccable, my dear fellow. Like Miss Tillman’s tits.” He took the painting off the easel and held it up. “What do you think?”

“About Shevaun Tilknan?”

“The painting. Great spheroids of balderdash, how can you think about a doxy’s tail when you’re in the presence of a masterpiece?” Quance took another pinch of snuff and choked, and gulped from his tankard of Napoleon brandy and sneezed.

The painting was a water color of the day’s ceremony. Delicate. Faithful. And a little more. It was easy to pick out Brock and Mauss, and Glessing was there, the proclamation in his hands.

“It’s very good, Mr. Quance,” Struan said.

“Fifty guineas.”

“I bought a painting last week.”

‘Twenty guineas.”

“I’m na in it.”

“Fifty guineas and I’ll paint you reading the proclamation.”

“No.”

“Mr. Cooper. A masterpiece. Twenty guineas.”

“Outside of the Tai-Pan and Robb, I’ve the biggest Quance collection in the Far East.”

“Dammit, gentlemen, I’ve got to get some money from somewhere!”

“Sell it to Brock. You can see him right smartly,” Struan said.

“The pox on Brock!” Quance took a very large gulp of brandy and said, his voice hoarse, “He turned me down, blast him!” and he dabbed furiously with his paintbrush and now Brock was gone. “By God, why should I make him immortal? And a pox on both of you. I’ll send it to the Royal Academy. On your next ship, Tai-Pan.”

“Who’s going to pay the freight? And insurance?”

“I will, my boy.”

“With what?”

Quance contemplated the painting. He knew that even in old age he could still paint and improve; his talent would not deteriorate.

“With what, Mr. Quance?”

He waved an imperious hand at Struan. “Money. Taels. Brass. Dollars. Cash!”

“You’ve a new line of credit, Mr. Quance?”

But Quance did not answer. He continued to admire his work, knowing he had hooked his prey.

“Come on, Aristotle, who is it?” Struan insisted.

Quance took an enormous gulp of brandy and more snuff and sneezed. He whispered conspiratorially, “Sit down.” He looked to see there was no one else listening. “A secret.” He held up the painting. “Twenty guineas?”

“All right,” Struan said. “But it better be worth it.”

“You’re a prince among men, Tai-Pan. Snuff?”

“Get on with it!”

“It seems that a certain lady admires herself greatly. In a mirror. With no clothes on. I’ve been commissioned to paint her thus.”

“Great God Almighty! Who?”

“You both know her very well.” Then Quance added with mock sadness, “I am sworn not to reveal her name. But I shall put her posterior into posterity. It’s superb.” Another gulp of brandy. “I, er, insisted on seeing her all. Before I agreed to accept the commission.” He kissed his fingers in ecstasy. “Impeccable, gentlemen, impeccable! And her tits! Good God on high, nearly gave me the vapors!” Another gulp of brandy.

“You can tell us. Come on, who?”

“First rule in nudes as in fornication. Never reveal the lady’s name.” Quance finished the tankard regretfully. “But not a man among you who wouldn’t pay a thousand guineas to own it.” He got up and belched heartily and dusted himself down and closed his paint box and picked up his easel, enormously pleased with himself. “Well, that’s enough business for this week. I’ll call on your compradore for thirty guineas.”

“Twenty guineas,” Struan said.

“A Quance original of the most important day in the history of the Orient,” Quance said scornfully, “for hardly the price of a hogshead of Napoleon.” He returned to his longboat and danced a jig as he was cheered aboard.

“Good God Almighty, who?” Cooper said at length.

“Must be Shevaun,” Struan said, with a short laugh. “Just the sort of thing that young lady would do.”

“Never. She’s wild, yes, but not that wild.” Cooper glanced uneasily at the Cooper-Tillman depot ship where Shevaun Tillman was staying. She was his partner’s niece, and she had come out to Asia a year ago from Washington. In that time she had become the toast of the continent. She was beautiful and nineteen and daring and eligible, and no man could trap her—into bed or into marriage. Every bachelor in Asia including Cooper had proposed to her. And they all had been refused but not refused: held on a rein, as she held all her suitors. But Cooper did not mind; he knew she was going to be his wife. She had been sent out under the guardianship of Wilf Tillman by her father, a senator from Alabama, in the hope that Cooper would favor her and she would favor him, to further cement the family business. And he had fallen in love with her the moment he had seen her.

“Then we’ll announce the betrothal immediately,” Tillman had said delightedly a year ago.

“No, Wilf. There’s no hurry. Let her get used to Asia and used to me.”

As Cooper turned back to Struan, he smiled to himself. A wildcat like that was worth waiting for. “It must be one of Mrs. Fortheringill’s ‘young ladies.’ ”

“Those rabbits’d do anything.”

“Sure. But they wouldn’t

pay Aristotle for that.”

“Old Horseface might. Good for business.”

“She’s business enough now. Her clientele’s the best in Asia. Can you imagine that hag giving money to Aristotle?” Cooper pulled impatiently at his muttonchop whiskers. “Best she’d do is give it to him in trade. Perhaps he’s joking with us?”

“He jokes about everything and anything. But never about painting.”

“One of the Portuguese?”

“Impossible. If she’s married, her husband’d blow her head off. If she’s a widow—that’d blow the top off the whole Catholic Church.” The weathered lines of Struan’s face twisted into a grin. “I’ll put the whole power of The Noble House on finding out who. Bet you twenty guineas I find out first!”

“Done. I get the painting if I win.”

“Dammit, I’ve taken a fancy to it now that Brock’s out.”

“The winner gets the painting and we’ll ask Aristotle to paint the loser into it.”

“Done.” They shook hands.

A sudden cannon, and they looked seaward.

A ship was charging through the east channel under full sail. Her free-lifting square sails and gallants and royals and topgallants were swelling to leeward, cut into rotund patterns by the buntlines and leach lines, her taut rigging straining and singing against the quickening wind. The rake-masted Clipper was on the lee tack on a broad reach and her bow wave flew upward, her gunnel awash, and above the froth of her wake—white against the green-blue ocean—sea gulls cried their welcome.

Again the cannon barked, and a puff of smoke swung over her lee quarter, the Union Jack aft, the Lion and the Dragon atop the mizzen. Those on the beach who had won their wagers cheered mightily, for huge sums of money were gambled on which ship would be the first home and which ship would be the first back.

“Mr. McKay!” Struan called, but the bosun was already hurrying over to him with the double telescope.

“Three days early an’ record time, sorr,” Bosun McKay said with a toothless smile. “Och aye, look at her fly. She’ll cost Brock a barrel of silver!” He hurried inland.

The ship,

Thunder Cloud, came barreling out of the channel, and now that she was clear, she ran before the wind and gathered speed.

Struan put the short double telescope to his eyes and focused on the code flags he was seeking. The message read: “Crisis not resolved. New treaty with Ottoman Empire against France. Talk of war.” Then Struan studied the ship; her paint was good, her rigging taut, her guns in place. And in one corner of her fore-royal sail was a small black patch, a code sign, used only in emergencies and meaning “Important dispatches aboard.”

He lowered the binoculars and offered them to Cooper. “Do you want to borrow them?”

“Thanks.”

“They’re called bi-oculars, or binoculars. Two eyes. You focus with the central screw,” Struan said. “I had them made specially.”

Cooper peered through them and saw the code flags. He knew that everyone in the fleet was trying to read their message and that all companies spent much time and money trying to break the code of The Noble House. The binoculars were more powerful than a telescope. “Where can I get a gross of these?”

“A hundred guineas apiece. A year to deliver.”

Take it or leave it, Cooper thought bitterly, knowing the tone of voice. “Done.” New code flags were raised, and Cooper handed the binoculars back.

The second message was a single word, “Zenith,” a code within the master code.

“If I were you,” Struan said to Cooper, “I’d unload your season’s cotton. In a hurry.”

“Why?”

Struan shrugged. “Just trying to be of service. You’ll excuse me?”

Cooper watched him leave to intercept Robb, who was approaching with the bosun. What’s in those goddam flags? he asked himself. And what did he mean about our cotton? And why the hell hasn’t the mail ship arrived?

This was what made trading so exciting. You bought and sold for a market four months ahead, knowing only the market position of four months ago. A mistake and the inside of a debtor’s prison you’d see. A calculated gamble that came off and you could retire and never know the Orient again. A wave of pain swept up from his bowels. Pain of the Orient that was always with him—with most of them—and a way of life. Was it a friendly tip of the Tai-Pan’s or a calculated ploy?

Captain Glessing, accompanied by Horatio, was eying

Thunder Cloud enviously. And also impatiently. She was a prize worth taking, and as the first ship of the year to make the voyage out from England and from Calcutta, her holds would be crammed with opium. Glessing wondered what the flags had meant. And why there was a black patch on the fore-royal.

“Beautiful ship,” Horatio said.

“Yes, she is.”

“Even though she’s a pirate?” Horatio asked ironically.

“Her cargo and owners make her a pirate. A ship’s a ship, and that’s one of the most gorgeous ladies who ever served man,” Glessing answered crisply, unamused by Horatio’s wit. “Speaking of ladies,” he said, trying not to be obvious, “would you and Miss Sinclair care to sup with me tonight? I’d like to show you around my ship.”

“That’s very nice of you, George. I would indeed. And I imagine Mary would be delighted. She’s never been on a frigate before.”

Perhaps tonight, Glessing told himself, there’ll be an opportunity to determine how Mary feels about me. “I’ll send a longboat for you. Would three bells—the last dogwatch—be all right?”

“Better make it eight bells,” Horatio said nonchalantly, just to show that he knew that three bells in this watch would be seven-thirty, but eight o’clock would be eight bells.

“Very well,” Glessing said. “Miss Sinclair will be the first lady I’ve entertained aboard.”

Good God, Horatio thought, could Glessing have more than a fleeting interest in Mary? Of course! The invitation was really for her, not me. What a nerve! Pompous ass! To think that Mary would even consider such a match. Or that I would allow her to marry yet!

A musket clattered to the stones and they glanced around. One of the marines had fainted and was lying on the beach.

“What the devil’s the matter with him?” Glessing said.

The master-at-arms turned the young marine over. “Don’t know, sorr. It’s Norden, sorr. He’s been acting strange like, for weeks. Perhaps he’s the fever.”

“Well, leave him where he is. Round up the sailors, marines to the boats! When everyone’s aboard, come back and fetch him.”

“Yes, sorr.” The master-at-arms picked up Norden’s musket and threw it to another marine and marched the men away.

When it was safe to move, Norden—who had only pretended to faint—slipped into the lee of some rocks and hid. Oh Lord Jesus, protect me till I can get to the Tai-Pan, he prayed desperately. I’ll never get an opportunity like this again. Protect me, oh Blessed Jesus and help me get to him afore they come back for me.

Brock was standing on the quarterdeck of his ship, his telescope trained on the flags. He had broken Struan’s code six months ago and understood the first message. Now, wot about ‘Zenith’? Wot do that mean? he asked himself. And wot be so important about Ottoman treaty that Struan’s’d risk telling about, open like, even in code, ’stead of in secret when they be aboard? Maybe they knowed I broke the code. Maybe they want me t’understand it and ‘Zenith’ means, private to them, the message be false. Crisis and war means price of tea and silk be going up. And cotton. Better buy heavily.

If it be true. And perhaps put my head in Struan’s trap. Where the hell be

Gray Witch? Not right for her to be beat. Damn that Gorth! He costed me a thousand guineas.

Gorth was his eldest son and the

Gray Witch’s captain. A son to be proud of. As big as he, as rough, as strong, as fine a seaman as ever sailed the seas. Yes, a son to follow you an’ worthy to be Tai-Pan in a year or two. Brock said a silent prayer for Gorth’s safety, then damned him again for being second to

Thunder Cloud.

He focused his telescope on the shore where Struan was meeting Robb, and wished that he could hear what they were saying.

“Excuse me, Mr. Brock.” Nagrek Thumb was captain of the

White Witch, a large, thickset Manxman with huge hands and a face the color of pickled oak.

“Yes, Nagrek?”

“There’s a rumor going around the fleet. I don’t put much stock in it, but you never know. Rumor says that the navy’s getting powers to stop us smuggling opium. That we can be took like pirates.”

Brock scoffed. “That be a rare one.”

“I laughed too, Mr. Brock. Until I heard that the order’s to be give out at four bells. And until I heard that Struan said to Longstaff we should all have six days’ grace to sell what stocks we have.”

“Be you sure?” Brock hardly had time to absorb the jolting news when he was distracted by a bustling on the gangway. Eliza Brock strode ponderously onto the deck. She was a big woman with thick arms and the power of a man; her iron-gray hair was worn in a loose bun. With her were their two daughters, Elizabeth and Tess.

“Morning, Mr. Brock,” Liza said, setting her feet squarely on the deck, her arms crossed over the hugeness of her bosom. “ ’Tis a nice day, by gum!”

“Where you beed, luv? Morning, Tess. Hello, Lillibet luv,” Brock said, his adoration of his daughters overwhelming him.

Elizabeth Brock was six and brown-haired. She ran over to Brock and curtsied and almost fell down, then jumped into his arms and hugged him, and he laughed.

“We were over t’ Mrs. Blair,” Liza said. “She be proper poorly.”

“Will she lose the baby?”

“No, the Lord willing,” Liza said. “Morning, Nagrek.”

“Morning, ma’am,” Thumb said, taking his eyes off Tess who was standing at the gunnel looking toward the island. Tess Brock was sixteen, tall and curved, her waist fashionably narrow. Her features were sharp and she was not pretty. But her face was strong and the life in it made her attractive. And very desirable.

“I’ll get some grub.” Liza made a note of the way Nagrek had looked at Tess. It’s time she were wed, she thought. But not to Nagrek Thumb, by God. “Come below, Tess. Get on with you, Lillibet,” she said as Elizabeth held out her arms to be carried.

“Please, please, please, Mumma. Please, please.”

“Use thy own legs, girl.” Even so, Liza swept her into her huge embrace and carried her below. Tess followed, and smiled at her father and self-consciously nodded to Nagrek.

“Are thee sure about Struan and Longstaff?” Brock asked again.

“Yes.” Nagrek turned to Brock, forcing his heated mind off the girl. “A golden guinea in a man’s hand makes his ears long. I’ve a bullyboy in the flagship.”

“Struan baint never agreeing to that. He couldn’t. It’d wreck him with the rest of us.”

“Well, it were said right enough. This morning.”

“Wot else were said, Nagrek?”

“That’s all the bullyboy heard.”

“Then it be trickery—more of his sodding devilment.”

“Yes. But what?”

Brock began churning possibilities. “Send word to the lorchas. Get every case of opium up the coast. Meantime send a purse with twenty guineas to our bullyboy aboard

China Cloud. Tell him there’s twenty more if he finds out wot be aback of it. Be careful, now. We baint wantin’ to lose him.”

“If Struan ever catched him he’d send us his tongue.”

“Along with his head. Fifty guineas says Struan’s got a man aboard us’n.”

“A hundred says you’re wrong,” Thumb said. “Every man aboard’s a trusty!”

“Better I never catched him alive afore thee, Nagrek.”

“But why should he fly ‘Zenith’?” Robb was saying. “Of course we’d come aboard at once.”

“I dinna ken,” Struan said. Zenith meant “Owner to come aboard—urgent.” He frowned at

Thunder Cloud. Bosun McKay was out of earshot down the beach, waiting patiently.

“You go aboard, Robb. Give Isaac my compliments and tell him to come ashore at once. Bring him to the valley.”

“Why?”

“Too many ears aboard. It might be very important.” Then he called out, “Bosun McKay!”

“Aye, aye, sorr.” McKay hurried up to him.

“Take Mr. Struan to

Thunder Cloud. Then go over to my ship. Get a tent and a bed and my things. I’ll be staying ashore tonight.”

“Aye, aye, sorr! Beggin’ your pardon, sorr,” Bosun McKay said awkwardly. “There’s a young lad. Ramsey. In H.M.S.

Mermaid, Glessing’s ship. The Ramseys’re kin to the McKays. The first mate’s got it in for the poor lad. Thirty lashes yesterday and more t’morrer. He were press-ganged out o’ Glasgow.”

“So?” Struan asked impatiently.

“I heard, sorr,” the bosun said carefully, “he’d like a berth somewheres.”

“God’s blood, are you simple in the head? We take no deserters aboard our ships. If we take one knowingly, we could lose our ship—and rightly!”

“S’truth! I thought you might buy him out,” McKay said quickly, “seeing as how Capt’n Glessing’s a friend o’ yorn. My prize money’ll go to help, sorr. He’s a gud lad and he’ll jump ship if he’s nothing ahead.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you, sorr.” The bosun touched his forelock and scuttled away.

“Robb, if you were Tai-Pan, what would you do?”

“Pressed men are always dangerous and never to be trusted,” Robb said instantly. “So I’d never buy him out. And now I’d watch McKay. Perhaps McKay’s now Brock’s man and put up to it. I’d put McKay to the test. I’d get intermediaries—probably McKay as part of the test, and also an enemy of McKay’s—and string Ramsey along and never trust his information.”

“You’ve told me what I’d do,” Struan said with a glint of humor. “I asked what you’d do.”

“I’m not Tai-Pan, so it’s not my problem. If I was, I probably wouldn’t tell you anyway. Or I might tell you and then do the opposite. To test you.” Robb was glad that he could hate his brother from time to time. That made liking him so much greater.

“Why’re you afraid, Robb?”

“I’ll tell you in a year.” Robb walked after the bosun.

For a time Struan mused about his brother and the future of The Noble House; then he picked up a bottle of brandy and began to walk along the cleft of rocks toward the valley.

The ranks of the merchants were thinning and some were already leaving in their longboats. Others were still eating and drinking, and there were gusts of laughter at some who were dancing a drunken eightsome reel.

“Sir!”

Struan stopped and stared at the young marine. “Aye?”

“I need your help, sir. Desperate,” Norden said, his eyes strange, his face gray.

“What help?” Struan was grimly conscious of the marine’s side arm, a bayonet.

“I’ve the pox—woman sickness. You can help. Give me the cure, sir. Anything, I’ll do anything.”

“I’m no doctor, lad,” Struan said, the hairs on his neck rising. “Should you na be at your boat?”

“You’ve had the same, sir. But you had the cure. All I wants is the cure. I’ll do anything.” Norden’s voice was a croak, and his lips were flecked with foam.

“I’ve never had it, lad.” Struan noticed the master-at-arms starting toward them, calling out something that sounded like a name.

“You’d better get to your boat, lad. They’re waiting for you.”

“The cure. Tell me how. I’ve me savings, sir.” Norden pulled out a filthy, knotted rag and offered it proudly, sweat streaking his face. “I’m thrifty and there be—there be five whole shillin’ an’ fourpence, sir, and it be all I have in the world, sir, and then there’s me pay, twenty shillin’ a month you can have. You can have it all, sir, I swear by the blessed Lord Jesus, sir!”

“I’ve never had the woman sickness, lad. Never,” Struan said again, his heart grinding at the memory of his childhood when wealth was pennies and shillings and half shillings and not bullion in tens of thousands of taels. And living again the never-to-be-forgotten horror of all his youth—of no-money and no-hope and no-food and no-warmth and no-roof and the bloated heaving stomachs of the children. Good sweet, Jesus, I can forget my own hunger, but never the children, never their cries on a starving wind in a cesspool of a street.

“I’ll do anything, anything, sir. Here. I can pay. I don’t want nuffink for nuffink. Here, sir.”

The master-at-arms was striding up the beach. “Norden!” he shouted angrily. “You’ll get fifty lashes for breaking ranks, by God!”

“Is your name Norden?”

“Yes, sir. Bert Norden. Please. I only want the cure. Help me, sir. Here. Take the money. It’s all yorn and there’ll be more. In Jesus Christ’s name, help me!”

“Norden!” the master-at-arms shouted from a hundred yards away, red with rage. “God’s blood, come here, you godrotting bastard!”

“Please, sir,” Norden said with growing desperation. “I heard you got cured by the heathen. You bought the cure from the heathen!”

“Then you heard a lie. There’s no Chinese cure that I know of. No cure. None. You’d better get back to your boat.”

“Course there’s a cure!” Norden shrieked. He jerked out his bayonet. “You tell me where to get it or I’ll cut your sodding gizzard open!”

The master-at-arms broke into a horrified run.

“Norden!”

A few on the beach turned around, startled: Cooper and Horatio and another. They began to run toward them.

Then Norden’s brain snapped, and gibbering and foaming, he hurled himself at Struan and slashed at him viciously, but Struan sidestepped and waited without fear, knowing that he could kill Norden at will.

It seemed to Norden that he was surrounded by devil-giants all with the same face, but he could never touch one of them. He felt the air explode from his lungs and the beach smash into his face, and he seemed to be suspended in painless agony. Then there was blackness.

The master-at-arms rolled off Norden’s back and hacked down with his fist again. He grabbed Norden and shook him like a rag doll and threw him down again. “What the devil happened to him?” he said, getting up, his face mottled with rage. “You all right, Mr. Struan?”

“Yes.”

Cooper and Horatio and some of the merchants hurried up. “What’s the matter?”

Struan carefully turned Norden over with his foot. “The poor fool’s got woman sickness.”

“Christ!” the master-at-arms said, nauseated.

“Better get away from him, Tai-Pan,” Cooper said. “If you breathe his flux you could catch it.”

“The poor fool thought I’d had the disease and got cured. By the Cross, if I knew the cure for that I’d be the richest man on the earth.”

“I’ll have the bugger put in irons, Mr. Struan,” the master-at-arms said. “Cap’n Glessing’ll make him wisht he never been born.”

“Just get a spade,” Struan said. “He’s dead.”

Cooper broke the silence. “First day, first blood. Bad joss.”

“Not according to Chinese custom,” Horatio said absently, sickened. “Now his ghost will watch over this place.”

“Good omen or bad,” Struan said, “the poor lad’s dead.”

No one answered him.

“The Lord have mercy on his soul,” Struan said. Then he turned west along the foreshore toward the crest that came down from the mountain ridge and almost touched the sea. He was full of foreboding as he drank in the good clean air and smelled the tang of the spray. That’s bad joss, he told himself. Very bad.

As he neared the crest, his premonition intensified, and when at last he stood in the floor of the valley where he had decided the town would be built, he felt for the third time a vastness of hate surround him.

“Good sweet Christ,” he said aloud. “What’s the matter with me?” He had never known such terror before. Trying to hold it in check, he squinted up at the knoll where the Great House would be, and, abruptly, he realized why the island was hostile. He laughed aloud.

“If I were you, Island, I’d hate me too. You hate the plan! Well, I tell you, Island, the plan’s good, by God. Good, you hear? China needs the world and the world needs China. And you’re the key to unlock the gates of China, and you know it and I know it, and that’s what I’m going to do, and you’re going to help!”

Stop it, he said to himself. You’re acting like a madman. Aye, and they’d all think you mad if you told them that your secret purpose was not just to get rich on trade and to leave. But to use riches and power to open up China to the world and particularly to British culture and British law so that each could learn from the other and grow to the benefit of both. Aye. It’s a dream of a madman.

But he was certain that China had something special to offer the world. What it was, he did not know. One day perhaps he would find out.

“And we’ve something special to offer as well,” Struan continued aloud, “if you’ll take it. And if it’s na defiled in the giving. You’re British soil for better or worse. We’ll cherish you and make you the center of Asia—which is the world. I commit The Noble House to the plan. If you turn your back on us you’ll be what you are now—a nothing barren flyspeck of a stinking barren rock—and you’ll die. And last, if The Noble House ever turns its back on you—destroy it with my blessing.”

He hiked up the knoll and, unsheathing his dirk, cut two long branches. He cleaved one and thrust it into the ground and with the other formed a crude cross. He doused the cross with brandy and lit it.

Those in the fleet who could see into the valley, and who noticed the smoke and the flame, found their telescopes and saw the burning cross and the Tai-Pan beside it, and they shuddered to themselves superstitiously and wondered what devilment he was up to. The Scots knew that the burning of a cross was a summons to the clan, and to all the kinsmen of all kindred clans: a summons to rally to the cross for battle.

And the burning cross was raised only by the chief of the clan. By ancient law, once raised, the burning cross committed the clan to defend the land unto the end of the clan.