Grey took out a sheaf of papers. "This's a copy of our private and public reports to Parliament. Read it before I go you'll get the full report through channels. Briefly, I think the Chinese are totally hostile and revisionist. Madman Mao and his henchman Chou Enlai are implacable enemies to international communism. China is weak in everything except the will to fight, and they will fight to protect their land to the last. The longer you wait the harder it will be to contain them, but so long as they don't get nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems they'll never be a threat."

"Yes. What about trade? What did they want?"

"Heavy industries, oil cracking plants, oil rigs, chemical plants, steel mills."

"How are they going to pay?"

"They said they've plenty of foreign exchange. Hong Kong supplies much of it."

"Did they ask for arms?"

"No. Not directly. They're clever and we didn't always talk or meet as a group. They were well briefed about me and Broadhurst and we weren't liked or trusted. Perhaps they talked privately to Pennyworth or one of the other Tories though that won't've helped them. You heard he died?"

"Yes."

"Good riddance. He was an enemy." Grey sipped his beer. "The PRC want arms, of that I'm sure. They're a secretive lot and rotten.''

"What's Julian Broadhurst like?"

"An intellectual who thinks he's a Socialist. He's the dregs but useful at the moment. Patrician, old school tie," Grey said with a sneer. "Because of that he'll be a power in the next Labour government."

"Labour will get in next time, Mr. Grey?"

"No, I don't think so, even though we're working very hard to help Labour and the Liberals."

Suslev frowned. "Why support Liberals? They're capitalists."

Grey laughed sardonically. "You don't understand our British system, Captain Suslev. We're very lucky, we've a three-party vote with a two-party system. The Liberals split the vote in our favor. We have to encourage them." Happily he finished his beer and got two more from the refrigerator. "If it wasn't for the Liberals, Labour would have never got in, not never! And never will again."

"I don't understand."

"At the best of times the vote for Labour's only about 45 percent of the population, a little under 45 percent. Tory Conservatives are about the same, usually a little more. Most of the other 10-odd percent vote Liberal. If there was no Liberal candidate the majority'd vote with the Conservatives. They're all fools," he said smugly. "The British are stupid, comrade, the Liberal Party's Labour's permanent passport to power therefore ours. Soon the BCP'll control the TUC, and so Labour completely secretly of course." He drank deeply. "The great British unwashed are stupid, the middle class stupid, the upper class stupid it's almost no challenge anymore. They're all lemmings. Only a very few believe in democratic socialism. Even so," he added with great satisfaction, "we pulled down their rotten Empire and pissed all over them with Operation Lion." Operation Lion was formulated as soon as the Bolsheviks had come to power. Its purpose, the destruction of the British Empire. "In just eighteen years, since 1945, the greatest empire the world has ever seen's become nonexistent."

"Except for Hong Kong."

"Soon that will go too."

"I cannot tell you how important my superiors consider your work," Suslev said with pretended open admiration. "You and all our fraternal British brothers." His orders were to be deferential to this man, to debrief him on his Chinese mission, to pass on instructions as requests. And to flatter him. He had read Grey's dossier and the Finns'. Robin Grey had a Beria-KGB classification 4/22/a: "An important British traitor paying lip service to Marxist-Leninist ideals. He is to be used but never trusted, and, should the British Communist Party ever reach power, is subject to immediate liquidation."

Suslev watched Grey. Neither Grey nor the Finns knew his real position, only that he was a minor member of the Vladivostok Communist Party which was also on his SI dossier.

"You have some information for me?" Grey asked.

"Yes, toParich, and also, with your permission, a few questions. I was told to ask about your implementation of Directive 72/Prague." This highly secret directive put top priority on infiltrating covert, hard-core experts into positions as shop stewards, in every car-manufacturing plant throughout the U.S. and the West the motor industry, because of its countless allied industries, being the core of any capitalist society.

"We're full speed ahead," Grey told him enthusiastically. "Wildcat strikes are the way of the future. With wildcats we can get around union hierarchies without disrupting existing unionism. Our unionstre fragmented. Deliberately. Fifty men can be a separate union and that union can dominate thousands and so long as there's never a secret ballot, the few will always rule the many!" He laughed. "We're ahead of schedule, and now we've fraternal brothers in Canada, New Zealand, Rhodesia, Australia particularly Australia. Within a few years we'll have trained agitators in every key machine-shop union in the English-speaking world. A Brit will lead the workers wherever there's a strike Sydney, Vancouver, Johannesburg, Wellington. It'll be a Brit!"

~ "And you're one of the leaders, tovarich! How marvelous!" Suslev let him continue, leading him on, disgusted that it was so easy to flatter him. How dreadful traitors are, he told himself. "Soon you'll have the democratic paradise you seek and there'll be peace on earth."

"It won't be long," Grey said fervently. "We've cut the armed services and we'll cut them even more next year. War's over forever. The bomb's done that. It's only the rotten Americans and their arms race who stand in the way but soon we'll force even them to lay down their arms and we'll all be equal."

"Did you know America's secretly arming the Japanese?"

"Eh?" Grey stared at him.

"Oh, didn't you know?" Suslev was well aware of Grey's three and a half years in Japanese POW camps. "Didn't you know the U.S. has a military mission there right now asking them if they'd accept nuclear weapons?"

"They'd never dare."

"But they have, Mr. Grey," Suslev said, the lie coming so easily. "Of course it's all totally secret."

"Can you give me details I could use in Parliament?"

"Well, I'll certainly ask my superiors to furnish that to you if you think it'd be of value."

"Please, as soon as possible. Nuclear bombsa Christ!"

"Are your people, your trained experts, in British nuclear plants too?"

"Eh?" Grey concentrated with an effort, heaving his mind off Japan. "Nuclear plants?"

"Yes. Are you getting your grits?"

"Well, no, there's only one or two plants in the U.K. and they're unimportant. The Yanks're really arming the Japs?"

"Isn't Japan capitalists Isn't Japan a U.S. protege? Aren't they building nuclear plants too? If it wasn't for Americaa"

"Those American sods! Thank God you've the bombs too or we'd all have to kowtow!"

"Perhaps you should concentrate some effort on your nuclear plants, eh?" Suslev said smoothly, astounded that Grey could be so gullible.

"Why?"

"There's a new study out, by one of your countrymen. Philby."

"Philby?" Grey remembered how shocked and frightened he had been at Philby's discovery and flight, then how relieved he was that Philby and the others had escaped without giving lists of the inner core of the BCP that they must have had. "How is he?"

"I understand he's very well. He's working in Moscow. Did you know him?"

"No. He was Foreign Office, stratosphere. None of us knew he was one of us."

"He points out in this study that a nuclear plant is self-sustaining, that one plant can generate fuel for itself and for others. Once a nuclear plant is operating, in effect it is almost perpetual, it requires only a few highly skilled, highly educated technicians to operate it, no workers, unlike oil or coal. At the moment all industry in the West's dependent on coal or oil. He suggests it should be our policy to encourage use of oil, not coal, and completely discourage nuclear power. Eh?"

"Ah, I see his point!" Grey's face hardened. "I shall get myself on the parliamentary committee to study atomic energy."

"Will that be easy?"

"Too easy, comrade! Brits are lazy, they want no problems, they just want to work as little as possible for as much money as possible, to Be to the pub and football on Saturdays and no unpaid work, no tedious committees after hours, no arguments. It's too easy when we have a plan and they don't."

Suslev sighed, very satisfied, his work almost done. "Another beer? No, let me get it, it's my honor, Mr. Grey. Do you happen to know a writer who's here at the moment, a U.S. citizen, Peter Marlowe?"

Grey's head snapped up. "Marlowe? I know him very well, didn't know he was a U.S. citizen though. Why?"

Suslev kept his interest hidden and shrugged. "I was just asked to ask you, since you are English and he originally was English."

"He's a rotten upper-class sod with the morals of a barrow boy. Hadn't seen him for years, not since '45, until he turned up here. He was in Changi too. I didn't know he was a writer until yesterday, or one of those film people. What's important about him?"

"He's a writer," Suslev said at once. "He makes films. With television, writers can reach millions. Center keeps track of Western writers as a matter of policy. Oh yes, we know about writers in Mother Russia, how important they are. Our writers have always pointed the way for us, Mr. Grey, they've formed our thinking and feeling, Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Bunina" He added with pride, "Writers with us are pathfinders. That's why nowadays we must guide them in their formation and control their work or bury it." He looked at Grey. "You should do the same."

"We support friendly writers, Captain, and damn the other shower whichever way we can, publicly and privately. When I get home, I'll put Marlowe on our formal BCP media shit list. It'll be easy to do him some harm we've lots of friends in our media."

Suslev lit a cigarette. "Have you read his book?"

"The one about Changi? No, no I haven't. I'd never heard of it until I got here. It probably wasn't published in England. Besides, I don't have much time to read fiction and if he did it, it's got to be upper-class shit and a penny-dreadful anda well Changi's Changi and best forgotten." A shudder went through him that he did not notice. "Yes, best forgotten."

But I can't, he wanted to shout. I can't forget and it's still a never-ending nightmare, those days of the camp, year after year, the tens of thousands dying, trying to enforce the law, trying to protect the weak against black market filth feeding off the weak, everyone starving and no hope of ever getting out, my body rotting away and only twenty-one with no women and no laughter and no food and no drink, twenty-one when I was caught in Singapore in 1942 and twenty-four, almost twenty-five when the miracle happened and I survived and got back to England home gone, parents gone, world gone and my only sister sold out to the enemy, now talking like the enemy, eating like them, living like them, married to one, ashamed of our past, wanting the past dead, me dead, nobody caring and oh Christ, the change. Coming back to life after the no-life of Changi, all the nightmares and the no sleeping in the night, terrified of life, unable to talk about it, weeping and not knowing why I was weep ing, trying to adjust to what fools called normal. Adjusting at length. But at what cost, oh dear sweet Jesus at what a costa Stop it!

With an effort Grey pulled himself off the descending spiral of Changi.

Enough of Changi! Changi's dead. Let Changi stay dead. It's dead Changi's got to stay dead. But Ch "What?" he said, jerked into the present again.

"I just said, your present government is completely vulnerable now."

"Oh? Why?"

"You remember the Profumo scandal? Your minister of war?"

"Of course. Why?"

"Some months ago, MI-5 began a very secret, very searching investigation into the alleged connection between the now famous call girl, Christine Keeler, and Commander Yevgeny Ivanov, our naval attache, and other London social figures."

"Is it finished?" Grey asked, suddenly attentive.

"Yes. It documents conversations the woman had with Commander Ivanov. Ivanov had asked her to find out from Profumo when nuclear weapons would be delivered to Germany. It claims," Suslev said, deliberately lying now to excite Grey, "that Profumo had been given security warnings by MI-5 about Ivanov some months before the scandal broke that Commander Ivanov was KGB and also her lover."

"Oh Christ! Will Commander Ivanov substantiate it?"

"Oh no. Absolutely not. That would not be correct or neces- sary. But MI-5's report tells the facts accurately," Suslev lied smoothly. "The report's true!"

Grey let out a shout of laughter. "Oh Christ, this'll blow the government off the front bench and bring about a general election!"

"And Labour in!"

"Yes! For five wonderful years! Oh yes and once we're ina oh my God!" Grey let out another bellow of laughter. "First he lied about Reeler! And now you say he knew about Ivanov all the time! Oh bloody Christ, yes, that'll cause the government to fall! Thistll be worth all the years of taking the shit from those middle-class sods. You're sure?" he asked with sudden anxiety. "It's really true?"

"Would I lie to you?" Suslev laughed to himself.

"I'll use it. Oh God will I use it." Grey was beside himself with joy. "You're absolutely sure? But Ivanov. What happened to him?"

"Promotion of course for a brilliantly executed maneuver to dis- credit an enemy government. If his work helps to bring it down, he'll be decorated. He's presently in Moscow waiting for reassig- ment. By the way, at your press conference tomorrow, do you plan to mention your brother-in-law?"

Grey was suddenly on guard. "How did you know about him?"

Suslev stared back calmly. "My superiors know everything. I was told to suggest you might consider mentioning your connection at the press conference, Mr. Grey."

"Why?"

"To enhance your position, Mr. Grey. Such a close association with the tai-pan of the Noble House would make your words have much greater impact here. Wouldn't they?"

"But if you know about him," Grey said, his voice hard, "you also know about my sister and me, that we've an agreement not to mention it. It's a family matter."

"Matters to do with the State take preference over family matters, Mr. Grey."

"Who are you?" Grey was suddenly suspicious. "Who are you really?"

"Just a messenger, Mr. Grey, really." Suslev put his great hands on Grey's shoulders and held him warmly. "Tovarich, you know how we must use everything in our power to push the cause. I'm sure my superiors were only thinking of your future. A close family connection with such a capitalist family would help you in Parliament. Wouldn't it? When you and your Labour Party get in next year they'll need well-connected men and women, eh? For cabinet rank you need connections, you said so yourself. You'll be the Hong Kong expert, with special connections. You can help us tremendously to contain China, put her back on the right track, and put Hong Kong and all Hong Kong people where they belong in the sewer. Eh?"

Grey thought about that, his heart thumping. "We could obliter- ate Hong Kong?"

"Oh yes." Suslev smiled. The smile broadened. 'Where is no need to worry, you wouldn't have to volunteer anything about the tai-pan or break your word to your sister. I can arrange for you to be asked a question. Eh?"

54 - 11:05 P.M.:.

Dunross was waiting for Brian Kwok in the Quance Bar of the Mandarin, sipping a long brandy and Perrier. The bar was men only and almost empty. Brian Kwok had never been late before but he was late now.

Too easy to have an emergency in his job, Dunross thought, unperturbed. I'll give him a couple more minutes.

Tonight Dunross did not mind waiting. He had plenty of time to get to Aberdeen and Four Finger Wu and as Penn was safely en route to England, there was no pressure to get back.

The trip will be good for her, he told himself. London, the theater, and then Castle Avisyard. It will be grand there. Soon autumn and crisp mornings, your breath visible, the grouse season, and then Christmas. It will be grand to be home for Christmas in the snow. I wonder what this Christmas will bring and what I'll think when looking back to this time, this bad time. Too many problems now. The plan working but creaking already, everything bad and not in control, my control. Bartlett, Casey, Gornt, Four Fingers, Mata, Tightest, Havergill, Johajohn, Kirk, Crosse, Sinders, AMG, his Riko, all moths around the flame and now a new one, Tiptop, and Hiro Toda arriving tomorrow instead of Saturday.

This afternoon he had talked at length to his Japanese friend and shipbuilding partner. Toda had asked about the stock market and about Struan's, not directly English style but obliquely, politely Japanese style. Even so, he had asked. Dunross had heard the gravity under the smooth, American-tinged voice the product of two years postgraduate school at Harvard.

"Everything's going to be fine, Hiro," Dunross had told him. "It's a temporary attack. We take delivery of the ships as planned."

Will we?

Yes. Some way or another. Linbar goes to Sydney tomorrow to try to resurrect the Woolara deal and renegotiate the charter. A long shot.

Inexorably his mind turned back to Jacques. Is Jacques truly a Communist traitor? And Jason Plumm and Tuke? And R. Is he Roger Crosse or Robert Armstrong? Surely neither of them and surely not Jacquest For God's sake I've known Jacques most of my lif~l've known the deVilles for most of my life. It's true Jacques could have given Bartlett some of the information about our inner workings, but not all of it. Not the company part, that's tai-pan knowledge only. That means Alastair, Father, me or old Sir Ross. All unthinkable.

Yes.

But someone's a traitor and it isn't me. And then there's Sevrin.