"No, not at all," he said, then conscious of.the eyes watching them, he added in Japanese, "Let us talk Japanese for a while."

"It is my honor, tai-pan-san."

Later, over coffee, he said, "Where should I deposit the money owing to you, Riko-san?"

"If you could give me a cashier's check or bank draft" she used the English words for there was no Japanese equivalent "before I leave that would be perfect."

"On Monday morning I will have it sent to you. There's "1Q625, and a further "8,500 payable in January, and the same the following year," he told her, knowing her good manners would not permit to ask outright. He saw the flash of relief and was glad he had decided to give her two extra years of salary AMG's information about oil alone was more than worth it. "Would eleven o'clock be convenient for the'sight draft'?" Again Dunross used the English word.

"Whatever pleases you. I do not wish to put you to any trouble."

Dunross noticed how she was speaking slowly and distinctly to help him. "What will be your travel plans?"

"On Monday I think I will go to Japan, thena then I don't know. Perhaps back to Switzerland though I have no real reason to return. I have no relations there, the house was a rented house and the garden not mine. My Gresserhofflife ended with his death. Now I think I should be RikoAnjin again. Karma is karma."

"Yes," he told her, "karma is karma." He reached into his pocket and brought out a gift-wrapped package. "This is a present from the Noble House to thank you for taking so much trouble and such a tiring trip on our behalf."

"Oh. Oh thank you, but it was my honor and pleasure." She bowed. "Thank you. May I open it now?"

"Perhaps later. It is just a simple jade pendant but the box also contains a confidential envelope that your husband wanted you to have,-for your eyes only and not for the eyes that surround us."

"Ah. I understand. Of course." She bowed again. "So sorry, please excuse my stupidity."

Dunross smiled back at her. "No stupidity, never, only beauty."

Color came into her face and she sipped coffee to cover. "The envelope is sealed, tai-pan-san7"

"Yes, as he instructed. Do you know what's in it?"

"No. Only thata only that Mr. Gresserhoffsaid that you would give me a sealed envelope."

"Did he say why? Or what you were supposed to do with it?"

"One day someone would come to claim it."

"By name?"

"Yes, but my husband told me I was never to divulge the name, not even to you. Never. Everything else I could tell you but not thea the name. So sorry, please excuse me."

Dunross frowned. "You're just to give it to him?"

"Or her," she said pleasantly. "Yes, when I am asked, not before. After it has been digested, Mr. Gresserhoff said the person would repay a debt. Thank you for the gift, tai-pan-san. I will cherish it."

The waiter came and poured the last of the champagne for him then went away again. "How do I reach you in the future, Riko- san?"

"I will give you three addresses and phone numbers that will find me, one in Switzerland, two in Japan."

After a pause he said, "Will you be in Japan the week after next?"

Riko looked up at him and his spirit twisted at such beauty. "Yes. If you wish it," she said.

"I wish it."

75 - 2:30 P.M.:.

The Sea Witch was tied just offshore beside Sha Tin boat harbor where they had moored for lunch. As soon as they had arrived, the cook, Casey and Peter Marlowe, had gone ashore with Gornt in command to select the prawns and shrimps and fish that were still swimming in sea tanks, then on to the bustling market for morningfresh vegetables. Lunch had been quick-fried prawns with crunchy broccoli, then fish rubbed with garlic and pan-fried, served with mixed Chinese greens, again al dense.

The lunch had been laughter filled, the Chinese girls entertaining and happy, all of them speaking varying degrees of salty English, Dunstan Barre choleric and outrageously funny, the others joining in, and Casey thought how different the men were. How much more unrestrained and boyish, and she thought that sad. The talk had turned to business, and in the few short hours she had learned more about Hong Kong techniques than through all the reading she had done. More and more it was clear that unless you were on the inside, real power and real riches would escape you.

"Oh, you'll do very well here, Casey, you and Bartlett," Barre had said. "If you play the game according to Hong Kong rules, Hong Kong tax structures and not U.S. rules, right, Quillan?"

"Up to a point. If you go with Dunross and Struan's if Struan's and Dunross exist as an entity by next Friday you'll get some mine but none of the cream."

"With you we'll do better?" she had asked.

Barre had laughed. "Very much better, Casey, but it'll still be milk and very little cream!"

"Let's say, Casey, with us the milk'll be homogenized," Gornt had said amiably.

Now the wonderful smell of freshly roasted coffee, freshly ground, was wafting up from the galley. Conversation was general around the table, banter back and forth, mostly for her benefit, about trading in Asia, supply and demand and the Asian attitude to smuggling, the Chinese girls chattering among themselves.

Abruptly, Grey's voice, a biting rasp to it, cut through. "You'd better ask Marlowe about that, Mr. Gornt. He knows everything about smuggling and blackmailing from our Changi days."

"Come on, Grey," Peter Marlowe said in the sudden silence. "Give over!"

"I thought you were proud of it, you and your Yankee blackmailer mate. Weren't you?"

"Let's leave it, Grey," Marlowe said, his face set.

"Whatever you say, old lad." Grey turned to Casey. "Ask him."

Gornt said, "This is hardly the time to rehash old quarrels, Mr. Grey." He kept his voice calm and the enjoyment off his face, outwardly the perfect host.

"Oh, I wasn't, Mr. Gornt. You were talking about smuggling and black marketeering. Marlowe's an expert, that's all."

"Shall we have coffee on deck?" Gornt got up.

"Good idea. A cuppa coffee's ever so good after grub." Grey used the word deliberately, knowing it would offend them, not caring now, suddenly tired of the banter, hating them and what they represented, hating being the odd-man out here, wanting one of the girls, any one. "Marlowe and his Yankee friend used to roast beans in the camp when the rest of us were starving," he said, his face stark. "Used to drive us mad." He looked at Peter Marlowe, his hate open now. "Didn't you?"

After a pause, Peter Marlowe said, "Everyone had coffee some of the time. Everyone roasted coffee beans."

"Not like you two." Grey turned to Casey. "They had coffee every day, him and his Yankee friend. Me, I was provost marshal and I had it once a month if I was lucky." He glanced back. "How did you get coffee and food while the rest of us starved?"

Casey noticed the vein in Peter Marlowe's forehead knotting and she realized, aghast, that no answer was also an answer. "Robina" she began, but Grey overrode her, his voice taunting.

"Why don't you answer, Marlowe?"

In the silence they all looked from Grey to Peter Marlowe, staring at each other, even the girls tense and on guard, feeling the sudden violence in the cabin.

"My dear fellow," Gornt interrupted, deliberately using that slight nuance of accent he knew would goad Grey, "surely those are ancient times and rather unimportant now. It is Sunday afternoon and we're all friends."

"I think 'em rather important, Sunday afternoon or not and Marlowe and I aren't friends, never have been! He's a toff,I'm not." Grey aped the long a he loathed and broadened his accent. "Yes. But the war changed everything and us workerstll never forget!"

"You consider yourself a worker and me not?" Peter Marlowe asked, his voice grating.

"We're the exploited, you're the exploiters. Like in Changi."

"Get offthat old broken record, Grey! Changi was another world, another place and other time an"

"It was the same as everywhere. There was bosses and the bossed, workers and them that fed off the workers. Like you and the King."

"Stuff and nonsense!"

Casey was near to Grey and she reached out and took his arm. "Let's have coffee, okay?"

"Of course," Grey said. "But first ask him, Casey." Grimly Grey stood his ground, well aware he had, at long last, brought his enemy to bay in front of his peers. "Mr. Gornt, ask him, oh? Any of youa', They all stood there in silence, embarrassed for Peter Marlowe and shocked with the implied accusations Gornt and Plumm pri- vately amused and fascinated. Then one of the girls turned for the gangway and left quietly, the others following. Casey would have liked to have gone too but she did not.

"Now is not the time, Mr. Grey," she heard Gornt say gently and she was glad he was there to break it up. "Would you kindly leave this matter alone. Please?"

Grey looked at them all, his eyes ending up on his adversary. "You see, Casey, not one's got the guts to ask they're all his class, so-called upper class and they look after their own."

Barre flushed. "I say, old chap, don't you th"

Peter Marlowe said, his voice flat, "It's easy to stop this nonsense. You can't equate Changi or Dachau or Buchenwald with normality. You just can't. There were different rules, different patterns. We were soldiers, war prisoners, teen-agers most of us. Changi was genesis, everything new, upside down, ev"

"Were you a black marketeer?"

"No. I was an interpreter in Malay for a friend who was a trader and there's a lot of difference between trading and black marketing an"

"But it was against camp rules, camp law, and that makes it black marketing, right?"

"Trading with the guards was against enemy rules, Japanese rules."

"And tell them how the King'd buy some poor bugger's watch or ring or fountain pen for a pittance, the last bloody thing he had in the world, and sell it high and never tell and cheat on the price, cheat, always cheat. Eh?"

Peter Marlowe stared back. "Read my book. In it th"

"Book?" Again Grey laughed, goading him. "Tell 'em on your honor as a gent, your father's honor and your family's honor you're so bloody proud of did the King cheat or didn't he? On your honor! Eh?"

Almost paralyzed, Casey saw Peter Marlowe make a fist. "If we weren't guests here," he hissed, "I'd tell them what a shower you really were!"

"You can rot in hella"

"Now that's enough," Gornt said as a command and Casey began to breathe again. "For the last time, kindly leave this all alone!"

Grey tore his eyes off Marlowe. "I will. Now, can I get a taxi in the village? I think I'd rather get home meself by meself if you don't mind."

"Of course," Gornt said, his face suitably grave, delighted that Grey had asked so that he did not have to finesse the suggestion into the open. "But surely," he added, delivering the coup de grace, "surely you and Marlowe could shake hands like gentlemen and forget about th"

"Gentlemen? Ta, but no. No, I've had gentlemen like Marlowe forever. Gentlemen? Thank God England's changing and soon'll be in proper hands again and the very British Oxford accent won't be a permanent passport to gentry and power, not ever again. We'll reform the Lords and if I have my waya"

"Let's hope you don't!" Pugmire said.

Gornt said firmly, "Pug! It's coffee and port time!" Affably he took Grey's arm. "If you'll excuse Mr. Grey and myself a mo- menta"

They went on deck. The chatter of the Chinese girls stopped a moment. Secretly very pleased with himself, Gornt led the way to the gangway and went ashore onto the wharf. Everything was turn- ing out far better than he had thought.

"Sorry about that, Mr. Grey," he said. "I had no idea that Mar- lowea Disgusting! Well, you never know, do you?"

"He's a bastard, always was, always will be him and his filthy Yank friend. Hate Yanks too! About time we broke up with that shower!"

Gornt found a taxi easily.

"Are you sure, Mr. Grey, you won't change your mind?"

"Ta, but no thanks."

"Sorry about Marlowe. Clearly you were provoked. When are you and your trade commission off?"

"In the morning, early."

"If there's anything I can do for you here, just let me know."

"Ta. When you come home give me a tinkle."

"Thank you. I will, and thanks for coming." He paid the fare in advance and waved politely as the taxi drove off. Grey did not look around.

Gornt smiled. That revolting bastard's going to be a useful ally in the years to come, he chortled as he walked back.

Most of the others were on deck, drinking coffee and liqueurs, Casey and Peter Marlowe to one side.

"What a bloody berk!" Gornt called out to general agreement. "Frightfully sorry about that, Marlowe, the bugger pr"

"No, it was my fault," Peter Marlowe said, clearly very upset. "Sorry. I feel terrible that he left."

"No need to apologize. I should never have invited him thanks for being such a gentleman about it, he clearly provoked you."

"Quite right," Pugmire said to more agreement. "If I'd been you I'dtve given him one. Whatever happened is in the past."

"Oh yes," Casey said quickly, "what an awful man! If you hadn't stopped it, Quillan,~ Grey wou"

"Enough of that berk," Gornt said warmly, wanting the specter laid to rest. "Let's forget him, let's not allow him to spoil a wonderful afternoon." He put his arm around Casey and gave her a hug. "Eh?" He saw the admiration in her eyes and he knew, gleefully, he was getting there fast. "It's too cold for a swim. Shall we just cruise leisurely home?"

"Good idea!" Dunstan Barre said. "I think I'm going to have a siesta."