Dunross's disgust increased. "You'd better get her here quickly." He dialed police headquarters and asked for Armstrong. He was not available. Dunross left his name then asked for Brian Kwok.

"Yes tai-pan?"

"Brian, can you come over here right away? I'm at Phillip Chen's house up on Struan's Lookout. John Chen's been kidnapped." He told him about the contents of the box.

There was a shocked silence, then Brian Kwok said, "I'll be there right away. Don't touch anything and don't let him talk to anyone."

"All right."

Dunross put the phone down. "Now give me the letter, Phillip." He handled it carefully, holding it by the edges. The Chinese charac- ters were clearly written but not by a well-educated person. He read it slowly, knowing most of the characters: Mr. Phillip Chen, I beg to inform you that I am badly in need of 500,000 Hong Kong currency and I hereby consult you about it. You are so wealthy that this is like plucking one hair from nine oxen. Being afraid that you might refuse I therefore have no alternative but to hold your son hostage. By doing so there is not a fear of your refusal. I hope you will think it over carefully thrice and take it into serious consideration. It is up to you whether you report to the police or not. I send herewith some articles which your son uses every day as proof of the situation your son is in. Also sent is a little bit of your son's ear. You should realize the mercilessness and cruelty of my actions. If you smoothly pay the money the safety of your son will be ensured. Written by the Werewolf.

- Dunross motioned at the box. "Sorry, but do you recognize the, era that?"

Phillip Chen laughed nervously and so did his wife. "Do you, Ian? You've known John all your life. That'sa how does one recognize something like that, heya?"

"Does anyone else know about this?"

"No, except the servants of course, and Shitee T'chung and some friends who were lunching with me here. Theya they were here when the parcel arrived. They, yes, they were here. They left just before you arrived."

Dianne Chen shifted in her chair and said what Dunross was thinking. "So of course it will be all over Hong Kong by evening!"

"Yes. And banner headlines by dawn." Dunross tried to collate the multitude of questions and answers flooding his mind. "The press'll pick up about the, er, ear and the 'Werewolf' and make it a field day."

"Yes. Yes they will." Phillip Chen remembered what Shitee T'chung had said the moment they had all read the letter. "Don't pay the ransom for at least a week, Phillip old friend, and you'll be world famous! Ayeeyah, fancy, a piece of his ear and Werewolfl Eeeee, you'll be world famous!"

"Perhaps it's not his ear at all and a trick," Phillip Chen said hopefully.

"Yes." If it is John's ear, Dunross thought, greatly perturbed, and if they've sent it on the first day before any negotiation or anything, I'll bet the poor sod's already dead. "No point in hurting him like that," he said. "Of course you'll pay."

"Of course. It's lucky we're not in Singapore, isn't it?"

"Yes." By law in Singapore now, the moment anyone was kidnapped all bank accounts of the family were frozen to prevent payment to the kidnappers. Kidnapping had become endemic there with almost no arrests, Chinese preferring to pay quickly and quietly and say nothing to the police. "What a bastard! Poor old John."

Phillip said, "Would you like some tea or a drink? Are you hungry?"

"No thanks. I'll wait until Brian Kwok gets here then I'll be off." Dunross looked at the box and at the keys. He had seen the key ring many times. "The safety deposit key's missing," he said.

"What key?" Dianne Chen asked.

"John always had a deposit box key on his ring."

She did not move from her chair. "And it's not there now?"

"No."

"Perhaps you're mistaken. That he always had it on the ring."

Dunross looked at her and then at Phillip Chen. They both stared back at him. Well, he thought, if the crooks didn't take it, now Phillip or Dianne have, and if I were them I'd do the same. God knows what might be in such a box. "Perhaps I'm mistaken," he said levelly.

"Tea, tai-pan?" Dianne asked, and he saw the shadow of a smile in the back of her eyes.

"Yes, I think I will," he said, knowing they had taken the key.

She got up and ordered tea loudly and sat down again. "Eeee, I wish they'd hurry upa the police."

Phillip was looking out of the window at the parched garden. "I wish it would rain."

"I wonder how much it'll cost to get John back," she muttered.

After a pause, Dunross said, "Does it matter?"

- "Of course it matters," Dianne said at once. "Really, tai-pan!"

"Oh yes," Phillip Chen echoed. "$500,000! Ayeeyah, $500, that's a fortune. Damn triads! Well, if they ask five I can settle for $150,000. Thank God they didn't ask a million!" His eyebrows soared and his face became more ashen. "Dew neh lob mob on all kidnappers. They should get the chop all of them."

"Yes," Dianne said. "Filthy triads. The police should be more clever! More sharp and more clever and protect us better."

"Now that's not fair," Dunross said sharply. "There hasn't been a major kidnapping in Hong Kong for years and it happens every month in Singapore! Crime's fantastically low here our police do a grand job grand."

"Huh," Dianne sniffed. "They're all corrupt. Why else be a po- liceman if it's not to get rich? I don't trust any of thema We know, oh yes we know. As to kidnapping, huh, the last one was six years ago. It was my third cousin, Fu San Sung the family had to pay $600,000 to get him back safelya It nearly bankrupted them."

- "Ha!" Phillip Chen scoffed. "Bankrupt Hummingbird Sung? Im- possible!" Hummingbird Sung was a very wealthy Shanghainese shipowner in his fifties with a sharp nos~long for a Chinese. He was nicknamed Hummingbird Sung because he was always darting from dance hall to dance hall, from flower to flower, in Singapore, Bangkok and Taipei, Hong Kong, dipping his manhood into a myriad of ladies' honey pots, the rumor being it wasn't his manhood because he enjoyed cunnilingus.

"The police got most of the money back if I remember rightly, and sent the criminals to jail for twenty years."

"Yes, tai-pan, they did. But it took them months and months. And I wouldn't mind betting one or two of the police knew more than they said."

"Absolute nonsense!" Dunross said. "You've no cause to believe anything like that! None."

"Quite right!" Phillip Chen said irritably. "They caught them, Dianne." She looked at him. At once he changed his tone. "Of course, dear, some police may be corrupt but we're very lucky here, very lucky. I suppose I wouldn't mind so much about, about John it's only a matter of ransom and as a family we've been very lucky so far I wouldn't mind except fora for that." He motioned at the box disgustedly. "Terrible! And totally uncivilized."

"Yes," Dunross said, and wondered if it wasn't John Chen's ear, whose was it where do you get an ear from? He almost laughed at the ridiculousness of his questions. Then he put his mind back to pondering if the kidnapping was somehow tied in with Tsu-yan and the guns and Bartlett. It's not like a Chinese to mutilate a victim. No, and certainly not so soon. Kidnapping's an ancient Chinese art and the rules have always been clear: pay and keep silent and no problem, delay and talk and many problems.

He stared out of the window at the gardens and at the vast northern panorama of city and seascape below. Ships and junks and sampans dotted the azure sea. There was a fine sky above and no promise of rain weather, the summer monsoon steady from the southwest and he wondered absently what the clippers had looked like as they sailed before the wind or beat up against the winds in his ancestors' time. Dirk Struan had always had a secret lookout atop the mountain above. There the man could see south and east and west and the great Sheung Sz Mun Channel which approached Hong Kong from the south the only path inward bound for ships from home, from England. From Struan's Lookout, the man could secretly spot the incoming mail ship and secretly signal below. Then the tai-pan would dispatch a fast cutter to get the mails first, to have a few hours leeway over his rivals, the few hours perhaps meaning the trading difference between fortune and bankruptcy so vast the time from home. Not like today with instant communication, Dunross thought. We're lucky we don't have to wait almost two years for a reply like Dirk did. Christ, what a man he must have been.

I must not fail with Bartlett. I must have those 20 million.

"The deal looks very good, tai-pan," Phillip Chen said as though reading his mind.

"Yes. Yes it is."

"If they really put up cash we'll all make a fortune and it'll be h'eung yau for the Noble House," he added with a beam.

Dunross's smile was again sardonic. H'eungyau meant "fragrant grease" and normally referred to the money, the payoff, the squeeze, that was paid by all Chinese restaurants, most businesses, all gambling games, all dance halls, all ladies of easy virtue, to triads, some form of triad, throughout the world.

"I still find it staggering that h'eungyou's paid wherever a Chinese is in business."

"Really, tai-pan," Dianne said as though he were a child. "How can any business exist without protection? You expect to pay, naturally, so you pay never mind. Everyone gives h'eung yau some form of h'eung yak. " Her jade beads clicked as she shifted in her chair, her eyes dark dark in the whiteness of her face so highly prized among Chinese. "But the Bartlett deal, tai-pan, do you think the Bartlett deal will go through?"

Dunross watched her. Ah Dianne, he told himself, you know every important detail that Phillip knows about his business and my business, and a lot Phillip would weep with fury if he knew you knew. So you know Struan's could be in very great trouble if there's no Bartlett deal, but if the deal is consummated then our stock will skyrocket and we'll be rich again and so will you be, if you can get in early enough, to buy~early enough.

Yes.

And I know you Hong Kong Chinese ladies like poor Phillip doesn't, because I'm not even a little part Chinese. I know you Hong Kong Chinese ladies are the roughest women on earth when it comes to money or perhaps the most practical. And you, Dianne, I also know you are ecstatic now, however much you'll pretend otherwise. Because John Chen's not your son. With him eliminated, your own two sons will be direct in line and your eldest, Kevin, heir apparent. So you'll pray like you've never prayed before that John's gone forever. You're delighted. John's kidnapped and probably murdered but what about the Bartlett deal?

"Ladies are so practical," he said.

"How so, tai-pan?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.

"They keep things in perspective."

"Sometimes I don't understand you at all, tai-pan," she replied, an edge to her voice. "What more can we do now about John Chen? Nothing. We've done everything we can. When the ransom note arrives we negotiate and we pay and everything's as it was. But the Bartlett deal is important, very important, very very important whatever happens, heya? Mob ching, mob men& " No money, no life.

"Quite. It is very important, tai-pan." Phillip caught sight of the box and shuddered. "I think under the circumstances, tai-pan, if you'll excuse us this eveninga I don't th"

"No, Phillip," his wife said firmly. "No. We must go. It's a matter of face for the whole House. We'll go as planned. As difficult as it will be for us we will go as planned."

"Well, if you say so."

"Yes." Oh very yes she was thinking, replanning her whole en semble to enhance the dramatic effect of their entrance. We'll go tonight and we'll be the talk of Hong Kong. We'll take Kevin of course. Perhaps he's heir now. Ayeeyah! Who should my son marry? I've got to think of the future now. Twenty-two's a perfect age and I have to think of his new future. Yes, a wife. Who? I'd better choose the right girl at once and quickly if he's heir, before some young filly with a fire between her legs and a rapacious mother does it for me. Ayeeyah, she thought, her temperature rising, gods forbid such a thing! "Yes," she said, and touched her eyes with her handkerchief as though a tear were there, "there's nothing more to be done for poor John but wait and continue to work and plan and maneuver for the good of the Noble House." She looked up at Dunross, her eyes glittering. "The Bartlett deal would solve everything, wouldn't it?"

"Yes." And you're both right, Dunross thought. There's nothing more to be done at the moment. Chinese are very wise and very practical.

So put your mind on important things he told himself. Impor- tant things like do you gamble? Think. What better place or time than here and now could you find to begin the plan you've been toying with ever since you met Bartlett?

None.

"Listen," he said, deciding irrevocably, then looked around at the door that led to the servants' quarters, making sure that they were alone. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and Phillip and his wife leaned forward to hear better. "I had a private meeting with Bartlett before lunch. We've made the deal. I'll need some minor changes, but we close the contract formally on Tuesday of next week. The 20 million's guaranteed and a further 20 million next year."

Phillip Chen's beam was huge. "Congratulations."

"Not so loud, Phillip," his wife hissed, equally pleased. "Those turtle mouth slaves in the kitchen have ears that can reach to Java. Oh but that's tremendous news, tai-pan."

"We'll keep this in the family," Dunross said softly. "This afternoon I'm instructing our brokers to start buying Struan's stock secretly every spare penny we've got. You do the same, in small lots and spread the orders over different brokers and nominees the usual."

"Yes. Oh yes."

"I bought 40 thousand this morning personally."

"How much will the stock go up?" Dianne Chen asked.

"Double!"

"How soon?"

"Thirty days."

"Eeeee," she chortled. "Think of that."

"Yes," Dunross said agreeably. "Think of that! Yes. And you two will only tell your very close relations, of which there are many, and they will only tell their very close relations, of which there are a multitude, and you'll all buy and buy because this is an inside-inside, gilt-edged tip and hardly any gamble at all which will further fuel the stock rise. The fact that it's only family will surely leak and more will jump in, then more, and then the formal announcement of the Par-Con deal will add fire and then, next week, I'll announce the takeover bid for Asian Properties and then all Hong Kong will buy. Our stock will skyrocket. Then, at the right moment, I dump Asian Properties and go after the real target."

"How many shares, tai-pan?" Phillip Chen asked his mind swamped by his own calculations of the possible profits.

"Maximum. But it has to be family only. Our stocks'll lead the booms, Dianne gasped. "There's going to be a boom?"

"Yes. We'll lead it. The time's ripe, everyone in Hong Kong's ready. We'll supply the means, we'll be the leader, and with a judicious shove here and there, there'll be a stampede."

There was a great silence. Dunross watched the avarice on her face.

Her fingers clicked the jade beads. He saw Phillip staring into the distance and he knew that part of his compradore's mind was on the various notes that he, Phillip, had countersigned for Struan's that were due in thirteen to thirty days: $12 million U.S. to Toda Shipping Industries of Yokohama for the two super bulk cargo freighters, $6,800,000 to the Orlin International Merchant Bank, and $750,000 to Tsu-yan, who had covered another problem for him. But most of Phillip's mind would be on Bartlett's 20 million and the stock rise the doubling that he had arbitrarily forecast.

Double?

No way no not at all, not a chance in hella Unless there's a boom. Unless there's a boom!

Dunross felt his heart quicken. "If there's a booma Christ, Phillip, we can do it!"

"Yes yes, I agree, Hong Kong's ripe. Ah yes." Phillip Chen's eyes sparkled and his fingers drummed. "How many shares, taipan?"

"Every bl"

Excitedly Dianne overrode Dunross, "Phillip, last week my astrologer said this was going to be an important month for usl A boom! That's what he must have meant."

"That's right, I remember you telling me, Dianne. Oh oh oh! How many shares, tai-pan?" he asked again.

"Every bloody penny! We'll make this the big one. But family only until Friday. Absolutely until Friday. Then, after the market closes I'll leak the Bartlett deala"

"Eeeeee," Dianne hissed.

"Yes. Over the weekend I'll say 'no comment' you make sure you're not available, Phillip and come Monday morning, everyone'll be chomping at the bit. I'll still say 'no comment,' but Monday we buy openly. Then, just after close of business Monday, I'll announce the whole deal's confirmed. Then, come Tuesdaya"

"The boom's on!"

"Yes."

"Oh happy day," Dianne croaked delightedly. "And every amah, houseboy, coolie, businessman, will decide their joss is perfect and out will come their savings and everything gets fed, all stocks will rocket. What a pity there won't be an editorial tomorrowa even better, an astrologer in one of the papersa say Hundred Year Fonga ora" Her eyes almost crossed with excitement. "What about the astrologer, Phillip?"

He stared at her, shocked. "Old Blind Tung?"

"Why not? Some h'eung you in his palma or the promise of a few shares of whatever stock you name. Heya?"

"Well, I"

"Leave that one to me. Old Blind Tung owes me a favor or two, I've sent him enough clients! Yes. And he won't be far wrong announcing heavenly portents that herald the greatest boom in Hong Kong's history, will he?"

9 - S:25 P.M.:.