"That's all right, Mr. Bartlett. Your request to stay overnight is approved."

"Thanks thanks very much. Could Svensen stay as well?" Bartlett grinned. "I'm not much of a housekeeper."

"Very well. How long will your aircraft be here?"

"Depends on our meeting tomorrow, Superintendent. We hope to go into business with Struan's. A week, ten days."

"Then you'll need an alternate parking place tomorrow. We've another VIP flight coming in at 1600 hours. I told Captain Jannelli to phone Ground Control before 1400 hours."

"Thanks. Does the head of CID Kowloon usually deal with parking around here?"

Armstrong smiled. "I like to know what's going on in my division. It's a tedious habit but ingrained. We don't often have private aircraft visiting us or Mr. Chen meeting someone personally. We like to be accommodating if we can. Struan's owns most of the airport and John's a personal friend. He's an old friend of yours?"

"I spent time with him in New York and L.A. and liked him a lot. Say, Superintendent, this airplane's my comm " One of the phones rang. Bartlett picked it up. "Oh hello Charlie, what's happening in New York?a Jesus, that's great. How much?a Okay Charlie, buy the whole blocka Yes, the whole 200,000 sharesa Sure, first thing Monday morning, soon as the market opens. Send me a confirm by telexa" Bartlett put the phone down and turned to Armstrong. "Sorry. Say, Superintendent, this's my com- munications center and I'll be lost without it. If we park for a week is it okay to come back and forth?"

"I'm afraid that might be dicey, Mr. Bartlett."

"Is that yes or no or maybe?"

"Oh that's slang for difficult. Sorry, but our security at Kai Tak's very particular."

"If you have to put on extra men, I'd be glad to pay."

"It's a matter of security, Mr. Bartlett, not money. You'll find Hong Kong's phone system first class." Also it will be far easier for Special Intelligence to monitor your calls, he thought.

"Well, if you can I'd appreciate it."

Armstrong sipped the coffee. "This's your first visit to Hong Kong?"

"Yes sir. My first time in Ash. Farthest I've gotten was Guadalcanal, in '43."

"Army?"

"Sergeant, Engineers. Construction we used to build anything: hangars, bridges, camps, anything. A great experience." Bartlett sipped from the can. "Sure I can't give you a drink?"

"No thanks." Armstrong finished his cup, began to get up. "Thanks for the coffee."

"Now may I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"What's Dunross like? Ian Dunross. The head of Struan's?"

"The tai-pan?" Armstrong laughed outright. "That depends whom you ask, Mr. Bartlett. You've never met him?"

"No, not yet. I do tomorrow. At lunch. Why do you call him the tai-pan?"

"Tai-pan means'supreme leader' in Cantonese the person with the ultimate power. The European heads of all the old trading companies are all tai-pans to the Chinese. But even among tai-pans there's always the greatest. The tai-pan. Struan's is nicknamed the 'Noble House' or 'Noble Hong,' hong meaning 'company.' It goes back to the beginning of the China trade and the early days of Hong Kong. Hong Kong was founded in 1841, January 26, actually. The founder of Struan and Company was a legend, still is in some ways Dirk Struan. Some say he was a pirate, some a prince. In any event he made a fortune smuggling Indian opium into China, then converting that silver into China teas which he shipped to England in a fleet of China clippers. He became a merchant prince, earned the title of the tai-pan, and ever since, Struan's has always tried to be first in everything."

"Are they?"

"Oh a couple of companies dog their heels, Rothwell-Gornt particularly, but yes, I'd say they were first. Certainly not a thing comes into Hong Kong or goes out, is eaten or buried or made without Struan's, Rothwell-Gornt, Asian Properties, Blacs the Bank of London and China or the Victoria Bank having a finger in the stew somewhere."

"And Dunross himself? What's he like?"

Armstrong thought a moment, then said lightly, "Again it depends very much whom you ask, Mr. Bartlett. I know him just a little, socially we meet from time to time at the races. I've had two official meetings with him. He's charming, very good at his joba I suppose brilliant might sum him up."

"He and his family own a lot of Struan's?"

"I don't know that for certain. I doubt if anyone does, outside of the family. But his stockholdings aren't the key to the tai-pan's desk. Oh no. Not of Struan's. Of that I'm very certain." Armstrong locked his eyes on Bartlett's. "Some say Dunross is ruthless and ready to kill. I know I wouldn't like him as an enemy."

Bartlett sipped his beer and the little lines beside his eyes crinkled with a curious smile. "Sometimes an enemy's more valuable than a friend."

"Sometimes. I hope you have a profitable stay."

At once Bartlett got up. "Thanks. I'll see you out." He opened the door and ushered Armstrong and Sergeant Lee through it, then followed them out of the main cabin door onto the landing steps. He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither odor nor perfume just Strange, and curiously exciting. "Superintendent what's that smell? Casey noticed it too, the moment Sven opened the door."

Armstrong hesitated. Then he smiled. "That's Hong Kong's very own, Mr. Bartlett. It's money."

2 - 11:48 P.M.:.

"All gods bear witness to the foul luck I'm having tonight," Four Finger Wu said and spat on the deck. He was aft, on the high poop of his oceangoing junk that was moored to one of the great clusters of boats that sprawled over Aberdeen harbor on the south coast of Hong Kong Island. The night was hot and humid and he was playing mahjong with three of his friends. They were old and weatherbeaten like himself, all captains of junks that they owned. Even so, they sailed in his fleet and took orders from him. His formal name was Wu Sang Fang. He was a short, illiterate fisherman, with few teeth and no thumb on his left hand. His junk was old, battered and filthy. He was head of the seaborne Wu, captain of the Beets, and his flag, the Silver Lotus, flew on all the four seas.

When it was his turn again, he picked up another of the ivory tiles. He glanced at it and as it did not improve his hand, discarded it noisily and spat again. The spittle glistened on the deck. He wore a ragged old undershirt and black coolie pants, like his friends, and he had ten thousand dollars riding on this single game.

"Ayeeyah, " Pockmark Tang said, pretending disgust though the tile he had just picked up made him only one short of a winning combination the game somewhat like gin rummy. "Fornicate all mothers except ours if I don't win!" He discarded a tile with a flourish.

"Fornicate yours if you win and I don't!" another said and they all laughed.

"And fornicate those foreign devils from the Golden Mountain if they don't arrive tonight," Goodweather Poon said.

"They'll arrive," Four Finger Wu told him confidently. "Foreign devils are glued to schedules. Even so, I sent Seventh Son to the airport to make sure." He began to pick up a tile but stopped and looked over his shoulder and watched critically as a fishing junk eased past, chugging quietly, heading up the twisting, narrow access channel between the banks of boats toward the neck of the harbor. She had only riding lights, port and starboard. Ostensibly she was just going fishing but this junk was one of his and she was out to intercept a Thai trawler with a cargo of opium. When she was safely passed, he concentrated on the game once more. It was low tide now, but there was deep water around most of the boat islands. From the shore and flats came the stench of rotting seaweed, shellfish and human waste.

Most of the sampans and junks were dark now, their multitudes sleeping. There were a few oil lamps here and there. Boats of all sizes were moored precariously to each other, seemingly without order, with tiny sea alleys between the floating villages. These were the homes of the Tankaand Haklo people the boat dwellers who lived their lives afloat, were born afloat and died afloat. Many of these boats never moved from these moorings but stayed locked together until they sank or fell apart, or went down in a typhoon or were burnt in one of the spectacular conflagrations that fre- quently swept the clusters when a careless foot or hand knocked over a lamp or dropped something inflammable into the inevitable open fires.

"Grandfather!" the youthful lookout called.

"What is it?" Wu asked.

"On the jetty, look! Seventh Son!" The boy, barely twelve, was pointing to the shore.

Wu and the others got up and peered shorewards. The young Chinese was paying offs taxi. He wore jeans and a neat T-shirt and sneakers. The taxi had stopped near the gangway of one of the huge floating restaurants that were moored to the modern jetties, a hundred yards away. There were four of these gaudy floating palaces three, four or five stories tall ablaze with lights, splendiferous in scarlet and green and gold with fluted Chinese roofs and gods, gargoyles and dragons.

"You've good eyes, Number Three Grandson. Good. Go and meet Seventh Son." Instantly the child scurried off, sure-footed across the rickety planks that joined this junk to others. Four Fingers watched his seventh son head for one of the jetties where ferry sampans that serviced the harbor were clustered. When he saw that the boatman he had sent had intercepted him, he turned his back on the shore and sat down again. "Come on, let's finish the game," he said grimly. "This's my last fornicating hand. I've got to go ashore tonight."

They played for a moment, picking up tiles and discarding them.

"AyeeyahI" Pockmark Tang said with a shout as he saw the face of the tile that he had just picked up. He slammed it onto the table face upwards with a flourish and laid down his other thirteen hidden tiles that made up his winning hand. "Look, by all the gods!"

Wu and the others gawked at the hand. "Piss!" he said and hawked loudly. "Piss on all your generations, Pockmark Tang! What luck!"

"One more game? Twenty thousand, Four Finger Wu?" Tang said gleefully, convinced that tonight old devil, Chi Rung, the god of gamblers, was sitting on his shoulder.

Wu began to shake his head, but at that moment a seabird flew overhead and called plaintively. "Forty," he said immediately, changing his mind, interpreting the call as a sign from heaven that his luck had changed. "Forty thousand or nothing! But it'll have to be dice because I've no time now."

"I haven't got forty cash by all gods, but with the twenty you owe me, I'll borrow against my junk tomorrow when the bank opens and give you all my fornicating profit on our next gold or opium shim ment until you're paid, heya?"

Goodweather Poon said sourly, "That's too much on one game. You two fornicators've lost your minds!"

"Highest score, one throw?" Wu asked.

"Ayeeyah, you've gone mad, both of you," Poon said. Nonetheless, he was as excited as the others. "Where are the dice?"

Wu produced them. There were three. "Throw for your fornicating future, Pockmark Tang!"

Pockmark Tang spat on his hands, said a silent prayer, then threw them with a shout.

"Oh oh oh," he cried out in anguish. A four, a three and another four. "Eleven!" The other men were hardly breathing.

Wu spat on the dice, cursed them, blessed them and threw. A six, a two and a three. "Eleven! Oh all gods great and small! Again throw again!"

Excitement gathered on the deck. Pockmark Tang threw. "Fourteen!"

Wu concentrated, the tension intoxicating, then threw the dice.

"Ayeeyah!" he exploded, and they all exploded. A six, a four and a two.

"Eeeee," was all Pockmark Tang could say, holding his belly, laughing with glee as the others congratulated him and commiserated with the loser.

Wu shrugged, his heart still pounding in his chest. "Curse all seabirdsthat fly over my head at a time like that!"

"Ah, is that why you changed your mind, Four Finger Wu?"

"Yes it was like a sign. How many seabirds call as they fly overhead at night?"

"That's right. I would have done the same."

"Joss!" Then Wu beamed. "Eeeee, but the gambling feeling's better than the Clouds and the Rain, heya?"

"Not at my age!"

"How old are you, Pockmark Tang?"

"Sixty perhaps seventy. Almost as old as you are." Haklos did not have permanent records of births like all village land dwellers. "I don't feel more than thirty."

"Have you heard the Lucky Medicine Shop at Aberdeen Market's got a new shipment of Korean ginseng, some of it a hundred years old! That'll stick fire in your stalk!"

"His stalk's all right, Goodweather Poon! His third wife's with child again!" Wu grinned toothlessly and pulled out a big roll of 500-dollar notes. He began counting, his fingers nimble even though his left thumb was missing. Years ago it had been hacked off during a fight with river pirates during a smuggling expedition. He stopped momentarily as his number seven son came on deck. The young man was tall for a Chinese, twenty-six. He walked across the deck awkwardly. An incoming jet began to whine past overhead.

"Did they arrive, Seventh Son?"

"Yes, Father, yes they did."

Four Fingers pounded the upturned keg with glee. "Very good. Now we can begin!"

"Hey, Four Fingers," Pockmark Tang said thoughtfully, motioning at the dice. "A six, a four and a two that's twelve, which's also three, the magic three."

"Yes, yes I saw."

Pockmark Tang beamed and pointed northwards and a little east to where Kai Tak airport would be behind the Aberdeen mountains, across the harbor in Kowloon, six miles away. "Perhaps your luck has changed, heya?"

M O N D A Y.

3 - 5:16 A.M.:.

At half-dawn a jeep with two overalled mechanics aboard came around (late 16 at the eastern end of the terminal and stopped close beside the main landing gear of Yankee 2. The gangway was still in place and the main door slightly ajar. The mechanics, both Chi- nese, got out and one began to inspect the eight-wheeled main gear while the other, equally carefully, scrutinized the nose gear. Methodically, they checked the tires and wheels and then the hydraulic couplings of the brakes, then peered into the landing bays. Both used flashlights. The mechanic at the main landing gear took out a spanner and stood on one of the wheels for a closer inspection, his head and shoulder now well into the belly of the airplane. After a moment he called out softly in Cantonese, "Ayeeyah/ Hey, Lim, take a look at this."

The other man strolled back and peered up, sweat staining his white overalls. "Are they there or not, I can't see from down here."

"Brother, put your male stalk into your mouth and flush yourself down a sewer. Of course they're here. We're rich. We'll eat rice forever! But be quiet or you'll wake the dung-stained foreign devils above! Herea" The man handed down a long, canvas-wrapped package which Lim took and stowed quietly and quickly in the jeep. Then another and another small one, both men sweating and very nervous, working fast but quietly.

Another package. And anothera And then Lim saw the police jeep whirl around the corner and simultaneously other uniformed men come pouring out of Gate 16, among them Europeans. "We're betrayed," he gasped as he fled in a hopeless dash for freedom. The jeep intercepted him easily and he stopped, shivering with pent-up terror. Then he spat and cursed the gods and withdrew into himself.

The other man had jumped down at once and leaped into the driving seat. Before he could turn on the ignition he was swamped and handcuffed.

"So, little oily mouth," Sergeant Lee hissed, "where do you think you're going?"

"Nowhere, Officer, it was him, him there, that bastard son of a whore, Officer, he swore he'd cut my throat if I didn't help him. I don't know anything on my mother's grave!"

"You lying bastard, you never had a mother. You're going to go to jail for fifty years if you don't talk!"

"I swear, Officer, by all the gods th"

"Piss on your lies, dungface. Who's paying you to do this job?"

Armstrong was walking slowly across the tarmac, the sick sweet taste of the kill in his mouth. "So," he said in English, "what have we here, Sergeant?" It had been a long night's vigil and he was tired and unshaven and in no mood for the mechanic's whining protestations of innocence, so he said softly in perfect gutter Cantonese, "One more tiny, insignificant word out of you, purveyor of leper dung, and I'll have my men jump on your Secret Sack."

The man froze.