cash flow from Southeast Asia and the USA… I switched off.
Most of the taipans were Cantonese, Chinese at least. The rest were assorted. One looked Filipino, two were Mediterranean, one bloke a Nordic giant the size of Leung, an Indian woman, a couple were Latin Americans. Why no Negroes? I jolted back, all ears.
“Antiques?” Dr. Chao had just said.
“Brokerage continues our main problem,” the Hindu lady said. “But our lawyers report that they can now bypass all national laws that restrict export. Asset-stripping of major national collections is now routine.” There rose a murmur of appreciation. “However, attempts to levy our charge on the auction houses’ intakes failed in USA and UK. It works well in the Continent and Australasia, but costs are high, forty percent of the gross.”
Feet shuffled. Dr. Chao murmured at Ling Ling, who did not hesitate. “Mix purchase takeover with new-start auction businesses in the difficult countries, Tai Tai. Then buy out the easier places.”
“Immediately, Little Sister?” The Hindu lady was disturbed.
“Yes.”
The matronly Italian cut in. “Little Sister. What percentage of outlay would be recovered in the first year?”
“Without other considerations, twenty-two percent. With, nearly forty.”
“Don’t let’s do it,” the Nordic god said impatiently.
“Your comment is worthy of thought, Mr. Van Demark,” Dr. Chao said with profound calm. “In your sector, of tourist concessions, expenditure of a million dollars brings in one eighty thousand. Antiques are currently engaged in laying out twenty thousand for a return of six million per annum. Compare the ratios of the two sectors. The profitabilities are… ?”
“Point one eight, three hundred.” From Ling Ling without a calculator. “One thousand, six hundred and sixty-six point six recurring times more profitability in the antiques sector.”
Van Demark reddened. The Hindu lady smiled and went on, “Our antiques have had notable successes. Theft recycling continues at a steady thirty percent of gross. The insurance and investment brokers still pay us four percent on all purchased items for market tranquillity. Museum-protection income has risen a quarter…”
I listened, gaping. I thought it was going to be a list of Cologne fake Roman glass, Italian porcelains, and who had enough nerve these days to market English hammered silver coins. Instead, I was hearing how the world was run. Normally I’d have been enthralled, but as the minutes ticked by, I sank further into despond. There was a message here. I’d been allowed to sit in on the Triad’s think tank. I was doomed.
They burbled on—drugs, extortion, shipping, insider share trading. Ling Ling herself did the bars and bar girls; her two women accounted for hotels and, surprisingly, sports concessions in Southeast Asia. My depressed neurons switched off. One thing: No hidey-hole screens were visible, so everybody, good and bad, was here in this room.
As the meeting broke up I tried to reach the Italian woman but was fingered by Ong and conducted to a separate room, in fact an auditorium. A group of Cantonese blokes huddled on the stage broke into smiles and fists— together gestures of jubilation when Ling Ling entered.
“Picture show, Lovejoy,” Ong said. I settled back as the first slide came on. Proving sessions—“proofies” to the trade—always make me nervous. Every good fake, even genuine antiques, undergoes this trial. Think of it as a screen test, where a knowledgeable jury tries to find defects in the pack of lies which the public will be told.
I ogled the projection.
It was beautiful, my Song Ping complete with frame. One of the men described the artistic features “as cataloged,” and was followed by a scientist who snapped us straight into high-pressure liquid chromatographic analyses of God knows what, seasick graphs, scanning electron micrographs of pollen grains found in the paint. An inorganic chemist showed us photometric and emission studies. An entomologist talked of spiders’ webs on the frame. Somebody had analyzed the glues, varnishes, the canvas, hey-noney-no.
It passed superbly, to my pride. Three others took over and dealt with exhibition of artifacts representing poor Song Ping’s hard times in old Canton. I especially enjoyed this bit, the old street photographs, maps of the city, grainy black-and-whites of Song Ping himself outside a shop, tickets, passes, fragments of a Chinese diary. It was lovely, a whole authenticated account of a life in old Canton. The printers had excelled themselves, producing faded catalogs of first twenty, then fifty-eight, then a hundred and sixty, paintings. Some goon read them all out in Cantonese, measurements and all, the maniac. My brain wasn’t up to Ling Ling’s, but producing one every two months would see me free in about forty years. Four decades.
“The Song Ping exhibition will begin tomorrow,” Dr. Chao announced, concluding the proceedings. “It will be a prodigious success. The painting will be on view one week from now.”
My vision misted, self-pity, as the know-alls babbled on. It wasn’t fair. Sentenced to forty years for naught, a caring compassionate bloke like me. I was so sorry for myself.
I’d now never see East Anglia, where even the future is filled with bygones.
But by the time Ling Ling rose with murmured thanks to the experts, I too was smiling and nodding with the best, a picture of elation. Sod imprisonment, and sod the Triad as well. I’d get on with my private holocaust.
Tempting the gods, I even smiled at my victims, Sim and Fatty. The gods thunderbolted me instantly. Ling Ling left to hostess the important visitors, and Dr. Chao summoned me aside.
From midnight on I was to go into exile. Well, even jail can improve living standards.
35
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THAT last time with Lorna and Mame was one long riot of spending, parties, dancing, romantic meals on beflagged junks, less a tryst than a tumult. Hong Kong’s famous sights blurred past in sunshine, loving, cheering at the Happy Valley races, flitting from shop to emporium while Lorna and Mame laughed and spent. Lorna even bought an apartment, for God’s sake, above Glenealy on the Peak Road. More hilarity, then a dash back to the liner to change for a candle-lit supper on a yacht moored by Junk Bay, where at last we were still, smiling at each other under tranquil twilight. About tranquil twilight.
It’s great stuff, even without an attractive American millionairess playfully feeding you jasmined lychees from a
