in a different world now, Hong Kong’s different, the world’s different! I’m tai-pan of Struan’s, I’m committed to look after the Noble House, and every tai-pan has had reverses, even your God cursed Sir bloody Ian Dunross, and he’ll have more with his delusions of oil riches China. Ev - ”
“Ian’s right ab - ”
“Even Hag Struan had reverses, even our bloody founder, the great Dirk himself, may he rot in hell too! Not my fault the world’s sodded up. You think you can do better?” Linbar shouted.
“Twenty times!” Gavallan slammed back.
Now Linbar was shaking with rage. “I’d fire you if I could but I can’t! I’ve had you and your treachery, you tired, old, out-of-date burk. You married into the family, you’re not a real part of it, and if there’s a God in heaven you’ll destroy yourself! I’m tai-pan and by God you’ll never be!” Gavallan hammered on the glass partition and the car stopped abruptly. He tore the door open and got out. “Dew neh loh moh, Linbar!” he said through his teeth and stormed off into the rain.
Their hatred stemmed from the late fifties and early sixties when Gavallan was working in Hong Kong for Struan’s, prior to coming here at the secret order of the then tai-pan, Ian Dunross, the brother of Gavallan’s late wife, Kathy. Linbar had been frantically jealous of him because he had had Dunross’s confidence while Linbar had not, and mostly because Gavallan had always been in the running to succeed as tai-pan one day, whereas Linbar was considered to have no chance.
It was Struan’s ancient company law for the tai-pan to have total, undisputed executive power, and the inviolate right to choose the timing of his own retirement and successor - who had to be a member of the Inner Office and therefore in some way, family - but once the decision was made, to relinquish all power. Ian Dunross had ruled wisely for ten years then had chosen a cousin, David MacStruan to succeed him. Four years ago, in his prime, David MacStruan - an enthusiastic mountaineer - had been killed in a climbing accident in the Himalayas. Just before he died and in front of two witnesses he had, astonishingly, chosen Linbar to succeed him. There had been police inquiries into his death - British and Nepalese. His ropes and climbing gear had been tampered with.
The inquiries finalized with “accident.” The mountain face they had been climbing was remote, the fall sudden, no one knew exactly what had happened, neither climbers nor guides, conditions were only fair, and, yes, the sahib was in good heath and a wise man, never one to take a foolish risk, “But, sahib, our mountains in the High Lands are different from other mountains. Our mountains have spirits and get angry from time to time, sahib, and who can foretell what a spirit may do?” No finger was pointed at any one man, the rope and gear “might” not have been tampered with, just badly serviced. Karma.
Apart from Nepalese guides all twelve climbers in the party were men from Hong Kong, friends and business associates, British, Chinese, one American, and two Japanese, Hiro Toda, head of Toda Shipping Industries-a longtime personal friend of David MacStruan’s - and one of his associates, Nobunaga Mori. Linbar was not among them.
At great personal risk two men and a guide climbed down the fault and reached David MacStruan before he died, Paul Choy, an enormously wealthy director of Struan’s, and Mori. Both testified that, just before he died, David MacStruan had formally made Linbar Struan his successor. Shortly after the distraught party had returned to Hong Kong, MacStruan’s executive secretary going through his desk had found a simple typewritten page signed by him, dated a few months before, witnessed by Paul Choy, that confirmed it.
Gavallan remembered how shocked he had been, they all had - Claudia Chen, who had been executive secretary to the tai-pan for generations, cousin to his own executive secretary, Liz Chen, most of all. “It wasn’t like the tai-pan, Master Andrew,” she had told him - an old lady but still sharp as a needle. “The taipan would never have left such an important piece of paper here, he would have put it in the safe in the Great House along with… with all the other private documents.”
But David MacStruan had not. And the dying command and the supporting paper had made it legal and now Linbar Struan was taipan of the Noble House and that was the end of it but dew neh loh moh on Linbar even so, his foul wife, his devil Chinese mistress, and his rotten friends. I’ll still bet my life if David wasn’t murdered, he was manipulated somehow. But why should Paul Choy lie, or Mori, why should they - they’ve nothing to gain by that…. A sudden rain squall battered him and he gasped momentarily, brought out of his reverie. His heart was still pumping and he cursed himself for losing his temper and letting Linbar say what should not have been said. “You’re a bloody fool, you could have contained him like always, you’ve got to work with him and his ilk for years - you were also to blame!” he said aloud, then muttered, “Bastard shouldn’t’ve jibed about Maureen…” They had been married for three years and had a daughter of two. His first wife, Kathy, had died nine years ago of multiple sclerosis.
Poor old Kathy, he thought sadly, what bad luck you had.
He squinted against the rain and saw the Rolls turn out of the heliport gate and vanish. Damn shame about Avisyard, I love that place, he thought, remembering all the good times and the bad that he had lived there with his Kathy and their two children, Scot and Melinda. Castle Avisyard was the ancestral estate of Dirk Struan, left by him to succeeding taipans during their tenure. It was rambling and beautiful, more than a thousand hectares in Ayrshire. Shame we’ll never go there, Maureen and I and little Electra, certainly as long as Linbar’s taipan. Pity, but that’s life. “Well, the sod can’t last forever,” he said to the wind and felt all the better for the saying of it aloud. Then he strode into the building and into his office.
“Hi, Liz,” he said. Liz Chen was a good-looking Eurasian woman in her fifties who had come with him from Hong Kong in ‘63 and knew all the secrets of Gavallan Holdings-his original cover operation - S-G, and Struan’s. “What’s new?”
“You had a row with the taipan, never mind.” She offered him the cup of tea, her voice lilting.
“Dammit, yes. How the hell did you know?” When she just laughed he laughed with her. “The hell with him. Have you got through to Mac yet?” This was Duncan McIver, head of S-G’s Iran operations and his oldest friend. “We’ve a laddie dialing from dawn to dusk but the Iran circuits are still busy. Telex isn’t answering either. Duncan must be just as anxious as you to talk.” She took his coat and hung it on the peg in his office. “Your wife called - she’s picking up Electra from nursery school and wanted to know if you’d be home for dinner. I told her I thought yes but it might be late - you’ve the conference call with ExTex in half an hour.”
“Yes.” Gavallan sat down behind his desk and made sure the file was ready. “Check if the telex to Mac’s working yet, would you, Liz?” At once she began to dial. His office was large and tidy, looking out on the airfield. On the clean desk there were some framed family photographs of Kathy with Melinda and Scot, when they were small, the great Castle Avisyard behind them, and another of Maureen holding up their baby. Nice faces, smiling faces. Just one oil painting on the wall by Aristotle Quance of a corpulent Chinese mandarin - a gift from Ian Dunross to celebrate their first successful landing on a North Sea rig that McIver had done, and the start of an era.
“Andy,” Dunross had said, beginning it all, “I want you to take Kathy and the kids and leave Hong Kong and go home to Scotland. I want you to pretend to resign from Struan’s - of course you’ll still be a member of the Inner Office but that’ll be secret for the time being. I want you to go to Aberdeen and quietly buy the best property, wharfs, factory areas, a small airfield, potential heliports - Aberdeen’s still a backwater so you can get the best cheaply. This’s a secret operation, just between us. A few days ago I met a strange fellow, a seismologist called Kirk who convinced me the North Sea’s over an enormous oil field. I want the Noble House to be ready to supply the rigs when they’re developed.”
“My God, Ian, how could we do that? The North Sea? Even if there’s oil there, which sounds impossible, those seas are the worst in the world for most of the year. Wouldn’t be possible, all the year round - and anyway the expense’d be prohibitive! How could we do it?”
“That’s your problem, laddie.”
Gavallan remembered the laugh and the brimming confidence and, as always, he was warmed. So he had left Hong Kong, Kathy delighted to leave, and he had done everything asked of him.
Almost at once, like a miracle, North Sea oil began to blossom and the major U.S. companies - headed by ExTex, the enormous Texas oil conglomerate, and BP, British Petroleum - rushed in with huge investments. He had been superbly positioned to take advantage of the new El Dorado and the first to recognize that the only efficient way to service the vast discoveries in those violent waters was by helicopter, the first - with Dunross’s power - to raise the massive funds needed for helicopter leasing, the first to shove major helicopter manufacturers into size, safety, instrumentation, and performance standards undreamed of, and the first to prove that all-weather flying in those foul seas was practical. Duncan McIver had done that for him, the flying and developing the necessary techniques quite unknown then. The North Sea had led to the Gulf, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Uruguay, South Africa - Iran the jewel in his crown, with its enormous potential, vastly profitable, with the very best connections into the
