Tai-Pan (3 page)

The China traders soon realized that while they were taking all the risks, the Company was taking most of the profit. And, too, they were totally excluded from the legitimate—and hugely profitable—tea and silk trade. So although they continued to compete fiercely, at Struan’s persuasion they began to agitate collectively against the Company to break its monopoly. Without the monopoly the traders could convert opium into bullion, bullion into tea, then ship the tea home and sell it directly to the markets of the world. The China traders would themselves control the world tea trade and their profits would become gigantic. Parliament became their forum for agitation. Parliament had given the Company its exclusive monopoly two centuries ago, and only Parliament could take it away. So the China traders gambled heavily, buying votes, supporting members of Parliament who believed in free competition and free trade, writing to newspapers and to members of the Government. They were determined, and as their wealth increased so did their power. They were patient and tenacious and indomitable—as only men trained by the sea can be.

The Company was furious at the insurgents and reluctant to lose its monopoly. But it desperately needed the China traders to supply the bullion to pay for the teas, and by now it depended heavily on the huge revenue from the sale of Bengal opium. So it fought back carefully in Parliament. Parliament was equally trapped. It decried the sale of opium but needed the revenue from the teas and the Indian Empire. Parliament tried to listen to the China traders and to the Company, and satisfied neither.

Then the Company decided to make an example of Struan and Brock, its chief antagonists. It withdrew their opium licenses and broke them.

Brock was left with his ship, Struan with nothing. Brock went into secret partnership with another China trader and continued to agitate. Struan and his crew fell on a pirate haven south of Macao, laid it waste, and took the fastest lorcha. Then he became a clandestine opium runner for other traders and relentlessly took more pirate ships, and made more and more money. In consort with the other China traders, he gambled ever more heavily, buying ever more votes and continuing to harass and exhort until Parliament was howling for the total destruction of the Company. Seven years earlier Parliament had passed the Act that eliminated the Company’s monopoly on Asia and opened it to free trade. But it allowed the Company to retain the exclusive right to trade with British India—and the world monopoly of opium. Parliament deplored the sale of opium. The Company did not wish to trade with opium. The China traders themselves would have preferred another—though equally profitable—staple. But they all knew that without the tea-bullion-opium balance the Empire would be wrecked. It was a fact of life of world trade.

With freedom to trade, Struan and Brock became merchant princes. Their armed fleets expanded. And rivalry honed their enmity even keener.

To replace the political vacuum left in Asia when the Company’s control was nullified and trade freed, the British Government had appointed a diplomat, the Honorable William Longstaff, as Captain Superintendent of Trade to protect its interests. The interests of the Crown were an ever-expanding volume of trade—to gain more tax revenue—and the continued exclusion of all other European powers. Longstaff was responsible for the safety of trade and of British nationals, but his mandate was vague and he was given no real power to enforce a policy.

Poor little Willie, Struan thought without malice. Even with all my patient explanations over the last eight years, our “exalted” Excellency, the Captain Superintendent of Trade, still canna see his hand afore his face.

Struan looked at the shore as the sun crested the mountains and bathed the men gathered there with sudden light: friends and enemies, all rivals. He turned to Robb. “Would you na say they’re a welcoming committee?” All his years away from Scotland had not completely erased his Scots brogue.

Robb Struan chuckled and set his felt hat at a crisper angle. “I’d say they all hope we’ll drown, Dirk.” He was thirty-three, dark-haired, clean-shaven, with deep-set eyes, thin nose, and heavy muttonchop whiskers. His clothes were black except for a green velvet cloak and white ruffled shirt and white cravat. His shirt and cuff buttons were rubies. “Good God, is that Captain Glessing?” he asked, peering at the shore.

“Aye,” Struan said. “I thought it apt that he should be the one to read the proclamation.”

“What did Longstaff say when you suggested it?”

“ ’Pon me word, Dirk, all right, if you think it wise.’ ” He grinned. “We’ve come a long way since we started, by God!”

“
You
 have, Dirk. It was all done when I came out here.”

“You’re the brains, Robb. I’m just the muscle.”

“Yes, Tai-Pan. Just the muscle.” Robb knew well that his stepbrother was Tai-Pan of Struan and Company, and that in Asia Dirk Struan was 
the
 Tai-Pan. “A beautiful day for the flag raising, isn’t it?”

“Aye.”

Robb watched him as he turned back to the shore. He looked so huge, standing there in the prow, bigger than the mountains and just as hard. I wish I were like him, Robb thought.

Robb had gone opium smuggling only once, shortly after he arrived in the Orient. Their ship had been attacked by Chinese pirates and Robb had been terrified. He was still ashamed, even though Struan had said, “Nae harm in that, laddie. The first time in battle is always bad.” But Robb knew that he was not a fighter, not brave. He served his half brother in other ways. Buying teas and silks and opium. Arranging loans and watching the bullion. Understanding the ever more complicated modern procedures of international trading and financing. Guarding his brother and the Company and their fleet and making them safe. Selling teas in England. Keeping the books and doing all the things that made a modern company function. Yes, Robb told himself, but without Dirk you’re nothing.

Struan was studying the men on the beach. The longboat was still two hundred yards offshore. But he could see the faces clearly. Most of them were looking at the longboat. Struan smiled to himself.

Aye, he thought. We’re all here on this day of destiny.

The naval officer, Captain Glessing, was waiting patiently to begin the flag-raising ceremony. He was twenty-six, a captain of a ship of the line, the son of a vice-admiral, and the Royal Navy was part of his bloodstream. It was getting lighter rapidly on the beach, and far to the east on the horizon the sky was threaded with clouds.

There’ll be a storm in a few days, Glessing thought, tasting the wind. He took his eyes off Struan and automatically checked the lie of his ship, a 22-gun frigate. This was a monumental day in his life. It was not often that new lands were taken in the name of the queen, and for him to have the privilege of reading the proclamation was fortunate for his career. There were many captains in the fleet senior to him. But he knew that he had been chosen because he had been in these waters the longest, and his ship, H.M.S. 
Mermaid
, had been heavily involved in the whole campaign. Not a campaign at all, he thought with contempt. More of an incident. It could have been settled two years ago if that fool Longstaff had had any guts. Certainly, if I’d been allowed to take my frigate up to the gates of Canton. Dammit, I sank a whole bloody fleet of war junks, and the way was clear. I could have bombarded Canton and taken that heathen devil Viceroy Ling and hung him at the yardarm.

Glessing kicked the beach irritably. It’s not that I mind the heathen stealing the damned opium. Quite right to want to stop smuggling. It’s the insult to the flag. English lives ransomed by heathen devils! Longstaff should have allowed me to proceed forthwith. But no. He meekly retreated and evacuated everyone onto the merchant fleet and then hamstrung me. Me, by God, who had to protect the whole merchant fleet. Damn his eyes! And damn Struan, who leads him by the nose.

Well, he added to himself, even so you’re lucky to be here. This is the only war we’ve got at the moment. At least, the only seaborne war. The others are mere incidents: the simple taking over of the heathen Indian states—by gad, they worship cows and burn widows and bow down before idols—and the Afghan wars. And he felt a surge of pride that he was part of the greatest fleet on earth. Thank God he had been born English!

Abruptly he noticed Brock approaching and was relieved to see him intercepted by a short, fat, neckless man in his thirties, with a huge belly that overflowed his trousers. This was Morley Skinner, proprietor of the 
Oriental Times
, the most important of the English papers in the Orient. Glessing read every edition. It was well written. Important to have a good newspaper, he thought. Important to have campaigns well recorded to the glory of England. But Skinner’s a revolting man. And all the rest of them. Well, not all of them. Not old Aristotle Quance.

He glanced at the ugly little man sitting alone on a bank overlooking the beach, on a stool in front of an easel, obviously painting away. Glessing chuckled to himself, remembering the good times he had had in Macao with the painter.

Apart from Quance, Glessing liked no one on the beach except Horatio Sinclair. Horatio was the same age as he, and Glessing had come to know him quite well in the two years he had been in the Orient. Horatio was also an aide to Longstaff, his interpreter and secretary—the only Englishman in the Orient who could speak and write fluent Chinese—and they had had to work together.

Glessing scanned the beach and saw, distastefully, that Horatio was down by the surf chatting with an Austrian, Wolfgang Mauss, a man whom he despised. The Reverend Mauss was the only other European in the Orient who could write and speak Chinese. He was a huge, black-bearded man—a renegade priest, Struan’s interpreter and opium runner. There were pistols in his belt, and the tails of his frock coat were mildewed. His nose was red and bulbous and his long, black-gray hair matted and wild like his beard. His few remaining teeth were broken and brown, and his eyes dominated the grossness of his face.

Such a contrast to Horatio, Glessing thought. Horatio was fair and frail and clean as Nelson, for whom he had been named—because of Trafalgar and because of the uncle he had lost there.

Included in their conversation was a tall, lithe Eurasian, a young man that Glessing knew only by sight: Gordon Chen, Struan’s bastard.

By gad, Glessing thought, how can Englishmen flaunt half-caste bastards so openly? And this one dressed like all the bloody heathens in a long robe with a damned queue hanging down his back. By gad! If it weren’t for his blue eyes and his fair skin, you couldn’t tell he had any English blood in him at all. Why the devil doesn’t he cut his hair like a man? Disgusting!

Glessing turned away from them. I suppose the half-caste’s all right, not his fault. But that damned Mauss is bad company. Bad for Horatio and bad for his sister, dear Mary. Now, there’s a young lady worth knowing! She’d make a good wife, by gad.

He hesitated in his walk. This was the first time that he had actually considered Mary as a possible mate.

Why not? he asked himself. You’ve known her for two years. She’s the toast of Macao. She runs the Sinclair house impeccably and treats Horatio as a prince. The food’s the best in town and she rules the servants beautifully. Plays the harpsichord like a dream and sings like an angel, by jove. She obviously likes you—why else would you have an open invitation to dine whenever you and Horatio are in Macao? So why not as wife, eh? But she’s never been home. She’s spent all her life among heathens. She has no income. Parents are dead. But what does that matter, eh? The Reverend Sinclair was respected throughout Asia when he was alive, and Mary’s beautiful and just twenty. My prospects are excellent. I’ve five hundred a year and I’ll inherit the manor house and the lands eventually. By gad, she could be the one for me. We could get married in Macao at the English church and rent a house until this commission’s up and then we’ll go home. When the time’s ripe I’ll say to Horatio, “Horatio, old boy, there’s something I want to talk to . . .”

“Wot be all the delay, Cap’n Glessing?” Brock’s rough voice shattered his reverie. “Eight bells were time to raise the flag and it be an hour past.”

Glessing whirled around. He was not used to a belligerent tone of voice from anyone less than a vice-admiral. “The flag gets raised, Mr. Brock, when one of two things happen. Either when His Excellency comes ashore or when there’s a signal cannon from the flagship.”

“An’ when be that?”

“I notice that you’re not fully represented yet.”

“You mean Struan?”

“Of course. Isn’t he Tai-Pan of The Noble House?” Glessing said it deliberately, knowing it would irritate Brock. Then he added, “I suggest you possess yourself with patience. No one ordered any of you tradesmen ashore.”

Brock reddened. “You’d better be learning difference twixt merchants an’ tradesmen.” He moved his tobacco quid in his cheek and spat on the stones beside Glessing’s feet. A few flecks of spittle marred the polish of the silver-buckled shoes. “Beg pardon,” Brock said with mock humility and strode away.

Glessing’s face froze. But for the “Beg pardon” he would have challenged him to a duel. Rotten low-class sod, he thought, filled with contempt.

“Beggin’ yor pardon, sorr,” the master-at-arms said, saluting, “signal from the flagship.”

Glessing squinted his eyes against the sharpening wind. The signal flags read: “All captains to report aboard at four bells.” Glessing had been present last night at a private meeting of the admiral and Longstaff. The admiral had said that opium smuggling was the cause of all the trouble in Asia. “Goddamme, sir, they’ve no sense of decency,” he had exploded. “All they think of is money. Abolish opium and we’ll have no more damned trouble with the damned heathen or with the damned tradesmen. The Royal Navy will enforce your order, by God!” And Longstaff had agreed, rightly. I suppose the order will be announced today, Glessing thought, hard put to contain his delight. Good. And about time. I wonder if Longstaff has just told Struan that he’s issuing the order.