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 ultimate seat of power, the Court, that his Iranian partners had assured him would be equally powerful enough, even though the Shah had been deposed. “Andy,” General Java-dab, the senior partner, stationed in London, had told him yesterday, “there’s nothing to worry about. One of our partners is related to Bakhtiar and, just in case, we’ve the highest level of contracts with Khomeini’s inner circle. Of course, the new era will be more expensive than before….” Gavallan smiled. Never mind the added expense and that each year the partners become a little more greedy, there’s still more than enough left over to keep Iran as our flagship - just so long as she gets back to normal quickly. Ian’s gamble paid off a thousandfold for the Noble House - pity he resigned when he did, but then he’d carried Struan’s for ten years. That’d be enough for any man - even me. Linbar’s right that I want that slot. If I don’t get it, by God, Scot will. Meanwhile, onward and upward, the X63s’ll put us way out ahead of Imperial and Guerney and make us one of the biggest helicopter-leasing companies in the world. “In a couple of years, Liz, we’ll be the biggest,” he said with total confidence. “The X63’s a smash! Mac’ll be fractured when I tell him.”
“Yes,” she said and put down the phone. “Sorry, Andy, the circuits are still busy. They’ll let us know the very moment. Did you tell the taipan the rest of the good news?”
“It wasn’t exactly a perfect moment, never mind.” They laughed together. “I’ll reserve that for the board meeting.” An old ship’s clock on a bureau began to chime six o’clock. Gavallan reached over and switched on the multiband radio that was on the filing cabinet behind him. Sound of Big Ben tolling the hour….
TEHRAN - MCIVER’S APARTMENT: Last of the chimes dying away, radio reception minimal, heavy with static. “This is the BBC World Service, the time is 1700 Greenwich Mean Time…” 5:00 P.M. London time was 8:30 P.M. local Iranian time.
The two men automatically checked their watches. The woman just sipped her vodka martini. The three of them were huddled around the big shortwave battery radio, the broadcast signal faint and heterodyning badly. Outside the apartment the night was dark. There was a distant burst of gunfire. They took no notice. She sipped again, waiting. Inside the apartment it was cold, the central heating cut off weeks ago. Their only source of warmth now was a small electric fire that, like the dimmed electric lights, was down to half power.