To Be the Best by Barbara Taylor Bradford

Author:Barbara Taylor Bradford
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780553279535
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1988-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

When Jonathan Ainsley had alighted in Hong Kong in 1970 he knew at once that he had found his natural habitat and his spiritual home.

The air was full of excitement, mystery, adventure and intrigue. Anything – and everything – seemed possible. Furthermore, he smelled money. Vast amounts of it.

He had come to the Far East licking his wounds, after being ignominiously kicked out of Harte Enterprises, where he had been head of the real estate division. Alexander had fired him; Paula had banished him from the family. And forever after he had blamed her for everything, believing that Alexander did not have the guts to stand up to him without her encouragement and support.

Before he had left England, Jonathan had done three things. He had dissolved his partnership with Sebastian Cross; sold his interest in Stonewall Properties to Sebastian for an excellent price; put his real estate holdings in London and Yorkshire on the block, and had made a tidy profit in the process.

When he had set out on his travels he had had two overriding goals – to amass a great fortune and to wreak revenge on his cousin Paula, whom he loathed.

Jonathan had been attracted to the Eastern world ever since his youth. Its religions, philosophies, and customs fascinated him; he drew aesthetic pleasure from its art, decorative objects and furniture. And so he decided to do a tour of this part of the world before settling in Hong Kong, which he had concluded was the most logical place to set up in business. For the first six weeks of his self-imposed exile, he had wandered around, sightseeing and enjoying being a tourist. He had stopped off in Nepal and Kashmir, gone hunting in Afghanistan, made a leisurely trip through Thailand, before proceeding to Hong Kong.

Before leaving London, he had taken the precaution of collecting letters of introduction from friends in the City and in real estate. Within a few days of arriving at the Mandarin Hotel, he had begun to call on those to whom the letters were addressed. At the end of his second week he had met a dozen or more bankers, businessmen, owners of land and construction companies, as well as a number of wheeler-dealers whom he considered to be dubious and not worth pursuing.

Two of the men he was particularly drawn to were a fellow Englishman and a Chinese. Separately, they had decided to help Jonathan get started, for their own reasons and to suit their own ends, and they were to prove invaluable to him. The Englishman, Martin Easton, was a real estate developer; the Chinese was a highly respected banker by the name of Wan Chin Chiu. Both were highly influential in their own circles, professionally and socially, but it was Jonathan who brought them together.

Exactly four weeks after he had landed at Kai Tak airport, he had set himself up in business. With the help of his new associates he had found small but attractive offices in Central, had hired

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