Whispering Shadows (11 page)

XI

As they waited for the train to take them back to Hong Kong, Richard Owen's thoughts turned to his father, Richard Owen II. He saw him playing with Michael in the garden of his house in Wisconsin a year before he died. It had been an oppressively hot summer day; Richard remembered it quite clearly. The old man had been wearing shorts, which showed his pale, thin legs. That had been unusual. He had been throwing footballs to his grandson, coughing and gasping for breath after every toss. His cancer-ridden lungs had made him short of breath, but they had not known this yet on that day. Michael had been unstoppable.
Just five minutes more,
he begged every time his grandfather tried to end the game. He dived and lunged across the lawn, sprinting tirelessly for the farthest passes, snatching even the most difficult balls from the air, constantly fired up by the rasping, effortful words of encouragement from his grandfather.
Good boy. Great catch. Great catch.
The weak voice could no longer be heard from the house at the other end of the large garden.

Richard Owen had sat on the terrace watching his father and his son, wondering if he should go over to them. He had dismissed the thought immediately. He would not be welcome. He was not even sure if they would let him join in. The day before, his father had only had strength enough for a few tosses, but when Richard had offered to replace him, his son had claimed that he was tired and gone up to his room.

Michael was very close to his granddad. The two of them got
along in a way that Richard did not understand, in a way that was alien to him and that he secretly envied. His father had never played ball with him before. He had not even found the time to attend the high school games in which his son had always been the quarterback and undisputed star. Where had the interest and the relaxed manner come from that enabled him to play with his grandson now, and since the boy had been able to walk, even? When he, Richard, played with Michael, they always started fighting within minutes. The boy was so sensitive. Awful. He reacted to every one of his father's comments with an objection and he took every piece of advice as a criticism. He was only trying to give him a few tips to help him to improve his game. But Michael refused to profit from his father's experience. At some point they had stopped playing football together. Now as he observed his son play with his own father, Richard didn't know if there was a greater distance between him and his father or him and his son.

Why were images from that afternoon over twenty years ago coming to him now, of all times? An afternoon that, as far as Richard could remember, had nothing remarkable about it. Why could he not remember a happier time with Michael? One of their fishing trips, on which they had not argued? Their trip to the Indy 500? He knew that they had had these experiences together, but with the best will in the world, he could not recall any details about them. He hated how unpredictable his memory was. He had nothing more important to think about or to remember right now. He was on his way to identify a dead body and he had no doubt that it was his son who lay in the morgue, regardless of any straw of hope Elizabeth still wanted to cling to.

The train to Hong Kong was so full that the young man from the consulate had to stand. Richard sat between his wife and an old Chinese woman who stank of garlic and who nodded off repeatedly. Her head had already landed on his shoulder twice, and only a determined shake had woken her again. He would have preferred to go by car, which the consulate official had offered them, but Elizabeth
had insisted on the train, probably because Michael had always taken the train.

They had barely exchanged a meaningful word in the last few hours. Every time he started saying something, she turned away. When he tried to take her in his arms her whole body stiffened. As if it were all his fault. As if he had irresponsibly sent the boy off on some adventure against his will. They had been fighting over that for two days. It was quite the opposite, he reminded his wife over and over again, failing to convince her. If the goddamn family had only listened to him, their son would still be alive.

As the third co-owner and former sole managing director of Aurora Metal, he had refused to invest in China for a long time. How could Elizabeth have forgotten all the discussions between father and son, the arguments that had resounded through the house, often ending in shouting and slammed doors? And when Elizabeth had gotten involved, Michael's faction had seized the opportunity. He, Richard, had made his position clear to her more than once: The American and the Canadian markets were enough for him; they had already provided a good living for two generations before theirs, so why should they change anything? They had provided General Motors and Ford with reliable supplies of specially manufactured screws and motor parts for close to half a century. He had known the buyers at the firms for many years; he was friends with some of them; they had never complained about the quality or the price. Why should he start manufacturing the parts on the other side of the world all of a sudden? China was a place for General Electric, for McDonald's, Boeing, or Philip Morris, the global players, not for Aurora Metal.

Who were they, after all? A medium-size firm, a family business that was managed by a third-generation Owen, that never wanted its shares to be publicly traded on the stock exchange, that was proud of still manufacturing in the same small town, yes, practically on the same piece of land on which his grandfather, Richard Owen I, had founded the company in February 1910. They had grown with the automobile industry, quite organically, without acquisitions or take
overs. The two-man business had grown into a respected firm with nearly nine hundred employees: the biggest local employer, sponsor of the college basketball team and a high school football team, and generous donor to the community hospital, where two operating theaters were named after them. Of course there had been a few lean years—the oil crisis in the 1970s, the subsequent recession under the ineffective Democrat Jimmy Carter—but for the most part it was about cyclical upturns and downturns, which the company had handled well. In the summer of 1995 they had inaugurated their new factory: bigger than a football field, filled with the latest machinery, the best American equipment. Faster. Cleaner. Safer. More efficient. They had spent a hundred million dollars on it, convinced that they were prepared for the future.

Less than two years later a young buyer from General Motors came to Richard Owen's office for the first time. He was barely older than his son, fresh from college, his head full of figures but with no idea how things actually worked. One of those types that universities seemed to spit out from a conveyor belt. He refused an invitation to lunch. He did not smoke, and instead of coffee he drank one Diet Coke after another while negotiating prices. Telling him, Richard Owen, something about the pressure on costs and shorter supply deadlines, about further rationalization in manufacturing and a competitor from Pusan, whose quality was not far off theirs. Pusan? Richard Owen asked, not sure if he had heard right. Pusan, South Korea, that smart-ass had replied in an intolerably arrogant tone of voice. As though people in Wisconsin had to know every crappy backwater in Korea. Richard Owen had come close to throwing him out.

Michael had been in the meeting. He had made notes and barely said anything. One month later, he suggested China for the first time. He wanted to go to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Shenzhen to do some research to see if moving at least some of their manufacturing operations might make sense. At first, Richard Owen had thought his son was joking. They had just invested a hundred million
dollars in a new plant, in the future of Aurora Metal. Why should they manufacture at the other end of the world? In a country ruled by Communists. The savings could not be so great that he would want to do business with them. He was a very conservative person, yes, old-fashioned and a relic, if his son wanted to look at it that way. The very idea of moving abroad just because they could shave a few cents off the price of manufacturing appalled him. They did not have to justify themselves to shareholders. Patriotism was more than a matter of lip service to him. He had bought American all his life. He would never have entertained the idea of driving a German or a Japanese car. When he had ordered his first motorboat, he had insisted on replacing the Yamaha engine with a Mercury. He only drank American wine and American beer.

But Michael would not leave him in peace. Every week, he came up with fresh figures and statistics, with examples from other industries, with comparable family-owned firms that had closed their factories in Indiana, Illinois, or the Carolinas and moved them to India or China. One day, Michael drove to a Walmart Supercenter with him and led him through the long rows of shelves. They started with the shoes. Michael picked out random pairs, turned them upside down, looked at the soles, and showed them to him, without saying anything. There were the words, Made in China. On every pair. And what about it, Richard Owen said. They're shoes, just shoes. They went on to the pants and jackets, to the lights and garden furniture, to the tools, to the toys, and the digital cameras. They pulled televisions and DVD recorders out of the shelves. The same three words were everywhere: Made in China. Walmart, Walmart of all places, Richard Owen thought to himself. How long ago had it been since their stores had had giant billboards in front of them with the words Made in America? Since every customer had had a button proclaiming Buy American! pressed into his hand? Ten years ago? Definitely not. Five at most. Michael asked his father if he knew what percent of Walmart's products came from China. Richard Owen got the feeling that he didn't know anything anymore. He
felt old, terribly old, and he wanted to go home. He shook his head and only vaguely registered the answer: almost 80 percent, his son told him with a triumphant tone in his voice.

Despite this, Richard Owen remained obstinate. What was Walmart to him, he said. Aurora Metal did not supply consumers who watched every cent, who only wanted to get things cheaper and cheaper. Its customers were General Motors and Ford, not for their budget models but their most expensive ones, which meant quality was even more important and quality had its price, as their managers knew; the people who bought a Cadillac or a Lincoln knew that too.

In the end it all happened very quickly. In the automobile industry, so it seemed to Richard Owen, the buyers had taken over power from the engineers in a short space of time. He found himself sitting across the table from young men who no longer enthused about the latest technical innovations or the R&D divisions, but cared only about the numbers. Suppliers meant nothing more to them than costs, which had to be reduced by every means possible. They demanded a “China price” from him, the amount for which they could supposedly get the parts manufactured in China. Aurora Metal could either comply or the business relationship between them would have to come to an end sooner or later, regrettable as it was. Richard Owen looked at his figures and felt that he was being made a fool of. He would have liked nothing more than to shove the young managers' paperwork in their mouths. He could not have supplied the goods at these prices even twenty years ago. He thought about how his father or grandfather would have dealt with these fellows, how they would have chased them and their China prices off the premises. But he was no longer strong enough to defend himself.

Michael Owen flew to Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, and when he returned after almost three weeks, he told his father that there was no country on earth that was more capitalist than China, that there was no need to worry about the Communists there, for they dreamed the American dream, and it was a ridiculous
anachronism born of sentimentality or ignorance to produce even a screw or a button in America when you could manufacture it for ten, no, twenty times less at the other end of the world. Michael had already spoken to several possible Chinese joint venture partners. With the Owens' experience and contacts, Aurora Metal was a sought-after partner; their only problem would be choosing who they should partner with. It was not a matter of moving parts of the production process there but the entire manufacturing operation. The plant in America had to be closed, the sooner the better, it didn't matter how modern or efficient the machinery was. The hourly pay of their new workers in Guangdong would be twenty-five cents, thirty-five cents at most. There were no trade unions, no pension provisions, and only one week's paid holiday, and anyone who did not do good work could be let go from one day to another. There were enough young men waiting at the factory gates who were ready to take on any kind of work. What was there left to discuss? Out of the nine hundred or so employees in America they would have to keep twenty at most in the office and in accounts.

When Richard Owen continued to hesitate to take this step, Michael threatened to go it alone. The next day, the first orders for the coming year were canceled. He knew that this was no cyclical downturn but a warning from General Motors' Diet Coke men. He had waited too long. China was no longer an alternative. China was the only way out now.