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returned from China in 1816 he was heir to nothing worth having. His mother was overseeing the building of a Broadway mansion that was gobbling the last of his father’s resources, and Bastard was so steeped in Madeira he had little notion of what was happening.
    Name Carolina’s child after his feckless father? Not if Bastard’s ghost came round rattling his chains and demanding the honor.
    Nineteen years old when he finally got home, and only his wits to rely on, but Sam Devrey knew Canton by then. Spoke the language, knew the ways of the mighty ships cramming the treasures of Asia into their cavernous holds, knew the Pearl River trade. Knew the Hakka pirates, whose junks ruled the waterways surrounding the tiny offshore islands and controlled the receipt and distribution of the British shipments of wooden chests packed with balls of a new form of black gold. Opium.
    “The Chinese call it ya-p’ien, ” he told Astor. “They smoke it, call it swallowing a cloud. Grabs them fast and won’t let go. No way a man can do without swallowing clouds once he’s developed a taste for it.”
    Opium was made from poppies, he’d explained. The best and the cheapest of it came from British-controlled India. No hope of getting any of that. But he’d heard of another source of supply, the Levant, andthere was a web of distribution outside the grasp of the British. He knew how to tap into that.
    “My partner in this Devrey shipping,” Astor said softly. “Your cousin Joyful Turner…”
    “I understand, sir. He will not approve.” Spoken as knowingly as young Samuel Devrey could manage and with surprising calm, given that until a short time earlier he’d been worrying himself sick about the opposition of Joyful Turner. “I had word yesterday that my poor cousin is caught by the fever.” Devrey had nodded toward the windows of Astor’s Broadway mansion, tightly closed against the contagion of yellowing fever raging in the city. “He must not have been as cautious as you are, sir. They say one of Joyful’s twin boys is abed with the selfsame affliction.”
    “As of this morning,” Astor had said, “both boys.”
    He should have known John Jacob Astor would have the latest news.
    “Then it seems to me”—Samuel had leaned forward and fixed Astor with a steady gaze—“you’ve a duty to make the decisions in my cousin’s stead.”
    “A duty,” Astor repeated. “ Ja. Perhaps.” And after a pause, “Your supply route, it is reliable?”
    “Absolutely, Mr. Astor. I guarantee it.” Why would it not be reliable? The money to be made in one exchange was frequently more than the smugglers had previously seen in a lifetime.
    “And your guarantee, Mr. Samuel Devrey, it is worth something?”
    “My bond, Mr. Astor,” he replied, never letting himself look away from the older man, giving him the full brunt of that earnest stare.
    “ Ja, very well.” Astor stood up and offered his hand. “Done, Mr. Devrey.”
    “Done, Mr. Astor.”
    Even so, they might not have gotten away with it. The emperor of China had recently outlawed trading opium for one thing. But corruption riddled Chinese governance, Chinese pirates were smarter than those charged with enforcing the law, and the British were not tobe bested by a nation whose navy consisted of open boats propelled by oarsmen pulling to the beat of a drum. Moreover, Samuel’s luck, what the Chinese called his joss, held. The yellowing fever took Joyful Turner’s life as well as those of his two sons. Any loyalty Astor might have felt to his former partner was ended when he paid over a generous sum to Joyful’s widow, who, it was said, consoled herself by nursing the poorest of the stinking poor in the hellhole of Five Points.
    So Samuel Devrey need have no further concern for any opposition to opium that might have been voiced by Joyful Turner, much less for the longstanding enmity between the Turners and the Devreys. He was entirely on his own. It was up to him to get