May 11, 2010

Searching for Dr. P.J. Lobo, enigmatic ‘Gold King of the Orient’

I recently picked up a copy of Ian Fleming’s Thrilling Cities, the James Bond creator’s early 1960s world travel guide “focused on the bizarre and perhaps the shadier side of life.” It’s an amusing period piece. The Sunday Times of London sent Fleming on an all-expense-paid, round-the-world jaunt, in first-class on BOAC. His fuel, as always, was a near-lethal level of consumption of booze, cigarettes, and buttery scrambled eggs on white toast. (The only vegetable matter that ever passed his lips appeared to be the chives on his eggs.)

His second stop, after Hong Kong, was the then-seedy Portuguese colony of Macau (where I myself had a fascinating visit several years ago). Fleming was on the trail of a man he hoped would fit the bill of a genuine Bond villain — the mysterious Dr. P.J. Lobo, who was said to control much of the world’s trade in gold. As he writes,

Irresistibly attracted, I gravitated towards him, the internal Geiger counter of a writer of thrillers ticking furiously.

Not only did Macau have no income tax or exchange controls, it was not subject to the Bretton Woods agreement which artificially fixed the gold price at an unsustainable $35 an ounce. The Doctor was said to have ingeniously exploited that loophole, buying gold at the official price and legally re-selling it at a higher unofficial market price to anyone who cared to visit Macau. Where they took it afterwards was their business.

So Fleming carefully arranged an introduction, and was ushered to the Doctor’s mansion, the Villa Verde. The Catholic religious art there didn’t reassure Fleming the agnostic, nor did the “powerfully built butler, who looked more like a judo black-belt than a butler” — who offered Johnny Walker. The Doctor was charming, and, on request, played some of his compositions on a gramophone. (He was an amateur composer.) They talked of gold, kidnapping, criminal brotherhoods, and opium:

“It is a terrible thing, Mr Fleming. These people give all their money for opium. Soon they lose their interest in food… They become sexless, neuter, and waste away. It would be much better if they drank beer, even too much beer, as I believe is sometimes the case in your own country. But what do you think of my coffee? This is my own coffee from my estate in Timor.”

In the end, they parted, Fleming concluding the Doctor was not the villain he had hoped to find — but rather a “careful, astute operator” who was actually a rather respectable, public-spirited fellow. Fleming, waxing philosophical, continued touring Macau, in search of high-stakes fan-tan and dens of vice. He found them.