Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt of the recently published book, About Face: The True Story of American Couple Caught in a Web of Intrigue and Crime (The Three Tomatoes Publishing, February 2023). In the early 1980s, with the encouragement and mentorship of Dr. Armand Hammer, founder and Chairman of Occidental Petroleum Company, Carole Sumner Krechman and her husband, Sheldon Krechman, became involved in a large and complicated joint venture with the Chinese to build a five-star, modern office and hotel complex and conference center in downtown Beijing—the first of its kind in China. Little did they know their joint venture would ensnare them in a dangerous web that included the most ruthless of China’s security agencies, the FBI, the CIA and a cast of characters who seem straight out of a Hollywood spy thriller. Read Chapter 1 which recounts their first meeting with Dr. Hammer.

Chapter 1

The Dinner

Learning without thought is deceptive; thought without learning is perilous.

~Chinese Proverb

In the fall of 1982, my husband, Sheldon, and I were looking forward to celebrating the opening of our first roller skating rink in an African American enclave near downtown Los Angeles. It was a beautiful, large, modern rink, and, based on the positive community response, we were looking forward to building these skating centers in African American communities around the country. Amid our excitement for this new entrepreneurial venture, we received a dinner invitation from Dr. Armand Hammer, the chairman of Occidental Petroleum (Oxy). We had no idea that this seemingly chance dinner would be the start of a life-altering journey into China.

Our dinner invitation came about from a convoluted, unlikely series of relationships spanning several decades and two generations between my father, B. Allen Sumner, and his accountant, Sam Shapiro. Sam was married to the niece of a colorful, controversial entrepreneur—Armand Hammer. Dr. Hammer was a physician, adventurer, and friend of communists. This New York-born capitalist and international dealmaker had moved west to set up an oil exploration company.

When he arrived in California in 1956, he bought the tiny Occidental Petroleum Company, located in a small office on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. When he needed an accountant, he hired his niece’s husband. Soon after that, Sam called my parents to invite them to dinner with Dr. Hammer. The dinner was an occasion for Dr. Hammer to promote his fledgling petroleum company, which needed investors. He was a master salesman, and by the time dinner was over, my dad and Sam had agreed to split one share for $25,000 a piece—a great deal of money at the time. There were only nine other investors in the company.

Exploratory drilling commenced a few months later. On their fifth attempt, the fledgling company, with three full-time employees, tapped into the largest natural gas reservoir in the history of the state, the Arbuckle field. One of the three employees, Paul Hebner, remained with Dr. Hammer as his closest confidant and secretary of the corporation and a member of the board of directors until Dr. Hammer’s death. My father continued his investments into Occidental, and as the company grew, he kept in touch with Dr. Hammer, but mostly, his relationship, going forward, was with Paul Hebner.

My dad would see Paul at the annual meeting but had not had much of a relationship with him for a long while; so, it was a pleasant surprise when Paul called, inviting him and my mother to a dinner arranged by Dr. Hammer in the dining room at Occidental Petroleum. He also asked how I was doing, and my father told him about our roller skating venture. Paul then suggested that we also come to the dinner and meet Dr. Hammer. I had met him just once when I was a teenager, and we were thrilled to be included.

So, by virtue of this unusual chain of relationships, we arrived at the Occidental building on a beautiful fall evening as guests of the world-famous eccentric octogenarian who, as it turned out, had an interest in China. To say the least, it was an unlikely circumstance—and would lead to an even more unlikely series of events.

Just getting to Armand Hammer’s dining room was an event in itself. His office building was part fortress and part museum. It lacked the crenelated towers and portcullis of a medieval castle but certainly had the functional equivalent of a moat full of alligators: alarm systems, security cameras, and poker-faced men with guns. The reason: It was a citadel for art. Dr. Hammer owned a private collection that would be the envy of anyone, anywhere. The tight security protected not only his person but also his possessions. After showing identification and clearing security, we took the elevator to the top floor and walked silently to the dining room, passing walls decorated with original paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet, Picasso, and other great masters.

As we approached the entrance to the dining room, the hushed quiet of the hallway gave way to the cheerful voices of people engaged in conversation. Through the double doors, we could see a large, opulent room furnished with Chippendale antiques, green leather chairs, heavy velvet drapes, and more paintings. Nine tables stood neatly arranged in the center of the room, set with fine China and silver flatware. The windows on the west wall looked out on the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica mountains.

People had gathered in small groups around the perimeter of the room, sipping champagne and drinking cocktails served by uniformed waiters. This was a collection of people with long, historic ties to Occidental Petroleum. We looked around until we found my parents, fortified ourselves with champagne, and were taken to meet the Great Man.

Dr. Hammer was an imposing presence but not because of his physical stature. He was a tiny, slight figure, old as Methuselah, and little more than five and a half feet tall with big, coke-bottle glasses, a ready smile, and a commanding demeanor that conveyed a sense of supreme confidence, high intelligence, and personal power. This was the man who had bargained with Lenin, traded with Stalin, served as an intermediary between the U.S. and the USSR, built a hugely successful petroleum company, hobnobbed with heads of state, and inhabited news headlines for a generation.

Much to our surprise, he began to ask us about our roller rink business. We realized Dr. Hammer had more in mind than just polite conversation as the questions continued. Then, after a pause, he told us about all the children in China who would enjoy roller skating, asked us if we had ever traveled there, and suggested it would be a very good idea for us to go to that country and see what business opportunities might present themselves.

We stood there transfixed, saying little, as he continued to persuade us for several more minutes. It was obvious that Dr. Hammer had invited us to this dinner for a reason. This was not a spontaneous conversation; he had an agenda.

We really hadn’t thought about expanding our business into China until that moment, but we found the prospect very exciting. But on the way home, my father told us not to get our hopes up that Dr. Hammer would help us in any way. Occidental Petroleum was an energy company, and our roller skating business would be of no interest to him.

That didn’t stop us from thinking about what he’d said about China. The next day (Saturday), we called my father at least five times. Maybe Dr. Hammer really was interested in us. During each call, my father repeatedly reminded us how much he loved us—the equivalent of a pat on the head to a naive child—while also reminding us that we were kidding ourselves to think that Dr. Hammer had a genuine interest in roller skating.

We conceded that he was right. There was no rational reason to think that Occidental Petroleum Company would want to promote roller skating in the People’s Republic of China. Nevertheless, we spent many hours that weekend dreaming about the possibilities. On Sunday night, as we retired to our bedroom, our thoughts oscillated between our fantasies and the level-headed rationality of my father.

At 9:00 a.m. on Monday morning, we received a telephone call at home from Dr. Hammer’s private secretary. She told us to expect a call at 10:00 a.m. from a Mr. Richard Chen, whom she identified as Occidental’s director of China affairs. When we asked about the purpose of the call, she told us that Mr. Chen was in charge of all China business for Dr. Hammer and that he had personally spoken to Mr. Chen about our roller skating centers. Dr. Hammer wanted us to talk to Mr. Chen in the hope that we might go to China.

Richard Chen worked as the interpreter for the United States government when China’s Chairman Deng Xiao Peng came to the United States for the first time and visited with Jimmy Carter. Several months later, at a dinner party, Richard met Dr. Hammer and subsequently introduced him to Chairman Deng Xiao Peng and the Chinese government. It wasn’t long afterward that Dr. Hammer hired Richard as the director of China affairs for OXY.

After our call with Dr. Hammer’s secretary ended, we just looked at each other in stunned disbelief. An hour later, another call came through. This time, it was Richard Chen on the line. He asked if we could join him for lunch at the Occidental building in two hours. Of course, we agreed, but things were happening so fast, we hardly had time to think.

What happened next seemed very strange at the time, and even moreso after we had time to reflect on it later. We arrived at the Occidental building and checked in with the guard in the lobby who called upstairs and then directed us to the bank of elevators behind him. But before we could push the button to summon a car, Dr. Hammer appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and motioned for us to follow him to his private elevator. On the way up to the executive floors, he asked us to listen very carefully to Richard Chen and report to him, privately, as much information as we could. He spoke to us in quiet tones as though we were trusted confidants. Strange, since we had only just met him three days before.

The elevator stopped on the fifteenth floor, and Dr. Hammer stepped out. As the doors closed, removing our view of the odd, small man, we just stared ahead silently, questions swirling in our heads. What was this all about? What information? It was one of those events that was so bizarre, you had to wonder afterward whether it really happened at all. The elevator rose one more floor, and we emerged into the art-filled hallway and made our way to the now-familiar dining room.

Richard Chen was waiting for us near the door. We introduced ourselves, sat down, and as lunch was served, made small talk. Richard told us how he came to be hired by Dr. Hammer as his director of China affairs.

According to Chen, Dr. Hammer was interested in doing business in China and had his eyes on a large coal-mining concession. After briefing us on their China involvement, Richard got around to asking about our roller skating business. As we described the working of our company, he listened with rapt interest and then asked if he could visit our offices the next day.

On Tuesday morning, Chen appeared at our offices and spent nearly the whole day with us. He left in the late afternoon, promising to get back to us shortly.

Three months passed, during which we heard nothing from Dr. Hammer or Chen. It didn’t seem surprising. After all, why would he take interest in a roller skating business? Perhaps, if we had shared some kind of friendship or other strong relationship, his interest in helping us would have made more sense. But we had met him only once—twice if you counted the mysterious elevator encounter.

We could only shake our heads. Dr. Hammer, a man with the ambition and financial means to conduct business on a billion-dollar scale, seemed hardly the type to give a moment’s notice to a recreational business run by a couple he hardly knew. The unusual request he made of us in the elevator that day receded in our memories, even though, years later, it would explain part of the puzzle. At that time, we had no context for it. Our enthusiasm for China obliterated all rational analysis of the situation. We knew that Dr. Hammer had a reputation for eccentricity and let it go at that.

Then, on a December evening, we received a call at home from Paul Hebner inviting us to attend a dinner at the University of Southern California, hosted by the Guangzhou Sister City Society. Guangzhou, China, is the sister city of Los Angeles. Occidental had purchased a table, and we were to be guests of the company.

On the following Saturday evening, we drove to the USC campus to attend the dinner. Paul was the host at our table; among the guests was a man named Lawrence Liu, the president of the Sister City Association. Paul introduced us to Liu and then said something quite unexpected. “The Krechmans will travel with you to China next March.” Our reaction was a mixture of surprise and excitement. Of course, the obvious question still remained: Why? In our enthusiasm, we didn’t give it a moment’s thought. A free trip to China? Who cared why we were going? Paul Hebner told us that Dr. Hammer would like to see us to discuss the trip.

A week later, we met with Dr. Hammer who told us he had arranged a trip to China for a group of American artists and they would be accompanied by several Los Angeles officials, including city councilman David Cunningham; Bea Lavery, protocol chief for Mayor Tom Bradley; and Warren Thomas, the director of the Los Angeles Zoo. The artists were supposed to meet their counterparts in several cities in China, and Thomas was along for the ride, with two lesser pandas who would be exchanged for two greater pandas in Guangzhou.

That night, in a conspiratorial tone, Dr. Hammer suddenly leaned forward and told us that we were not to disclose to anyone our purpose for going on the trip. That would be easy since we didn’t have a clue ourselves. He went on to say that we would meet several Occidental employees who would assist us in anything we might want or need. He told us to keep our eyes open and look for opportunities to forge relationships with Chinese individuals.

We were then shuttled from his office to meet with Lawrence Liu. He told us not to tell David Cunningham, a friend of ours—or anyone else, for that matter—that we would be on the flight until we arrived at the airport.

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