by Ian Hamilton
Ava thought of Glen Hughes, oblivious to the subtleties of messages from Wuhan.
“May said you weren’t pleased with them,” she said.
“I knew what it would mean to you.”
“They lied to me.”
“They did.”
“I gave my word to Edwin Hughes that if he helped, he would be safe.”
“They knew that. I told them.”
“So they made a liar out of me as well.”
“I know,” Uncle said.
Ava struggled to keep her emotions in check. “They played me for a fool.”
“You are never a fool.”
“So what am I supposed to do now?”
“Let us finish the contract, collect our money, and move on.”
“I wish it were that easy for me,” she said.
“There are times when you have to — ”
“And there are times,” Ava interrupted, “when I can’t roll over and close my eyes and pretend nothing happened.”
“What are you saying?”
“I may not want to finish the job.”
He paused. “I thought it was done,” Uncle said, “that the money is secured, that we are waiting for some transactions to conclude.”
“The money isn’t secure at all. With one phone call I can make it disappear.”
Ava waited for Uncle to reply. Please, don’t disappointment me, she thought.
“That is your decision. You do what you think is best.”
“And you’ll support me?”
“That is a question you know you never have to ask,” he said quietly.
She felt her face flush. His reprimand stung. “I’m sorry, Uncle, I meant no disrespect. This job has affected my emotions.”
“I prefer it when you are thinking with your head.”
“My head is still working,” she said. “And what it’s telling me is that we need to go back to the Wongs and remind them who they’re doing business with.”
“You have something in mind, don’t you.”
“Uncle,” she said, avoiding his question, “are you prepared to walk away from our commission?”
“Money I never had is money I cannot lose.”
“I may make enemies of the Wongs.”
“Ava, for what it is worth, I do not think that is possible. Changxing sees things in me that even I do not see in myself anymore. He will do what he can to avoid conflict with me.”
“It is May Ling who is my worry.”
“You have too much malice for her. She is formidable, that is true, but when I separate her in my mind from her husband, all I see is a practical woman whose love for her husband has pushed her to do things she would not have done by her own choosing.”
Ava thought of the woman who had sat on her bed in Wuhan, of the strange conversation they’d had, of the tears. And then she thought of Edwin, Lisa, Bonnie Knox.
“Uncle, I have to save Glen Hughes’ life.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“We need to renegotiate our agreement with the Wongs.”
“That would be difficult for me to do over the phone. I believe I would have to go to Wuhan.”
Ava drew a deep breath. “I don’t want you to do that,” she said quietly. “I want to do it.”
“You do not know the man,” he said.
“No, but I know the woman, and I think she can persuade the man.”
“You are so sure of that?”
“I am.”
The line went quiet and she heard Sonny yelling in the background. She realized they were still on the street outside the massage parlour. “A drunk just bumped into the car. Sonny is sending him on his way,” Uncle said.
“I’ll talk to the woman,” Ava said.
“Yes, I think that might be best.”
“Thank you.”
He sighed. “We men pretend we control things.”
“Uncle, if you don’t want me to do this — ”
“No, you have assessed the situation properly. May Ling is the one who can be reasoned with. If there is any chance to renegotiate the agreement, then it has to be between you and her.”
“I’m going to call her now.”
“Let me know when she succumbs.”
(35)
Ava went to the window and looked out on Kensington Gardens. She thought of Wuhan, of the cranes that formed its skyline, of air so foul that streetlights filtered through construction debris. She thought of May Ling and Changxing sitting on the top floor of their eight-storey mansion with the entire world living below, looking up at them.
Westerners couldn’t understand power as it was exerted in China. As men like Changxing accumulated wealth and contacts and influence, they correspondingly became increasingly immune to the everyday nuisances of life, and from the laws and constraints that applied to most citizens. As long as they were careful not to flaunt their status, stayed within the broad guidelines of the law, and didn’t cause any public embarrassment or become a threat to their political and military allies, there was hardly anything they couldn’t do, and there was virtually no one who would risk raising a hand against them. It gave men such as Changxing an overblown sense of security, a sense of invulnerability to the vagaries of the outside world. It had taken an Englishman to prick the bubble he lived in, the bubble that Ava had been hired to patch. Now all she wanted to do was take that small tear and turn it into a gaping hole.
She picked up her phone.
“ Wei,” May Ling said.
“Auntie, it’s Ava.”
The line went silent. “I did not expect to hear from you so soon,” May Ling said finally.
“I spoke to Uncle.”
“What did he say?”
“Auntie, he said I should do what I think is right.”
“I’ve asked you not to call me Auntie.”
“I can’t call you anything else.”
“Why?”
“You know or you don’t know — what does it matter? The thing is, we need to renegotiate our agreement.”
“We finalized it with Uncle.”
“Auntie, the ground has shifted. This is now between you and me.”
“My husband — ”
“Fuck your husband.”
She could hear May Ling breathing deeply. “Shall I have Changxing call Uncle?” she asked coldly.
“Yes, do that, Auntie. Have the two men talk. And then say goodbye to your money and watch Wong Changxing become the biggest fool the new China has ever seen.”
The line was quiet. “Why are you doing this?” May Ling whispered.
“You lied to me.”
“And no one has done that to you before?”
“You took the lives of three innocent people.”
“I’ve explained that.”
“Auntie, your explanation does not excuse the fact that you betrayed me.”
“Don’t call me Auntie anymore,” May Ling snapped, and then went quiet, composing herself. “Tell me,” she said calmly, “what is it that you want?”
Ava looked up Church Street and thought she could see the barriers that surrounded the Hughes Art Gallery. “I want our fee to be its regular thirty percent.”
“Uncle and I agreed on twenty.”
“It’s now thirty, which is what it should have been in the first place.”
“And if I agree, are there more demands?”
“Yes.”
“So why should I agree?”
“Because the demands are joined. It isn’t one or the other.”
“What else do you want?”
“Glen Hughes lives. He lives for as long as his health allows. He lives, and all his family and his friends live. No one who is close to Glen Hughes has an accident.”
“If that isn’t possible?”
“Then, Auntie, from our side, three things happen. The money — all of it — disappears. More important, perhaps, is that the world will find out that Wong Changxing bought fifteen fake paintings and
paid seventy-three million dollars for them in a pathetic attempt to be something he’s not. And finally I will somehow, in some way, link — at least in the public’s mind — the death of those three people to the two of you.”
“Does Uncle know what your position is?”
“Call him and ask.”
“I may.”
“Call him on another line. I’ll wait.”
May Ling paused. “Thirty percent?”
“And Glen Hughes lives.”
“I need to talk to Changxing — ”
“No, you don’t,” Ava snapped. “You and I alone will agree on how this business is to be concluded. The men may be told, but not consulted.”
“Or?”
“As I said, there will be no money and I will do everything I can to shame and humiliate your husband. Maybe no one in China will ever know what happened, but the rest of the world will. And I can guarantee that by the time I’m finished there will be so many rumours about the killings in Kensington that not a country in the world will give either of you a visa.”
May Ling went quiet. “Thirty percent,” she whispered, “and Hughes lives?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“And we get the seventy-three million?”
“No, I think by the time I’ve paid certain expenses, I’ll recover about sixty million. Subtracting our commission, that will leave you about forty million.”
“You would sacrifice twenty million in commission for Glen Hughes’ life?”
“And you would forgo forty million and risk your husband’s reputation, everything he’s built, for the life of a man you’ve never met?”
“I see the logic in your position,” May Ling said carefully. “But I don’t know if my husband will.”
Ava thought of Glen Hughes. He was already on his way to England to comfort his brother’s widow because of what he thought was a robbery gone wrong. “Tell Changxing that letting Hughes live is a greater and more prolonged torture. He’ll be a man living in perpetual terror, waiting for the gun that will take his life just as his brother’s was taken. In some ways, letting him live is a greater punishment than killing him.”
“There is a sense of justice in that.”
“Shall I tell Uncle?”
“Yes, you can tell him,” May Ling said. “I will make my husband understand.”
“I hope so, Auntie, because I am a vengeful woman.”
“That is another quality,” May Ling said softly, “that we seem to share.”
(36)
The first Air Canada flight out of Heathrow to Toronto was at eleven a.m. Ava was checked in by nine thirty and sitting in the lounge and online ten minutes later. There was an email message from Roxanne Rice, saying the two paintings had sold for eighty-four million. The money would be in the Liechtenstein account within forty-eight hours. The Wongs would net just over forty million after Harrington’s commissions and expenses, the five million each for Hughes and Rice, and the thirty percent she and Uncle had earned as their commission. Ava sent Roxanne her thanks and asked her to pass along best wishes to her husband. She then emailed her flight schedule to Maria, Mimi, and her mother and told them she would contact them when she reached her condo in Yorkville.
It was mid-evening in Hong Kong. Uncle should be at dinner, she thought. She had called him the night before to update him on her talk with May Ling Wong. He hadn’t been surprised by her apparent success but was now as anxious as she was to put this case behind them. She knew he would be pleased that the money would be available so quickly. His cellphone rang once and went directly to voicemail. That’s strange, she thought, and dialled his home number.
“ Wei,” he answered.
“You’re at home this time of night?” she said.
“My stomach keeps acting up. I went to see a doctor this afternoon and had acupuncture. Now I am drinking nothing but warm water and eating only congee for two days.”
“I worry about you.”
“Please do not. I am not falling apart — not yet, anyway.”
“I’m at Heathrow, heading home. I was just told that our money will be available within the next two or three days.”
“Excellent. I will call Changxing.”
“I wonder if he’ll make any mention of the changes in our agreement.”
“He has already. He called me earlier today,” Uncle said and made a small noise that sounded to Ava like a laugh. “That wife of his told him she thought they should increase our commission to the regular rate. She said you had done some remarkable work and that she had perhaps been disrespectful, haggling with me the way she did. He told me he had felt that way all along, and he instructed his wife to follow her instincts and pay us thirty percent. He made it sound as if he was giving me a gift.”
“I see.”
“He also said he had been thinking about Glen Hughes.”
“And?”
“He thinks Hughes must be going crazy with fear. ‘He is living in hell,’ he said. He has decided to leave him there.”
“May Ling is a clever woman.”
“Yes, she is,” Uncle said slowly. “She could be an important contact in years to come. Anyone with her kind of guangxi should not so easily be set aside.”
“Uncle — ”
“I know you do not want to hear that and I will not mention it again, but that does not make it any less true,” he said.
Before she could answer, the announcement came that her flight was ready to board. “I have to go, Uncle.”
“Safe journey,” he said.
Eight hours later Ava was walking through the arrivals hall at Pearson Airport, heading towards the limousine service. Then she heard her name. She turned to see Mimi, her mother, Maria, and Marcus Lee all waving at her.
Mimi and her mother were standing together; Marcus was to his wife’s left and Maria several metres to Mimi’s right. It was an awkward grouping, given that her mother never liked to concede looks to any other woman; tall, blonde, beautiful Mimi was an overpowering presence. Maria was wearing the Steinum sweater. Shy as always, she gave Ava a small smile, a tiny wave.
Ava went directly to Maria. They kissed discreetly, and then Maria said, “Mimi introduced me to your parents.”
“As what?”
“Your friend.”
Ava turned and walked over to her parents and Mimi, Maria trailing behind.
“Welcome home,” Mimi said, holding out her arms. The two women hugged.
Ava looked at Jennie Lee. “Mummy, you’ve met Maria.”
“Yes,” Jennie said. “I told her that I’ve never seen a girl who looked so good in bright colours.”
Ava smiled. “Even though I wasn’t expecting any of you, I’m really happy to see you. But now I really want to get home. How will we handle transportation?”
“I have Mummy’s car,” Marcus Lee said.
“Maria and I came together in a limo. It’s waiting outside,” said Mimi.
Ava looked at her parents. “If you don’t mind, I’ll ride with the girls. Maybe we can meet later for dinner.”
Marcus Lee looked uncomfortable, and Ava wondered if she had offended him. “Daddy, it’s just more practical.”
“Can we talk privately for a moment?” he said.
Ava looked at her mother and saw concern etched on her face. “Of course,” she said.
They moved to the side, leaving the other three women.
“Michael called me this morning,” Marcus said. “We talked in detail about his problems. I think he needs your help.”
“Daddy, I’ve just met him, and then only for two minutes.”
“He’s your brother.”
“Until a few days ago he was only a name.”
She saw the pain in her father’s eyes and felt her cheeks flush in shame.
“He wanted me to help him. I can’t. It’s beyond my capacity. He needs you.”
“What do you think I do?” she asked.
“I don’t live in a bubble in Hong Kong. I know who Uncle is, and was. And things are said about you — some of them alarming, some of them more complimentary. Michael is my oldest child. When I die, he will become the head of this family. I need you to respect that. Right now he’s at risk and he’s put most of his assets at risk. I don’t want to watch my oldest child lose his future.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Help him.”
“How?”
“Call him and he’ll explain.”
“But you know what happened?”
“I know enough to understand that he needs your help.”
“I’ll call him,” she said quietly.
Marcus leaned down and kissed his daughter on the forehead. “It’s always been my dream to bring my children together. I regret that it’s under these circumstances.”
“It’s a family and a structure that you created,” she said.
“I haven’t always been wise.”
The three women were standing where Ava had left them. Jennie looked pointedly at Ava as she walked back towards them. She saw in her mother’s eyes that Marcus had confided in her. Jennie mouthed, Momentai? and Ava knew that her mother stood with him.
Ava gave a slight nod and mouthed, Momentai.
“I was serious about dinner tonight,” Ava said to Jennie.
Her mother glanced at Maria and Mimi. “I think I’d rather have your father to myself tonight, and I think your friends would like to have you to themselves as well. Now off you go with them. We can talk later.”
When Marcus rejoined them, Jennie reached for his hand. “The girls need to leave for the city,” she said. “We should go home.”
Ava watched as they walked towards the escalator that would take them to the parking garage, her mother still holding on to his hand. His head was turned in her direction, talking. Her eyes never left his face. She couldn’t remember a time when they had seemed closer.