‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I get that, obviously. I know the big dudes own everything and run everything. So what does that have to do with anything?’
He looked at her, hands frozen in mid-gesture. He was still doing the octopus embracing the globe thing. ‘Everything. The rich want to get richer. That’s their own raison d’être. It’s what they do.’
‘So?’ she shrugged. ‘Get richer. The fuck do I care? I don’t even invest in the stock market.’
He lowered his hands, grinning. His hair was dishevelled just a little. It was too short to ever get really funky. She liked him this way – out of his immaculate suit, away from his celebrity guest parade, letting his hair down … as much as it could be let. He was almost human at such times. Not a man who had a stake in every major illegal operation run out of the subcontinent, with ties to the Triads, Yakuza, Jopok and every other Asian mafia in existence. Apart from his billion-dollar legitimate business interests, of course. Or was it the other way around? Was there a difference anymore?
‘So where do the rich get more money from?’ he asked.
‘Each other? Through competition? By outdoing each other at business or service or even just making money? Isn’t that the basis of capitalism, free enterprise?’
He shook his head. ‘That was true maybe a hundred years ago. When the capital markets really were used to raise capital for legitimate business and fuel growth. Back when the so-called “developed nations” were still growing, populations and consumer buying expanding. But all that changed once the First World markets peaked. Population went into negative growth. So did consumer spending. You name the sector, the industry, the business, the service, it’s all in a downward spiral.’ He used his finger to follow an invisible graph vector in the air, taking a gradual declining path that increased in the negative gradient of the Y-axis. ‘Fewer people means less spending, which means negative growth, and the basic rule of business is the same as nature: “Grow or Die”. The older industrialized countries went through a similar graph. The British Empire. Towards the end, they couldn’t consume as much as they were producing – as much as they needed to keep producing and selling in order to keep growing. So what did they do?’
She sat on a beautiful shaped thing that was either a futon or a very well-cushioned statuette. She almost leapt up again when it moved and adjusted its contours to her body posture, weight and angle of incline. Intelligent furniture, fuck. ‘They sold their shit to their colonies?’
‘Yes, and what substance did they use initially to trade and set up the distribution network for those sales?’
She shrugged. ‘You lost me there.’
‘Opium,’ he said, with a touch of sadness that he rarely displayed. ‘The drug they used to subjugate the most powerful nation in the world.’
‘China,’ she said. ‘Of course. They manufactured and distributed opium legally across the Cathay belt at the time. I read Amitav Ghosh’s trilogy.’
He spread his hands. ‘I read his bibliography, the list of books Ghosh took his information from. Half a dozen of them were written by my ancestors.’
Sheila kept silent. She knew better than to say or do anything when Wu spoke of his family. He continued on his own.
‘Did you know that opium was sold legally in India until 1947? It was only after we formed our own government and took charge that we outlawed the drug and its manufacture, sale and distribution. But the damage was done. The groundwork had been laid. Once they had created the distribution system and market with opium, they used the same system to market other, legitimate products. The British basically laid the railway tracks for the same drug distribution system that continues even today, now selling a hundred other substances in place of opium. Bastards built the Drug Railroad of the World.’
She ventured an aside. ‘And your family runs quite a few trains on that railroad.’
He turned and looked at her sharply. ‘You’re one to talk, Sheila Ray.’
She smiled. After a moment, he smiled back. That was another thing she liked about him: unlike the stereotypical movie cliché of powerful ganglords – especially Asian ganglords – Stanley Wu’s emotional intelligence quotient and self-esteem were high enough that he could take criticism and not have you double-tapped on the spot or taken out back and have the shit beaten out of you. At least that was true of her and of the few instances when she’d taken a potshot at him.
‘It’s true,’ he admitted. ‘The British started the fire, but we kept it burning. No denying that. But now it’s a different world, a different ball game. After the sub-prime-mortgage fallout and the crash, the big boys needed a new cash cow. Something they could milk for at least a few decades without the well running dry. Something big. Something that feeds a need that won’t go away anytime soon.’
‘Drugs,’ she suggested.
He waved that away, flapping his hand like a Tai Chi master. ‘Drugs are already in the mix. So are Ponzi schemes, legal as well as extra-legal. Counterfeiting. Arms dealing. Extortion. Identity theft. Prostitution. Money laundering. The small-time stuff like fraud, forgery, illegal immigration, larceny, murder-for-hire, armed robbery …’ he gestured. ‘All that small-time shit. But all that was already around and already pushed to the limit. There is only so much juice you can squeeze out of an old litchi.’
An attendant in a traditional Chinese Hanfu brought in a tray and handed Wu a tiny scroll of paper so discreetly that had Sheila even glanced away for a moment, she would have missed the exchange. She followed the attendant for just a second, the richly brocaded Hanfu catching her eye, and when she looked back at Stanley, the scroll had already been read and disposed, she didn’t know where. He gestured to the tray, but she shook her head, declining. He picked up a tiny bone china cup adorned with delicate artwork and sipped steaming hot jasmine tea as he talked.
‘There was only one business left that hadn’t been fully exploited yet and was still profitable enough to assure the zamindars of the free market the certainty of guaranteed profits for decades to come. Something big and widespread enough that it would always be in demand, and for which there would always be a plentiful supply. What was more, it was a self-replenishing supply.’
‘Self-replenishing?’ She frowned. ‘You mean, like cocaine?’
He wagged a finger slowly, holding the tea cup high in the other hand, at face height. ‘Cocaine needs to be grown in secret, processed in secret, packaged and distributed in secret. They needed something that could be supplied through legitimate channels, under protection of law, using borderline-legal methods. It would never go out of demand and keep rising in price, and they could control the supply and quality of it.’
Sheila shrugged, giving up. ‘Diamonds?’ It did sound a lot like the way the original cartel had built the diamond trade, exploiting native African labour and lack of legal sophistication to create a trillion-dollar empire through the use of legal technicalities and loopholes. ‘Blood diamonds?’
Stanley Wu smiled, the steam from the tea swirling around his high cheekbones and only slightly slanted eyes. She loved his eyes. They were dark, intense, trustworthy eyes, Chinese eyes. ‘People,’ he said simply. ‘Human trafficking, to use the correct term. Or to use an older unfashionable term, slave-trading.’
Fifteen
15.1
FATHER FRANCIS HELPED ANITA off the main pathway onto a narrow overgrown grass path that had evidently not been used much in years. She guessed it was one of the older paths, before the zoo was renovated in 2005, because she remembered them from her childhood visits. He had a plastic yellow flashlight which he used discreetly, keeping it pointed downwards. The sound of shouting and yelling faded behind them, but didn’t die out completely. There were police or emergency vehicle sirens in the distance too. The path wound at a genial angle, culminating in a mossy side wall of a building that looked abandoned.
A man was waiting by a side door. She recognized him as the doctor who had given her the injection earlier and stopped at on
ce. Father Francis’s chin collided with the back of her head, probably hurting him more than it did her. ‘He’s with them,’ she said. ‘He has to be the one who called them.’
Father Francis put his arms on her shoulders, steadying her. ‘Dr Jayawardhane called me, not them. That’s why he sedated you and agreed to keep you in the clinic instead of following procedure by sending you to Trivandrum General Hospital. He will probably lose his job for it.’
She thought about this and realized he was right. Besides, she was trusting Father Francis for the moment, so she had to go with what he said.
The doctor looked her up and down, his gaze lingering on her leg. He looked very pained to see the muck and grass stains all over the dressing. ‘You must be careful to not get infected,’ he said, reminding her of a character in a zombie movie. Too late, doc, she wanted to tell him. I’m already one of the living dead. ‘I will give you some drugs for her,’ he said to the padre over her shoulder. ‘Make sure she has them on time or the foot could become septic.’
He led them into the building which turned out to be some kind of extension at the back of the same animal hospital building she had been in earlier. They passed cages with injured or sick animals lying in various states of discomfort, some bandaged, others asleep, their chests heaving. A lioness with a bandaged paw and an enormous plastic Elizabethan collar around her neck lifted her head and growled a greeting. Anita growled back, drawing a look from the priest. They kept moving.
The doctor had a van waiting with the zoo’s name painted on the sides. The engine was idling. He opened the rear doors. There was a cage inside, with blankets and a lot of straw. ‘Get in, cover yourself well, stay quiet.’ He went around to the front and got into the cab of the van.
Father Francis helped her into the cage, covered her with the blankets – which stank to high heaven of some unidentifiable animal’s sweat and urine – then sprinkled handfuls of straw strategically. He leaned over and whispered, ‘I’ll be up front. Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of this, Anita.’
He began to step back, to shut the van doors. She reached through the bars of the cage and caught his jacket. ‘Padre, about Lalima, just one question. Who murdered her? Was it my brothers?’
He patted her hand, ‘I’ll explain later. Now just relax and lie still.’
He shut the doors, leaving her in darkness. She couldn’t hear his footsteps going around the side of the van but after a moment, she heard the passenger side door open and then shut and the van began moving.
She lay down, intending to play sick-lioness for a while, even thinking mischievously of growling a bit if anyone tried to check her cage, but before she knew it, she had conked off. The next thing she knew, she was awake and being carried on a stretcher into some kind of old British Raj-era building. High vaulted ceilings and stained glass casement windows floated high above. There was an ancient chandelier with the biggest cobweb she had ever seen and very dark oil portraits of stern-looking Jesuit-types. She registered the fragrance of jasmine blooming and it reminded her of jasmine tea which she loved to have after a Chinese meal at one of the last surviving genuine Chinese restaurants in Mumbai. Her favourite, when she could afford it, was Baba Ling’s. Though she still missed Frederick’s.
They brought her into a room with stone walls and high vaulted ceilings, and she felt certain she was either in a church rectory or a convent. She glimpsed a habit or two floating about and thought of the goddamn beautiful irony. She who had turned away from God and the Church for so many years was now being given refuge in a house of the Lord by a deacon of His faith.
She was still smiling when they settled her into an iron spring-cot with a window over her head, slightly to the right. There was a carved dark wooden table and a chair for visitors by her bedside. From the sound of their footfalls as they carried her in, the floors were stone. She could see rows of beds to either side and on the other side of the room. It was like a hospital ward in an old WWI movie. Except that she was the only patient.
Dr. Jayawardhane spoke with Father Francis for a moment, mostly about medications and diet and rest, from what she could catch. Since he used mostly English, she assumed that the American didn’t know her language, but he surprised her at the end when a nurse or nun came up and he addressed her in fluent, if slightly limited Malayalam. So he’d been here awhile. Interesting.
The nurse administered a drip which Anita hated because she had had them before and they sucked big time. But she endured it, waiting until the nun had finished, even managing a ‘thank you, sister’ before turning to Father Francis.
‘Lalima. Tell me about her,’ she said.
‘You should rest,’ he said. ‘The drugs will make you sleepy.’
‘Time enough for sleep in the grave,’ she replied.
He smiled. He was handsome when he smiled. ‘What is that? Ecclesiastes or Doxology?’
‘Conan the Barbarian, the first movie, with Arnold.’
His smile vanished. ‘I see you’re not as sick as you appear.’
‘I’m sick of my family trying to kill me. I’m sick of not knowing what’s going on. Tell me, father. Tell me, how have I sinned? Against who?’
‘Whom,’ he corrected. ‘Sorry, I majored in English. Boston U.’
‘Good for you, college boy,’ she said, trying to sit up and regretting it instantly. What the fuck was that at the end of her right leg, a foot or a piece of lead filled with ground glass? Damn sedative must have worn off. She hoped the fresh ones would kick in fast. ‘Please explain what this is all about and where you fit into this picture.’
He saw the hostility in her eyes and softened. ‘Anita … Lalima told me about what you went through with your brothers after your father’s death.’ He shook his head, his fingers touching the rosary around his wrist in a gesture she knew was instinctive: her grandmother used to touch her rosary the exact same way. ‘It was un-Christian behaviour. Such things are greatly offensive to any good person on God’s earth.’
She bit her lower lip to keep from saying more than she should. ‘Your commiserations make me feel all warm and toasty inside. But right now, this isn’t about me. I want some answers and I’d like them fast, please. We can talk about my good old days later.’
He frowned. ‘Haven’t you read the documents? We thought you would have figured it out by now. You did call the others, didn’t you?’
She stared at him. ‘Jesus, padre. No disrespect, but you’re freaking me out now. Who are you? How do you know whom I called or didn’t call? How do you know about the packet?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m a priest of the Catholic Church. I was at the parish of St. Bartholomew’s in downtown Boston for two years before choosing to join this mission. I’m not CIA or some government agency spook. Lalima told me, remember? I know what’s in that package; I know she left instructions with the lawyer to send it to the four of you. You’re a detective. It’s perfectly logical that you would have found out who the others were and called them by now. What’s so sinister about that? It’s the reason why Lalima chose you, apart from the fact that you were her dearest and most trusted friend. She knew you would take it up like a righteous cause and do what had to be done to stop them – or try, at least.’
Anita drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. ‘Okay, I get that part. Crystal. But who’s “they”? My family? Philip—’ she paused, experiencing a moment of utter despair and fighting it back with kung fu fists of fury, not now, damn-dog. ‘Philip said something about Father Yeshua, our parish priest in Varkala … It made me think the Church was somehow mixed up in this too. And going by the Catholic Church’s record in the past few decades, I somehow came to the conclusion that you were the bad guys. No offense.’
Father Francis sighed and looked down briefly, grappling some inner demon of his own before nodding. ‘It’s true, we have had our share of problems. But don’t paint the whole barn with the same shade of dung, Anita. It’s true that there are some members of the Church mixed
up in this, but we excommunicate them the instant we are certain of their complicity. Please know that nobody involved in such sordid dealings is authorized or associated in any official capacity, or operates with the complicity of the Roman Catholic Church, so help me God.’
He signed the sign of the cross, even muttering the standard ‘In nomine Patris et fils et spiritus sancti’ sub-voce as he did, out of habit.
She was starting to like this Father Francis. He was a straight guy. Or at least seemed to be. ‘Okay, I’ll bite,’ she said, feeling a subtle easing in her foot. Was it the pain medication or the benediction? Oh yeah, Anita, girl, you’ve been saved! Hallelujah! ‘Then who are the bad guys here? What do they want? What’s this all about really? Why did Lalima send us four women those packages? What do those documents really prove? What did she expect us to do with them?’ Anita gestured. ‘I don’t even have my package anymore and the bastards still tried to kill me. At Trivandrum Zoo, of all places. What is going on, father? Please tell me. Treat me like I’m stupid. Or American. Break it down for me.’
He smiled at the American jab, and she liked him even more for that, for not getting uppity and all nationalistic about it. ‘It’s about the business of human trafficking. That’s what it’s about, to put it simply and stupidly in Americanese. The documents prove how legitimate banking and insurance and financial institutions are earning profits from enterprises with “dirty” sources and simply turning a blind eye to where the money is really coming from.’
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