The Two Sisters of Borneo

by Ian Hamilton

  “Do not look so alarmed. I checked with Parker yesterday and he saw no reason why I could not travel. Besides, it is only a two-hour flight.”

  “But, Shanghai?”

  “I have some business to attend to. Sonny will be travelling with me.”

  Ava tried to keep the surprise out of her voice. “Business?”

  “It is something I cannot discuss with you. I gave my word to the other party that no one else would be involved.”

  “You’re taking Sonny.”

  “To carry and drive, nothing more.”

  “Uncle, this is so strange,” she said, bewildered.

  “I am sorry for telling you like this, but it is something I have been working on for a while. It is now starting to come together, and even better than I could have hoped for. The invitation came yesterday and we did not have a chance to talk. It made me excited when I received it, so excited that I ate and drank like a fool . . . Ava, this does not concern any business we have ever done or people you have ever met. If it did, I would be taking you with me, so do not look so disappointed. Besides, it will give you a break. With the wedding over and me away for a few days, you can have some time to yourself.”

  “For how long?”

  “Three or four days. They are putting me up in a suite at the Peninsula Hotel.”

  “And Parker said this is all right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Uncle —”

  “Please do not argue with me about this, Ava. My mind is made up.”

  “If there’s any problem?”

  “Someone will call you, I promise.”

  ( 5 )

  She slept fitfully, waking every few hours with the nagging sense that something was wrong. She looked at the message light on the hotel phone. It wasn’t blinking. She checked her cellphone. No voicemails or texts. Uncle has to be well, she told herself. She finally woke at noon and remembered with a start that she was supposed to have met May Ling for breakfast.

  Ava called her friend’s cell. May answered on the second ring.

  “Wei.”

  “I’m sorry about breakfast. I just woke up. I was at the hospital until past four o’clock with Uncle. He had another attack.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Yes, or as okay as he can be, given the circumstances. They said they were going to let him out today.”

  “And are you okay?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you have to get him?”

  “No, that’s Sonny’s job and he’s quite territorial about it.”

  “So you’re free to meet?”

  “As soon as I’ve showered.”

  “Take your time. I’m still in my room. “

  Ava did take her time. She made an instant coffee and drank it while scanning the South China Morning Post. The wedding hadn’t received any coverage. The lawyer she’d danced with had pointed out several photographers from newspapers. She imagined they were from some of the many Hong Kong Chinese dailies.

  She showered, removing the last remnants of makeup from the night before, brushed her teeth, and towel-dried her hair. She threw on a black Giordano T-shirt and her Adidas training pants, then suddenly felt at loose ends. Michael and Amanda would be in the air, on their way to a one-week honey-moon in the Seychelles Islands. Sonny would be driving to the hospital to get Uncle, and then they would be heading to Shanghai. Both of the touchstones for what had become her life in Hong Kong were gone. She phoned May Ling.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Good. I’m upstairs in the M Bar drinking a martini.”

  “A martini?”

  “I’ll explain.”

  Ava rode the elevator to the twenty-fifth floor. She had no idea the M Bar opened so early, but May Ling was sitting by herself at a table overlooking Victoria Harbour. She was wearing slim black jeans and a teal turtleneck sweater. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and as Ava approached her she saw small lines around the edges of her mouth and faint circles under her eyes. More surprising was that her eyes were full of worry. May Ling, in Ava’s experience, was a woman who took things in stride.

  “Sorry to have missed breakfast,” Ava said.

  May held out her arms and they hugged. Ava could feel the tension in her friend’s body.

  “May, what the heck is going on?”

  May shrugged. “Is it that obvious?”

  “You’re drinking a martini at noon.”

  “Well, we have a problem.”

  “A problem?”

  “A business problem.”

  Ava sat down at the table. When a server materialized almost instantly, she ordered a coffee.

  “I thought we’d talk first and then go to Man Wah for dim sum,” May said, motioning to the restaurant that made up the other half of the twenty-fifth floor.

  “Sure, that sounds fine. But May, you’re worrying me with all this talk about a business problem. Amanda mentioned something to me, but she thought it was a Wuhan issue.”

  May plucked a green olive from her drink. “It has nothing to do with Wuhan. It’s a problem with the new business — our business. I’ve been trying to sort it out by myself. I mean, Amanda had her wedding and you had Uncle, so I thought I would leave the two of you out of it.”

  May Ling’s eyes were like Uncle’s. They were such a deep brown that in many lights they looked black, and like Uncle’s, they spoke to you. Ava had seen them distressed only once before, that night in Wuhan when they had first met, when May Ling sat on Ava’s bed and begged her to take their case. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Ava, are you sure you’re up for this conversation? I know the last few days have been really trying for you,” May said.

  Ava shrugged. “I’ve spent the past four months worrying about Uncle and worrying with Amanda about the wedding. Yesterday, between him and her, could have been the worst day since I’ve been here, but we got through the wedding and Uncle got through another crisis. And none of it — the past four months, I mean — has been as soul-leeching as I thought it would be. I had to get the misery out of my system with Uncle and forget about how frivolous the wedding preparations were. And I did both well enough to get by. So tell me, what’s our problem?”

  “It isn’t officially ours yet,” May said, biting into the olive, her eyes on the harbour below. “You haven’t yet put your money into the business, and after hearing this you may not want to.”

  “Oh, don’t give me that,” Ava said. “Nothing can be that bad.”

  “I’m not so sure, and Changxing is most certainly sure it is.”

  “Why is he involved?”

  May looked back at Ava. “He isn’t, not directly anyway. But he does know about the problem. I couldn’t disguise my distress when I found out about it, and when he asked me what was going on, I told him. I think maybe he’s enjoying my discomfort. It just reinforces his idea that I can’t — or, more accurately, shouldn’t — do anything without him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  May drained her martini. “All the money I had was tied up in businesses I shared with him. When I went to him with this idea for our thing, he was . . . Well, he was somewhat understanding and tolerant, but more confused than anything else. He couldn’t understand why I wanted to do something with just you and Amanda. Still, I must give him credit. He signed off on my pulling a hundred million dollars out of our joint ventures to bankroll the new company, and he didn’t charge me too much interest on the fifty million I agreed to repay when your share came in. But at the core, in his heart, I think he wants me — he wants us to fail so that things can go back to the way they’ve always been.”

  “And you’re trying to tell me what? That we’ve failed?”

  “No, but we have a problem.”

  “That so far I know nothing about.”


  May slipped the last olive into her mouth and sucked on it as if she were trying to extract every last drop of gin. “Our new company has put money into three businesses in very short order. We bought Jack Yee’s trading company outright, as you know, because that was the only way we could get Amanda. But it’s a mature business that almost runs itself. We invested in a distribution business in Shanghai that I’ve had my eye on for some time. I’ve known the married couple who own it for years, and the wife is really the brains behind the operation. The husband died about six months ago and now she has free reign to expand the business. She came to me with a proposal; I gave it to Amanda to assess and she said it was a solid investment. We gave the woman the capital she needed to add warehouse space and to update and expand her truck fleet. It’s already looking as if the returns will be very good.

  “The problem investment is the only one we had no previous detailed knowledge of. It’s a family business that produces fine furniture in rosewood, teak, rubberwood, and bamboo. When we looked at it, there were four equal partners: the two sons and two daughters of the founding family. Their parents, who started the business, have been dead for a few years.” May paused as the server appeared with Ava’s coffee.

  “Another drink, Madam Wong?” he asked.

  May Ling looked at her empty glass and then shot a small smile towards Ava. “No, thank you,” she said.

  Ava took a sip of her coffee. “How did these brothers and sisters find us?”

  “Through Amanda. It was her project. She went to business school with the younger of the two sisters.”

  “No wonder you didn’t want to discuss it with her before the wedding,” Ava said.

  “It could have ruined her day.”

  And might have jinxed the marriage itself, Ava thought. “But May, are you suggesting that maybe Amanda was somehow negligent?”

  “No, this isn’t Amanda’s fault, believe me. She did thorough due diligence and I went over all the paperwork myself.”

  “Then why do we have a problem, and how did it happen so quickly? I mean, this investment is how old?”

  “Four months.”

  “Good God.”

  “I know, I know. But the thing is, the more I look at it, the more I think we were set up from the very start.”

  “What do you mean? The family did this to us?”

  May shook her head. “I wish it was so simple.”

  “Then what?”

  May stared out over the harbour, her profile captured by soft overhead lighting that made her look young and vulnerable. “I think the two brothers are trying to fuck us over,” she said, turning back to Ava.

  Ava sipped some more coffee. Her fatigue was beginning to dissipate. “Not the sisters?”

  “No.”

  “How have you come to that conclusion?”

  “The brothers are useless, both of them.”

  “May, that’s not telling me anything.”

  “Sorry, I just get so angry when I think about them.”

  “I’m listening.”

  May stared at her empty glass. “The parents built the company from scratch. They started by exporting timber overseas and then gradually eased their way into furniture production. The sons and the eldest daughter — her name is Ah-Pei — joined the company right out of high school. She was the only one who really worked at it. The brothers, Tambi and Mamat, did marketing and sales, but all that meant was that they went to trade shows, drank with buyers, and paid off enough of them to increase their sales. The actual heavy lifting in the business — anything to do with finance, administration, purchasing, or production — was managed by the parents and gradually by Ah-Pei. They all worked seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day — you know the kind of people I’m talking about. Ah-Pei never married; the business was her entire life. The two sons did marry, and then immediately became more concerned about keeping their wives happy than spending time at the company.

  “As the business grew, it obviously became more complicated, and Ah-Pei and the parents decided that Chi-Tze, the youngest daughter, needed to get the education to help them deal with it. They sent her off to Melbourne, where she got a bachelor’s degree with a major in business. She did so well in Australia that they sent her to the U.S. to get an MBA, and that’s where she met Amanda.

  “The parents died a few years ago. The four children inherited the business in equal parts. By then Chi-Tze had graduated and was working alongside her sister. Tambi and Mamat were doing what they always did: as little as possible for as much money as possible. Ah-Pei was used to it, and truthfully she seems a little old-fashioned about how she views her relationship with the male members of her family. But Chi-Tze wasn’t as tolerant. She decided she wanted to take the brothers right out of the business, and with her sister’s tepid approval she contacted her colleagues from business school to see if anyone would have an interest in making an investment. Amanda was on the list.”

  “What form did our investment take?”

  “It was two-tiered. Amanda assessed the business to have a net value of just over sixty million U.S. dollars. I thought her numbers were, if anything, a little low, and I have to tell you I was pleased by her conservative approach. So we made an offer of twenty-five million for half the business, structuring the deal to buy out the brothers’ shares with fifteen million, with the other ten million to be put in as working capital. So really we were offering fifteen million to buy half of a business we had assessed at sixty million.

  “We assumed, of course, that the brothers would dicker with their sisters and that the women would come back to us with counter-offers, but that never happened. Amanda said she thought they were that desperate to get rid of Mamat and Tambi, and that the brothers were as desperate to get their hands on ready cash.”

  “On the surface it sounds like a good deal for us.”

  “Doesn’t it.”

  “So what’s gone wrong?”

  “A customer in the Netherlands.”

  “One customer?”

  “Yes, but the biggest by a mile, and in hindsight far too big for the health of the business.”

  “What’s the problem with them?”

  “They’ve declared bankruptcy,” May said.

  Ava, almost unaware, had finished her coffee. She felt the urge for another and looked for the waiter. He was standing to one side, his attention on their table. Everyone working in the hotel knew who May Ling was, and by now they had come to know Ava as well. Ava pointed to her cup. He nodded and then looked at May Ling. She sighed. “What the hell,” she said, and signalled for another martini.

  “How much do they owe?” asked Ava.

  “We invoiced them for close to thirty million dollars. It cost us twenty million to make the products, so if we got that back we could break even. But as far as I’m concerned, we’re out of pocket the full thirty,” May said abruptly.

  Ava sat back, startled. “How did that happen? I mean, why would they extend themselves that much? Weren’t there at least letters of credit?”

  “That’s what I’ve spent the last week piecing together, and that’s why I think the two brothers are fucking us over, either on their own or in partnership with the Dutch.”

  “How did they do that? I thought you had taken them out of the business.”

  “Some of this is supposition on my part, but let me tell you what I know and then you can tell me what you think.”

  The server arrived with their drinks and fussed over the table. As he did, Ava ran the numbers through her head. She didn’t like the result, and that was even if they could salvage part of the thirty million.

  Ava lifted her cup towards May. “Cheers,” she said.

  May shot her a look that implied she thought Ava was being sarcastic. Then Ava smiled, and May smiled back, but without any enthusiasm.

  “I’m list
ening,” Ava said.

  May’s eyes darkened. “As I said earlier, Tambi and Mamat were in charge of sales and marketing. This Dutch customer — who distributes the products all over Europe — has been buying furniture from the family for years and has always paid his bills in full and usually on time. When they first started doing business, letters of credit were always in place, but over the years a trust developed. The company started giving the customer payment terms and stopped demanding the LCs.”

  “The brothers were involved in the financing?”

  “Not directly. Ah-Pei would have had to approve the arrangement. I can only imagine that the brothers talked her into it, and besides, the Dutch company had a good track record. But Tambi and Mamat are the ones who had the relationship with the buyer. They’d meet him in Holland or at the factory two or three times a year to put together purchase orders. But — and this a big but — this past October, after we’d done our deal with Ah-Pei and Chi-Tze but before the brothers were officially out of the business, the two of them met with the Dutch buyer and negotiated a huge purchase order. The Dutch customer bought nearly all of the existing inventory and then ordered multiple containers of new products.”

  “And the women didn’t find that odd?”

  “I think they were too excited about getting rid of their brothers, and besides, as I said, they knew the Dutch company. Or at least they thought they did.”

  “So Mamat and Tambi had the authority to commit the company to a deal that large?”

  “They were still partners and officers in the company, but Ah-Pei’s signature was required as well. The problem is that she didn’t read the fine print until two weeks after the brothers were officially gone.”

  “Fine print . . . Just how bad was the deal?”

  “The terms were ridiculous. Net payment wasn’t due until forty-five days after the product actually arrived in the Netherlands. With thirty days thrown in for shipping, that meant it would be at least seventy-five days before any cash came back their way.”

  “And we actually shipped that much product that quickly?”

  “They cleaned out the inventory. In a few weeks they had packed and shipped all of it.”