The Two Sisters of Borneo

by Ian Hamilton

  She drew a deep breath. “Jeremy, I’m wondering, is there any way you could take a peek into the account and tell me just how much of our money is already there?”

  “Ava!”

  “Please. We’re close to thirty million U.S. dollars in the hole and they’ve been selling our inventory like mad for weeks. I just want to know how much money they’ve actually put away.”

  He hesitated, and she knew he was considering the request. “Please,” she said again.

  “You have the account number?”

  She read it to him.

  “Company name?”

  “7793579 Aruba Inc.”

  His phone went to speaker and she heard the familiar clicks of a computer keyboard.

  “The account has been open for only two months,” he said. “The initial deposit was a hundred thousand euros, and since then . . . Well, over eleven million euros has been deposited — about fifteen million dollars.”

  “Any withdrawals?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It looks like close to five million dollars.”

  The number staggered Ava. This wasn’t a commission deal — the money was probably being split three ways. The brothers were partners with the Dutch. “In a lump sum?”

  “Bits and pieces.”

  “Wire transfers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sent where?”

  “I don’t think that’s information I can share with you.”

  “Jeremy, the thing is, we believe that some former partners in our business here helped set up the fraud. We have no hard proof but we’re working on getting it and have commenced legal action against them in the interim. All I need to know is the name of city — even the country — where the money was sent. It could help us eliminate them as suspects.”

  “This is rather irregular.”

  “But not precisely a meaningful breach of confidence. I mean, I haven’t asked you what names are attached to the company or who has signing authority on the account.”

  “And please don’t.”

  She heard the phone return to its normal mode and then the sound of Bates breathing. “The money went to Malaysia, to Kuala Lumpur,” he said.

  Those fucking brothers, she thought. “That’s helpful to know. Thanks.”

  “Now the man who’s going to send me the information, his name is Smits?” Jeremy said quickly. Ava guessed he was trying to deflect any more questions about the account.

  “Jacob Smits. I’ll contact him as soon as we’re finished and give him your email address.”

  “Excellent. But as I said, no promises.”

  “Understood.”

  “And how do I reach you once I decide what to do?”

  “Phone me,” Ava said. “Or better, email me. I’ll copy you on the note I send to Jacob so you’ll have his address.”

  “And you have mine, of course.”

  “I do.”

  “How nice that you hung on to it. You know, if you’re ever back in this part of the Caribbean . . .”

  “You’re the first person I’ll call,” she said.

  Ava closed her phone, feeling quite pleased with herself. She had sniffed out the money trail, and the connection to the brothers seemed to be clearer than ever.

  She went into her email, found Bates’s address in her contact list, and then wrote to Smits, copying Bates. Jacob, please send copies of everything you have with regard to the financial statements, bank accounts, and wire transfer, and an explanation of what you think occurred and how it occurred, to Jeremy Bates at Barrett’s. He has kindly agreed to look at our documentation. If he thinks our position has merit, he’s prepared to call Barrett’s in Aruba to warn them that the account may be problematic. So please take the time to prepare a complete file. His email address is attached.

  She sent the message and then leaned back in the chair. As she was giving her arms and back a good stretch, her room phone rang.

  “Ava Lee.”

  “It’s May.”

  “I was just about to call you.”

  “You sound livelier. Did your meeting go well?”

  “Too soon to tell. I’m going to see them again in less than an hour. But we’ve had some very good news from the Netherlands.”

  “The trustee’s changed his position?”

  “No — we located the money. It’s being sent to a bank in Aruba, a bank where I have some contacts. I’m working on making sure they can’t withdraw any more funds until we tie down the legal side.”

  “That’s great.”

  “About fifteen million dollars has been deposited, and five million has been wired in various amounts to a bank account in Kuala Lumpur. Looks like a three-way split.”

  “Profit-sharing?”

  “What else could it be?”

  “The money was sent to those brothers?”

  “Probably, but I’m not completely certain. And before you get any more excited, you should know that I don’t have an account number or a bank name to attach to the Malaysian account.”

  “It is those pricks. Who else could it be?”

  “I think you should call our local lawyer; he needs to get onto this. There must be some way he can track the flow of money into that account. It would have originated from Barrett’s Bank in Aruba. Here is the account number, and here is the company the account is registered to,” Ava said.

  “Repeat those numbers,” May said. “I’ve just picked up a pen.”

  Ava recited them again and then said, “There has to be some kind of central record system in Malaysia for tracking incoming foreign currency.”

  “One would assume so, and if there is we’ll get the information.”

  “So, not a bad day so far,” Ava said

  “No, not at my end either. The staff at the factory are quite capable and my young people have fit in very nicely. I’m optimistic about our chances of keeping the business intact, with or without the Dutch money. If we can get those funds back, then we’re in really great shape. One good thing about a crisis like this is that it forces you to assess and re-evaluate every part of your business. I liked what I saw today.”

  “Any news from Hong Kong?”

  “Not from my end.”

  “If I don’t hear from Michael by tomorrow morning, I’m going to call. And I should probably talk to Jack Yee as well. By then I might have something constructive to say.”

  “Don’t wait until then to call me. I’m going to stay up until you get back.”

  “Yes, Mummy,” Ava said.

  ( 25 )

  The esplanade was still brightly lit. More people were strolling along the boardwalk than earlier in the evening, the sea breeze pulling them there like a magnet.

  Ava walked towards the statue of the swordfish, her mind cluttered with thoughts about Jacob Smits, Aruba, Jeremy Bates, Amanda, and the two brothers she was sure she would be confronting. In her old business, finding and collecting money that had gone astray was never personal unless the other party chose to make it so. Ava prided herself on her ability to be pragmatic, to focus on the job at hand and not be distracted by pettiness. She had been spat on, cursed at, and threatened with fists, knives, and guns more times than she could remember. Her initial response was always the same: You stole the money. Now return the money and nothing else need happen. She wasn’t sure she could be so phlegmatic where Tambi and Mamat were concerned.

  With the help of Jacob and Jeremy and May’s lawyer, she knew she was going to find a path to the money. Every instinct she had honed over her ten years of working with Uncle told her that the money in Kuala Lumpur was theirs, and that the brothers had earned it by undermining their sisters. Could she convince them to give it back? There wasn’t much doubt about that. Could she convince them to implicate, in the clearest of terms, their Dutch co-conspirators? She could
. She was, after all, dealing with cowards, with men who paid thugs to beat their own younger sister with a bat. But could she do all that without physically abusing them? She probably could, but the question was, did she want to?

  She reached Fa Pang at just past eleven. The restaurant was dark. Ava looked down the esplanade in both directions. A few businesses had closed for the evening, but most were open. They’ve run out on me, she thought with a touch of panic.

  She went to the door and peered inside. The owner was standing by the cash register, dimly lit by one overhead light. She rapped on the door. He looked towards her and waved. She relaxed.

  “You close early,” she said as he opened the door.

  “My chief cook wasn’t feeling that well,” he said.

  “Ah.”

  He turned and walked back towards the register. “They’re waiting for you in the back room. Knock before you go in,” he said over his shoulder.

  She gathered herself at the door and then rapped three times. She heard a noise that sounded like feet shuffling. Then Wan’s voice: “Come.”

  Ava opened the door and stepped inside. Wan sat at the table in the same chair, his aide Yu Fei by his side. She nodded and took two more steps. “Were you successful with your phone calls?” she asked.

  “I have some information.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “I also talked to some people about you.”

  “That couldn’t have been too interesting.”

  “You have a reputation, huh?”

  Ava glanced sideways. There were four other men in the room, two more than before. They stood in pairs on either side of her.

  “Hey, pay attention, I’m talking to you,” Wan said.

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘reputation.’”

  “You’re supposed to be a tough little bitch, handy with a gun and a knife, and some martial art.”

  “There have been times when I’ve needed to defend myself.”

  “Do you have a gun or knife on you now?”

  “No.”

  He pushed his chair back, his feet dangling off the ground, his hands behind his head. “They told me the old man is ill.”

  “Who told you?”

  “People who know. They say he has cancer and that you’ve been babysitting him.”

  “That’s just gossip,” she said. “Look, can we get back to the reason I’m here? Did you get my information?”

  Yu Fei’s eyes flickered to her left and Ava sensed movement from the men who stood there. She turned. A face leapt into focus. She thrust her elbow up and back, driving it into the tip of a nose. She heard it crack, and then a man screaming. The two men on her right had moved in close and were now almost on top of her. She took a step back and coiled, ready to strike.

  “What is this —” she said to Wan.

  She saw a smile cross his face as her right leg buckled. She collapsed onto the floor and then twisted to see a man with a bat, a bat whose end he had driven into the back of her knee. She struggled to get to her feet, but three men jumped on her, two of them pinning her arms as the third pressed a cloth against her mouth.

  The last thing she remembered was hearing Wan say, “Make sure the bitch is out cold.”

  ( 26 )

  Ava was dreaming of her father. They were in a hotel and it was time to check out. He told her to collect their bags while he paid the bill.

  She saw him clearly, dressed in a suit, red Armani silk tie, his hair slicked back, a wry smile on his face. She couldn’t exactly remember their room number but thought it was 3138. When she got there, the door was open and the chambermaid was vacuuming. She looked for their bags, then asked the maid if she had seen them. The woman stared at her blankly.

  The room was 1338, she thought as she rode the elevator down. When she got to that room, the door was locked. She tried the key she had and it didn’t work. Shit, he’s going to kill me, she thought as she made her way back to the lobby.

  She imagined he’d still be in line at the front desk, but there was no line and there was no father. He’s getting our taxi, she thought as she approached the clerk.

  “I’ve forgotten our room number and I need to get our luggage,” she said to the clerk.

  “I need your name and some government identification,” the clerk said.

  “My name is Ava Lee.”

  “Identification?”

  Ava reached for her bag but it wasn’t there. She put her hand in her pants pockets. They were empty. “You don’t know me? You don’t remember me?” she asked.

  “I need ID.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Just one minute, miss, I think I need to call Security,” the clerk said.

  Ava looked through the glass walls and doors of the hotel entrance and saw her father outside. She yelled his name and began to walk towards him. Without looking back, he climbed into a taxi. She began to run. The taxi pulled away. The last thing she saw was his face in profile as the taxi turned left onto a street that looked like Hong Kong, but it could have been Bangkok, or Jakarta, or Manila.

  She knew she was dreaming. These same events had visited her in the night countless times; the venues changed, the circumstances varied, but the dream always left her chasing her father. And they always seemed to come to her when she was travelling, when she was in a hotel room far from home. She tried to force herself to wake, to escape the sense of loss that was overwhelming her emotions. But this time her eyes couldn’t open. Then she realized she wasn’t in a hotel room, she wasn’t in a bed, she wasn’t lying under a down-filled duvet.

  She was sitting on an armchair, her ankles taped to its legs and her wrists bound behind her back. She was blindfolded but not gagged. Her feet were bare and rested on a wooden floor. Then slowly she remembered how she’d got there: pain shooting down her leg as she fell to the floor, the cloth being pressed to her nose and mouth. Wan’s last words came back to her, and she knew she wasn’t in Fa Pang anymore.

  There were voices in the background, mumbling, indistinct, and now she knew she wasn’t alone. She strained to hear but her mind couldn’t focus, distracted by the pain in her body. The chair was wood, and her tailbone felt as if it was balanced on a rock. Her leg muscles ached, her thighs were gripped in knots. And the back of her right knee throbbed, sending shocks down to her toes.

  She began to shift her weight off her tailbone, flexing her glutes as gently as she could while still getting some kind of movement. When that discomfort eased, she started to work on her legs, moving her thighs from side to side not more than a millimetre at a time. Gradually the muscle knots began to unwind, but as they did, the pain in her knee became more intense. The bat had hit soft tissue, and she knew that at the least she had a deep bruise. She only hoped her ligaments and the kneecap itself hadn’t been damaged. She slowly began to wiggle her toes, trying to tease muscle action up her calves.

  “How long are we keeping her here?” she heard an unfamiliar, high-pitched voice say.

  She took a slow breath. Either they were speaking more loudly or she was concentrating better.

  “How the hell would I know?” another, a deep baritone, responded.

  “The boss seemed excited.”

  “He thinks she’s going to be a big payday.”

  “Shut up, you two,” she heard Yu Fei say. At least she thought it was Yu Fei. She tried to picture him: close to six feet, lean, pockmarks on his cheeks, a wispy black beard, thin lips, and eyes that had looked at her as if she were a whore.

  “We didn’t hear you come in.”

  “How is the woman?”

  “Hasn’t moved.”

  “When she comes to, give her some water.”

  “Anything else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if she has to piss?”

  “She can
piss where she is. You clean it up.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Just do what you’re told. I’m going to meet Wan. He’s been talking to the potential buyer. I’ll be back this afternoon. Call me if there are any problems.”

  Ava heard a door close and she assumed Yu had left.

  There was silence, as if the other two men were making sure he was truly gone. Then the higher of the two unknown voices said, “What buyer?” Ava decided to call him Squeaky.

  “Whoever wanted the other two women fixed. Wan will want to see how much money he can get for getting rid of this one,” the other one said. She named him Boom.

  “And if there isn’t any interest?”

  “Wan has a way of making people interested.”

  “And if they don’t want to pay enough?”

  “Then he’ll try to sell her back to her own people.”

  “And then?” Squeaky said.

  “Then whatever. It isn’t our decision. And these things usually end the same way.”

  “What a fucking waste.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “She’s pretty.”

  “You weren’t saying that when she broke your brother’s nose.”

  “She’ll get hers.”

  A chair scraped across the floor. “I’m going to take a crap,” Boom said. A door opened and closed.

  Ava counted to thirty and then came alive. “Where am I?”

  “Ah, wakey, wakey,” Squeaky said.

  “Where am I?”

  “That is none of your business.”

  Ava moved around the chair and flexed her leg muscles as much as she could. “I don’t need to be tied up like this.”

  “Not your choice, and not my choice.”

  “At least untie me a moment so I can stretch. My leg is killing me.”

  “No.”

  “The blindfold —”

  “No, you’re staying the way you are until I’m told to do something different.”

  She licked her lips. “I’m thirsty.”

  “Water I can do.”

  “Thank you.”

  She waited to hear him leave the room. Instead she heard the sound of water being poured from a Thermos into a glass.