by Ian Hamilton
The job had been a bust, but she didn’t care. She hadn’t wanted it in the first place and had taken it only to placate her mother, and maybe to occupy Uncle. And maybe she’d taken it to avoid making a decision about what she wanted to do with her life. Once she’d taken it on, though, it had been like being on autopilot, going through the motions like the professional she was . . . like the professional she’d been.
Autopilot — that’s what she’d been on since waking on Saturday morning in Surabaya with Andy Cameron’s semen encrusting her body. All she felt was numbness when she thought about it, the same numbness she’d felt when she slid the picana under his genitals, the same numbness when she saw him slumped dead on the chair. She had gotten her revenge. Why did she feel no satisfaction?
It has nothing to do with Cameron, she thought. He was just another stranger, like so many others over the years, who had tried to do her damage as she went about her job. He had just been more successful.
“I’m so tired of strangers,” she said quietly to herself. They had filled her life for the past ten years. The clients and the thieves, and all the people along the way who had helped her connect the dots between one and the other. All of them strangers who had to be manipulated, brought onside, urged to do the right thing, forced to comply to her will. Cameron had been no different than any of them. And neither were the Indonesians who had worked alongside her, contributing to a man’s death without any real interest in the why of it. All of them had taken a piece of her.
“I think I’m done,” she whispered.
She deplaned and, ignoring the bustle around her, walked slowly through the airport, a bag in each hand. Uncle hadn’t told her where he would be, but he usually sat in the Kit Kat Koffee House, and she headed there without glancing at the designated arrivals area.
He was there, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lower lip, one of the Hong Kong racing papers open on the retro-style round laminated table. He looked up, and when he saw her, he smiled, put down the cigarette, and stood to greet her. “My beautiful girl,” he said.
She thought he looked almost gaunt, and then wondered if her imagination was working overtime. She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. “I’m happy you came.”
He seemed surprised by her response. “There were other problems in Surabaya?”
“No, no, I’m just pleased to be out of Indonesia, and happy to see you.”
He folded his newspaper and put it into the side pocket of his black suit jacket. “I am sorry you went there in the first place, and I am sorrier about the way it ended. Perkasa, he was a good man?”
“He couldn’t have been better.”
He began to say something else and then caught himself. “Well, then, let us go. Sonny has the car parked at the VIP curb. We got here early, so I imagine the police are getting impatient with us.”
“Hardly.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but I do not like to take things for granted.”
He reached for one of her bags. “No, Uncle, I can manage,” she said.
“I put you in the Mandarin Oriental,” Uncle said as they walked through the terminal, “and I made a dinner reservation for us at Man Wah.”
It was Ava’s turn to be surprised. “Man Wah?”
“I know you like it.”
“But you don’t.”
“They fuss too much.”
“And I’m not in the mood for a fuss. So if you don’t mind, I’d rather eat noodles.”
He slipped his hand around her forearm and squeezed. “Noodles, then.”
“I still need to shower and change,” Ava said. She was wearing the same clothes she’d started the day in.
“Who is rushing?”
They went through a door marked PRIVATE. The Mercedes was parked no more than ten metres away. Sonny stood by the front bumper talking to a policeman as if he was an old friend. Uncle said, “Help Ava with her bags.”
Sonny stared at her, his eyes pensive. Had he found out something else about Uncle?
The policeman put a fist inside his opposite palm and then lowered his head and moved his hands up and down in a sign of respect. Uncle acknowledged him with a nod.
It was almost ten o’clock when they left the airport, the evening traffic light and moving fast. In less than half an hour Sonny had the Mercedes at the entrance to the Mandarin. The talk en route had been casual, Uncle asking after her family and Ava telling him about Amanda and Michael. He seemed overly attentive when she explained her role in the wedding party, and Ava found that strange. Usually when a job went sideways, Uncle took it even harder than she did and was always eager to pick apart the details. Now it seemed to be the furthest thing from his mind.
He waited in the hotel lobby while she checked in, quickly showered, and changed into the only clean clothes she had left, a pair of slacks and a pale blue shirt. She was just about to leave the room when her cellphone rang. When she picked it up, she saw she’d missed two calls while she was in the washroom. They were both from Sonny. So was the incoming.
“Sonny?”
“He went to the hospital again yesterday,” he said quickly.
“I’ll try to see his doctor tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll tell me what’s going on.”
“You won’t see him.”
“Why not?”
“I had my woman call his office Saturday. She got a message saying he was going to be away from the office for the next week.”
“Great.”
“Ava, you will stay in Hong Kong until he gets back?”
She hesitated. “If I have to, Sonny, I will. The other option is for me just to talk to Uncle, but I’m not sure how he would react.”
“We need to know what’s really going on first.”
She thought about spending a week in Hong Kong waiting for a doctor who might not talk to her anyway, and then balanced that against questioning Uncle about his health when he had made it clear he didn’t want people prying. “You may be right,” she said.
“I know I am. If he’s trying to keep this from me, you, and Lourdes, he won’t say anything. He’ll just get angry.”
Ava knew how true that was. They each had their secrets, she and Uncle, and they each guarded their privacy with a passion that bordered on obsession. They rarely spoke about personal matters; when they did, it was so awkward that it was almost painful. But not sharing secrets didn’t lessen the intensity of their relationship, didn’t detract from the strength of the commitment they felt towards one another. If anything it made those feelings all the more powerful, because they were based on something that didn’t need to be said, something that was permanent, accepted. In her mind — and, she thought, in his — it was something as close to unconditional love as possible.
Ava said, “Let me sleep on whether I stay or not. You know Uncle is waiting for me to go to dinner. I’d better get downstairs.”
It was now past eleven o’clock, but the streets in Central were still crowded. Sunday was family day for the Chinese, the traditional day off for the hundreds of thousands of Filipino housemaids and yayas who lived in Hong Kong, and just another business day for the retailers and restaurants that stayed open late to service them.
Uncle looped his arm through Ava’s and let her navigate. She led them to the same noodle restaurant they had sat in five days before . . . a lifetime ago.
The owner saw them at the entrance, and before a word could be spoken he was already moving other customers around so he could accommodate them. Most of the other tables were occupied by families having a late-night snack. At one, four heavily tattooed men, two of them with their hair pulled back in ponytails, were drinking beer and sharing platters of grilled squid and snow-pea tips fried in oil and garlic. When the men saw Uncle and Ava, they began to talk among themselves, and then they stood as one and walked over to the table.
“It is an honour to see you, to meet you,” the oldest said, bowing his head to Uncle. The others followed suit.
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�Where are you from?” Uncle asked.
“14K Wanchai.”
“Send my regards to Mountain Master Chen,” Uncle said.
“And he would want to send his deepest regards to you.”
“Thank you,” Uncle replied, with slight dip of his head.
The man stared at Ava. “Are you Ava Lee?”
“I am,” she said, taken aback.
“We know who you are too,” the man said. “Everyone has heard about Macau.”
“You are famous now,” one of the others said.
Ava lowered her eyes, embarrassed, confused.
The men hovered for a moment and then bowed to Uncle again before going back to their table.
“You have become something of a legend,” Uncle said, seemingly pleased.
“For what? Storming a house and shooting an unarmed man in the head? Hardly a contribution to mankind.”
“Every society has its own morality, its own code of ethics.”
“I never thought I was part of that society,” Ava said.
He glanced at her and she saw a hint of disappointment in his eyes. She hoped it was only because of her tone. “You are a brave girl. Just think of it in that light,” said Uncle.
“I didn’t feel so brave the way I left Surabaya,” Ava said.
“There was no choice.”
“I wonder if our Vietnamese clients would look at it that way,” Ava said, refusing to concede her fallibility.
“They may not have to,” Uncle said.
Ava looked across the table at him and saw a little smile playing on his lips. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said as the owner arrived, ready to take their order.
“I feel like eating tonight,” Uncle said, ordering a plate of noodles with beef drenched in XO sauce, steamed broccoli with oyster sauce, and a San Miguel beer.
“Bring extra noodles — I’ll share, and jasmine tea,” she said. When the owner left, she turned back to Uncle. “What did you mean about our clients?”
He shrugged, still looking mischievous. “After we talked earlier today, I did some thinking and then I made some phone calls. I spoke to an old friend on the Hong Kong police force, and he put me onto a mutual friend in the Security Bureau . . . Men I trust, you understand. Men I really trust.”
“Men you trust,” she repeated as their drinks arrived.
Uncle took a deep swig of his beer, like a man who hadn’t had a drink in months. “I mentioned the ’Ndrangheta to them and their interest was immediately piqued. When I explained — very generally — what you had uncovered, they became quite excited. I then put a proposal to them, and while their reaction was not exactly what I expected, it was close enough to make things interesting,” he said, and took another pull of beer.
Ava sipped her tea. She had no clue where he was headed.
Their food arrived, the noodles on one of the biggest platters she had ever seen, slivers of beef piled high, almost glittering under the combination of XO sauce and overhead lighting. The owner stood to one side, admiring his kitchen’s handiwork. This wasn’t a normal serving, Ava knew, not even a normal double serving. And the ratio of beef to noodles was outlandish. Uncle nodded his thanks and then said, “I will have another beer.”
“Should you?” Ava asked, and instantly regretted it.
“It is that kind of night,” he said.
They dug into the noodles. Uncle filled his bowl, extracted a slice of beef, and held it in the air, examining it as if it was a rarity. His second beer arrived before he had finished his first mouthful. “We may not have to abandon our clients,” he said as he set the empty beer bottle to one side and picked up the other. “At least, that is the message I got from my friends.”
“I don’t understand,” Ava said, helping herself to noodles and beef, her appetite surfacing despite her discomfort with the way the evening had gone thus far.
“The information you got from the bank — it has value.”
“Value to whom? We’re going to blackmail the Italians?”
“Of course not. We need to stay far away from the Italians. The information, according to my friends, has the greatest value to police. They think — in fact, they are convinced — that we should be able to sell it to a police organization.”
Ava said, “Why would the Hong Kong police have any interest?”
“Everyone is interested in the ’Ndrangheta, although not that much is known about them, I was surprised to learn. There was an assumption, certainly among the Hong Kong police, that they are not that well organized. When I started to talk about the bank, about the transfers, about the real estate business, it really intrigued my friends. They thought — and they told me the assumption is commonplace — that the ’Ndrangheta was a hundred or so loosely knit families. They had no idea there was this kind of structure to them.”
“And they are willing to pay for this kind of information?”
“No, not them. They think we need to talk to the police forces in the countries where you have found proof they are operating — Italy, of course, and then the U.S., Venezuela, Canada, Indonesia.”
Ava poured herself more tea, noticing that Uncle had almost finished his second beer. “Even assuming that we have something worth paying for, how do we keep the information secure?” she asked.
“Do you mean how do we keep the ’Ndrangheta from knowing who passed on the information about the bank and the cash, the real estate holdings, and — probably the most important thing of all — the people and companies whose names are attached to those holdings?”
“Exactly.”
“That is the problem,” said Uncle.
“And a big one,” said Ava. “I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t feel safe with anyone in Indonesia, Italy, or Venezuela, and when I say anyone, I mean anyone. The U.S. makes me almost as uncomfortable, unless you know someone there you trust the way you trust your friends here.”
“I know a couple of people, but the problem in the U.S. is that you would have to involve so many police forces. With all that overlapping, it gets tough to get a decision made and it is even tougher to keep things quiet. I do not think they could be bought off as easily as, say, the Italian cops, but with all the competing jurisdictions, things could get very sloppy. And we do not need sloppy.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Canada.”
“Aside from the fact I live there, what else recommends Canada?”
“It was not my idea, actually. It came from my friend with the Security Bureau.”
“And does he know about me?”
“No, I never mentioned you. But I did explain a little bit about our clients and about the bank’s involvement in Toronto. That’s when he said the Mounties should be contacted. He spoke highly of them — one force, acting independently, less chance of breaches. And that is where our clients live, in Canada, so it would be logical to go to the Mounties. And also it would not be far-fetched to ask for the money our clients lost as compensation for providing them with the information.”
“So we’re simply seeking justice for our clients, not trying to extort money for information.”
“True enough, is it not?”
“In a rough way, yes, it is.”
Uncle drained his beer. “And in the process, my friends said, the Mounties would raise their profile in international law enforcement. If we can provide them with the means to bring down even part of the ’Ndrangheta in Canada, the U.S., Italy, Venezuela, and if we give them the levers they need to stop such massive money laundering, they can only gain in prestige. There is no way to judge how much that would mean to them. Maybe it is thirty million dollars’ worth.”
Ava nodded, more out of politeness than in agreement. Why, she wondered, does he want to do this? We’re out of Surabaya without the Italians on our tail. We don’t need the money. Could he really be that concerned about our clients in Toronto?
She looked across the table at him. He was signalling for a
third beer, a slice of beef wrapped in noodles balanced on his chopsticks. There was a sheen on his face, and Ava thought she could detect a hint of yellow in his complexion. There was something else too. He seemed anxious — not in any fearful way, more like nervous — as if he had doubts about his ability to convince her of his position. And why should that matter? She nearly always did what he wanted. She didn’t need elaborate explanations, and he had never been a man to provide elaborate explanations. So why now? Did he suspect she wanted out of the business? Was he trying to hang on to it for some other reason? Ava remembered what Sonny had said to her when she’d first arrived in Hong Kong. Maybe that was it; maybe Uncle needed a reason to get out of bed every morning and didn’t want to let go of the one reason they had left.
“I know some Mounties,” Ava said, frowning at the owner as he brought another beer to the table. The man caught her look and signalled with a raised eyebrow that he understood.
“I know you do,” said Uncle.
“But that doesn’t mean I’d trust any one of them with what could be our lives.”
“How do you figure?”
“If we do this thing and the Italians find out, they’ll kill us.”
“No,” Uncle said, putting down his chopsticks, his bowl still half full, “what I mean is, how do you know those men are not trustworthy?”
Ava shrugged. “The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are as much a big government bureaucracy as they are a police force. It’s unrealistic to think they’d even consider handing over thirty million dollars without some kind of committee getting involved and without their doing due diligence on us and on our information.”
“Are you concerned about the quality of the information?”
“No, not in the least.”
“Then it comes down to credibility and to trust.”
“I know.”
He put the beer bottle to his mouth, paused, and then set it down. He reached across the table and placed his hand on hers. “The only way I think this could work is if you have one person you really trust, and you deal only with that person, and you deal with him completely anonymously and isolated from everyone else. He has to be your shield. Do you know any Mountie you would trust that much?”