The Couturier of Milan

by Ian Hamilton

  “Why did she think I’d say no?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  ( 37 )

  May managed to walk Ava to the elevator without tripping or stumbling. “I’m a bit drunk,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  “But happy.”

  “You mean ‘happier.’ Nothing is resolved yet.”

  “Whatever. We’re a great team —me, you, Amanda, and Xu.”

  “Xu?”

  “Don’t start being defensive about him again. Every time I mention his name, you react like that.”

  “There’s something that makes me nervous.”

  “What?”

  “The idea of you and Xu getting into a relationship.”

  May was quiet. Finally she said, “Well, you can relax, because it will never happen.”

  “You don’t want it to?”

  “Of course I do, but I would never make the first move.”

  “And if he came on to you?”

  “I’ve given him several chances and he’s not shown the slightest interest,” May said. “I am older than him.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  “Thanks for that, but I like to think that even if I wasn’t older, he wouldn’t want to mix business and pleasure,” May said. “That’s how I normally think about things too, but I have these little moments of weakness.”

  Ava wrapped her arms around May. “I would never stand in the way of anything that made you happy,” she whispered. “But I love you and Xu so much, I can’t stand the thought of a relationship between you two causing tension among us.”

  “Don’t worry,” May said.

  “I know,” Ava said. She took a deep breath and noticed there were tears on her cheek. She wiped at them roughly with one hand.

  “I’ve rarely seen you this emotional,” May said.

  “This Ventola business upsets me. I can handle whatever animosity is directed at me, but it bothers me to think about the pain Clark and Gillian have had to endure,” Ava said. “And then there’s Maria. I don’t want to lose her, but I can’t give in to what she wants. I’m starting to realize that she’s going to disappear from my life.”

  “It will be her loss.”

  “Spoken like a true friend.”

  The elevator doors opened.

  “Let’s get a good night’s sleep,” May said. “Everything will look better in the morning, and with any luck we’ll be in Hong Kong by this time tomorrow night.”

  When Ava got to her room, she sat down on the bed. She felt woozy from drinking too much or too fast. She quickly undressed, put on a T-shirt, and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. She returned to the sitting area feeling more alert but knew she needed a distraction if she was going to stay awake for Amanda’s call. She listened to Pang Fai’s message again and for a moment thought about calling her, before deciding against it. She wanted to be sober if and when that happened.

  She turned on the television and scanned the channels. A couple of films looked promising but she didn’t want to jump in partway through. She settled for a mindless variety show that lasted nearly two hours. When it ended, she went back to the bathroom to brush her teeth and get ready for bed. She walked to the window and sat in the green leather chair with her new phone in her lap. Five minutes later it rang.

  “It’s done,” Amanda said.

  “How did it go?”

  “Very well, I think. I did my very best impression of an overwrought woman. I even managed to force a few tears.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He acted like he already knew about what I was telling him,” Amanda said. “He was calm and didn’t protest or deny anything.”

  “That’s all?”

  “He did say he’d tried to warn you, but that you’d been too stupid or stubborn to listen.”

  “That’s true enough, I guess.”

  “The bottom line is that I think he bought the story.”

  “Now all he has to do is buy one more and we’re on our way to Hong Kong.”

  ( 38 )

  Ava slept fitfully, her mind already in Hong Kong and frustrated that she wasn’t physically there as well. She woke at just past seven feeling irritable and impatient. Two cups of coffee, an hour’s walk back and forth along the Bund, and a long, hot shower didn’t improve her mood.

  She checked her emails and saw one from Raffaello Pandolfo. She smiled but didn’t open it. What was in it was less important than the fact that he’d sent it. Sure that he was checking on her, she turned on her regular phone. The log showed two incoming calls from Pandolfo and another from a number with the Italian country code. She turned off that phone and reached for the one Xu had provided.

  “I got calls from Italy on my regular phone. Did you?” she asked May when she answered.

  “One call with a message. I didn’t listen to it.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Someone also called my office in Wuhan early this morning and asked for me. Changxing has instructed the staff to say that I’m not available and they have no idea when I will be,” May said. “The Italians are rather mistrustful, aren’t they. They may not have entirely believed Lam.”

  “It’s to be expected.”

  “Have you spoken to him yet?”

  “It’s too early. I figure he’ll wait until about two, which is seven in the morning in Milan, before he calls Italy.”

  “Ava, have you thought about what we’ll do if Lam can’t convince them to come to Hong Kong?”

  “He’ll convince them.”

  “Are you saying that because you believe it or because it’s the only option we have?”

  “It isn’t the only option, but it’s the best one,” Ava said.

  “What else do you have in mind?”

  “If it wasn’t for the personal threats against us, I’d just keep tightening the screws in China and try to expand our activities elsewhere. The threats don’t allow us that kind of time. I take them seriously and I can’t pretend they’ll disappear because of Lam’s fabrication,” Ava said. “So if the Italians won’t come to us, we’ll have to go to them.”

  “To Milan? You and me?”

  “And Xu, Lam, Suen, Sonny, and however many more men we need.”

  “God, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Me too, but if it does, we’re not going into it without a full commitment.”

  “Can you get that from Xu and Lam?”

  “We have it now.”

  “For Hong Kong.”

  “Geography is a detail.”

  May became quiet, and Ava knew she was thinking about the ramifications of what had just been said. She also knew that May had no idea about the ties that bound her to Xu and Lam, and she wasn’t ready to start explaining them.

  “Have you spoken to Amanda this morning?” Ava asked.

  “Yes, about half an hour ago,” May said, her voice lightening at the change of subject. “She’s going to the factory in Pudong, but her bags are packed and she’s ready to leave with us at short notice.”

  “And what are your plans for the morning?”

  “I’ve scheduled a conference call with Suki to go over her plans for the next six months. You can join us if you want.”

  “I may just do that,” Ava said. “When do you start?”

  “Half an hour.”

  “Okay, I’ll drop in, but first I’m going to book us seats on an early evening flight to Hong Kong.”

  Ava ended the call, feeling irritated again. What would happen if the Italians didn’t come to Hong Kong? She had answered May’s question quickly and, she hoped, convincingly, but the truth was she wasn’t at all certain that Lam or even Xu would be willing to go to Milan. The hackneyed phrase about being a fish out of water came to her. Hackneyed or not, it was true, and one of the major reasons she wanted to get the Italians to Hong Kong, on triad turf. The situation would be reversed if they had to go to Milan.

  Lam has got to get
them to come to our territory, she thought. She went online, searching for flights to Hong Kong. She blinked in surprise; there were more than thirty-five direct daily flights and an abundance of airlines to choose from. She opted for the familiar, booking three business-class seats on a Cathay Pacific flight scheduled to leave at five-fifteen and arrive in Hong Kong around eight.

  She checked the time. It was too early to call Lam, and she didn’t want to harass Xu. She sighed, picked up the phone and her bag, and left the room for the short walk to May’s.

  May had left her door ajar, and when Ava entered the room she saw her sitting at a small round table with a stack of paper in front of her. Suki Chan’s distinctive voice tumbled out of the speaker. Suki spoke quickly and enthusiastically, her words falling over each other, leaving no room for interruption. Ava wondered sometimes if she ever drew a regular breath when she was on one of her verbal tears.

  May motioned for her to sit. Ava opened her bag and took out a notebook and pen. Suki was talking about the possible expansion of their Beijing warehouse and logistics business, which they’d taken over only the year before. She was specifically urging them to buy and expand a cold-storage facility near the capital. They had recently done that in Shanghai and the business had been immediately profitable. As Suki reeled off numbers, Ava wrote them in her notebook. May had already covered spreadsheets with numbers and question marks.

  Suki paused and May was quick to fill the silence. “Ava joined us a few minutes ago,” she said.

  “Do I need to repeat anything?” Suki asked.

  “No, May can brief me on anything I missed,” Ava said.

  “Great. Now let me move on to the carbon-fibre container project.”

  May extracted another spreadsheet from her stack and placed it on top. Ava turned to a fresh page in her notebook. Of all the investments they had made —apart from PÖ —this was the one whose potential excited Ava the most. The world of ocean freight revolved around steel containers that were twenty or forty feet long, and there were close to twenty million of them in use. The company in which they’d invested had developed a container made of carbon fibre that weighed only ten percent of its steel counterpart. It was also collapsible, which made it much easier to store, non-corrosive, and well insulated, and it could float. The flotation aspect was proving to be a major selling point, Suki explained, because ten thousand steel containers fell off ships every year and were never seen again.

  “I know you might find this funny after the way we’ve been losing VLG containers this week, but we’ve also made some recent sales because of the tracking system we can imbed in the skin of ours,” Suki said.

  “Explain that to me again,” May said. “Changxing has a customer who’s really concerned about the security of his shipments.”

  “It’s simple enough. The composite in the panels of our containers is electronically transparent, so information from any built-in sensor can be transmitted wirelessly.” Suki laughed. “It is virtually impossible to lose one of our containers.”

  “Then it’s a good thing we haven’t taken over the marketplace yet,” Ava said.

  “We’re a long, long way from doing that,” Suki said. “As good as our product is, it still costs three times what a steel container does.”

  “But it pays for itself in less than two years, through savings in storage charges and fuel costs,” May said.

  “Not everyone is prepared to wait that long for a return on their investment.”

  “So what are the sales projections for the next six months?” Ava asked.

  “I’ll go major market by major market,” Suki said. She began reading out a long list of numbers.

  Despite her overriding concern about how Lam’s morning was going, Ava found herself getting caught up in the minutiae of the carbon-fibre container business. As Suki moved past sales projections and into their longer-term marketing strategies, Ava was totally engrossed. So was May, who asked question after pointed question. May knew the transportation and warehouse business inside out and wasn’t afraid to challenge Suki, sometimes in a manner that Ava thought bordered on rude. What pleased Ava was how professional Suki was in her replies. When the discussion ended, it wasn’t because they had run out of things to say or because Ava had filled two pages of her notebook. It was because Ava’s phone rang.

  She stared at it blankly until the Guangzhou number registered. She hit the answer button and put the phone to her ear with a combination of eagerness and trepidation. “Ban, we’ve been anxious to hear from you.”

  “I’ve been on and off the phone with the Italians for the past hour.”

  “That sounds complicated,” Ava said. She moved away from the table, leaving May to continue the discussion with Suki.

  “It was, and we’re still not finished.”

  “Oh,” Ava said, now out of earshot.

  “Don’t be discouraged, at least not yet,” Lam said. “One reason our talks dragged on was that Ricci isn’t empowered to make the kind of decision we want. He had to speak to a man named Moretti, who in turn had to consult with a Franco Bianchi. I remember Bianchi. He dealt directly with Li when he was Mountain Master. I think that when they initially contacted me, they didn’t know that Li is dead and I’m the boss. I’m quite sure that Ricci and Moretti are under-bosses, and that they thought they were dealing with an equal when they talked to me. I should have picked up on that at the outset.”

  “They know you’re the boss now?”

  “They certainly do. I told them that until I spoke directly to Bianchi, nothing good was going to happen for VLG in China.”

  “Has that happened?”

  “Five minutes ago. He apologized for their complex lines of communication and said he had misunderstood the leadership situation in Guangzhou. Otherwise he would have called me himself.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Not exactly what you and I discussed.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The more I thought about my original plan, the less plausible it seemed. In fact, I decided it was too weak to get you what you want, so I decided to up the ante,” Lam said.

  “How so?”

  “I told him he has a far bigger problem with the factories and the shipments than he knows and that I originally thought,” Lam said. “I said I had just discovered that the factories are at least partially owned by some triad gangs, specifically gangs in Shanghai and Wanchai that are controlled by Xu. Bianchi said he has heard of Xu but never had any dealings with him.”

  “Does Xu know you told him that?”

  “I cleared it with him.”

  “Sorry,” Ava said hurriedly, realizing that once again her question might have been inappropriate.

  “Momentai,” Lam said. “I said the triad ownership position has obviously changed the way I’m looking at my contract with the Camorra. I told Bianchi that we have to bring Wanchai and Shanghai onside if anything is to get done. He asked me if that’s possible. I said yes. He asked me what it would take. I said I think I can broker a deal that both sides can live with, but that it will have to be done face-to-face. He asked me why. I said that Xu not only has part-ownership of the plants, he also has a connection with PÖ.”

  Ava wasn’t quite sure what she’d just heard. “You said what?”

  “I told him that PÖ has contracted all its clothing manufacturing to plants owned by Xu, and had been planning to develop lines of leather goods and shoes in Huidong and Huadu, in Xu’s factories. I said VLG’s public trashing of PÖ looks certain to cost Xu even more than their production was worth, and that’s why he reacted the way he did with regard to the VLG products being made in his factories.”

  “How did Bianchi react?”

  “He was stunned and then got quite angry —but not at me. He said it was Ventola who went after PÖ and that he did it on his own, without consulting them.”

  “Good god, that is a more intricate story.”

  “Maybe, but it lends itself to a simp
ler resolution,” Lam said. “Bianchi now believes that Xu controls the plants and all he has to do is cut a deal with Xu to get their production and supply lines reopened.”

  “You say that as if you’re certain that the Camorra has a financial interest in VLG and wasn’t just hired to do a job.”

  “I am certain, because I asked Bianchi that specific question. He told me they’ve been partners in VLG for more than ten years. It’s one of their most profitable and worry-free investments.”

  “That certainly gives them enough motivation to resolve the problem.”

  “And I made it very clear that the problem won’t be resolved unless they meet with Xu.”

  “How can they say no?”

  “I can’t predict what they’ll do,” Lam said.

  “No, you’re right, I shouldn’t be making assumptions. I mean, I never believed that Dominic Ventola would stoop to the level he did. Look how that’s turned out.”

  “Ava, I also have to say that Bianchi was quite resistant to the notion of Ventola’s being involved in any part of the negotiations.”

  “Ventola and Raffaello Pandolfo. I want them both there.”

  “I’ll ask, but I can’t promise,” Lam said.

  “What’s the point in negotiating with the Camorra alone? I want to be certain that VLG understands its position. I want to be sure that Ventola commits to resurrecting PÖ and calls off his contract on May and me.”

  “Whether or not he’s there, the Camorra will be made to understand that the contract is null and void.”

  “Ventola can go elsewhere. He has a vindictive streak and the money to indulge it. I don’t want to spend weeks or months looking over my shoulder, and I’m not about to expose May and me to any kind of risk.”

  “Then I will insist they be there.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And if they refuse?”

  “At the very minimum we’ll continue our campaign to shut them out of China.”

  “Hopefully I won’t have to issue that threat during my discussion with Bianchi,” Lam said.

  “I don’t know many people who are more persuasive than you,” Ava said.

  “That’s quite the compliment, coming from you,” Lam said. “There is one more thing we should talk about and that’s a meeting locale.”