by Ian Williams
“Maybe,” Drayton said. “Should I?”
“Well, in the bag with his other stuff there was a business card of one Chuck Drayton of a company called Shanghai TT Logistics. I wondered if that was the same Drayton that I used to know, the one that worked for the US Government.”
Drayton was silent for a moment, then he said, “It’s a long story, Luis. I’ll be on the next flight down.”
*
Drayton met Acevedo in a noodle restaurant that was a small island in the middle of the vast gaming floor of the biggest casino in the world. The first thing they talked about was Baccarat, a card game, and the most popular in Macau by far.
“It makes no sense, Luis,” Drayton said. “What’s the point?”
“Chuck, it doesn’t have to make sense.”
“There’s no skill involved, absolutely none.”
“It’s not about skill. It’s about luck.”
“That’s my point, Luis, it’s a game of pure chance. Like the toss of a coin.”
“Luck, fortune, that’s what matters here. That’s what brings more than one and a half million Chinese to these tables every month, and you know what?”
“What?”
“Most of the near US$40 billion a year they blow here goes on the game you say makes no sense.”
They were drinking the local Macau beer. It was early evening and the place was quiet.
They’d chosen a secluded table by a glass wall covered in dragons and giving them a grandstand view of rows of curved Baccarat tables, mostly empty apart from bored-looking dealers. Just one was busy, standing room only, the crowd hanging on every turn of a card. Acevedo said somebody on that table must have won big, because winning attracted a crowd that wanted to share the winner’s good fortune.
Acevedo understood gaming, since he’d worked around the casinos for more than thirty years. He still had the title of Special Investigator in the Public Security Police of Macau, though he told Drayton that nowadays he did little investigating and nothing he’d describe as special.
Acevedo had once been the go-to man on the Triads, China’s organised crime syndicates, and had the scars to prove it, shot in the stomach and almost killed during Triad wars that gripped Macau in the mid-1990s, fighting for control of the casinos. He’d been attacked by gangsters with meat cleavers a couple of years before that, nearly losing an arm.
Acevedo was almost twenty years older than Drayton, and the American had been enthralled by those stories when the two men had first met in the late 1990s at a conference in Washington DC on organised crime. Drayton had been a State Department rookie back then, still learning the ropes.
They’d worked together a few years later in Lyon, France, when both had been on assignment to Interpol, an organisation supposed to track down international crooks, but mostly getting in the way. At least that’s how Drayton had seen it.
By then Acevedo had been pretty much side-lined back in Macau. He was Portuguese and when the place was handed back by Portugal to China in 1999 he was pushed to one side along with many other colonial-era officers. But he didn’t see much future in near-bankrupt Portugal. So he took his chances and stayed, consigned to a desk job in the police force of China’s new Special Administrative Region of Macau.
Drayton looked at his old friend and could feel his frustration. There was much that hadn’t changed about him. He still wore an old black bomber jacket over blue polo shirt and blue jeans. His hair was grey now, but still slicked back behind his ears, and there was still that indelible tan Drayton had always envied.
Lines were now spreading across his face like cracks in drying mud.
Acevedo said it had been coincidence that he’d been the one who took the call the day the body washed up on the coast of Taipa Island, not far from the airport.
“Who found him?” Drayton said.
“Old woman, exercising at dawn. Morgan’s bag was found near a place called Fisherman’s Wharf.”
“How long had the body been in the water?”
“One, two days at most. It was badly cut, like a Triad attack, except when the Triads do that, when they chop you, it’s usually to mutilate, to maim. As a warning. They usually leave you alive, if only just.”
A cheer went up at the crowded Baccarat table, where more people were jostling for a place. The good fortune seemed to be lasting. Other tables were filling up, and Drayton watched how the players handled their chips, some nervously rotating them or tapping them on the table, pushing them gently into position. Others banging them down with a theatrical grunt.
“Boy, they take that stuff seriously,” Drayton said. “Like their life depends on every turn of the card.”
“Sometimes it does,” said Acevedo.
Then Drayton said, “The body, Luis, were there any identifying marks?”
“Well, here’s the thing, Chuck. They pulled me off the case before I got to see it, then sent the body to the mainland. The initial report went with the body.”
They stopped talking as their food arrived: a double-cooked pork rib soup with seaweed and sea coconut for Drayton, because he liked the sound of that, and shrimp and noodles for Acevedo, who’d eaten there before.
“Why would they do that?” Drayton asked. “Pull you off the case like that.”
“I’m guessing it’s pretty sensitive. And was rather hoping you might be able to help there, Chuck. You knew the guy.”
Drayton took a piece of paper from his pocket with a photograph on it.
“You know this guy, Luis?”
Acevedo sat back, drank some beer and started to laugh, a laugh of weary recognition.
“Sure. Fang Sau Kei. That’s Three Finger Fang.”
“Three Finger Fang?”
“He was a leader of one of the most powerful Triads here in the mid-90s, which is when he lost the little finger of his left hand, during the gang wars. Then after the handover he reinvented himself, became a big power broker in southern China. Very close to the Party leadership there.”
“That’s a pretty big career move,” Drayton said.
“Not really. Don’t forget the Triads liked to think of themselves as patriots. They often had strong links across the border, with the Party. We always suspected Fang had protection over there, and after the handover he became untouchable. This guy’s nasty, Chuck. In his day he was the most violent of the violent, and I don’t suppose he’s a completely reformed character. How come he’s on your radar?”
“Let’s take a walk,” Drayton said, and they headed out of the restaurant and across the gaming floor, weaving around the tables and slot machines designed, as Drayton saw it, to extract every last cent from you. Acevedo told him there were 1,000 gambling tables and 3,500 slot machines in that one casino alone.
“A British finance guy, probably dead, and a Chinese Triad. What’s the link, Chuck?”
But Drayton ignored the question and asked whether Three Finger Fang was still doing business in Macau.
“Look around you, Chuck. At last count we had thirty-five casinos in the thirty-five square miles that’s Macau. Nothing else really matters in this place, but the real action is not here, on the floors, it’s in the VIP rooms, the private rooms, which you don’t see and to which you’ll need a special invite. That’s where the high rollers go. Up there they gamble millions.”
“Who are the high rollers?”
“The big gamblers. Party officials, the heads of state-owned companies. Which is where Three Finger Fang comes in. He runs one of the biggest junkets.”
“Junkets?”
“Yeah. Think of them as travel agents with a nasty streak. They organise things for the high rollers. They’re also informal bankers, providing credit here in Macau and collecting the debts back home in the mainland.”
Drayton said he didn’t
see why you’d need to use a junket, and Acevedo said that since gambling is illegal in mainland China there’s no legal way of recovering gambling debts.
“And there’s another thing,” Acevedo said. “You know how much money a Chinese person is legally allowed to take out of China each year?”
“Must be a lot, looking at the way they spend.”
“It’s US$50,000. Half a trillion dollars a year flows out of China illegally. And it’s speeding up, with a good chunk of that through Macau and Hong Kong. Let me give you an example, Chuck. You must have noticed all the jewellery shops here?”
“Can’t miss them,” Drayton said.
“Officially Macau sells US$250 million of luxury watches alone each year.”
“That’s a lot of watches.”
“Not necessarily.”
Acevedo told him it was just another money laundering scam.
“I go into a jeweller and I buy, say, a US$75,000 Bernard Dupuis Aquamarine.”
“That’s a watch?”
“That’s a very nice watch.”
“I put it on my Chinese credit card, which is accepted here. Then immediately pawn it to the same jeweller for US$70,000 cash.”
“The five k being the commission?”
“Yeah. The Bernard Dupuis never even leaves the display cabinet.”
“Nice. But why not just bring it all in a suitcase across the border?” said Drayton.
“Oh, they do that too, but can be risky. There are lots of other tricks. The really big players can use shell companies, in Hong Kong say, and issue fake invoices for non-existent imports to China. But that way you miss out on the Baccarat.”
“So there are lots of ways of shifting money from China. What are you trying to tell me?” Drayton asked.
“I’m saying first that the money flows have jumped sharply as the Chinese economy has wobbled and the Party’s cracked down on corruption. I’m also saying that some of the big players, like Three Finger Fang, couldn’t do what they do without the help of Western bankers. Now tell me about Mr Morgan.”
– 36 –
Fisherman’s Wharf
They left the gaming floor and walked along a broad bright passageway lined with luxury shops, and into the heart of Venice, or at least Macau’s copy of it.
They paused on a bridge over a canal as a gondola passed below, navigated by a stout Chinese gondolier in a striped T-shirt and straw boater, while wisps of white cloud moved slowly across an impossibly blue sky projected on the ceiling above. Drayton couldn’t recall the last time he saw a sky like that in China.
“As knock-offs go, it’s pretty impressive,” he said.
“Some say it’s better than the original,” Acevedo said. “The sun shines twenty-four hours a day, it never rains, and there are no pigeons.”
“Too bad. I like pigeons.”
Opera music was playing gently in the background too.
“Okay, I will level with you,” Drayton said. “You guessed right. The English guy was advising Fang on his overseas investments, but not just his. Fang represents a syndicate, top Party officials mostly. They’ve been buying real estate in the US, and are looking for more.”
Then he told the Macau investigator about the St Kitts passport scam, and Acevedo said, “Now I see your interest. And the Englishman, did they have some sort of falling out?”
“Hard to say,” Drayton said. “It’s a long story, but some of Morgan’s documents about Fang’s syndicate got posted online.”
“That’s not good,” Acevedo said. “He’s very private, and not the forgiving type.”
“I know,” said Drayton. “I’ve met some of his associates.”
“There’s something else you should know,” Acevedo said. “The heat is really on these guys, which probably explains why they want to get so much cash out of the country, hoover up overseas assets.”
“How’s that?”
“A whole bunch of officials in the south have been targeted in the Party’s corruption crackdown. But this is about more than corruption. It’s bigger than that. They’re on the wrong side of a vicious power struggle.”
Acevedo said officials in the south had always done their own thing.
“There’s a Chinese saying, ‘The mountains are high, the emperor is far away’. But not anymore. A lot of them have been swept up in the crackdown.”
He asked Drayton whether he’d heard the coup rumours in Beijing, and Drayton said yes, but the guys at the embassy there didn’t really take it seriously, saying it was just a piece of internet hysteria.
Acevedo said security guys he talked to in Macau and Hong Kong really believed that something was going on.
“They say the anti-corruption guy, the one they said died after a short illness, was shot, at a concert of all places.”
Which got Drayton thinking.
“What concert was that?” he said, and Acevedo said he didn’t know, some concert at the big cultural centre in Beijing. Then he asked Drayton if he was okay, because the American seemed distracted.
“But who really knows what’s true or false?” Acevedo said. “Welcome to the Matrix.”
Another gondola passed below, the gondolier singing what sounded to Drayton like an ice cream commercial. His passengers were busy taking selfies, living their Venetian moment.
Drayton said he should really go, since he could still get a late flight from Hong Kong back to Shanghai.
“Your sources, they really think the anti-graft guy was shot?” he said.
“That’s what they say. But, hey, who really knows what’s going on in this place?”
And Acevedo said there was one more thing.
“Your Englishman, he was last seen at a Thai restaurant at Fisherman’s Wharf, close to where his bag was fished from the water. He was pretty groggy, according to a server there. She helped him to his feet when he fell off a bench. And he left his jacket, on the floor.”
Acevedo then gave Drayton an envelope.
“His iPhone and a playing card. They were inside Morgan’s jacket pocket. There were several missed calls from you, and messages and calls with Chinese numbers, now unobtainable, though I’m sure your experts can dig further.”
Drayton went to open the envelope, and Acevedo said no, not here, the casinos have eyes.
“And the card?” Drayton said.
It’s an ace of spades,” Acevedo said, “with the words ‘Fisherman’s Wharf’ written in very small letters above the ace, together with the name of the Thai place and a funny little drawing.”
“A drawing?”
“Yeah. Strange. A stick alien.”
This time Drayton smiled, shaking his head.
“A stick alien?”
“That’s right. You know, matchstick man with big head, big sloping eyes. Classic alien. You know, little spaceman from another planet.”
“I know. I’m familiar with them.”
“So maybe the aliens got him,” Acevedo said. “We may never know. Maybe it’s some sort of signature. Perhaps this guy just liked aliens. Who knows?”
“Or a warning,” Drayton said.
They walked along a walkway and through a tunnel of swirling changing lights that led to another casino, the entrance marked by a big snarling golden dragon coiled around a silver ball.
“So how come you have these,” Drayton said, “seeing you were pulled off the case?”
“I was on the case for one whole morning.”
“And you never told the new investigators from the mainland about this?”
“They never asked,” Acevedo said. “That’s the shuttle bus that will take you to Fisherman’s Wharf, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
And Drayton said he did have a sudden craving for some Thai food, thanked
Acevedo, and asked him to be in touch if he learned anything more about the identity of the body.
“Keep me honest,” he said. Then he headed for the bus.
“Oh, Chuck,” Acevedo called after him, “the server, her name’s Angelika Rosales. From the Philippines.”
The bus was half full. The hardcore casino-hoppers were only beginning to get into their stride, though the stories of the night so far, the ups and downs, wins and mostly losses were all over their faces.
Two men with cropped hair and leather jackets got on the bus and sat near the back. Drayton, who was sitting near the front, watched them in the driver’s rear-view mirror, as they toyed with their smartphones, heads down, saying nothing. To him, they didn’t look like winners or losers, or gamblers at all for that matter.
The bus crossed the low bridge linking Taipa with the Macau peninsula, ferries moving below, picking up pace as they left, the waterfront casinos a blaze of colourful neon. The bus pulled up, its first casino stop, and Drayton made sure he was first off, well ahead of the buzz-cuts.
He quickly entered the lobby, and into a coffee shop, taking a seat in a far corner, away from the door and out of view of the lobby. He waited there for ten minutes before abandoning his coffee half drunk, leaving the building from a rear entrance, and heading across a busy road to Fisherman’s Wharf.
Then he was in Rome, confronted by a big floodlit copy of the crumbling colosseum. A bored-looking security guard was slumped against a tall pillar, which was topped with the figure of a prancing horse. He was struggling to keep his eyes open. Three young children startled the guard as they ran, shouting, from one of colosseum’s arches, disappearing into another.
There was nobody else to be seen. Fisherman’s Wharf boasted dozens of upmarket shops, restaurants and bars, sitting in copycat architecture from across the world. But even for a Monday, close to nine in the evening, it was unusually dark and deathly quiet.
Drayton walked to the waterfront, pulling his coat closer, his collar higher, to protect against a cold breeze from the bay. The long low bridge which he had crossed just half an hour earlier, brightly lit, spanned across the water in front of him. A ferry manoeuvred into a terminal to his left.