by Ian Hamilton
His abruptness didn’t surprise her. “That depends on what you need done.”
“Mo has one child, a son who lives in the U.S. He’s taken the English name David and is attending UCLA. I’m told David is the most important thing in Mo’s life, that he absolutely dotes on the boy.”
“That is a very expensive school, and Los Angeles isn’t cheap to live in. The annual bill must come to more than a hundred thousand dollars. How does he pay for something like that?”
“No one in the Party would care about that. There isn’t a senior Party member who doesn’t have a kid at a university in the U.K. or the U.S. I’m more interested in the fact that Mo loves his son so much.”
“Yes, I can understand that.”
“Do you have any way of finding out exactly where he lives?”
“For what purpose?”
“Let’s find out what we can about him. He might be our leverage.”
Ava hesitated and then said, “I have a friend in Canada who’s good at locating people. I’ll contact him.”
“Perfect. See you in the morning.”
( 9 )
For the second consecutive morning, Fai walked with Ava to the entrance of the hutong, waited until she flagged a taxi, and then kissed her goodbye.
The night before had been quiet. Fai had prepared a meal that they ate in the kitchen. It was northern Chinese cuisine: steamed pork buns, pork and chive bread dumplings, and a large plate of suan cai — pickled cabbage — that had been made by Fai’s mother and sent to Beijing.
As they ate, they chatted about Chen and Mo and the meeting the following day. Ava found that Fai’s knowledge of Mo was surprisingly meagre. She seemed to know nothing about his personal life, and her assessment of his character, while harsh, wasn’t exactly deep. When Ava pressed for more detail, Fai held up a hand.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “What you don’t understand is that I had no interest in knowing this man, or anything about his life. It was easier for me to deal with him, and others like him, if I thought of him as a non-person.”
Ava saw the logic in that statement but still felt a stab of pain at the thought of what had created that mindset. One thing was evident as they sat at the table — Fai was calmer than she’d been the night before, but with a calmness that Ava thought verged on fatalism. Ava didn’t believe in fate, because she couldn’t believe that life was predetermined. There was always something that could be done, an action to be taken that could change the course of events. It was her experience that people who thought otherwise, those who spoke often about fate, were prone to inaction and more ready to accept defeat. When she mentioned this, Fai smiled.
“You are mistaking my lack of worry for not caring,” Fai said. “I care passionately about what’s going to happen, but I trust you. And when I’m with you, I feel that I can survive anything. You give me a foundation of support I’ve never had.”
Ava thought about the weight of that responsibility and felt a slight touch of panic. She was used to being more emotionally isolated, and Fai was breaking down those barriers. Then she thought of her mother, and May Ling, Uncle, and Xu. Why should her devotion to Fai be any less than it was to them? “You’re right, we will survive,” Ava said. “I just want it to be on our terms and not someone else’s.”
After dinner she phoned Derek Liang in Toronto. Derek was an old friend who was married to Mimi, an even older friend. Mimi and Ava had both attended Havergal College, a private girls’ high school, and they had remained close. Ava had met Derek at the dojo of Grandmaster Tang. He and Ava were the only two students deemed worthy by the Grandmaster to learn bak mei. Derek was an only child with wealthy parents and had no reason to work. During her early debt-collection years he had been her reliable sidekick — someone who was loyal and, with his bak mei training, lethal. After he met Mimi and they married and had a daughter, Ava had stopped asking him to accompany her on jobs, but he had computer and investigative skills that she still called on from time to time.
It was early morning in Toronto when she reached him, but he sounded alert. Ava could hear a child’s voice in the background and assumed he was looking after his daughter. She told him what she needed to find out and he said he’d get right on it. When Ava then asked to say hello to Mimi, Derek told her she’d already left for the office. Ava smiled as she wondered how his very traditional Chinese parents were handling that kind of role reversal.
She and Fai went to bed early. Neither of them had slept much the night before and now they made up for it. Ava’s head hardly touched the pillow before she was asleep.
She woke to the smell of coffee and pale light from a sun shrouded in what looked like fog but was more likely polluted air. She went downstairs to find Fai standing in the kitchen in her underpants, the PÖ T-shirt from London Fashion Week, and nothing else. Ava wrapped her arms around Fai’s waist. Fai gently pried herself free, turned, and threw her arms around Ava. They stood like that for several minutes, Ava’s breath hot against Fai’s neck.
“Do you want to go back to bed?” Fai asked.
“I’m horny enough, but I don’t have a lot of time,” Ava said. “Besides, being horny gives me an edge. I should take that feeling into the meeting.”
They eventually sat down at the table with cups of coffee and a plate of leftover dumplings. “I should leave here around nine-thirty,” Ava said. “I’m meeting my friend Lop at the Éclat at eleven.”
“You haven’t told me what this Lop does that he’s so connected,” Fai said.
“He was an officer in the PLA, in Special Forces. Now he runs an operation for Xu in Hong Kong.”
“Was it Xu or the military connection that secured this meeting?”
“It was the military, but when it comes to our getting what we want from Mo, I imagine that Lop’s current job and state of mind will be more important factors.”
“Is he a dangerous man?”
“Very.”
“Good,” Fai said.
After breakfast, Ava showered and dressed. Given who she was meeting, she took some care with her makeup, put on her Cartier watch, and joined her shirt cuffs with an exquisite pair of green jade links. She had debated which clothes to wear before opting for a light pink button-down, a black pencil skirt, and a pair of crocodile-skin stilettos she’d bought at the Brooks Brothers store in Tsim Sha Tsui.
Fai was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. She was still wearing the PÖ T-shirt but had added a pair of blue jeans. Her hair hadn’t been brushed and it didn’t seem that she’d washed, because Ava could see traces of sleep in her eyes. For all that, Ava thought she was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen.
They walked hand in hand through the hutong, Fai waving at her neighbours. Ava was surprised at how openly Fai was displaying her affection, but then remembered that there she was among friends.
“You’ll call me as soon as the meeting is over, won’t you,” Fai said as Ava got into the taxi.
“You can count on it.”
“Good luck.”
Ava took her phone from her bag as soon as the hutong disappeared from view. She turned it on and saw what she expected — a message from Derek. She accessed her voicemail and listened. Then she took a Moleskine notebook from her bag, turned to the back page, and wrote Fai across the top. The notebook was a standard part of how she worked. Every job she’d taken with Uncle had its own book where she’d recorded names, numbers, observations, and her progress. When the job was completed, the notebook was put in a safety deposit box at a bank near her Yorkville condo in Toronto. She found that the act of putting pen to paper helped her retain facts and assisted her thought processes, so it was a habit she’d taken with her to Three Sisters. The front page of this particular notebook had the name Sun written on it, and the following six pages contained information she’d found relevant as she worked through their files.
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As the car made its way into Beijing traffic, Ava re-accessed Derek’s voicemail and recorded at the back of the book the information he’d left. As usual, he hadn’t let her down.
His wasn’t the only message on the phone. She had been copied on various texts and emails going back and forth between May Ling, Amanda, and Suki. They were upbeat, and those from May and Amanda complimented Suki. May had also written directly to Ava asking about her schedule. That will have to wait, Ava thought. Suki had left a message saying the three real estate appraisals were expected to be finished within a couple of working days.
* * *
Traffic was better than it had been the day before and Ava found herself at the hotel’s front door at ten-thirty. She found a seat in the lobby and sat down to wait for Lop. Despite her outer confidence, she had rarely felt so ill-prepared for a meeting. She knew virtually nothing of substance about Mo except for what Derek had sent her about his son. She also had no idea how Lop was going to behave. Her only direct experiences with him had been decidedly nonverbal, and she had no idea how persuasive he could be. It might fall to her, she thought, to convince Mo to abandon his Pang Fai plans, and right now she didn’t have much to work with.
As she contemplated these possibilities a text arrived from Lop. Just landed and am in a cab.
Great, she thought as she checked the time. At this rate he wouldn’t be at the hotel until maybe twelve. She stood up, intending to go to one of the restaurants, but then she saw some more of the hotel’s art collection in a hallway to her left. Why not see it all? And for the next forty-five minutes that’s what she did.
There were about a hundred pieces in total, she figured, and aside from the Warhol and the Dalis she’d seen previously, there were three Pierre Matters and many works by Chinese artists she’d never heard of. What she found most intriguing was that, while the works done by foreigners were very different, even odd, the Chinese art was mostly pedestrian. It was if the Chinese artists didn’t want to be too avant-garde, to take too many risks. From the short biographies that accompanied each piece, she saw that most of the artists were under forty. They had been raised after the Cultural Revolution, in a system that didn’t value eccentricity or individualism. She thought their work reflected that.
Ava’s phone vibrated as she looked at a sculpture by Liu Ruowang that glorified the peasant class, titled East Is Red. It was a text from Lop, saying he was a few minutes away. Ava headed back to the lobby.
Unlike most Triad gang leaders, Xu cared about the image his men presented. He frowned on tattoos, mohawk haircuts, outlandish clothes, and gold teeth. His views reflected his personal taste but were also practical. He didn’t want his men drawing unnecessary attention; he wanted them to blend in.
When Ava saw Lop enter the hotel lobby, she thought he could be mistaken for a successful businessman. He was a wiry five feet nine, dressed in brown khakis with a sharp crease down the front and a crisply ironed short-sleeved dark blue cotton shirt. His hair was cropped close to the scalp and his face was freshly shaved. He carried a brown leather overnight bag in one hand and a small brown briefcase in the other. He stopped just inside the door and looked around the lobby.
“Lop, I’m over here,” Ava said, stepping into his line of sight.
He walked briskly towards her. When he was a couple of paces away, he stopped, brought his two hands together in front of his chest, and bowed slightly towards her. The show of respect stunned her. It was the last thing she’d expected from him.
“Ava, I’m sorry to be so late. I had forgotten what traffic is like here. Hong Kong has spoiled me.” He looked at her as he spoke, but then his eyes darted left and right. Ava could feel the energy behind them.
“I’m just grateful that you organized this meeting and that you came at all,” she said. “We still have time to talk. Do you want to go into one of the restaurants or just sit here in the lobby?”
“I’m staying here tonight. I should check in and get rid of my bag. The lobby is fine for us to talk.”
Ava found a sofa and waited for Lop. He was back in less than ten minutes.
“Did you manage to locate Mo’s son?” he asked as soon as he’d joined her.
“I have his address, phone number, and the names of some of his friends,” she said, not offended by his abruptness.
“Any interesting issues around him?”
“There could be, but it’s the kind of information I hope we don’t have to use.”
“Mo and Zhang are really close, and that gives Mo some serious protection,” Lop said, not pursuing her comment. “He’s also been in this job for years, and evidently the Politburo’s Standing Committee is happy with the way he’s handled it.”
“Are you saying that his son is the only leverage we have?”
“No. Xu and a couple of my PLA associates have given us permission to use their names and their interests as a way of trying to influence him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s no point explaining until you agree that we can mention the PÖ brand and Pang Fai’s involvement with it as part of the discussion.”
“I need to know how all those things fit together.”
Fifteen minutes later she did, and fifteen minutes after that she and Lop left the hotel to walk to the offices of the China Movie Syndicate. The sidewalks were crowded and they were forced to shuffle. Even then they were constantly being jostled, and more than once they were brought to a full stop by a wall of people. This would normally have aggravated Ava, but her mind was elsewhere. She couldn’t stop thinking about the risk they were about to take. If the meeting didn’t go well, if they didn’t get the result they wanted, it wasn’t just Pang Fai who could be damaged. The PÖ line could be obliterated.
( 10 )
The Syndicate had its offices in a forty-five-storey glass-enclosed building with no particular aesthetic qualities that were discernible from the street. The building’s lobby was equally generic, which Ava found odd for an organization that was in the entertainment business. She hadn’t expected neon lights, but a few framed movie posters wouldn’t have been out of place. She and Lop walked across a marble floor to a large reception desk shaped like a horseshoe, passing the building registry as they went. A quick glance seemed to indicate that the Syndicate was the building’s only occupant. Four people sat at the desk. Behind them, in brass letters, the name china movie syndicate was affixed to the wall. There had been two security guards at the main entrance, and the desk was flanked by two more.
“We have an appointment with Mr. Mo,” Lop said to a young woman.
“Name?” she asked.
“Lop.”
She checked a computer and glanced up at him. “It says here there should be two of you, but there’s no second name.”
“This is Ms. Lee,” Lop said. “She’s meeting Mr. Mo with me.”
“Fill out these name tags. You have to wear them at all times.”
When they’d done so, the woman picked up a phone. “Could you please advise Mr. Mo that his one o’clock appointments are in the lobby,” she said, and then listened before looking up at them. “Someone will be here shortly to escort you upstairs. You can wait over there.”
Lop and Ava walked over to a line of leather-upholstered metal chairs set against the far wall. She continued to be unimpressed by the image presented by the Syndicate.
A constant stream of people filtered through the lobby, but after ten minutes there was still no sign of their escort. Lop’s hands rested on his thighs, his fingers tapping like mad. Ava wondered if he was capable of presenting their case calmly.
“Mr. Lop and Ms. Lee,” a woman said. She had appeared unseen from the right side of the lobby. “I work with Mr. Mo. Will you please follow me?”
The woman was middle-aged, of medium height, sturdy, and plainly dressed in a black business suit and flat sho
es. They followed her beyond the reception desk to the main bank of elevators. She used an access card to open a side door and stood back to let them pass into a small hallway that had a waiting elevator. They stepped inside and Ava saw it had a button for only one floor, the forty-fifth.
The woman didn’t speak as they rode to the top of the building. When the elevator stopped, she said, “Mr. Mo is still in another meeting, but I thought it would be more pleasant for you to wait here.”
Stepping off the elevator, they walked into a large, square reception area that was far more luxurious than the downstairs lobby. Straight ahead, a young woman sat at a small wooden desk. Between her and the elevator was about twenty metres of hardwood floor covered in part by an immense, brightly coloured carpet. The walls were wood-panelled and festooned with pictures of Mao, Zhou Enlai, and the current premier, citations and awards from international film festivals, and photos of various movie stars, including Gong Li and Pang Fai. To either side of the desk was a sofa, chair, and coffee table ensemble.
“Can I bring you tea, coffee, or some water?” the woman asked.
“We’re okay,” Lop said.
“Then have a seat and I’ll come for you when Mr. Mo is available.”
They watched as the woman disappeared through a door behind the desk. “Doesn’t exactly make you feel important, does it,” Lop said.
“The meeting was at short notice.”
“Xu would never keep anyone waiting like this. He has too much respect for other people.”
“Are you working up a bit of a hate for Mo?”
“It’s an easy thing to do, but he’s hardly unique in Beijing. There are a lot of arrogant bureaucrats in this city.”
“You’d know more about that than me,” Ava said, and then saw the receptionist eyeing them. Could she hear what they were saying? “I think we should leave this topic alone for the moment.”
“Yeah,” said Lop.
The wait was less than ten minutes, but Ava felt every second of it as Lop’s agitation became more intense. It was a relief when the middle-aged woman reappeared and said, “Mr. Mo is ready for you now. Follow me.”