The Scottish Banker of Surabaya

( 17 )

When Ava woke at four thirty, she knew she officially had jet lag. She lay still, her eyes closed, her arms limp by her side, trying to coax herself back to sleep. She tried to think of the cottage, the early morning smell of fresh pine, the snap to the air, the lake lapping gently against the dock. But her mind was too active to be seduced so easily. Andy Cameron, a man she didn’t even know, kept intruding, her image of him in ripped jeans and tight shirt a compliment to John Masterson’s descriptive powers.

She finally gave up and rolled out of bed. She went to one of the windows and levered open the wooden shutters. The sun was inching over the horizon, the gardens below beginning to glint. She listened for a call to prayer and heard nothing.

It was late afternoon in Toronto. Ava thought about calling her mother, Maria, Mimi, and then put them aside. She was back at work and they were best kept at a distance — less distraction that way. She made an instant coffee and then sat at the computer. Uncle had emailed her the information she needed on Perkasa and confirmed that he had sent him enough money to pay for a small gang if she needed it. Amanda had written to say she needed Ava’s measurements for her maid-of-honour dress, and was it possible for her to come to Hong Kong for a fitting sometime before Christmas.

Marian had talked to their mother and been told about Ava’s role at the wedding. Marian had never met Michael or any of the half-brothers and -sisters; her relationship with their father was far more distant, more neutral — an arrangement encouraged by her gweilo civil-servant husband, who had trouble wrapping his head around the complexities of the Lee family. Marian had written, Mummy is over the moon about this. She sees it as a complete validation of her relationship with Daddy. It’s like she’s won some kind of public moral victory over Wife Number One. I just hope you aren’t doing this for her sake, and that it won’t be too awkward for you.

In terms of awkward moments in my life, Ava thought, standing next to Amanda will rank at the bottom of any list. She wrote back, I understand that Mummy is happy about this, but I have my own relationship with Michael and especially Amanda and my presence at the wedding stems from that. I couldn’t be more comfortable with it.

Ava finished her coffee and immediately made another. She checked the door for a newspaper and found none. Back at the computer she pulled up the Globe and Mail and read the latest Canadian news. The country was still there, somehow still surviving the ruling Conservative Party and its uptight and thuggish leader.

Light began to stream through the open shutters into the room. Ava went back to the window and saw that the gardens were now fully lit, the grass, leaves, and flowers gleaming with dew that would evaporate in minutes under the full glare of the sun. Traffic was light, with as many street vendors pushing carts loaded with breakfast as there were actual cars.

The hotel had a gym, and Ava debated between going there for a run or outside onto the streets. She was a park girl, liking nothing better than an early morning run in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park or Bangkok’s Lumpini or New York’s Central. But from her window all she could see was pavement. Still, it was better than running indoors, she thought, and it would give her the chance to orient herself. She pulled on her gear, grabbed a bottle of water, and headed downstairs.

The lobby was deserted, occupied only by the desk clerk, a security guard, and the doorman. They all nodded to her as she walked past, mouthing the word Bu.

Ava walked out of the hotel onto Embong Malang Street. She stretched, testing her leg. There was still some pain but it was manageable, and she knew she could run at close to full speed. She turned to the right and began to motor. The downtown had an uncluttered look, with offices and shops set well back from the wide streets. The air was humid, thick with the smell of cooking oil, rotting vegetation, exhaust fumes, and garbage left at the roadside for dogs and rats to root through. She gagged a little at first when the smell became especially pungent, but gradually she became acclimatized. After two kilometres straight west, she turned back and found herself breathing normally.

Passing the hotel on the journey back, she found herself on Basuki Rahmat Street, and there, only a few hundred metres away, was Tunjungan Plaza. The complex was massive, with four separate blocks, each five storeys high. A huge SOGO sign advertised the presence of the Japanese retailer. Another promised more than five hundred stores. Ava hadn’t seen many shopping centres that large.

She headed east past the plaza, searching for Bank Linno. It was half a kilometre farther on, its name emblazoned in red neon halfway up the eight-storey structure and repeated on the ground level, above double glass doors that led into the customer branch. The building was rather unremarkable: of modest height, the windows small and dusty, the stucco exterior turning yellow in the cracks. It didn’t look as if it housed a bank with billions of dollars in capital.

Ava ran for another two kilometres before heading back. The bank didn’t look any more imposing from the opposite direction.

She started to sweat the instant she stepped into the air-conditioned hotel lobby. She always sweated when she exercised, but this was different. It was as if her body had been storing heat as she ran instead of releasing it gradually, and the cold air triggered a flood. Her white T-shirt was soaked by the time she was halfway across the lobby, her nipples visible through it in spite of the white athletic bra. The hotel was more active now, and she could feel eyes on her. She wiped her face with the hem of her shirt, briefly exposing her midsection. She should have carried a small towel with her, but after a season of running in Ontario’s cottage country — where a normal summer day would have been chilly to any Javanese — she had forgotten about the ravages of humidity.

She stripped as soon as she got to her room. There was no sense showering yet; it would only make her sweat all the more and for longer. She adjusted the air conditioning so it wasn’t quite so cold and so strong, and wrapped herself in a robe from the bathroom.

She sat down in a chair by the window and looked out onto the gardens, thinking of the bank and Andy Cameron and trying to come up with an approach that would seem plausible, trying to create a flow of conversation that would throw some light on what was a rather disjointed set of facts. It wasn’t an easy transition, moving from questions about the bank and the services it could provide for her fictional Hong Kong company to questions about a defunct Toronto branch, a bogus bank fund, and employees who preferred to be invisible. She was struggling — the connections were almost too tenuous.

When she finally stopped sweating, Ava took off the damp robe and walked into the shower, taking her workout gear with her. When she was done, she wrung out her bra, underwear, T-shirt, and shorts and hung them over the top of the shower stall.

She crawled back into bed and turned on the television. She watched the BBC World News, BBC News from Asia, the BBC world weather report, and BBC Business News. She was just getting into an interview between a presenter and the mayor of London when her cellphone rang.

“Ava Lee,” she said, not looking at the ID.

“It’s Sonny.”

She felt an immediate surge of fear and then caught herself. “Did you find out anything?”

“I had my woman follow him yesterday morning, and then again today. Both times he went to Queen Elizabeth.”

“The hospital?”

“Yeah, here in Kowloon.”

So many possibilities, she thought, and they don’t have to be dire. “Can you figure out why?”

“I’m guessing cancer,” Sonny said.

She heard the thickness in his voice and knew he was struggling. “But you aren’t positive.”

“Ava, it’s known as the cancer hospital.”

“Still . . .”

“Yesterday my woman just followed him to the hospital. Today she trailed him right inside. He went to the floor where they give radiation treatments.”

“I see.”

“Ava, what are we going to do?”

“Well, let’s start by not jumping to conclusions,” she said with as much force as she could. She moved to the side of the bed, sitting up so she could look out the window at the tops of trees in the garden. Somehow they didn’t seem real. “Can you have your woman follow him again?”

“I don’t want to push our luck. He’s still who he is, and she shared an elevator with him this morning. I’m sure he’d recognize her if we tried it again.”

“Can we find out who his doctor is?”

“Which one?”

“What does it matter?” she snapped, impatient more with the situation than with Sonny.

“I don’t understand.”

She drew a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. Berating Sonny wasn’t going to help. “Talk to Lourdes and see if she knows who his family doctor is. If she doesn’t, ask around, talk to some of the other uncles . . . No, no, forget that last bit. For sure they’ll tell him. Just talk to Lourdes; she should know. Whatever is going on, his family doctor will have been his first point of contact.”

“What if we can’t get a name?”

“Then we’ll get a list of all the doctors at Queen Elizabeth who do radiation treatment and I’ll contact them one by one until I find the one he’s seeing.”

“He’s still at the hospital. I’m going to see Lourdes right away.”

“Sonny, don’t alarm her.”

“She’s scared already.”

“Don’t make it worse. Just tell her you’re feeling a bit under the weather and want to see a doctor, and then ask her if Uncle’s is nearby.”

“She won’t believe that.”

“Tell her anyway. It’s amazing what people are prepared to believe to avoid coping with an uglier reality.”

“Okay,” he said, without any conviction.

Ava weighed her options. “Sonny, do you want me to come back to Hong Kong today?”

“No, there’s no point to that, is there. I mean, we don’t know anything for sure, and besides, he’s so damn happy that you’re back here and you’re working a job together. We don’t want to ruin that. It’s the first time in weeks that I’ve seen him cheery.”

“All right, but if you need me, all you have to do is call. Uncle is more important than any job.”

“He’s more important than anything,” said Sonny.

“I know.”

“Than anything,” Sonny repeated.

“Yes, Sonny, than anything. Now get over to the apartment and talk to Lourdes before he gets back.”

“Okay, boss.”

I wish he hadn’t called me that, she thought as she ended the call.

She sat on the edge of the bed for another five minutes, her mind spinning. She had known something was wrong, and maybe she had even suspected it was something like cancer. Still, to have it confirmed was different. Except it isn’t confirmed, she told herself. And then there was the matter of flying back to Hong Kong. It was an emotional reaction, she knew. Get on a plane, go see Uncle, find out what’s going on. And then what? What if it wasn’t a crisis? How silly would she look then? And she couldn’t discount Sonny’s logic either. Uncle was happy right now, so why alarm him? Tears welled in her eyes. She wiped them away, but it wasn’t so easy to get rid of the knots in her stomach.

Ava slid off the bed and was walking over to her computer to search for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital when the room phone rang.

“Ava Lee,” she said dully.

“Good morning, Ava, it’s John Masterson.”

“Hi, John.”

“I just spoke with Andy Cameron and he said he would be happy to meet with you.”

“That’s good.”

“The thing is, though, today his schedule is crammed, and then Saturday and Sunday he has his golf club’s annual two-day member/guest tournament. How would dinner tonight work?”

Ava hesitated.

“Actually, Ava, that was my idea. Fay, my wife, and I were going to invite you to join us tonight anyway, and I thought why not throw Andy into the mix. We’ll be a foursome, but you can at least have a chance to get acquainted with him, talk a little shop.”

That might actually make things easier, Ava thought. He might be a little more free-wheeling, and with a couple of drinks in him, maybe I can manoeuvre some questions by him. “Yes, why not,” she said.

“Great, I’ll let Andy know. We were thinking about Chinese, if that’s okay with you. There’s a restaurant called X.O Suki not far from the hotel that we like.”

“Sounds fine.”

“How does that leave your day?” he asked.

Now where is this going? Ava thought. “Reasonably free.”

“Because Fay doesn’t have to work and she’s offered to take you sightseeing if you’re up to it.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“It isn’t like that at all. She’d love to do it.”

What else was there for her to do? Hang around the room and mope? “Then in that case I’m happy to accept her offer.”

“Wait a second,” Masterson said, his voice becoming muffled. “I just spoke with Fay. She’ll meet you in the hotel lobby at around ten.”

Ava checked her watch. It was just nine thirty. The Mastersons weren’t people for wasting time.