The Scottish Banker of Surabaya

( 33 )

Perkasa drove her back to the Majapahit. Traffic was still light and they made great time. He had the radio turned low, and he glanced at her several times during the ride as if he wanted to start a conversation. Ava looked out the window at the passing city. She knew what he wanted to discuss. She just wasn’t ready to discuss it.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be,” she said, when the Nissan pulled up in front of the hotel.

“I’ll wait right here. No rush.”

She was greeted by the same doorman who had walked her to the Sheraton that morning. He gave her a big smile. “How was your meeting?”

“Just fine,” Ava said.

She walked up the stairs to her room and went directly to the computer. It took a few minutes to connect to the Internet and then seconds to get into regcalindo.com. She followed the directions Cameron had given her and found herself looking at a list of loan transactions.

They were grouped by branch and listed by date. Under the date was the amount of the loan followed by the company it was loaned to, with an address and contact names, titles, and phone numbers. There were at least two names, and sometimes more, attached to every company. Virtually every one of the names was Italian. None of them were familiar to Ava, but then there was no reason for them to be. Some names appeared several times, and some names were attached to more than one company.

Every building or piece of property being acquired was described in incredible detail. The first group of properties was listed under the Rome branch. Initially the purchases were concentrated in Rome, but as the dates progressed the acquisitions spread to Milan, Florence, and Parma. The companies receiving the loans were almost as diverse, with home addresses spread all over Italy.

New York was next, and two parts of the pattern changed. The companies getting loans were registered in the New York area and nearly all the individuals attached to them had U.S. addresses. The Toronto office had opened only six months after New York. Ava couldn’t believe how many properties were listed, using the New York model of local companies and addresses. It seemed that a lot of Woodbridge and Vaughan, two new high-end Italian suburbs in Toronto, was owned by the ’Ndrangheta, or at least by local Italians somehow affiliated with them. She searched again for names she could recognize. She thought a couple of the companies sounded familiar, and the name Rocca popped up repeatedly, although it was attached to Luciano, Alfredo, and Joseph, not Dominic.

There were more pages outlining activity in Venezuela, but Ava had already seen enough to know that Cameron had been telling the truth. She scanned the pages a second time. There had to have been more than five hundred transactions. She quickly calculated their value — more than five billion dollars.

Ava dug into her bag and found two USB drives. She downloaded the files onto one memory stick for herself and then onto the second as backup. When that was done, she phoned Uncle.

“Wei.”

“I got the passwords and I got into their system. He wasn’t lying about all the money they’ve been ploughing into real estate. It’s at least five billion,” Ava said.

“How much information is there?”

“More than I would have thought prudent,” she said. “Dates, company names, company officers and directors, addresses, and phone numbers for every company receiving a loan. Payment schedules, copies of corporate and personal guarantees — on and on it goes. And then enormous detail about every property being financed.”

“Just what you need to record if you are really running a banking operation.”

“Exactly.”

“And all of which would look completely above board unless someone knew specifically what you were really doing.”

“Yes.”

“How are the loans grouped?”

“By date, by branch.”

“The Italian ones — where were the companies incorporated?”

“Seemingly everywhere but in Reggio Calabria.”

“That is not surprising,” Uncle said.

“I downloaded it all, twice. I’ll keep a stick with me and arrange to have one sent to you before I leave here.”

“Ava, we have booked you on a Cathay Pacific flight leaving Surabaya at six tonight.”

“Okay.”

“And I think Perkasa should get back to Jakarta tonight as well.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“The locals he hired, how good are they?”

“Excellent.”

“Will they keep their mouths shut?”

“I think so, but you should ask Perkasa that question,” Ava said, not willing to vouch for people she didn’t know, hadn’t hired, and couldn’t talk to.

He became quiet and she wondered if she’d offended him. Instead he said, “The banker is a problem.”

“I know.”

“He seems to like to talk.”

“He was coerced,” Ava said.

“No matter. If they suspect anything, they will make him talk as easily. He knows your name, yes?”

“He does, and he knows people who are friends of friends — friends who know me very well.”

“So the question is, can you trust him not to go to his employers and tell them that a young woman named Ava Lee has been sniffing around the bank? Believe me, he does not have to tell them any more than that to make them paranoid. And they are relentless. No one would be safe.”

“I don’t trust him at all,” said Ava.

“So, what to do?”

“I was thinking about it during the car ride to the hotel. He has a meeting scheduled with the Italians in Surabaya tonight, at seven. If he doesn’t show, from everything he’s told me, they’re going to go nutty. The last thing we want is them running around digging into his past twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

“You cannot let him go to the meeting,” Uncle said quietly.

“No, of course not,” said Ava. “The thing is, we can’t just dump his body and his car somewhere. Sooner or later they’ll be found. And even if they aren’t found right away, he can’t just go missing. We need to make them think he’s done a runner on them. We need them to think that Cameron is their problem. We need them to focus entirely on finding him.”

“You obviously have some idea of how to do that.”

“I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve come up with something that might work, but I really need the help of Perkasa and his two men here to make it happen.”

“Do you need me to talk to him? Do you need more money?”

“No, let me handle it.”

“Ava,” he said quietly, “no matter what, I want you on that six o’clock flight. I know those people. They are to be taken seriously.”

“I’ll be on the plane.”

“And I will be at Chek Lap Kok to meet you.”

“I’ll call you after I check in at the airport here.”

“Be careful,” he said.

“As always.”

She phoned Perkasa as soon as she ended the call with Uncle. “We need to figure out what to do with the banker,” she told him before he could speak.

“Do you have anything in mind?”

“Yes, I want him to go to Singapore or Manila or KL.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Tell me, how tough is it for anyone to fly directly from Surabaya to any of those places?”

“There are all kinds of direct flights.”

“That’s what I thought, but that’s not what I meant. How difficult is security? Could we book a flight in Cameron’s name, get a ticket in his name, and then have someone else check in using his name?”

He said, “I’m glad to hear you say he’s not the one actually flying.” And then he added, “You would need to know someone working at one of the airline check-in counters.”

“Does either Waru or Prayogo?”

“We have to ask. If they don’t, I can make some phone calls to Jakarta.”

“How about at the gates? Do they double-check ID here?”

“If they check a boarding pass, it’s normally just to make sure you’re getting on the correct flight.”

Ava said, “Call the boys and see if they know anyone who can help at the airport.”

“They may ask for more details,” he said. “Like, if one of them gets on a flight, how do they get back?”

“I was thinking more of you getting on a flight. Do you have your passport with you?”

“I do. But I think I’d like more details.”

She said, “I haven’t thought it all the way through yet. The only thing I know, and Uncle agrees, is that we don’t want the Italians chasing after us. Look, you talk to Waru while I check today’s flight schedules.”

She hung up the phone, went online, and did a quick scan of airlines flying from Surabaya to other major south-eastern Asian cities. There was a host of them: Cathay Pacific, Malaysian Airlines, Garuda, Singapore Air, and two airlines she’d never heard of. If the Indonesians had a contact, she thought it was likely she’d find a flight.

She phoned Perkasa. “Did you get Waru?”

“Just finished with him. Between him and his friends, they have contacts at virtually every airline that flies out of here. As long as you’re willing to pay enough, there won’t be any problem.”

She ran through the flight schedules. “There’s a Malaysian Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur at five thirty and a Singapore Air flight to Singapore at seven. Call Waru back and tell him to make arrangements for the one that works best. And tell him I don’t care how much it costs, I just want it done right. If we have to pay ten people, then I will.”

“Okay, I’ll tell him . . . Then what?”

“Call me back with the details so I can make the booking.”

“Five minutes.”

“Good. Then get over to the Sheraton, pack your bags, and check out. Then come back here and pick me up. I’m going to be packed as well and ready to go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Away from Surabaya, but first back to the house. We need to look after the banker,” she said, and hesitated. “Will this be an issue with the brothers?”

“I thought it might come to this,” Perkasa said. “Uncle thinks it is best?”

“He thinks it’s the only sensible thing to do. He also wants me out of here today and you back in Jakarta as fast as you can get there. So will any of this be an issue with the brothers?”

“No. We’ll pay them a bit more.”

“They may have to do more than keep their mouths shut.”

“No problem. It’s all about the money.”

“I have lots of money.”

“No need. Uncle sent me enough for a small army.”

“Fine. Then I’ll see you in about twenty minutes,” Ava said.

She looked around the room. She’d be leaving Surabaya without any money for Theresa Ng. She couldn’t remember the last time — actually, any time — she had been happy to leave a place without collecting any money or even having any hope of collecting it. There was Cameron’s million dollars or so that she might be able to get her hands on, but she was sure it could be tracked. Even if he had ten million, it wasn’t worth the risk.