The Scottish Banker of Surabaya

( 42 )

The afternoon was all loose ends for Ava. Amanda left Man Wah just after one thirty after filling Ava’s head with details about the wedding. Ava had been to one other wedding in her life — her sister’s, which had been held, out of deference to Bruce, in a Unitarian church in Ottawa.

Amanda’s was going to be a different animal, as befitted the only child of a wealthy Hong Konger marrying the oldest son of one who was probably richer. A large bridal party, various gift registries, pre-wedding events, the Catholic cathedral, the Grand Hyatt. At first Ava found it distracting, but then it became mind-numbing and she found herself tuning out, until Amanda asked, “Is it possible you could come to Hong Kong a while before the wedding to help?”

“Was that implied when I said I would be maid of honour?”

“Sort of,” Amanda said, looking away from the table.

“Then I’ll try to organize myself to make that possible,” Ava said.

After saying goodbye to Amanda, she had returned to her room. The lunch had gone well in that it hadn’t generated any unexpected emotions, and she had been able to handle the call from her mother. Maybe she was getting a grip on herself. She thought about calling Maria and then put the notion aside. It was the middle of the night in Toronto. There was no one more tender, more vulnerable, more loving than Maria when she had just woken up, and Ava wasn’t sure how she would react to that.

Maria was Ava’s first real girlfriend. There had been relationships before, but none that she had ever thought of as permanent . . . Ava paused at the thought. She had never discussed the future with Maria.

She went to the desk, opened the computer, and began to write to Maria. I am sitting here in my hotel room and all I can think about is how much I miss you and how much I love you. When I get back to Toronto, we need to sit down and talk about us. Then she stopped. What did she actually mean by “talk about us”? Was she prepared to make a commitment to live together, to marry? She didn’t know. Then she imagined Maria reading those words and the meaning she might ascribe to them. She deleted the message and started a new one. I miss you and I love you. See you soon.

Ava walked over to the window and looked out at Victoria Harbour. The afternoon was going to drag and the room was beginning to feel like a prison. She phoned Uncle. Lourdes answered, her voice again filled with worry. “He is sleeping,” she said.

“Don’t bother him. I’m going over to the Kowloon side to shop, so if he wants to have dinner with me, tell him to call me on my cell.”

She left the hotel and walked to the Star Ferry terminal. At mid-afternoon it wasn’t that busy, and she was able to get a seat in the rear that gave her a clear view of the Hong Kong skyline. When she stood among the skyscrapers that lined the harbour, she felt overwhelmed, almost oppressed, by their size and number. As the ferry moved across the harbour, the density and variety of the buildings changed and they became less ominous. They ringed the harbour in a solid line, most of them soaring sixty storeys or more, reflecting the energy and ego of the new China, each built to draw one’s eye through clever combinations of steel and glass and colour. Ava thought of them as sentinels, projecting power, protecting the city.

The ferry berthed at Tsim Sha Tsui. She strolled over to the nearby Harbour City shopping centre and began to explore its more than seven hundred shops. Three hours later she re-emerged with a pair of Ferragamo shoes and two new Brooks Brothers shirts. It had been an afternoon of complete calm. The centre, like all the others in Hong Kong and the New Territories, was swamped with people on weekends, but on this Monday afternoon Ava had been the lone shopper in many stores, and she never felt hurried or crowded. Her sense of calm was enhanced by the fact that her phone didn’t ring. Twice she checked it to make sure it was on.

Near the Ocean Terminal part of Harbour City was a row of restaurants, including a McDonald’s and a congee shop that Ava and Uncle had eaten at many times. She went into a coffee shop, ordered a plain black coffee, and checked her voicemails — none — and emails — all spam.

She called Uncle’s apartment again. Lourdes answered. “He’s gone out with Sonny,” she said.

“Did you tell him I called?”

“Oh, Ava, I’m sorry, I forgot.”

“Never mind, I’ll call his cell.”

Uncle’s phone rang four times and cut off. She tried Sonny.

“Hey,” he said.

“Is everything okay?”

“I think so. He called me about an hour ago saying he wanted to get a massage. I took him to this place close to the Peninsula Hotel. They really baby him there.”

“I’m in Tsim Sha Tsui. Maybe we can hook up for dinner.”

“He just went in. He’ll be at least two hours.”

“How was he when you went to get him?”

“Not bad,” he said carefully. “His colour was better, and he seemed to have more energy.”

“Good, that’s encouraging. Now, Sonny, I’m going to head back to Central. Tell him I called. I won’t have dinner until I hear from him.”

She left the coffee shop and walked the two hundred metres to the ferry terminal. Rush hour was on and the boats going in either direction were jammed. Ava had to wait fifteen minutes before squeezing onto one. It was close to seven o’clock when she stepped off in Central. She was halfway to the Mandarin when her phone sounded. Uncle, she thought, and then saw that the originating number was blocked.

“Hello.”

“Jennie, this is Marc Lafontaine.”

Jennie? “How are you, Marc?”

“Well enough. I’ve just finished speaking with Ottawa.”

“And how did that go?”

“To be frank, Jennie, they have some problems.”

“Marc, I sense that you have someone there with you. Is that right?”

“No, I’m alone.”

“But there is someone else on the line listening to our conversation.”

“There are two of us, actually,” a new voice said.

“And who are the two of you?”

“My name is Kevin Torsney and my colleague is Peter Valliant. We’re senior officers in the organized crime unit here in Ottawa.”

“It would have been nicer if you’d announced your presence before I asked.”

“Apologies. We didn’t know if you would speak to us.”

“I told Marc I didn’t want to talk to anyone but him.”

“Again apologies, but if you want to do a deal, one way or another you have to speak to us.”

Should I hang up? Ava thought. Marc had called her Jennie. He had given her fair warning, and she was sure that at least so far he had protected her real name. It was almost too late to care anyway. “It is very early in the morning where you are.”

“We’ve been working nonstop, all night in fact, since we received your information.”

“And?”

“We have some problems with it.”

“How so?”

“We need more time.”

“You still have another six hours before my deadline.”

“We’ll need a lot more time than that.”

“No.”

“Ms. Kwong, if you want your thirty million dollars, you have to give us more time.”

“Mr. Torsney, there was a reason for the deadline.”

“We aren’t stalling, if that’s what you think.”

“Why would I think that?”

“I imagine you might think we’re taking the extra time to find out enough about Cameron, the bank, and the transactions you sent us so that we won’t need you.”

“That did occur to me.”

“That’s not the case.”

“So what is the case?” There was a long silence, and Ava thought she heard muttering. “Don’t talk behind my back,” she said.

“Ms. Kwong, this is Valliant. I’ve been trying to run down the people behind the transactions you sent us. That’s what’s causing the delay. Each of the deals is supported by a complex structure — numbered companies turning into law firms holding assets in trust; individuals, Canadian citizens with spotless records but no apparent means, who own real estate worth millions and tens of millions of dollars; and so on. The only things we can find in common are that everyone who is involved is Italian and appears to have connections to Calabria, though not to any criminal organization.”

“Bank Linno?”

“Undoubtedly a curious success story with its remarkable growth and its rather suspicious non-Indonesian customer base.”

“You mean Italian customer base.”

“Yes, that is what I mean.”

“Andy Cameron?”

“Curious and suspicious as well,” Valliant said.

Torsney interrupted. “And, Ms. Kwong, we have confirmed that he left Surabaya on Sunday for Singapore.”

“Just so no one gets any ideas about looking for him there, I do have to tell you he’s already left.”

“I would hope so. The trail he left was rather obvious.”

Ava was approaching the hotel. This was not a discussion she wanted to pursue in the lobby, and at that time of the evening the streets were so crowded she could walk only at quarter speed. “Look, this is really inconvenient for me right now. Is it possible you could call me back in about fifteen minutes?”

“Ms. Kwong, we aren’t going to change our mind about needing more time,” Valliant said.

“And what do you mean by more time?”

“Several days at least.”

“That is quite open-ended.”

“I’m sorry, but we can’t be more specific.”

“Well, I can. I’m not going to give you more time, so I guess you have fifteen minutes to work something out.”

“And then what? You’ll really walk away?”

“Maybe I’ll go to the Americans.”

“What makes you think they’ll react any differently?”

“They have RICO. The money they can claw back from the real estate deals in and around New York City will pay me what I want and will leave them with a ton of cash and the credit for shutting down at least part of the ’Ndrangheta.”

“But will they give you and your client the level of security we can?”

Ava didn’t answer.

“Ms. Kwong, the information you gave us does have interest. What it doesn’t have right now is any credence,” Torsney said. “Two names and some copies of financial transactions do not justify sending you a thousand dollars, never mind thirty million. We need time to verify that what we have is exactly what you claim it is.”

“Call me in fifteen minutes,” Ava said, ending the call.

She walked into the hotel lobby, saw a vacant chair in a corner, and headed for it, dialling Sonny’s cell number as she went.

“He’s still in massage,” he said.

“I don’t care. Take your phone to him. We need to talk.”

“Ava —”

“Do it.”

She sat down, her mind churning. It was the Canadians or nothing, and nothing was beginning to look like the best option.

“Are you all right?” Uncle asked.

“No. Things are getting complicated. I’ve just heard from the Mounties. They want more time.”

“Why?”

“They’re having problems getting to the bottom of the real estate deals I sent them. There are layers upon layers. They say they need time to get to the roots.”

“Is that true?”

“Probably.”

“So what to do?”

“The way I see it, the longer this gets stretched out, the greater the risk. The Italians will know by now that Cameron’s gone to Singapore, and they’ll already be assuming he’s done a runner. I’m sure they’re trying to track him down.”

“Never to find him.”

“True, but my fear is that in a few days they might be paranoid enough and smart enough to figure out he never left. If that happens, and if they happen to talk to a certain Singapore Air supervisor at Juanda Airport, their attention would switch to Surabaya and to how Cameron spent his time after leaving work on Friday. That is something I don’t want to happen.”

“It seems unlikely.”

“But not impossible. And if I give the Mounties more time, who knows who they’ll start talking to. Uncle, I think our only chance to get our money and to get distance from this entire affair is to push for a quick resolution.”

“All we have are the bank records. If that is what is causing the delay, that is not going to change. What surprises me is that they have not insisted on meeting or having direct communication with Cameron.”

“That, I think, will be the next thing they want.”

“What do you want to do? End it?”

“No, I would like to have the money. But I’m beginning to think that what I want even more is every law enforcement agency in the Western world hounding the ’Ndrangheta. I want the Italians to be focused on that and not on hunting the ghost of Andy Cameron. A good offence is often the best defence.”

“But you do not want to give the Mounties the time they say they need to establish that what we are telling them is accurate.”

“Not if it involves days or weeks of work going through bank records. We simply cannot give the ’Ndrangheta that kind of time.”

“I am beginning to wish I had not called my friends at the Hong Kong police. I should have thought this through better.”

“There is nothing wrong with your plan if we can move fast enough.”

“Is there anything we can do to make that possible?”

“There is one thing. It’s a bit of a gamble, but it has the main advantage of providing positive proof in the quickest way possible and the secondary advantages of giving the Mounties the money they need to pay us and taking the Indonesian-based Italians out of the game. It would most certainly get everyone’s attention.”

She heard Uncle inhale. He would be smoking a cigarette; she imagined the tip held delicately to his lips, his eyes hooded as he considered what she had said. “Are you talking about the airplane?”

“Yes.”

“The airplane with money that the banker said arrives every Tuesday in Surabaya?”

“Yes.”

“How can you confirm that it will come tomorrow night?”

“I would have to talk to the Mounties and they would have to have conversations with the Indonesians. Flight plans have to be filed. A plane can’t just show up at an airport.”

“You said the customs people are being paid off.”

“That doesn’t mean air traffic control is. And besides, this can’t be done without Indonesian involvement, so at some level it has to be opened up. All I can do is stress to the Mounties how compromised Indonesian Customs is and ask them to find other ways to get the information we need.”

“You will also need the Indonesian police or military.”

“I know. In this case I think it will most definitely be military.”

“And you have to hope that the Canadians have strong enough connections in Jakarta to make that happen.”

“I have to assume that they do. If they don’t, we’ll know soon enough.”

“Ava, what have you told the Canadians about the planes?”

“Absolutely nothing. The word plane was never uttered.”

“Good. That at least gives some negotiating room.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“And you want to do this with tomorrow night’s flight?”

“Yes. I don’t want to wait another week.”

“If they cannot organize it that quickly, or if they say no?”

“Uncle, what is there to organize? We’re talking about one smallish commercial jet with only a flight crew, which is being met, as far as I can tell, by two Italians. We don’t need an army.”

“Do not minimize the politics that will have to be managed.”

“That’s out of our hands.”

“All right, but what if, with every good intention in the world, the Canadians cannot make this happen the way you want?”

“Then I believe we should send all the information to the Mounties and walk away from the money. Whether we get paid or not, we still need them to harass and occupy the attention of the ’Ndrangheta.”

“What about your friend — the one who knows who you are?”

“I can only hope that, once they get the information, his superiors will stop caring how it found its way to them.”

“I think that is entirely likely.”

“Me too. Now let me go and see if I can swing a deal.”

“Ava, even if the Canadian side is secure, are you sure you covered your tracks in Surabaya?”

“As sure as I can be,” she said.

“You do not say that with as much conviction as I would like to hear.”

“It has been a difficult case —” she began, and then saw the familiar 613 area code light up her screen. “Uncle, the Canadians are calling. I have to go.”

“Ava, one last thing. Have you thought about what might happen if they go for your plan and that airplane does not arrive?”

“There are so many possible consequences. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Call me as soon as you have things sorted out with them, one way or another. I will not sleep until I know what has happened.”