The Scottish Banker of Surabaya

( 49 )

Aries assigned two men to help her, or, as it turned out, to watch her. They stood by, doing nothing, as she opened two blocks and worked her way into them, her dismay growing as she did. There was an excess of five- and ten-euro notes, and at the bottom of one block, two cubes of pounds sterling. Each stack was all of the same denomination, thankfully, and after counting five of them it was obvious that they were wrapped one hundred to a stack. It was still going to be a time-consuming job.

She left the plane to look for Aries and Poirier. A police cruiser had arrived and a man with a chest full of medals and an elaborately gold-embellished hat was talking with them. They were standing over the bodies of the Italians, the tips of the policeman’s shoes touching the puddle of blood. They began to laugh and then stepped back from the corpses as an ambulance pulled up at the entrance to the hangar.

“Can I speak to you, please?” Ava said to Poirier.

“Sure,” he said, walking towards her.

“I can’t count the money while it’s on the plane. We need to unload it. I need enough space to be able to sort it by denomination and currency.”

“When we get the bodies out of here, the van will be leaving. Will that give you enough room to operate?”

“Is someone going to mop up the blood?”

“We can do that.”

“And then I’ll need a large scale. Once we’ve got the money sorted, we’ll weigh it.”

“Okay, if you think that will work.”

“It will be accurate enough.”

“Give us half an hour to get this place cleaned up, and let me see if I can run down a scale for you.”

“Thank you. In the meantime, would you mind if I went back to the Nissan? I have my notebook and iPhone in my bag. I need to make a record of what we count.”

“You don’t need my permission.”

“I also want to make a phone call.”

“Your client?”

“My partner.”

“Go ahead.”

Ava walked through the back door, past a soldier who was guarding it, and climbed into the car and extracted her phone. She tried Uncle’s Kowloon number first.

“Wei,” he said before the first ring ended.

“It’s me,” she said, realizing he must have been waiting by the phone.

“I have been anxious.”

“You can begin to relax; the worst is over. The plane arrived full of money and we secured it.”

“The Italians?”

“Both dead, and the pilot.”

“So they resisted?”

“There seemed to be one gun and one shot. The Indonesians used that as an excuse to put a hundred bullets in each of them.”

“That bad?”

“Maybe not quite that many, but there isn’t much left for a mother to recognize.”

“Once a man is dead, what does it matter how he looks?”

“Well, there’s no doubt they’re dead, and not much doubt, I think, that they were going to die anyway, whether a shot was fired or not.”

Uncle hesitated. “It is better that way.”

“The Canadian doesn’t think so.”

“Did he react badly?”

“He showed his displeasure in a subtle way. Otherwise he was very professional. He knows the game.”

“As do we.”

“Yes, Uncle, as do we.”

“So what happens now?”

“They’re removing the bodies and the van the Italians came in. When that’s done, I’ll count the money, get as many official signatures as I can, and catch an early flight out of here tomorrow morning.”

“I am glad you made the decision to go.”

“Me too.”

“There is always a risk when you are dealing with so many moving parts, but if you had not gone, it would have been very difficult for us to even start to put the Italians behind us.”

“And we have the money.”

“I care less about the money. Maybe I did when I first suggested trading our information for it, but as I took more time to think, it was the Italians that weighed on me. That is why I am happy you went. You are too young to have to worry about being pursued by people who never forget that vengeance is owed.”

“I’m going to count the money anyway, and I’m going to get them to sign off on it.”

“The Indonesians will keep it for now?”

“Yes, but they have their agreement with the Canadians and the Canadians have their deal with us, and we have the information the Canadians are waiting for.”

“A few days, then, before we will see it in Kowloon?”

“I would hope so.”

“By the way, I got a small package from Perkasa today.”

“Stick it in a drawer. It’s a copy of the bank records. I wanted you to have it as backup.”

“It is nice to know that we should not need it.”

“I’ll see you sometime tomorrow,” Ava said.

“What time do you think you will arrive?”

“If everything goes well, around noon on the CX flight.”

“Call in the morning to confirm. If you cannot reach me, talk to Sonny. Either way, he will meet you at the airport,” Uncle said. “Now I need to get some rest.”

Ava looked at her watch. It was still early in the evening. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the seat. The van was idling, the air conditioning humming, but she still felt hot. Sweat began to trickle down her face and she felt the onset of panic in her stomach. She sat upright, unstrapped the bulletproof jacket, and threw it behind her. Things had gone well, better than she had any right to expect. Now wasn’t the time to let other issues intrude. I have to get outside myself, she thought.

Poirier came to the back door of the Nissan and opened it. “The bodies are gone,” he said.

“Yes, that’s great,” Ava said, pulling herself together.

“The van is being hooked up for a tow and I’ll have someone get rid of the blood, so you can start emptying the plane anytime you want.”

“A scale?”

“They’re looking for one. It will take you a while to get the money organized. By the time you do, we should have what you need.”

“Thank you very much for being so helpful.”

Poirier’s hand rested on the door handle. “I am sorry it got so brutal in there.”

“You didn’t seem very pleased with the way things were conducted.”

“I wanted to take the Italians alive.”

“Yes, that was obvious. Your friend the captain didn’t seem to think it was that important.”

“He is his own man. Or at least he’s the marines’ man, and he knows how to obey an order,” Poirier said.

“I don’t see how it matters that much anyway,” Ava said. “We have the money, the bank will be put out of business, and I’ll be sending Ottawa the information that has been promised. What else did you want?”

He shrugged. “I wanted to know the things the Indonesians don’t want me to know.”

“That’s all too confusing and conspiratorial for me. I’m an accountant, and all I want to do is count the money and get on a morning flight for Hong Kong.”

Poirier moved away from the car. “Let’s get started.”

Ava walked with him back into the hangar, just as the white panel van was leaving it. A soldier had started to hose down the floor, the diluted blood flowing towards the tarmac. Aries was in a corner talking to some of his men. The policeman was gone. So was the co-pilot. The two soldiers who had been in the plane with her stood at the bottom of its steps.

“We’ll put the money over here,” Ava said, pointing to the wall farthest from the blood.

Poirier went over to Aries. A minute later, the two of them came up to Ava. “I’ll have my men empty the plane right away,” Aries said with a smile. “You won’t mind if I watch you while you work?”

“Not at all. I don’t want there to be any confusion when I’m done.”

He turned to Poirier. “I’m going to send most of the men back to the barracks after we unload. What do you want to do?”

“I’m staying here.”

“Naturally.”