Her phone rang at seven in the evening. It was the wake-up call she had booked after leaving Ordonez’s offices and before crawling into bed with a glass of Pinot Grigio. Ava showered herself into relative consciousness before calling Uncle, who had left a note for her at the front desk, asking her to call him when she checked in.
“ Wei,” he said.
“Uncle, it’s Ava.”
“I’m in suite 1040. Come and see me.”
His door was open when she arrived. The room was beautiful, with gleaming teak floors, elegant bamboo furniture of a quality she knew you couldn’t buy anymore, and a king-size four-poster bed with a snow-white down comforter. Uncle was sitting on a bamboo chair, his feet barely touching the ground, a bottle of Tsing Tao beer in his hand. “I have some white wine on ice for you,” he said, pointing to a credenza.
“You’re spoiling me,” she said.
“It is by way of an apology.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle, I don’t understand.” Ava couldn’t think of anything he’d done that required an apology. Even if there had been a slight, their relationship was such that he would have made amends in a more subtle and less direct way.
He waited until she had poured herself a glass and seated herself next to him before leaning towards her. He caught her eye, and she flinched when she saw the anger in his face. “I was very unhappy with the manner in which Chang Wang and Tommy Ordonez treated you today,” Uncle said. “I had words with Chang after you left the room. I told him I was not certain we wanted to take the job and that I would leave it up to you.”
Ava was surprised by his reaction. She hadn’t found Ordonez and Chang more offensive than some of their other rich Chinese clients. There’s something else at play here, she thought. “Is there a problem with our fee?”
He smiled. “You are so practical.”
“Is there?”
“No, just the opposite. After the way they behaved, I insisted on our usual rate. They agreed.”
“So what’s the issue?”
“Their behaviour,” he said. “Chang Wang is waiting downstairs to have dinner with us. I told him that if we are not there by eight o’clock it means we are going back to Hong Kong tomorrow.”
“You and Chang Wang — how far back do you go?” she asked, realizing that this had nothing to do with her.
“We are both from Wuhan, and we grew up together as boys in the same village.”
“And you’ve kept in touch all these years?”
Uncle stalled by taking a sip of beer. “We have done favours for each other,” he said slowly. “Chang helped me get to Hong Kong. After I was established, I helped him get to the Philippines, where he had a brother. From time to time our businesses — my old one — needed help, and we were there for each other. In China today, Tommy Ordonez would be nothing but an ink blot if it were not for my connections. And Chang helped me make a lot of money in these islands.”
“Such old friends, and close friends. There can’t be too many men from that village who made it out, let alone became so successful.”
“Only a few of us, and that makes it worse.”
Now she understood. By being rude to her, Uncle thought they had been disrespectful to him. He was at times overly sensitive to slights, and as he got older she noticed he was more easily irked. She also knew he didn’t care about Ordonez’s behaviour; it was Chang’s attitude that bothered him. “Uncle, Chang Wang was in a difficult position today. Tommy Ordonez is obviously in a rage over this Canadian business. His own brother, whom he obviously trusted, has failed him. You wouldn’t expect Chang to openly chastise or oppose Ordonez. Maybe by being a little rude to me himself, he managed to moderate Ordonez. I’m sure that his actions towards me meant no disrespect to you.”
Uncle leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. “Ava, if you want to go back to Hong Kong we will leave Ordonez to sort out his own mess,” he said quietly.
“Uncle, that would be the wrong reason to go back to Hong Kong.”
“What do you mean?”
“From what I’ve read and heard, Philip Chew is up to his neck in this thing. That’s obvious to me, to you, and I’m sure to them. So why do they want to use us at all?”
He took another sip of beer. “You are probably right, of course. They do suspect Philip, Chang more than Ordonez. Ordonez is still willing to give his younger brother the benefit of the doubt. They want us to eradicate that doubt.”
“And then what, push us aside?”
“No, I was firm about that and they agree. Even if we discover that Philip was responsible for the loss, there is the matter of determining what he did and why he did it. And then there is still fifty million dollars — or part of fifty million dollars — that we need to find and recover.”
“Why hasn’t Ordonez confronted his brother?”
“He wants to be one hundred percent sure of the facts.”
“I’m not sure I believe that,” she said.
“Neither do I, but Chang did say that when they sent their CFO in Manila to Vancouver, Philip Chew would not meet with him or talk to him on the phone. The CFO even went to his house but was not allowed through the front door. Chew seems to have barricaded himself inside. So maybe Ordonez has not talked to him because he cannot,” Uncle said. He paused and looked down at his beer. “Ava, Ordonez is a very proud man, and I know that is another reason why we are involved. He wants to keep this whole affair as private as possible. Inside the company they are blaming this Jim Cousins for concocting the scheme and they are saying that Louis Marx did not do his job properly. That is the official line, and I am not sure anything we find will change that, internally at least. You need to understand that, in Manila, Ordonez is a superstar in the business community. He has hardly put a wrong foot forward. If it comes out that he was swindled by his own brother, he will become a cheap headline in the Manila Star and every other newspaper in the country. And in the Philippines image is important. The idea of people laughing behind his back makes Ordonez crazy.”
“Chang told you all this?”
“Most of it.”
She sat quietly for a moment, calculating costs. “Uncle, what if we prove Chew’s culpability? What if I find out where the money went and there is no money to be retrieved?”
“We have a standby fee of one million dollars.”
“How much time do they expect us to devote to this?”
“I told them that if we could not find answers within a week, then we would part ways.”
“There isn’t much downside to that,” she said.
“I think not.”
“Then let’s take the job.”
He smiled. “As I said, a practical girl.”
“And a greedy one. I want that fee.”
She started to rise, assuming their conversation was over, but Uncle remained in his chair. “There’s something else I don’t know?” she asked.
Uncle sipped his beer. “The fat man you saw me with at the airport in Hong Kong.”
“Yes?”
“His name is Lop Liu.”
“You implied he ran the Triad in Mong Kok.”
“He does.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Do you remember Jackie Leung?”
“The toy manufacturer just outside Guangzhou? The one who tried to move the business to Vietnam without telling his partner? I caught up with him in Ho Chi Minh City.”
“You beat him, yes?”
“He came at me with a crowbar.”
“All he remembers is that you beat him and took his money. Lop told me that Jackie has become very successful, and he has guanxi — connections and influence — with some of my old adversaries. The fat man told me that Jackie wants repayment for the misery we put him through.”
Ava was accustomed to threats and wondered why Uncle was taking this one to heart. “You’re not nervous, are you?”
He waved his hand. “Me, they would never think about harming. It is you that pig Leung has targeted.”
“Uncle, why are you telling me this?” she asked.
“I want you to be careful.”
“I always am.”
“Ava, these are serious and competent people who have been well paid, with promises of more if they can kill you. You need to be alert until I can resolve this.”
“And how will you do that?”
“I am going to have Leung taken care of.”
“Then what do I have to worry about?”
“I have to find him first.”