Uncle shrugged off the lie. “Will you call your father while you are here?”
“I don’t think so.”
The two men had never met but they knew of each other, as the wealthy and powerful of Hong Kong tend to do. “Maybe just as well. I hear that the wife in Australia is causing him problems.”
Ava hadn’t heard that news and the surprise registered on her face.
“It is smart of him, keeping them all separated. I don’t know, though, where he finds the energy or the time to keep them satisfied.”
Their food came. She poured tea for both of them. The restaurant was full, a steady flow of people coming and going.
Uncle ate quickly, hardly bothering to chew his food. For a man who was otherwise outwardly serene and calm almost to an extreme, it was an unusual characteristic. She wondered sometimes if this might be truer to his nature than the bland, confident face he liked the world to see.
“There isn’t any point in going to the Wanchai address you were given for Jackson Seto,” he said, pushing his empty plate aside. “I sent someone there today. He hasn’t lived there for at least six months.”
“Do you have another address for him?”
“No.”
“Hong Kong phone number?”
“No, but you might get better information from Henry Cheng. He is the one who connected Seto to Andrew Tam. You have an appointment with him tomorrow in his office at 11 a.m. He doesn’t know why you want to talk to him, but he should be cooperative enough. One of my friends called him and made the arrangement.”
“Where is the office?”
He passed her a slip of paper. “Kowloon side, Nathan Road.”
“I was thinking of going to see Andrew.”
“Why don’t you wait until you see Henry Cheng?” Uncle said. “And even then it may not be a great idea. What can you tell him? That you’ve found out where his money is? What good does that do him? You might create false expectations.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You know, Andrew’s uncle, my friend, used to call me every three weeks. Now he calls me twice a day. He is nervous for the nephew. The family does not have the kind of money where they can afford to lose thirty million Hong Kong. The repercussions would be massive. When he calls, I tell him I know absolutely nothing. And I’ll keep telling him that until you tell me it is over, one way or another.”
“I need to find Seto.”
“Maybe Cheng can help.”
“And I need to find George Antonelli, the Bangkok partner.”
“Our friends in Bangkok have already been working on that. By the time you get there they should have all the information you need.”
“I don’t think Antonelli has access to the money. From what I can gather, Seto has those controls.”
“But Antonelli can give you access to Seto.”
“Exactly.”
They walked slowly back to the hotel together, his arm looped through hers. The Mercedes was parked near the hotel entrance. Sonny stood near the car’s front door, watching them as they approached. He opened the back door for Uncle and helped him into the car. Ava said goodbye and turned to walk into the Mandarin.
“Call me after you meet with Cheng,” Uncle said to her back.
(6)
Ava loved the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. the very first in the chain had been built on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok in 1887. She had first discovered it when she was dating a banker and had travelled there with her for a four-day conference. They had splurged on their accommodations, booking the Somerset Maugham Suite in the Author’s Wing. After the banker left for her meetings in the mornings, Ava took the hotel’s private ferry across the river to its spa and indulged.
Her afternoons had been split between the wing’s lounge, where she introduced herself to the works of Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene, and the restaurant terrace on the Chao Phraya. She was hardly a literary historian, but the fact that Conrad, Greene, Maugham, Noel Coward, and James Michener had all stayed and supposedly written there fascinated her. And the river was alluring in its own way. It was broad, brown, and sluggish, and as busy as a North American highway with ships, tugs, and barges working their way north from the Gulf of Thailand into the interior, while water taxis and ferries worked their way from east to west, dodging the bigger vessels as they went.
Most evenings her friend had an official function to attend, so Ava ate at the hotel by herself. There was a Chinese restaurant — the China House — on the hotel property next to the main building. It served perhaps the best Chinese food she had ever eaten up till then: abalone that had been gently braised for twelve hours, stir-fried black chicken, soy-braised pomfret.
The thing that had struck her most about the hotel was its level of service. It wasn’t just that it offered good service — that was routine for every five-star hotel in Asia — it was more that the staff seemed to anticipate everything she did or wanted to do. In the four days she had never pressed an elevator button. On her first day there she ordered ice at exactly four o’clock. The ice was there again the next day, the day after, and the day after that, always at exactly four o’clock. And every staff member in the hotel seemed to know her name.
The only negative was the hotel’s location, which was outside the city core. If you wanted to go anywhere else in Bangkok, you had to contend with traffic that was perpetually paralyzed. The hotel wasn’t a place for someone who needed to get about quickly.
The Mandarin in Hong Kong did not have a location problem. After a quick shower and a change into her business attire, Ava walked out the front door and got to the Star Ferry in ten minutes. After a five-minute wait she was crossing Victoria Harbour to her meeting with Henry Cheng in Kowloon.
It was a pleasant day for Hong Kong, about room temperature, slightly overcast, with a light breeze. She sat at the back of the ferry, taking in the sun and looking at the skyline. There was nothing like it in the world — a solid wall of skyscrapers lining the harbour like some medieval fortress. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Central Plaza. Two international finance centres. The Hopewell Centre. The Bank of China building, designed by I. M. Pei. More than forty buildings over sixty-five storeys high. New York couldn’t even come close.
The ferry docked in Timshashui on the Kowloon side. She thought about taking a taxi but had time to spare, so she walked instead. When she got to Henry Cheng’s office on Nathan Road it was five minutes to eleven.
Kowloon isn’t as aggressively modern as Hong Kong Island. The building on Nathan Road was only five storeys high, its brick exterior faded and chipped. She rode its single elevator to the top floor and found that Cheng’s company occupied half of it — about three thousand square metres — a large office by Hong Kong standards. A hundred or so employees were working in an open-concept area. A handful of closed offices was at the far end, and a boardroom with its door open that Ava could see was empty. The receptionist noted her name and said in Cantonese that Mr. Cheng was expecting her; would she please follow her to the boardroom.
Ava sat there and waited. The office tea lady stuck her head in the door and asked if she wanted anything.
“I’ll have some green tea,” Ava said.
Henry Cheng was carrying a bottle of water when he arrived. He looked at Ava in her linen slacks and pink Brooks Brothers shirt with green jade cufflinks and said, “You’re not what I was expecting.”
“I’m not sure how to take that,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter. Never mind,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Henry Cheng.”
“Ava Lee.”
He sat a couple of chairs away from her, tapping his fingers impatiently on the table. “What can I do for you?”
He was short and chunky, and Ava guessed he was in his mid-forties. His hair was parted in the middle and
