to Guyana.
She checked the seating availability in business class; all the flights were wide open. She emailed her travel agent to arrange the flights and book her into the best hotels she could find.
Checkout time at the Hyatt was noon. She called downstairs and negotiated a late checkout for half the normal daily rack rate.
Ava had missed two phone calls while working online, one from Arthon and the other from Uncle. She phoned Arthon. He was pleased, if a bit surprised, that things had gone so well. She told him to keep a set of the photos in case they were needed. He said he had been going to anyway, and she wondered what that implied for Antonelli.
When she called Uncle, he asked her how it had gone with Antonelli. That was his way of letting her know he was always in the loop, and that indeed it was his loop.
She described her meeting in detail.
“Where is this Guyana?” he asked.
“What, you don’t have friends there?”
“I won’t know that until I know where the place is.”
“It’s in South America. On the northeast coast, surrounded by Suriname, Brazil, and Venezuela, and a stone’s throw from Trinidad. And I know that only because I looked it up.”
“This is encouraging,” he said, meaning that she had located Seto. Geography was lost on him.
“Do you want to say anything to Tam’s uncle?”
“No, not until you have the money,” Uncle said. “Ava, where you are at the Hyatt, the Erawan Shrine is right next to you.”
“It is.”
“Go there, will you? Light some incense, leave some flowers, make a donation, and pray for us all.”
“I didn’t know you were a Buddhist.”
“I’m not, but neither is the shrine. It is actually Hindu, and it is devoted to the Thai version of Brahma — I can never remember his Thai name — and his elephant, whose name I do remember, but only because of the hotel. It’s Erawan.”
“I’ll go.”
“Good. It’s a lucky shrine. I’ve been there twice, and both times the results were more than I could have hoped for.”
The shrine was on the corner of Ratchadamri Road, one of the busiest corners in one of the busiest cities in the world. The area was large, about twenty metres square, and was fenced, so Ava had to squeeze in through a gate. Even at one in the afternoon, with the sun at its peak, the shrine was filled almost to overflowing with concentric circles of worshippers standing around the statues of the six-armed Brahma and his elephant.
Ava bought a garland of flowers, an orange, and three incense sticks. She placed the flowers and the orange at Brahma’s feet, where hundreds of gifts already lay. She lit the incense, held it in between her palms in the wai position, and began to pray, rocking gently back and forth, her lips moving, her words gentle.
It was mainly Thais who were praying. The tourists stood on the outskirts, taking photos of the worshippers and the troupe of Thai dancers who performed there every day, dancing to please Brahma so that he in turn would be kind to the supplicants.
Ava prayed for more than five minutes, naming all the members of her family and her closest friends. She asked for health and happiness, repeating the words like a mantra. When she had finished, she felt at peace. She put a hundred-baht note in the dancers’ collection urn and returned to the hotel.
Since it was a Saturday the hotel had a couple of weddings booked. She couldn’t move through the lobby without bumping into someone wearing a uniform or a gown. She figured that only people affiliated with the police or the military could afford to get married at the Hyatt. Their base pay was meagre, but the perks and kickbacks made up for it. Uncle said he had never met a retired police officer who wasn’t a millionaire. She assumed that the same applied to the military.
If she had been feeling more sociable she could have quizzed Arthon about how it all worked. He had been pretty blase about picking up contributions from casinos that weren’t supposed to exist. She had heard that the street beggars worked like franchises, being assigned a specific spot to work their pathos and kicking back half their proceeds to the police. There wasn’t a bar in the city that didn’t contribute to the police pension fund. Every stolen car ended up being either sold or cannibalized by a special cop squad. The money moved upstream in an established and fully controlled pattern.
Still, she loved Thailand. Organized corruption was always superior to corruption with no rules. Uncle avoided doing business in places such as the Philippines and India and parts of China for that very reason.
Back in her room Ava switched on her computer and began a search on Guyana. This was new territory: a place in the world where Uncle’s extensive network did not reach. Very quickly she deduced that George Antonelli hadn’t been exaggerating all that much, if at all. The country — officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana — had a population of about 800,000 people, most of them huddled along a sixty-kilometre strip of coastline, and a per capita income of less than $1,200. That ranked it 155th in the world, and she hadn’t even heard of many of the countries that came in lower.
The country had one airport, with only a handful of airlines flying into it. It had no passenger railway. It did have more than eight thousand kilometres of road, but only about six hundred kilometres were actually paved, and on those it seemed that potholes were as prevalent as tarmac. A diesel-generated power grid provided about sixty percent of the country’s actual needs; blackouts were a scheduled daily occurrence. She made a note to buy a flashlight. The water quality was also iffy. She made a note to buy water purification pills.
The population was predominantly East Indian, the descendants of indentured servants. But there was also a very large black population, the descendants of slaves. The two groups had a long history of antagonism. The rest were remnants of the original Carib Indians, a tiny group identified as European, and a small group of Chinese. The country had a remarkably high crime rate but also boasted one of the world’s tallest wooden structures, an Anglican cathedral.
All in all, it didn’t sound like a holiday destination.
Ava called downstairs to the concierge and told him she needed to buy a flashlight and some water purification pills. He told her she would find everything she needed at CentralWorld.
The shopping complex is on Ratchadamri Road almost kitty-corner from the Erawan Shrine, a five-minute walk from the hotel. CentralWorld is eight storeys high, and with more than half a million square metres of shopping space, it is the world’s third-largest shopping complex. Ava found what she wanted, but only after a half-hour hunt.
Her shopping done, she settled in at the mall for her first full Thai meal since her arrival. She had just ordered when her cellphone rang. The caller was using a number blocker. She answered, since not many people had her number — only those she actually wanted to have it.
“Ava, this is Andrew Tam.” He sounded nervous. “My uncle hasn’t been able to get hold of your uncle. He is concerned about how things are proceeding.”
“Andrew, please tell your uncle that when I’m on a case, I don’t give my uncle daily updates. It’s like I told you: when I have something to report, I’ll call.”
“It’s getting quite tense around here. I’m under tremendous pressure from my family. I also have a meeting with my bank next week, and they’re going to be asking some awkward questions. I’m not a very good liar.”
“So this is about you, not your uncle.”
“I am worried.”
“Andrew, I have located the money. I know where it is. Now I have to go and get it. That sounds easier than it might turn out to be, which is why I haven’t called you. Until I actually have the money, I have nothing and you have nothing.”
“You’ve found it!” he said, grasping at the good news and ignoring the caveats.
“I have.”
“Fantastic.”
“Not until I get it.”
“This is a great start, though, isn’t it? I mean — ”
“Andrew, stop,” she said. “Look, you can tell the bank and your uncle whatever you want. If you need to buy
