she was quite open with me after a little persuasion. It seems that our friend Seto had made quite a score for himself. According to her, he’s managed to turn a recent profit in the amount of about five million United States dollars.”
She didn’t know if she believed a word of it, but her position wasn’t going to change. “There was no profit. There was just theft,” she said.
“So you concede the amount?”
“Captain, I never misled you about how much money I was chasing. I don’t remember ever mentioning an amount.”
“And you know, I don’t think you did either, so that’s true enough. The fault is mine, of course. I couldn’t imagine Seto being that successful. But now, belatedly I admit, I find out that he is evidently more clever than I thought. And so here we are, Ms. Lee… Let me ask you, given this new information, do you really think it’s fair that I should have to settle for just $300,000?”
“Yes, I do,” Ava said.
“You disappoint me, Ms. Lee. I mean, really, without our very active and unique support, where would you be? I’ll tell you: you’d be sitting at the Phoenix Hotel with no hope of getting at Seto or his money. Yes, I think that’s exactly where you would be.”
“Possibly,” she said.
“And even if you had contrived to get your hands on him, where were you going to go with him? Nowhere, I tell you, although you might have ended up in Camp Street Prison for kidnapping, or worse.”
Robbins’s voice had risen an octave, his words coming faster. Ava waited for a few seconds, not jumping to respond. When she did, she said as softly and deliberately as she could, “I assume you want to make a proposition.”
“Of course I do. I think that we have to revisit our agreement, that we need to make it less one-sided.”
“You’re looking for more money?”
“It’s only fair.”
“It isn’t my money to give. It belongs to my client,” she said.
“That’s a quibble. All I know for certain is that the money is in a bank account belonging to Seto. How it got there is your word against his. In fact, the case could be made that you tried to bribe a Guyanese government official to help you fraudulently deprive a Guyanese resident of his hard-earned assets.”
Ava bit back the anger that was swelling up from her stomach. Seto had been an idiot to tell the woman. She had probably confessed everything the moment the Captain asked his first question. As for him, well, he was turning out to be exactly what she had feared he was. She just wished he could have been contained for another day or two. But there was nothing positive to be gained in getting angry about any of it. She tried to shift the conversation. “You know, Captain, all this talk about money is still completely hypothetical. There is no guarantee that the bank will release any funds at all to me.”
He laughed, phlegm catching in his throat and causing him to cough. “I have absolute confidence in the approach you described to me,” he said, catching his breath. “I found it entirely sensible, and when I factor in your persuasiveness and your appeal, well, I think the approach goes well past sensible all the way to irresistible. So humour me, please, and let’s talk about money, hypothetical or otherwise.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Half,” he said bluntly.
The figure took her aback. He was even greedier, even more aggressive than she’d imagined. “Captain — ”
“I want $2,500,000.”
Ava held the phone against her neck as she did two quick calculations. The first was how much negotiating leverage she had. The answer was short and brutal: absolutely none that she could think of at the moment, and the moment was all that mattered now. They had her passport and, more important, she was in a place where she had no connections, no support, no backup. All it would take was one quick phone call to the bank from some BVI crony of Robbins and the entire deal would be blown apart.
The second calculation was how much money she would have left if she drained Seto’s bank account and paid Robbins what he wanted. Not enough to make Tam whole, but he would get bandaged up. “Captain, that amount is way too high,” she said.
“Don’t be stupid. I think half is fair for all the trouble I’ve gone to. In fact, when I really think about it, half is generous on my part.”
He’d been under control until then, not pleasant but not harsh either, just confident and insistent. Now she detected the first real threat in his tone. He was drinking, and dollar signs were dancing in his head. This isn’t the time to aggravate him, Ava thought. It’s time to pull back. “I’ve already given you $300,000.”
“What?”
“I’ve paid you $300,000, and I think that needs to be factored into any agreement.”
He laughed again, and when he spoke he was back in control. “Always negotiating, aren’t you? But you are correct, of course. So where does that leave us?”
Both of them went quiet. Ava had no idea what he was thinking. All she knew was that she had to negotiate some kind of deal or she wasn’t going to leave the airport. And there was only one deal on the table. She needed to get into Road Town; she needed to get to the bank; she needed to buy time. “Discounting the $300,000 would mean we pay you $2,200,000,” said Ava.
“Are you saying you will pay or you might pay that amount?”
“Will.”
“Ah, I knew you were too clever to do anything else.”
“I still need to call Hong Kong — ”
“No,” he said. “No Hong Kong. No calls. You and I have made the deal and we’ll leave it that.”
“I’m not sure — ”
“I’m sure,” he snapped. “No Hong Kong. No calls. You go to the bank tomorrow and work your charm. Have them send the $2,200,000 to my account and then you can send whatever you want overseas and explain everything later to your people there. I’m sure they’ll understand why it was necessary to do things this way. I mean, a bird in the hand — ”
“You know, it isn’t going to be as simple as you think,” she said as calmly and softly as she could, and then waited for another eruption.
She heard him breathing, and then another clink of ice. “I think you need to explain exactly what you mean by that,” he said, the edge creeping back into his voice.
“Transferring the money directly from Seto’s account to your account could cause a problem,” Ava said.
“Why?”
“Well, I’ve already established the parameters for my meeting. The banker has been told — by Seto, he believes — that the money is being placed in an investment in China. He thinks Seto and I are going to show up at his office tomorrow morning to execute the paperwork. Instead, I’m the only one who’s going to be there. I think I can talk my way around Seto’s absence, but even if he thinks I’m credible, he still needs to see Seto’s identification and he still needs Seto’s signature on a whole bunch of documents. Will he accept the signatures without actually seeing Seto? That’s my hope, Captain, but it is by no means certain. He’s going to be suspicious enough when I show up without Seto, and even more suspicious when I deliver him signed documents but still without Seto. Now, by sending money to the Cayman Islands, what you want me to do is compound all that uncertainty by changing the terms of the arrangement Seto emailed to him.” Ava stopped to let the Captain absorb the information.
She felt Jack Robbins looking at her. He was obviously listening. “Given those circumstances, I can guarantee, Captain, that the moment I tell him we now want only half of the money to go to Asia, and the other half to be sent to a bank account in the Cayman Islands, alarm bells are going to ring in his head. And, Captain, we don’t want any alarm bells, because no capable banker can ignore them, and a bank as good as Barrett’s will have someone very capable running a branch as sensitive as this one. It’s all in the optics, Captain. Change the optics and you change the reaction. Change the reaction and you put the outcome at risk. The optics now are okay — not great, just okay. If we alter the plan now, it would only hurt us both.”
She knew none of that would have occurred to him. Now she hoped he wasn’t too drunk to think things through.
