“I don’t understand how you could — ”
“How I could what? Let that happen? This is the United Kingdom, not some jacked-up Third World country where extortion always wins out because people are worried about their precious fucking face. Right now sixty million dollars is worth more to me than my daughter’s face.”
Hawkins was approaching the table. Simmons saw him first and slid away from Ava. “Ms. Lee was just telling me that she might release those sex tapes my daughter spoke about,” he said. “What do you think of that?”
“You are very good,” Ava said quietly.
“Thank you,” Simmons said.
Hawkins set their drinks on the table. “Surely there is another solution,” he said.
“Give us back the money that was stolen,” Ava said.
“You’ll need to take that up with my daughter,” Simmons said, downing the Scotch in one gulp. “And that might not be easy. She’s meeting with a lawyer tonight, and I suspect they will advise her to avoid any further contact with you.”
“I have to say, Mr. Simmons, that I don’t think our chairman, Tommy Ordonez, is going to be happy when I relay this conversation to him. Up until now he hasn’t been aware of your involvement, directly or indirectly, in this matter. But when I tell him, I know he’ll be surprised by your refusal to pay back money that was so obviously stolen. He will also be rather dismayed by some of the attitudes you’ve expressed.”
“Ms. Lee, I know who Tommy Ordonez is. I know he’s a Chinese hiding behind a Filipino name. I also know that he built his business on cheap beer and cigarettes, and I can only imagine how many people he paid off in the Philippines and China along the way. So I’m not going to be offended by any poor opinion he may have of me.”
“Minister,” Hawkins said, caution in his voice.
“I’ll let Mr. Ordonez know how you feel,” Ava said.
“Do that,” Simmons said. “I actually met him once, you know. In Singapore at a dinner, when I was still running my generator business. He had a strange voice, like a monkey’s. Don’t you think he squeaks like a monkey?”
“Minister, I think we should be leaving now,” Hawkins said, sliding from the booth.
Simmons also stood, then looked down at Ava. “Our dinner host pulled me aside and apologized for seating me next to him. He told me where Ordonez was from and explained how, despite having hardly any education and not an ounce of class, he’d built his business. He said he thought Ordonez was worth maybe a billion dollars, but it didn’t matter how much money he had, you still can’t shine shit… You still can’t shine shit.”
Ava blinked, scarcely believing his crudeness. Even Hawkins seemed disturbed by it. “Minister, we must leave,” he said.
“Of course,” Simmons said, smirking at Ava.
Ava sat rooted, her eyes on her soda and lime. When she looked up again, they were walking towards the exit. Her palms felt clammy. Her mind had trouble focusing on where she was. She guessed that was how it felt to lose $65 million.
(39)
Ava sat at the desk in her room until one in the morning, her notebook open, forcing herself to review the strategy that had gone so wrong.
She had bought a bottle of white Burgundy in the hotel bar and brought it up to her room. She had finished half of it, which meant that she’d drunk a bottle and a half of wine that night. It had little impact, however — her mind and her senses were as sharp as ever. And no matter how she rearranged her notes and reworked the strategy, both were telling her she was in big, big trouble.
She was going to have to call Uncle, and he’d call Chang, and Chang would talk to Ordonez, and then what? Would he blow the whole thing up? Would he go public? Would the accusations and the lawsuits start flying? And if they did, how could she keep the Mohneida out of it? Even as she asked herself these questions she knew the answers. Ordonez would sue The River, and if his lawyers were any good — and she was sure they were — they would sue the Mohneida as well. The letter of indemnification she’d given Chief Francis would be brushed aside as a useless piece of paper signed by someone not authorized to act on behalf of the Ordonez Group. As much as she cared about the money, the idea of Chief Francis’s thinking she had lied to him and betrayed him bothered her more.
It was eight in the morning in Hong Kong. She knew she should make the phone call, but she went back to her notebook one more time. The only chance she had to resolve this was to get Roger Simmons to change his position. Everyone else was irrelevant.
She went online and began to read everything she could find on him. There was hardly anything of a personal nature. The first part of his life was all about business; his interest in politics had emerged once he became a rich man. In his earliest political days he had served two terms as president of the local Conservative constituency association. The media had identified him early on as a major financial backer of the national party and a potential parliamentary candidate. But about ten years ago he had gone public with his disenchantment about some Conservative Party policies, specifically those related to immigration. He had left the party briefly and attached himself to a right-wing movement that wanted to repeal immigration laws that gave preferential treatment to citizens of many of Britain’s former colonies. The colonies cited were in the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Now why isn’t that a surprise? Ava thought.
Simmons’s public flirtation with the far right hadn’t lasted long. He was wooed back to the Conservative Party and made a successful run for a seat in Parliament. His success in business had resonated with serious newspapers such as the Times and the Guardian, which earmarked him for a future Cabinet post. The party elite obviously thought highly of him; he was rewarded with a position as parliamentary secretary two years after the election and had become a full-fledged cabinet minister the year before. There was already talk of him as one of a handful of high fliers in the party, and that a more senior Cabinet posting, such as the Exchequer or maybe even the Foreign Office, wasn’t beyond his reach. The Daily Standard had even gone so far as to say that the “local lad” had the brains and the toughness to become prime minister; that story had a link to a BBC television interview, which Ava clicked on.
The questions were general and gentle in nature. Simmons downplayed his business achievements, spoke glowingly about the prime minister and his Cabinet, and when asked about his own ambitions said he was happy to serve in whatever capacity his leader saw fit for him. The interviewer then asked if he had any interest in heading the party, in leading the country. Simmons laughed off the question, saying that his only ambition was to do his job as well as he could, every day of the week.
Ava remembered Jeremy Ashton’s words about politics being Simmons’s latest ego trip, and the remark he’d made about Simmons believing he was only one step away from the Prime Minister’s Office. It brought to mind a Canadian client she and Uncle had worked with, a man who had a hand in both the business and political spheres. Ava had asked him how the two cultures differed.
“In business,” the client had said, “sooner or later most people find out where they fit best. The sales and marketing guy wants to do sales and marketing; he doesn’t dream about becoming the chief financial officer. And the CFO, well, he’s got no interest in product development. People find their level of competence and are normally content about where they fit in the structure.
“Politics,” he went on, “is a completely different animal. Everyone who’s in the game has — whether they admit it or not — an oversized ego. The system fawns over them until most members of Parliament lose all sense of perspective. There isn’t a single backbencher in the House who doesn’t believe he or she belongs in Cabinet and could manage any portfolio. And there isn’t a single cabinet minister who doesn’t secretly believe he or she would make a terrific prime minister. That kind of ambition is the nature of the beast. Status and stature within the peer group becomes the most important thing in their lives. It’s the only way the score is kept.”
Ava wondered aloud, “What in life matters most to Roger Simmons?” She stopped watching the BBC interview and saw that it was now past nine o’clock in Hong Kong. She knew she couldn’t put off making the call to Uncle any longer.
“Uncle, it’s Ava,” she said when he answered.
