The Imam of Tawi-Tawi

by Ian Hamilton

  “Where, or what, is Tawi-Tawi?” she asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s the southernmost island in the Philippines.”

  “I thought that was Mindanao.”

  “Mindanao is a large region with a lot of islands. Tawi-Tawi is one of them.”

  “And what is your problem in Tawi-Tawi?”

  “Zakat College.”

  “What?”

  “More properly, the Zakat College of Tawi-Tawi.”

  “That’s a strange name for a college.”

  “The word zakat is Arabic. I’m not entirely sure what it means.”

  “Are you telling me that the college is Islamic?” Ava asked.

  “That’s what we’ve been told.”

  “And what else?”

  “We’ve been told there are things going on inside the college that could be disruptive.”

  “To whom?”

  “The entire southern region of the Philippines could be affected, and if it is, our business might be crippled.”

  “How could a college impact the region, and your business?”

  “You need to talk to Ramirez,” he repeated. “He’s the one who brought these concerns to us, and he’s the one who really understands their ramifications.”

  “This already sounds like it’s far removed from my expertise.”

  “You’re making an assumption that you should resist until you talk to Ramirez,” he said. “I promise you, Ramirez is by far the best equipped to explain everything. You will find that he is an intelligent and thoughtful man.”

  “Is that all you can tell me?”

  “It’s all I feel qualified to say.”

  Ava drew a long, slow breath. Chang had been only slightly more forthcoming, but she sensed that his reluctance wasn’t just stonewalling, that it might have some justification. The question was, had he told her enough to convince her to go to the Philippines? She thought of the last time she had seen him. It was in the Old Manila restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel, and she and Uncle had just agreed to take on the collection job. Chang had become quite emotional when they told him; he’d expected them to decline. What had impressed Ava was how calm and considerate he’d been as he waited for their anticipated rejection. She could feel the same kind of restraint on the other end of the phone line. What would Uncle want me to do? she asked herself.

  “I’ll try to get to Manila tomorrow,” she said. “I’m not sure about flight connections from here, but I’ll check as soon as I hang up.”

  “I would send the company jet to get you, but Tommy has it in Singapore and he is going to the U.K. from there,” he said. “We’ll pay for your flight, of course, first class. Do you have a hotel preference? I remember the last time you were here you stayed at the Peninsula. Shall I reserve a suite for you there?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “I’ll see that it’s done, and when you’ve booked your flight, let me know the details. I’ll have to make arrangements at Aquino Airport for your arrival and pickup.”

  “I’ll call you the moment the flight is booked.”

  “Thank you,” he said after a slight hesitation.

  “Was there something else you wanted to say?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll talk to you in due course.” She ended the call and sat back in the chair. What have I just committed to? she thought.

  ( 4 )

  She sat down at the room desk, took a black Moleskine notebook from her bag, and opened it to the last page. She wrote Chang Wang across the top and then jotted down Tawi-Tawi, Zakat College, and Miguel Ramirez. She then began to make a list of questions that came to her as she mentally reviewed her talk with Chang.

  When she worked with Uncle, she had kept a notebook for every job they undertook. In it she recorded names, numbers, and thoughts and generally tracked the progress of the investigation. When the job was done, she stored the notebook in a safety deposit box at a bank branch in Toronto. It was a habit that she hadn’t broken. The front part of this notebook was filled with details of the conflict with VLG. Her friends found it amusing that she still insisted on writing things down the old-fashioned way. Her response was that the act of writing, of creating a permanent record, helped her remember and process details in a way that using an electronic device couldn’t.

  The list of questions grew until it almost filled the left-hand column of the page. Ava felt increasingly apprehensive about the commitment she’d made. She reached for the phone.

  She spoke to Amanda first. The news that Ava would be going to Manila to help an old friend of Uncle’s instead of going to Shanghai elicited some disappointment but no objections, which made Ava realize that May Ling had probably assessed the situation more accurately than she had.

  May Ling was next on her list, and she was immediately and enthusiastically supportive of her decision. “The fact that you’re going there at all should create some obligation in return,” May said.

  “I’m not going in with the expectation of getting repaid sometime down the road.”

  “Of course not, but it wouldn’t hurt if that was one of the results.”

  Ava was about to caution her about prejudging the outcome but bit her tongue. One of the many things she loved about May was her practicality.

  Xu was her last call. He was quiet while she related her conversation with Chang. “He must really need you,” he said finally.

  “Well, he certainly thinks he does. I just don’t want to disappoint him.”

  “Ava, whatever help I can provide, I will. Don’t hesitate to ask,” he said.

  She smiled. With May and Xu, she never had to worry about having her back covered.

  After she ended her call to Xu, she opened her laptop. It had been sitting on the desk, ignored, all weekend. She had begun to search for flights when she was struck by hunger pangs. She reached for the room service menu, quickly ordered, and then returned to the computer.

  Getting from Kunming to Manila was harder than she’d expected. There were no direct flights; the quickest, simplest route was to Hong Kong on China Eastern Airlines and then a Cathay Pacific flight to Manila that didn’t arrive until eight o’clock in the evening. She checked her other options, but that was the best one. She reserved first-class seats on both flights and then phoned Chang.

  “There’s nothing earlier?” he said when she gave him her schedule.

  “That’s the best I can do.”

  “All right, we’ll make it work. I’ll get back to you with details from this end.”

  She leaned back in the chair and sighed. She needed to prepare for the meeting, and that meant getting some information on the Zakat College of Tawi-Tawi. She found some general information online about Tawi-Tawi and a couple of colleges on the island, but none with the name Zakat. She looked up the word.

  The doorbell sounded before she could delve much deeper. She let in the room service attendant and stood by as she set up the table for dinner. She had been hungry when she ordered, but now she felt ravenous as the hot and sour soup and beef with fried noodles and XO sauce were laid out on the table. She opened the half-bottle of Pinot Grigio she’d ordered and then dug into the food.

  The soup portion was big enough for two and loaded with shrimp and scallops. The noodles were piled high on a large plate. The slivers of beef almost melted on her tongue, and the XO sauce gave the dish a spicy kick. Almost unawares, Ava finished the half-bottle of wine. She took a smaller bottle from the room bar and made it last until she’d polished off her meal.

  I’ll need to exercise tomorrow, she thought as she stood up from the table. She liked to run and managed to do ten kilometres three or four times a week. If she was stressed she ran more often, and the runs were longer and harder. She also practiced bak mei, a centuries-old martial art that was taught one-on-one and
had very few disciples because of its physical and mental demands. She had started training when she was in her teens and didn’t become proficient until she was in her mid-twenties. It wasn’t a pretty martial art. It was designed to inflict damage by attacking the most vulnerable areas — eyes, nose, ears, nerve endings — of an opponent’s body. During her days working as a debt collector with Uncle, she’d been attacked more times than she could remember by men wielding guns, knives, tire irons, or their own fists. Bak mei had saved her more than once.

  She groaned. I’ll go for a long run and maybe a bak mei workout tomorrow, she promised herself. She was five foot three and had weighed about 115 pounds since she turned twenty. Her slim physique was partly genetic, but she knew the exercise made a difference. Uncle used to joke that she ate more than any man he knew; he said one day she would wake up weighing two hundred pounds.

  She sat down at the desk with the intention of doing more research on Tawi-Tawi. Just as she opened up a website, her phone sounded and she saw Uncle Chang’s number on the screen.

  “Ava, Ramirez will see you at his home. He lives on Flame Tree Road in Forbes Park, which is in the Makati district.”

  She’d been to Makati, the commercial centre of Manila, and she knew Forbes Park was a wealthy residential district next to it. She tried to calculate when she might arrive at the house on Flame Tree Road. She was familiar enough with Aquino Airport to know that clearing Customs could be tortuous at any hour and that traffic in the city could be equally slow. Even if her flight arrived on schedule at eight, she figured she’d be doing well if she reached Flame Tree Road by ten.

  “It could be late by the time I get there,” she said.

  “We’re making arrangements with Immigration Services to have you escorted through Customs and Immigration, and he’s sending a driver to meet you. He also doesn’t care what time you get to the house.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “No. I don’t want to interfere. Ramirez is the man you need to listen to, but we can talk afterwards.”

  “Sounds good,” she said.

  After ending the call, Ava was overcome by a yawn so powerful it made her shiver. She had spent the weekend running on sexual adrenalin, surviving on less than eight hours of sleep in total. Now the combination of wine, the dinner, and Fai’s departure came crashing in on her.

  Tawi-Tawi and Miguel Ramirez will still be there in the morning, she thought as she fell face down on the bed.

  ( 5 )

  When Ava woke, the early spring sun was streaming through the window. She looked at the empty side of the bed and imagined Fai there, stretched out with one arm flung across Ava’s body. She glanced at the bedside clock and saw that it was eight-fifteen. Fai had said to call before eight, but Ava phoned her anyway and left a message: “I miss you.”

  She walked over to the window and looked out onto Dianchi Lake. The water shimmered in the light cast by the sun, which was suspended in a clear blue sky. Ava had been spending so much time in Shanghai that she had forgotten the sky could actually be blue rather than perpetually grey. The Kunming air was fresh and almost crisp, the temperature hovering around fifteen degrees Celsius. She felt a surge of energy and immediately thought about going for a run. She still had to research Ramirez and Tawi-Tawi, but she could do that while she was waiting for her flight. She calculated when she’d have to be back at the hotel to get ready to leave for the airport, and figured she had just enough time to get in a ten-kilometre run.

  She went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and splash cold water on her face, downed a quick coffee, threw on her running gear, and headed downstairs. She asked the concierge if there was a running path around the lake. He told her all she had to do was follow the signs. The hotel wasn’t far from the lake, and when she eventually reached it, she found a wide promenade that was surprisingly uncrowded. In her experience, public and open spaces in most Chinese cities were usually crammed with people from dawn until late at night. She ran north, her pace gradually increasing until she felt some strain, then slowed and reversed course.

  Ava felt herself relax, and her mind moved away from the process of running. She thought about Pang Fai and found herself grinning like a lovestruck teenager. Then Chang Wang and the trip to Manila entered her mind and the smile disappeared. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the decision she’d made, but she would see her commitment through. Her hope was that her meeting with Ramirez would be expeditious and she could leave Manila the next day.

  Ava showered as soon as she got back to the hotel, did a quick check of her emails and phone messages, and got ready for the trip. She was conservative when it came to clothes. For casual wear she preferred black Giordano T-shirts and Adidas training pants and jackets. When she wasn’t promoting PÖ, her work wardrobe consisted of slacks and skirts in neutral colours and an array of cotton and linen button-down shirts from Brooks Brothers. Ava thought they presented a professional image, the kind of clothes that a female accountant would wear. For the trip to Manila, she chose a white button-down shirt and black slacks.

  She left the hotel shortly after eleven. It was a forty-five-kilometre drive to Kunming Changshui Airport, and she didn’t want to risk getting stuck in traffic. By twelve-thirty she was sitting at a computer terminal in the China Eastern Airlines international lounge and entering “Senator Miguel Ramirez” into a search engine.

  Unlike Zakat College, there wasn’t any shortage of information about the senator. If anything there was a surfeit, the result of a long career in public service and the fact that the Philippines had an incredibly large and vibrant media industry. Ava counted multiple stories from five daily newspapers in Manila alone.

  Ramirez came from a humble beginning, which wasn’t that common among high-level Philippine politicians, most of whom were the beneficiaries of family dynasties. He was born in Roxas City on Panay Island, the son of two schoolteachers. He graduated from the University of the Philippines with a degree in agriculture and went to work for the Cooper Pineapple Company of Hawaii, becoming vice-president for Southeast Asia while still in his thirties. He had been a supporter of Benigno Aquino, the main leader of those opposed to Ferdinand Marcos.

  Marcos had been the Philippine president for more than twenty years, and for much of that time he used martial law to govern as a dictator. For four years Aquino led the opposition from his temporary home in the United States, but in 1983 he returned to the Philippines to challenge Marcos directly. Minutes after his plane landed, he was assassinated on the tarmac. Following Aquino’s assassination, Ramirez transferred his support to Aquino’s wife, Corazon. Three years later, Corazon defeated Marcos in an election. When she became president, she appointed Miguel Ramirez minister of agriculture.

  Ramirez served under Aquino for the six years of her single term. When Fidel Ramos was voted in as the new president of the Philippines, he retained his position as minister of agriculture. But three years into that appointment, things started to get messy.

  Depending on their editorial policies, political alliances, and penchant for sensationalism, the spin the various media put on Ramirez varied, but on one thing they all agreed: it was remarkable that a man born into a lower-middle-income family, who had been a salaried employee at Cooper and made a modest amount as a government minister, had somehow managed to accumulate what was estimated to be more than US$70 million. Charges of corruption, specifically of taking bribes, were levelled by various members of the legislature, and there were cries for a public enquiry. Ramirez’s claim — that he had simply gotten lucky in the stock market — was dismissed as far-fetched, and an enquiry was launched.

  But before the enquiry began, there was a scheduled election for twelve seats in the country’s twenty-four-seat Senate. Senators did not run in or represent specific regions. The election was country-wide, and the top twelve candidates would win seats. Ramirez resigned his position in the cabinet and ran. By s
ome estimates he spent $5 million on his campaign, making it the most costly in Philippine history. One of his most prominent friends was Tommy Ordonez, who publicly endorsed Ramirez and was identified by various media as one of his key financial backers. The money was well spent; Ramirez finished second and won a seat in the Senate. The position paid only a modest salary, but a more important reward accompanied it: as a senator he was immune from prosecution, a protection his cabinet position didn’t provide.

  There’s some dirt under your fingernails, but not enough to have scared off the electorate or your friends, Ava thought as she read accounts of the election.

  After the election, the enquiry was cancelled and the questions about Ramirez’s wealth faded. When he was mentioned in the media, it was usually in reference to his political role as a senator — a position that carried with it very real power. Not only did every national law and treaty have to be approved by the Senate before being passed on to the president for final signature, it was the only institution in the country that could impeach the president.

  Ava noted that Ramirez’s role in the Senate wasn’t restricted to matters of general concern. He also had long-standing involvement with two key committees. One of them was, not surprisingly, agriculture. But he was also vice-chair of the committee that oversaw the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency. Since his first election he had been on both committees, and he was now serving his second six-year term as a senator. According to the law, she read, he could serve only two terms. She did a quick calculation and saw that his second term would end in less than two years. She wondered if he was worried that the old corruption charges would resurface when his immunity privileges lapsed.

  Curiously absent from nearly all of the stories was information about Ramirez’s private life. A wife was mentioned but never named, and there was no hint of any children. If he had hobbies, they were kept out of the public eye. And the only social functions he attended were those directly related to Senate business.