by Ian Hamilton
She lowered the volume so that the program would be less of a distraction but loud enough that she could hear if something new was reported. She sat at the desk, opened her computer, and turned on her phone. She had missed two messages while she was meeting with the Americans. One was from Wahab and the other from Senator Miguel Ramirez. Both just said, “Call me.”
She could imagine what Wahab wanted to say, and she wasn’t ready to listen. She phoned Ramirez instead. Elisha answered, with a weary “Senator Ramirez’s office.”
“Hi, this is Ava. I’m returning the senator’s call.”
“Are you okay? I’ve been thinking about you all day, ever since we got the news about the college,” Elisha said.
“I haven’t had time to think about being okay or not. How about you, and what is Zoey saying?”
“It’s all very upsetting. That imam must be a madman. People around here are angry that he hasn’t been caught yet.”
“And how is the senator?”
“He was in emergency committee meetings all afternoon, and he’s been bombarded with calls. He’s on the phone now with Mr. Juhar, who’s head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Mindanao.”
“Well, tell him I called, and when —”
“No, Ava, don’t hang up,” Elisha said. “He told me to let him know the second you called. Stay on the line.”
As she waited, Ava checked her emails. May Ling, Amanda, her mother, her sister Marian, and Mimi, her best friend in Toronto, had all replied to her cheery earlier missive. For not the first time, Ava felt that she was living in parallel worlds, and rarely had she felt so little control in either one.
“Ava,” Ramirez finally said. “What a terrible, terrible day for all of us.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I feel like a punching bag getting hit on all sides.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s no reason to be — it’s part of the job. This is just worse than usual,” he said. “But I am worried about my friends in the south. This may not go well for them.”
“Wahab called me but I haven’t spoken to him yet.”
“He’ll want to ask you about the American who was with you. That’s why Juhar called me.”
“What about the American?” Ava asked, immediately on edge.
“They want you to talk to him.”
“Why?”
“Truthfully, I may be the cause,” he said. “When I was speaking with Juhar earlier this evening about the task force being sent to the south, I mentioned that there’s a large number of SAF members in its ranks.”
“That’s to be expected, isn’t it?”
“The problem is that they’re not all identified as such. Some of them work within other organizations. I made the mistake of referring to them as our version of the Trojan horse. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t thinking at all — I’d been in that damn committee for four hours listening to senior security advisors telling us that the college is the tip of the iceberg and that we have to get below the waterline to uncover the real danger in the south.”
“The Brotherhood?”
“Not specifically. More like Muslims in general. But once that kind of thinking sets in, everyone is fair game.”
“What does any of that have to do with the Americans?”
“Juhar and Wahab want them to be a presence in the south. They think that if they’re physically there, they’ll act as a moderating influence on the SAF.”
“What makes them believe that?”
“The Americans are always talking about building bridges between themselves and moderate Muslim communities. Your American colleague knows how co-operative the Brotherhood has been. He might be prepared to recommend that they have an observer role in what’s going on down there. I mean, he could maintain that they still have an interest until all those anti-American threats are disproved.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Ava said.
“Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have any questions?”
“None.”
Ramirez paused and then said, “I’ll tell Juhar. It may help a little. Who knows?”
“Yes, who knows?” Ava said.
“Stay in touch,” he said.
Ava put down her phone. She thought about the four men in the boardroom. When she had asked them about providing a small measure of support for the Brotherhood, Gilmour had equivocated. What did that tell her?
She sat quietly at the desk and thought about the decision she had to make, and as she did, a memory of Uncle came to her. Early on in their partnership they had been offered two jobs, but they only ever did one at a time. One involved a large amount of money that looked like it would be easy to track. The other involved much less that would be harder to get back. She and Uncle had talked about their options over a bowl of congee at his regular breakfast restaurant in Kowloon. “I know there is less money in the second job, but the man and his family need it more,” he said. “Besides, the wealthier man came to us and said, ‘Get my money back,’ while the other said, ‘Please help me.’ I know the job is more difficult, but that should give us a greater sense of satisfaction when we succeed. Over the years I have found that doing the hard thing is most often doing the right thing.”
Ava had no doubt about what the easy thing was in this case. In fact, she’d already done it, when she asked the Americans to help the Brotherhood. But what was the right thing? She took her notebook from her bag, wrote Tawi-Tawi across the top, and then contemplated making lists of the positives and negatives attached to her decision. She started on the positive side and quickly wrote a safer world. Then she stopped. What am I doing? she thought.
She reopened her email and began to write a message to May Ling and Xu. It took her over an hour to compose a draft. The first draft turned into a second and then a third. When the third draft was done, she left the computer and went to the bathroom. Ten minutes later she returned, reviewed what she’d written with a clear eye, and thought that it still held together. She added Brenda Burgess, Three Sisters’ Hong Kong–based lawyer, to the recipients line and sent the document.
She checked the time; it wasn’t quite eight o’clock. She phoned Pang Fai.
“Hey,” Fai said. “You caught me halfway out the door.”
“I wanted to hear your voice,” Ava said.
“Where are you?”
“I’m back in Manila, but I’m not sure for how long. With any luck I’ll get out of here tomorrow morning.”
“Where will you go?”
“Shanghai.”
“Ava, I was thinking,” Fai said. “Maybe I’m being silly about not seeing you during the entire film shoot. Let’s talk tomorrow, after you’ve left Manila and we have more time to go over it.”
“That would be wonderful,” Ava said.
“Now I have to run. I love you.”
Ava held the phone in her hand for several seconds after the line went dead. When she put it down, she returned to the computer and sent another email to May Ling. It read: If anything happens to me, please look after Pang Fai. You can tell her the details about what led to whatever does happen, but it’s more important to me that you tell her she was the love of my life.
Then she phoned Ramirez again. They spoke for almost thirty minutes and then exchanged multiple phone calls for another half-hour. The time that passed seemed like a few heartbeats to Ava. When she had finished all her correspondence and calls, she felt twenty pounds lighter, as if she were floating in mid-air watching a passing parade. Now all she had to do was get safely back to earth.
( 46 )
She waited for another half-hour before calling Dulles. She guessed from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t alone, and when she said she was ready to talk, he was quick to ask if Harrison could join t
hem.
“I don’t care who’s there,” Ava said. “Where do you want to do it?”
“We’ve been with Tom Allison in the conference room. Brad and I just left, but the others are still with him.”
“Did Allison come clean?”
“Yes, but that’s all I want to say right now. Where would you like to meet?”
“Downstairs.”
“How about in the Bar?”
“Sure. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
She didn’t need to freshen up but she went into the bathroom anyway. She splashed cold water on her face and looked into the mirror. She was paler than normal, and there were dark circles under her eyes.
She was alone in the elevator. As it passed the second floor, Tom Allison came to mind. What was going on in the Reyes Room between him, Bentley, and Gilmour?
“Ava,” Dulles said as she stepped out of the elevator. He and Harrison stood about ten metres from her. “The Bar is full, but there’s an alcove in the lobby that will give us some privacy,” he said.
“Let’s go,” she said.
She followed them across the lobby to a sofa and chair that were almost hidden from view. Harrison sat in the chair while she and Dulles took the sofa, each of them keeping as much distance as possible from the other.
Harrison leaned forward as soon as they were settled. It wasn’t a threatening gesture, but his hands were tightly clasped and his face was clouded with doubt. “Are you going to disappoint us?” he said. “I told Alasdair I thought you were, but I like nothing better than being wrong on issues like this.”
“I’m going to disappoint you,” she said.
“Ah,” he said, collapsing back into the chair. He placed his fingertips under his chin and looked quizzically at her. Then his eyes bored into hers. She didn’t turn away. “Why?” he asked.
“You might have swayed me with your appeal to help make the world a safer place. But then again you might not have, because I found myself asking a question. A safer place for whom? And my answer was a safer place for you and others like you. Not so much for everyone else,” she said.
“Don’t exclude yourself from our company.”
“That’s another thing,” she said. “I don’t like being told that I’m part of a team that includes people like your associates Gilmour and Bentley. And I found Bentley’s convoluted rationale for supporting a death squad to be completely repulsive.”
“I share your sentiments when it comes to Bentley,” Harrison said. “But he is beyond my jurisdiction. Part of my job is to limit the damage that he and others like him can do.”
“And where does Gilmour fit into that spectrum?”
“He’s in a less advantageous position than me; he has to deal with the White House on a regular basis. I don’t envy him in the least, and I think he does a very good job under trying conditions. Don’t judge him too harshly for his analogy. He truly is a team player.”
“Even if that means covering up for Murdoch and Allison?”
“Especially if that means covering up for them,” Harrison said.
Ava shook her head in disbelief.
“The reality is that if people like Gilmour and me don’t focus on the bigger picture, then what are now skirmishes become battles, and battles become wars,” Harrison said. “Sometimes that means we have to turn a blind eye to acts we find despicable, because there’s a greater good we’re pursuing and we need to protect the resources we have so we can continue to pursue that greater good. That’s the vision I was trying to present to you. Obviously I did a poor job of it.”
“No, actually you didn’t,” Ava said. “I do get it.”
“Then is it too late for a change of mind?”
“I guess I’m not a big-picture person. I don’t see much value in trying to save the world by hurting or destroying people you meet along the way. I can’t stop Muslims and Jews and Christians and atheists or anyone else from hating one another and trying to kill each other over things I don’t understand. But I don’t have to condone it, and in my mind, that’s what my silence would represent,” Ava said. “Then there’s the matter of respecting the people I deal with. The most important part of that for me is keeping my word and honouring my promises. I made a promise to the Muslim Brotherhood and I feel bound to keep that promise. So maybe I can’t save the world and I can’t bring those dead boys back to life, but I can keep my word.”
“We’ll do what we can for the Brotherhood,” Harrison said.
“You’re too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“I pulled the plug,” she said.
“How?”
“I’ve already spoken to the Philippine authorities.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Everything.”
“I thought you were going to talk to us first.”
“I didn’t agree to anything like that. I said I would make up my mind, and I did. Then I acted on it.”
“Who did you actually talk to?”
“I imagine you’ll find out soon enough,” Ava said. “But there’s one thing I need to say that you may think unnecessary and possibly objectionable.”
Harrison hadn’t changed his position or his expression since he’d sat back in the chair. He looked like a man engaged in casual conversation, and for the second time that day he reminded Ava of Uncle. “I’m listening,” he said.
“I have written an account of everything that happened, everything I know, and everyone who was involved. I sent it to two close friends who have their own sets of powerful friends and contacts, and to a lawyer whom we trust. The lawyer has strong relationships with the media in the United Kingdom and the United States. If anything happens to me, they’ll make sure that information gets into the right hands.”
Harrison pursed his lips and then said, “You are correct — it was unnecessary. Though I’ll still have to let Gilmour know what you’ve done. And I’m sure you understand that I can’t vouch for Bentley or fools like Allison.”
Dulles’s phone rang. He looked at the screen in annoyance, then quickly hit the Talk button. “Roberto. This is an unusually late call,” he said.
Harrison’s attention shifted to Dulles, and Ava followed suit. Dulles had the phone pressed tightly to his ear. She couldn’t catch any of the incoming conversation but she knew who Roberto was, and she was impressed by the control that Dulles displayed as he listened. Several times he tried to say something but couldn’t. Finally he did speak. “I will tell them, and I’m sure they’ll be amenable to that suggestion.”
Dulles hung up, looked at Harrison, and shook his head slowly. “That was General Roberto Mendez. He heads the intelligence service of the armed forces of the Philippines. He was inviting us to attend a meeting of the National Intelligence Advisory Committee, of which he’s a key member. They want to see us tonight. He knows that you, Jeff, and Charles are here, and they expect everyone to attend.”
“What have you done?” Harrison said to Ava.
“I told you, I pulled the plug.”
“It was a rhetorical question,” Harrison said as he pulled himself to his feet. “I’d better go and tell the others. We should get organized to meet with Mendez and his people.”
Dulles drew several deep breaths as he watched Harrison leave. Then he looked at Ava. “I wish you hadn’t done it that way,” he said.
“What other way was there?”
“Harrison was on your side, and he might have brought the others around,” Dulles said.
“It didn’t seem like that in the meeting.”
“He had to maintain his position.”
“Which he did very well.”
“I’m not saying that he agrees with your opinions, Ava, but his attitude towards you is more personal.”
“What are you talking about?”
&nb
sp; “Maybe I should have mentioned this earlier, but he ran our station in Hong Kong during the British handover to the Chinese. When I told him about your Hong Kong connections and the partner you called Uncle, he asked me if you meant a man named Chow Tung.”
“Yes, he was my partner, the man I called Uncle.”
“Harrison was convinced it was him, and that made him quite sympathetic to your situation.”
“How could I have known that, and what good would sympathy have done? You were going to put off doing anything for as long as you could, in the hope that the problem in Bongao wouldn’t be connected to the United States. I didn’t think there was that much time to spare where the Brotherhood is concerned,” Ava said.
“You’re right. We were going to drag our feet, though I’m not convinced that doing that would have been successful.”
“So what happens now?”
“We’ll meet with the Philippine authorities. We’ll come clean about Murdoch but we’ll protect Allison as much as we can, because we have no other choice. We’ll eat some shit. We’ll try to talk them into keeping things under wraps, and they may do that if the right deal is put on the table. If, in the end, we have to give them their pound of flesh, it will be Murdoch, or more likely a couple of his colleagues and a pile of money.”
“Where are Murdoch and his crew?”
“Allison’s just told us they left the Philippines yesterday afternoon.”
“How? Where?”
“What does it matter?”
“You sound as if you were prepared for my doing this.”
“It was always a probability in Harrison’s mind, and after we met with you it became likely. So Harrison did have a plan — you just beat him to it. But do you think you’ve done the Brotherhood any favours with this approach?”
“My contact thinks we have. He was the one who spoke to Mendez. There were SAF troops scheduled to go to Tawi-Tawi. Mendez has agreed to pull them out of the task force.”
“Your contact is Senator Ramirez, right? You mentioned him to me and Ryan.”
