by Nick Macfie
“Hadley, can you make it to the Opium Wars room? You have to, really.”
“Actually, I was on my way to Macau.”
“Macau ferries leave every half hour. This is about economic indicators! How sexy does it get?”
“They’re our bread and butter. Of course I’ll go!” For fuck’s sake.
“Way to go, Hadley!”
I entered a small room full of commodities, energy, markets and Treasury sub-editors. They had managed to make the place smell like the inside of that same taxi. How sexy does it get? The discussion had already started. The Asian woman I had seen earlier with the phone stuck in her ear was standing in front of a white board. She droned on about consumer price inflation, crude oil output and foreign direct investment and I was comfortably slipping away, thinking about that hi-hat in ‘Nights on Broadway’, when she slapped the table with a newspaper.
“Take gross domestic product,” she shouted. It was like one of those jokes from English television in the seventies. “Take my mother-in-law… Please.” But this was not a joke. Well, it was. But it wasn’t meant to be.
“GDP rose five percent in the fourth quarter.” A long silence. “You see a lot of it nowadays in the newspapers and in Shrubs copy. I am here to tell you that it is wrong.”
She slapped the newspaper against the leg of the table, making everyone jump, and stood up straight. I sat up straight.
“It is wrong, wrong, wrong,” she said. Wrong, wrong, wrong the indicator. I put her nationality as Japanese and her state of emotional health as edgy. “The one thing growth didn’t do was grow five percent in the fourth quarter! What it did do was grow five percent from the previous quarter or from the same quarter a year earlier. On the one hand, you have got to make clear what you are saying. If you don’t make it clear, then we are giving our clients ambiguous information. On the other hand, we want to be specific.”
Sounded like two hands wanting the same thing. I wanted two specific things at this moment - a stiff G&T in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I saw Zeb walk past the window speaking into his deaf aid.
“But surely all the people who read these interesting stories, who make money on them, know the difference.”
This was Baxter who had just arrived and was standing in the corner by the door with his arms folded. He knew the answer. He was just encouraging debate. “They know in advance which figures are coming out when and whether they are monthly or annual. They know the way different agencies and different newspapers report the news. Why do we bother?”
“Because Shrubs wants to get it right?” an intern said.
“Yes,” said Baxter. “Yes. So how should we say it?”
“GDP grew ten percent in the year… through the fourth quarter?”
“Yes,” the girl at the white board said. “Yes. You have been doing your homework.”
“I’m a bit confused,” I said. “You said earlier GDP grew five percent.”
“Not now, Hadley.”
“I think we should make an effort to get the numbers right too.”
“GDP grew ten percent in the year through the fourth quarter is perfect.”
“But who speaks like that?” I asked.
“We speak like that. Because it is unassailable.”
“So does this apply to annual company results?” It was Zeb, god bless him! He had managed to get the device out of his ear! “I’ve got this story about India’s number three two-wheeler manufacturer. Its profit rose two percent in the year through this year?”
“No, that is ridiculous.”
“Tell me why.”
Just please don’t sing, Zeb.
“And what about general news?” I asked. “Say it’s David Bowie’s eightieth birthday. We have to say he turned eighty in the year through today?”
“He’s never eighty,” Zeb said.
“I’m sure we’ll worry about that one when the time comes,” the girl said. She was slowly slapping the white board with the newspaper.
“What about Herman’s Hermits?” Zeb asked, sticking his head above the parapet as it had never been stuck before. I seriously believe he was being serious.
“Look. Fuck off, Zeb,” Baxter said. “You too, Hadley. No one invited you into the conversation.”
“Excuse me? The order was unassailable.”
“You just want to put down everything, don’t you Hadley. Any new initiative. You never think that we might want to change things, to make things better. You never consider taking things to the next level.”
“I never consider raising my ahead above the parapet,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“Well, tell me more about this next level. How about we go to the next level of trying to write stories that use common English and are interesting?” I picked up the local paper off the table. “What about this story about the last language in the Andaman Islands becoming extinct this week?”
“Completely non-germane to the conversation.”
“You’re right, it’s not German. It’s the last language in the Andamans. It got wiped out in a storm. This is a story I would read with pleasure. How can a storm wipe out a language? I want to know. I’m going to sit down and read this story as soon as this meeting is over.”
“Wiped out, you say?” This was Baxter again.
“Apparently. In a year through this week. But do we have the story? I don’t think so. Not the last time I looked on the wire. Because it is fascinating, only thirty lines long and doesn’t make anyone fabulously rich.”
“If it’s been wiped out, at least that will be the last we’ll hear of it. Any more utterly moronic questions?”
“If there aren’t now…”
“What is it, Hadley?”
“Well, if there aren’t now, perhaps it would be okay if we came back to you if some arose?”
“Of course.”
“In, say, the week through next Friday?”
WHEN I FIRST VISITED Macau, it was a sleepy Portuguese-run enclave of China with a handful of seedy casinos, a couple of excellent Portuguese restaurants and a favourite with me, a bizarre nightclub in the middle of a swamp on Taipa island. The roulette tables at the Lisboa, the world’s ugliest building, were covered in thick, transparent plastic instead of baize, there were two zeroes instead of one, giving the house a ridiculously strong edge, and the dealers would take a cut out of your winnings as a tip before throwing what was left vaguely in your direction. This wasn’t Cannes. It wasn’t even the Silver Star. It was more like the wet fish market on Lamma and smelt almost the same.
Now Macau was a giant theme park, with huge, clean casinos very much the theme. It was part of Communist Party-run China and raked in more money than Las Vegas. Mao should be turning his grave. So should Ocean’s Eleven. A beautiful walk along the seafront on the Praia Grande under the shade of banyan trees overlooked a huge reclamation project. The nightclub in the swamp had long gone, as had the Bela Vista Hotel, a rundown rococo building on top of a hill overlooking the Praia Grande with a bridal suite and its glorious balcony, collapsed bed and squeaking floorboards. The building was tarted up into a boutique hotel which never worked and was now the home of the Portuguese consul.
The suspect-bank-with-North-Korean-connections was still there, in all its glory in the heart of the city. The Banco Colonial de Macao, which in its heyday catered for money from opium wars, prostitution, dodgy fireworks workshops, matchstick factories and, of course, 24-hour casinos.
As always when on a story, especially when I had taken the initiative, I felt the nerve endings tingle. I was alive. Two carafes of a light rose at Fernando’s on Black Sand Beach, on the far island of Coloane, took the edge off, but I still felt invincible. Coloane and Taipa were once separate islands, joined by a low causeway, but reclamation over the last few years had fused them into one.
I took a taxi back into town and paced the pavement on the opposite side of the road to the bank, around the corner from the Seventeenth Century Sao Paulo c
athedral, once one of the greatest monuments to Christianity in Asia but which burnt down in a typhoon in 1845. Only the façade remains.
With a little bit of luck, this could be a great story. With a little bit of patience. If I had been in the Pakistan town of Abbottabad at the right time, maybe I would have spotted Osama bin Laden. Maybe I could have broken the story to the world. It was the same thing now. There was a story here to break. The wine had slightly dulled my senses, it has to be said, and I couldn’t quite remember what the story was. The question I needed to ask myself, but didn’t, was: what am I doing in Macau? The hotel massage parlour didn’t open until seven. It was now only one. I had time to kill. I spotted a cosy little bar down an alley advertising Portugal’s Sumol orange juice and Gordon’s gin.
I left the bar two hours later and took up my previous position, leaning against a lamp post. I realised I was slightly bent over at the waist and my head was drooping, but there was nothing I could do about that. Two amahs escorting children in immaculate white uniforms home from school gave me a wide berth and frowned.
“Watch out for pickpockets,” I said. It was good advice. There was no reason to gather up the children and shepherd them away, giving me a backwards frown.
I tried to remain focused on the bank. The comings and goings, the withdrawals and deposits. Was there a link between someone going into a bank to deposit… and someone leaving a bank to withdraw? I thought I had struck upon something. Somewhere there had to be a clue as to what was going on. It didn’t occur to me, at the time, that what I was doing was a complete fucking waste of time. I stood my ground, or rather tripped over my ground. The indisputable logic of several large gins served with segments of lime and short measures of Sumol, a fizzy Portuguese orange soft drink I swore I would never forget. You could almost drink it straight, it was that good.
I didn’t have to wait long. A Chinese man carrying a bulging Korean Air Lines bag entered the bank. I stood upright and reached for my notebook and pen. Using Pitman’s New Era shorthand I knew I would be unable to decipher the next day, I wrote:
Man. Bag with bulge. Korean Air. Bank.
I shut the notebook and crossed the road. The dark brown glass doors opened automatically with a noise, as if they were commenting on my condition. Pisssssed. A welcome blast of cold air enveloped me as I lowered myself into a nice, comfortable leather armchair facing the queues to the tellers. There was my man - lining up to be served. What a nerve. So cool in his expensive, blue cotton suit, whistling under his breath as if he didn’t have a care in the world. I reopened my notebook and wrote:
Inside bank. Nonchalant man. Lining up. One part gin, one part Sumol.
I felt a tugging at my shoulders. I knew I had been rumbled. My only chance was to get a black bin liner over the helicopter pilot’s head and somehow extract a dangerous Russian electronic device from his ear. If only… If only…
“Gentleman?” There was that tugging again. “Gentleman?”
“Is the device… still active?”
“Gentleman? You have to wake up. The bank is closing.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You are sleepy, sir. But our staff have to go.”
“Of course. I’m sorry.”
Sleeping on the job would never do. I tidied my hair, straightened down my shirt and took a double mouthwash swig of Castle Stalker from my hip flask before heading outside. The man with the bag had long gone. Everybody had long gone. But this story, as they say in the trade, had legs. So many legs, in fact, that I decided to call Baxter.
“Rodney? It’s Hadley.”
“What’s up? We’re busy. Thanks for your input in the economic indicators meeting, by the way.”
“No problem. Or are you being ironic? You’ll never guess where I am.”
“Ooh, let’s see now. Ulan Bator? Dayton, Ohio?”
“Wrong on both counts. Guess again.”
Pissed again. “The Eiffel Tower? Deuxieme etage?”
“Macau. I’m in Macau!”
“What do you want, Hadley?”
“Maybe, just maybe, today you should call me… Percy.”
Oh lord. “Hadley, I’m very busy. What’s up?”
“Of course. Sorry. But I thought you ought to know that today, I stood outside the bank, the Banco Colonial de Macao, and took note of the comings and goings.”
“And?”
“Well, I may just surprise you. I saw someone enter the bank. He was carrying a Korean Air Lines bag.”
Silence. “Carry on, Hadley.”
“Exactly.”
Silence. “Hadley, we have a suicide bomb blast in Islamabad, a seven-magnitude quake in Tibet and a large mudslide in the Philippines. And now a man carrying a shoulder bag. Which do you think I should get to first?”
“I take your point. I’ll make this quick. He entered the Banco Colonial and lined up as though about to deposit cash. After that I lost him.”
“Okay. Just the one question springs to mind.”
“Sure.”
“So what?”
Hey, chill, boss. “So what? The Korean connection is pretty significant. I agree that, so far, this is all circumstantial. But the bag was bulging. I mean fat. Full of money and documents, I suspect. Deposit slips, withdrawal slips. Receipts. You’re going to tell me Korean Air Lines is a South Korean company. And you’re right. But who would have thought of a North Korean carrying a South Korean carry-on bag?”
“Into a Macau bank. No, you’ve got me there. Hadley.”
“Exactly.”
“Is this really the best you have?”
“Well, I still need to do some research, some door-stepping. Or door-stopping. There are a few loose ends, I agree.”
“Door-stop there, please.”
“Ha, ha. Okay.”
“I have a lot of things on my mind, Hadley. Let me just say this quickly.”
“Shoot.”
“I wish.”
“Ha ha ha.”
“No, seriously. I sometimes wonder, I often wonder, if you are on the same planet as the rest of us. We are looking for solid news. A solid, stand-up lead, a significant leak of information. You’re banging on about a man with a handbag and getting all excited about nothing. You’re acting as though you’ve been in the reporting business six days.”
“But it’s a great story.” I stepped from foot to foot. I was in need of a solid stand-up leak.
“What’s a great story? Think about it. You are behaving like a baby. You have nothing. Zilch. Rien.”
“Nada.”
“Nada. Right.”
“Nichts. Nulla. Mouh matye.”
“Shut up. You have come up with a big fat zero.” And then in a loud whisper: “I know you’ve been drinking and it’s despicable and a sackable offence. I will overlook it this time. This time again. But don’t call me again unless the Lisboa Hotel collapses or Portugal invades.”
The line went dead. I caught my reflection in the dark, glass of the Banco Colonial. I also caught the reflection of the neon Sumol ad over the road, brighter now under a leaden sky, and decided to jack in the news hound business for the day and seek some refreshment.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I HAD FOUND A RHYTHM in the roulette business and I didn’t want to go back to the desk. Dealing was challenging and satisfying, providing a service for people who needed to gamble to unwind and providing entertainment for the rest, apart from those young mums who were going to lose everything. I wasn’t entirely convinced, despite the house edge statistics and the piles of cash made each hour on the “Xanadu”, that roulette couldn’t be beaten.
There were thirty-seven numbers (on a regular table with just the one zero), each paying thirty-five to one. Obviously, the odds are in the house’s favour. But what if you played the one number that most people factored out of the equation and which prompted loud moans each time it was hit? You only play zero, and its splits, and forget about the rest. Especially forget the dozens and the even chances. T
hey were for losers. I had witnessed many people win on zero, but lose elsewhere with silly mid-table bets. I couldn’t recall a punter playing only zero and its immediate surrounds, until one late night shift when I looked up from the wheel and saw a warm, familiar face.
“Are you stalker for me or am I stalker for you?”
It was the gorgeous Chinese girl in the cheongsam from London, the one with the old, plump Chinese sugar daddy with the greased back black hair and highly polished cheekbones. The general. He was wearing the same huge sunglasses, embalming oil on top of a pale foundation. The colourless drink in his hand was probably a large formaldehyde with a dash of soda. The glum and silent type. They were sitting directly opposite and smiling directly at me. I couldn’t understand how I had missed their arrival.
“Good morning, madam. How lovely to see you. Can I get you a colour?”
“Something to match my lipstick. Let’s say $5 a chip? U.S. dollars, that is.”
I looked across at the chef who nodded his approval.
“We take $500 to start,” she said.
“We have the lovely red colour,” I said.
“Percy.”
I looked back at the chef who was giving me the evil eye. Don’t flirt with the punters, he was saying. Especially when they were drop-dead gorgeous with pouting, shining red lips. Who was more drop-dead gorgeous, this girl or Scout? Easy. This girl was drop-dead gorgeous. Scout was life-affirmingly gorgeous and on fire. I pulled five stacks of red chips from the wheel, nudging two stacks with my right hand into the recesses of the three stacks in my left, and pushing them out expertly across the baize. The fourth fingernail of the right hand pushed into the cloth like a plough to make sure I was pushing from the bottom chip in the stacks and wouldn’t send them toppling over one another.
“Such grace,” the woman said. “I remember you with grace.”
