The Scottish Banker of Surabaya

by Ian Hamilton

  “Without attracting attention?” Perkasa asked.

  Ava heard the doubt in his voice. “Well, with as little attention as possible. Waru should be able to help us figure out if that’s at all doable. I figured if we do it tomorrow then we don’t have to worry about him not showing up for work at the bank. And if we do it in the morning we can have access to him for the day, and I don’t think we’ll need more time than that.”

  “You’re sure about his being accessible in the morning?”

  “As I said, he’s scheduled to play golf. When do most people play in this climate?”

  “The morning.”

  “Exactly. Getting him on Sunday at any time is more important to me than waiting for Monday.”

  Perkasa said, “Let’s make sure about the time if we can. I’ll phone the club on some pretext and try to confirm that Cameron is playing and when he’s supposed to tee off.”

  “Good idea,” Ava said, realizing she’d been making a lot of assumptions.

  “Regardless of when he’s scheduled to play, you want to grab him somewhere between his house and the club?”

  “That’s my idea, but I don’t know how far one is from the other and I don’t have a clue about the roads in between. I’m thinking that early on Sunday morning they won’t be that busy, but we need Waru to check all that out.”

  “Won’t Cameron be expected at the golf club?”

  “You or Waru can call and tell them he’s had to cancel.”

  “What was the name of the course again?”

  “Paradise Run.”

  He picked up the paper with Cameron’s address on it. “Excuse me for a minute while I talk to the guys,” he said.

  Ava watched the brothers as Perkasa spoke, his tone completely matter-of-fact. Their facial reactions were equally neutral. The minute turned into something approaching five; then Waru interrupted and Perkasa passed the piece of paper to him. He and his brother looked at it together and then had their own quiet discussion. Waru finally handed it back with his own monologue and what sounded like a question.

  “They want to know if the banker has a driver or not. It isn’t unusual for that to be the case, and if he does, then in all likelihood the driver will be doubling as a bodyguard and could be armed.”

  “I don’t know anything about a driver. All I know is that he drives a Porsche 911 Targa.”

  Perkasa smiled and spoke to Waru, who smiled back. “There’s no chance he has a driver for that car,” Perkasa said to Ava.

  “I didn’t think so. Now, how about the house? Do they know where it is?”

  “Yeah, Waru used to patrol the area. The house and the golf course are both in west Surabaya, about twelve kilometres apart. Waru says the banker has about a two-kilometre drive from his house, through a residential community, to the highway, and then about an eight-kilometre drive on the highway to the cut-off for the golf course. The road going to the course is only two lanes, and very winding. He says it isn’t developed around there. The course is quite isolated.”

  “That sounds like the ideal spot, doesn’t it.”

  “That’s what Waru said.”

  “Then that’s the plan. How do you want to coordinate it?”

  “Let me call the golf club first,” Perkasa said.

  He walked over to the hotel desk and started a conversation with the concierge. She punched some information into her computer and then turned the screen for Perkasa to look at it. He spoke to her again and she reached for a phone and made a call while he watched. When she was done, Ava saw him slip a banknote across the desk to her.

  “He’s playing tomorrow and he’s supposed to tee off at seven thirty,” Perkasa said when he returned.

  “What did she tell them?” Ava asked.

  “She said she was calling for a hotel guest who has some paperwork he needs to get to Cameron first thing in the morning. She said the guest wanted to meet up with him before he started to play.”

  Ava looked at Waru. “Is he willing to wear his police uniform tomorrow?” she asked.

  Perkasa repeated the question in Indonesian. Waru nodded.

  “Great,” Ava said. “Then I suggest that we position one of our vehicles — you and I should be in it — near the banker’s house very early tomorrow morning. The other one, with the brothers, should be on the golf course road; we can leave the exact location to Waru. You and I can tail the Porsche after it leaves the house. We’ll need to be in phone contact with the other car so they’ll know when he’s left and just in case he changes his route. When the banker exits the highway, he’ll be only a minute or so from our second car. Waru can block the road then. If he’s wearing his uniform, he should be able to get the Porsche to stop without any fuss.”

  Perkasa looked at the diagram she was drawing in her notebook as she talked. “And we’ll come from behind and seal off any chance of him reversing,” he said.

  “Exactly. Then, one way or another, we get him out of the car. Hopefully Waru can talk him into doing it peacefully. If not, then we’ll do it forcefully,” Ava said. “Now, I want his wrists, eyes, and mouth taped as quickly as possible. There isn’t any point in giving him time to memorize faces or licence plate numbers.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then we bundle him into the trunk of Waru’s Pathfinder and off we go.”

  “What about the Porsche?”

  “Obviously we’re not leaving it there. One of us has to drive it back to Waru’s.”

  “Let me explain all of this to them and then we’ll figure out who drives what,” said Perkasa.

  “While you’re doing that, I need to use the washroom,” Ava said.

  She scrubbed her hands with soap and then splashed cold water on her face. These are good men, she thought as she looked in the mirror. Not too many questions, not at all concerned about the why of it all. It was just a job, a well-paid job, that needed to get done. She’d been lucky with Uncle’s men over the years, and it felt to her that she’d drawn well again.

  Her opinion didn’t change when she returned to the lobby. The three men had moved to one sofa, her notebook in front of them, their faces calm, focused. Perkasa looked up. “They like this plan, and the early morning timing is good.”

  “Who’ll drive the Porsche?”

  He smiled. “We all want to, but given that Waru is going to be in uniform and I think I should stay with you, Prayogo is the choice.”

  “That’s fine with me. How about any questions they have?”

  “Waru did ask how long you think you’ll have to hold the banker at his house.”

  “Not past Sunday, I hope.”

  “And they suggested that we drive the routes tonight, the one from the house to the cut-off and the road to the golf course. It will give us a better sense of the time involved, and Waru would like to pick out in advance the best place to intercept the banker.”

  “Of course,” Ava said. She had taken that for granted but was pleased to agree to it as their idea.

  “Well, then, we should get going,” Perkasa said. “It will be dark soon enough.”

  ( 27 )

  They drove twenty kilometres, almost straight west of the city, in Waru’s Pathfinder, Perkasa and Ava riding in the back, Prayogo up front with his brother.

  CitraLand — “the Singapore of Surabaya,” as sign after sign proclaimed — was a grouping of developments. Cameron’s house was in CitraGarden, Lampung. The roads were beautifully paved, divided by landscaped meridians that must have taken an army of labourers to keep so immaculate.

  Ava looked out at row after row of white stucco houses with red-tile roofs, wooden trim, single-car driveways, and small front lawns. She had seen developments like this outside of Bangkok. It was the Asian interpretation of a North American subdivision, its focus on clean, new, and organized.

  Waru led them through the grid, the houses getting gradually larger and beginning to show some variety in architecture. When they reached a street where the houses sat on quarter-
acre lots, he slowed down but didn’t stop, pointing left to a two-storey building behind a four-metre brick wall. Ava glanced at the pale blue stucco house with its swooping red-tile roof. Then her attention was drawn to the interlocking stone driveway, where a black Porsche Targa was parked. It was the only car in sight. The licence plate matched the number Indra had given her. The son of a bitch is home, she thought. The wrought-iron gate fronting the driveway was agape. How easy would it be?

  Perkasa looked out the back window in the direction they had come from. “There’s only one road out of here that leads to the highway. We can wait for him at any spot between here and there.”

  “I don’t want to take the slightest chance of losing him,” Ava said. “So we’ll wait down there, at the end of this road, with the car facing him. We should be able to keep him in sight without getting too close.”

  “Ava, have you given any thought to what we’ll do if Cameron doesn’t follow our script?” Perkasa asked.

  She glanced at him. He was looking out the window. “What do you mean?”

  “What if he has a passenger in the Porsche? What if he leaves the Porsche here and takes a cab or limo? What if he catches a ride with a buddy?”

  “All I care about is that he leaves the house to go to the golf course. How he gets there doesn’t matter. Ideally it’s by himself, in the Porsche. If some other scenario presents itself, we’ll deal with it. You’re okay with that, I hope.”

  “I’m okay, but I know the boys will ask the question and I didn’t want to guess at an answer.”

  “We’re going to get Cameron one way or another.”

  “Like I said, I’m okay with that, and they will be too.”

  He’s only being thorough, Ava thought, aware that she might have sounded defensive, and worse, as if she hadn’t thought things through. “I don’t mean that I would ask anyone to do anything reckless,” she said. “We’ll get here early tomorrow and see how Cameron intends to get to Paradise Run. If there’s any dramatic change, we’ll discuss it before committing.”

  “That’s fine. Now what?”

  “Let’s drive the route to the course. We need some idea of timing, and I’d like to see where Waru intends to intercept him.”

  Perkasa spoke to the men in front. Waru nodded and drove back the way they had come. When they reached the highway, he took a cut-off about halfway back to the city. There was a service station and a cluster of small houses near the exit, and after that nothing but rice paddies on both sides of the road. The road was straight for the first half-kilometre and then began to wind. About another half-kilometre along, Ava saw a small hill. It wasn’t much of a rise, just enough to hide a car on the other side. Waru drove over it and then stopped about fifty metres further on. He parked by the roadside.

  They all got out of the vehicle. Waru pointed at the hill and then turned and looked in the other direction as he spoke to Perkasa.

  “He thinks this is the best spot,” Perkasa said to Ava. “The banker won’t see him until he comes over the rise, and if he blocks the road here, Cameron will still have time to stop. The good thing is that it won’t give the banker time to think about anything other than stopping.” He looked down the road. “And we can’t see the golf course from here, so no one is going to see us from there either.”

  “I like it,” said Ava.

  “We still have to worry about other cars on the road.”

  Ava shrugged. “It will be early. And even if someone does see us, Waru will be in his uniform and it will all look official.”

  “When should we be in place?”

  “I think we need to be at Cameron’s house before dawn.”

  “Okay.”

  Ava asked, “How far is it from here to Waru’s house?”

  “About a thirty-minute drive straight west.”

  She looked at the hill, at the cars. “I have a good feeling about this.”

  “Yeah, it seems to hang together.”

  “Well, if you can’t think of anything else for us to do, I guess that’s it for today. I’d like to go back to the hotel,” Ava said.

  “Dinner?”

  “If you want to take the guys, go ahead. I had a very late lunch and I can’t eat another thing.”

  Perkasa’s eyes shifted away from her, and she sensed he was disappointed. “I may do that,” he said.

  “My treat.”

  “That isn’t necessary.”

  Ava shrugged. “Let’s head back, shall we? I have some phone calls to make.”

  “Do you want the boys to meet us at the hotel in the morning or do you want them to come directly here?”

  “We’ll meet at the Sheraton. Say, five a.m.?”

  “Perfect,” he said.

  “And make sure they have the picana.”

  “It’s at their house. They told me it came with a transformer of some kind.”

  “It sounds like they bought the right thing. They can leave it at the house — I won’t need it until I get Cameron there.”

  ( 28 )

  Ava had never been uncomfortable with being alone, but as soon as she got to her room she began to feel unsettled.

  Perkasa had driven her to the Majapahit and asked her again to join him for dinner. She couldn’t eat, she repeated, and that was the truth. Her body felt disconnected from her mind, which was wandering in unaccustomed patterns.

  She lay on the bed, turned on the television, and searched for something that might distract her. She watched Moonstruck with Indonesian subtitles for about fifteen minutes and then gave up. Andy Cameron kept intruding, and the initial image was always the same: him walking so cockily towards their table at the restaurant, a sly grin fixed on his face.

  Ava went to the bathroom and turned on the tap, slapped her face with cold water. Focus, she muttered. Treat tomorrow like any other job. Get organized.

  The game she was playing, she knew, had its limits in terms of credibility. She wanted to hurt Cameron. She was going to hurt Cameron. But in Perkasa’s eyes, and therefore in Uncle’s, it had to be seen as a necessity. And that could be made believable, or at least believable enough, only by keeping Cameron under control. Ava did not want him talking about that night — not a word. She did not need any weeping, pleading, or heart-rending and completely self-serving bullshit confessions and apologies. All she wanted him to do was talk about the bank, about Fred Purslow, about Costa Rica and the Emerald Lion Fund and Lam Van Dinh. Or rather, not talk about it — not at first, anyway.

  Ava left the bathroom and sat at the desk. She opened her notebook and began to list the questions that under normal circumstances she would want answered. Who owned the bank? How had it accumulated such a huge capital base in such a short time while operating from Surabaya? Why those overseas offices? Why was the Toronto office closed? Where were Muljadi and Rocca? Was there ever a Surabaya Fidelity Security fund? Who killed Purslow? Why kill Purslow? Each question begot more questions, the complexity compounding, the purpose of her search hardening. She tried to imagine how Cameron would react.

  The room telephone rang. It startled her and she looked at her watch. It was past ten o’clock; she realized she’d been sitting at the desk for more than an hour. She didn’t want to answer, but it could be Perkasa.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Ava, this is Vivian Ho. I apologize for calling so late, but I just got back from dinner and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “You spoke to your sister about me,” Ava said coolly.

  “Only in the most general way,” she said, stuttering softly. “I didn’t tell her what happened. It’s just that I know my sister, and I know what a good friend she can be, and I know how loving she is. I thought you could use that kind of support.”

  “How would you know what kind of support I need?”

  She hesitated. “Well, you aren’t the first victim of this kind of abuse I’ve attended to. I think I have some understanding —”

  “Understanding?”

>   “Yes, exactly.”

  “Fay told me you’re gay,” Ava said.

  “I’m not sure my sister has the right —” Vivian began, sounding distressed.

  “I am too,” said Ava.

  There was only quiet from the other end of the line. Ava imagined Vivian gathering her senses, gathering her words. She readied herself for the platitudes that would end their conversation. Then she heard a sob, and another, and then a stream, interrupted only by gulps for air.

  “Please,” Ava said, almost unaware of her own voice cracking, of her own tears returning.

  They cried wordlessly together, Ava’s tears coursing down her cheeks and falling onto the notebook. She wiped at them blindly, blotching the questions that only a few minutes before had seemed so clever.

  “I am so sorry . . .” Vivian was finally able to say.

  Ava pushed her chair away from the desk and turned towards the window. She wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “I really appreciate that you called,” she said.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Vivian asked, still sniffling.

  “No, you’ve done enough.”

  “I’ve done nothing.”

  “That’s not true. You were wonderful to me.”

  “If only I had known . . .”

  “Known what, that I’m gay? What difference would it make to what was done to me?”

  “I still think you should go to the police.”

  “I have . . . in my own way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Should I tell her? Ava thought. To what end? “Look, Vivian, I need to get some sleep now. I want to thank you again for calling and for all your concern. Chances are I’ll be out of Surabaya sometime tomorrow, so we should treat this as goodbye.”