by Ian Hamilton
“Goodbye then,” Vivian said slowly.
“Goodbye,” said Ava.
She sat there, still facing the window. The drapes were open, a full moon illuminating the treetops that waved in the nighttime breeze.
( 29 )
The hotel lobby was almost deserted when she came down the stairs. The doorman-cum-security-guard standing by the reception desk flirting with the clerk was the only sign of life. He looked at Ava, then at his watch, and said, “Early start, Ibu.”
“Yes, I have an early breakfast meeting.”
“A very early meeting.”
It was ten to five. She had slept badly, waking every hour, her mind a whirl, not able to settle on the day ahead, not able to settle on anything. She gave up at four fifteen, cancelled her wake-up call, washed, brushed her hair and teeth, threw on casual clothes, had two quick coffees, put her notebook into her bag, and then left the room with the bag in one hand and a roll of duct tape in the other.
“Do you want a taxi?” the doorman asked.
“No, I’m going to the Sheraton. I’ll walk.”
He left the desk. “That isn’t a good idea, Ibu, not alone in the dark at this time.”
“I can look after myself,” Ava said, going through the door.
“Maybe so, but I’m going with you anyway,” he said.
She started to argue but he was already walking beside her, a look of determination on his face. “Did Pak Indra mention me to you or any of the other security staff?” Ava asked.
“No, why?”
“No particular reason.”
The streets were still; the only noise she could hear was an insect chirping. “It’s like everyone’s left the city,” she said.
“In about half an hour you won’t think so. The muezzin will start the adhan, and everything will spring to life.”
The walk to Tunjungan Plaza was quick and uneventful, although twice Ava saw figures lurking in doorways. When they reached the Sheraton entrance, she tipped the guard ten dollars. “That isn’t necessary, Ibu,” he said.
“I know. Take it anyway.”
She saw Waru first. He wore a uniform she’d seen the day before, on the policeman who stopped Fay. “Hey, Ava, over here,” Perkasa called. He was sitting off to one side with Prayogo. They were both dressed in jeans and black T-shirts, and Ava wondered if that was deliberate.
“Is Waru a motorcycle cop?” she asked as she drew near.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t think it will look strange, him stopping Cameron in a Nissan Pathfinder?”
“Nah. Around here a cop is a cop is a cop.”
“If you say so . . .”
“Ava, don’t worry.”
She nodded.
“We’re ready to roll whenever you are.”
“Well, then, let’s hit the road.”
They rode the elevator down two levels to the underground parking garage. Both Nissans were parked beside the elevator doors. “The boys were here at four thirty,” Perkasa said.
“Let’s hope Cameron is as punctual,” she said, handing the tape to him. “Please tell Waru that as soon as he cuffs him, I want his eyes and mouth taped. He can throw him in the trunk then.”
“He knows.” Perkasa passed the tape to Waru and then spoke to the brothers in Indonesian. They listened carefully, nodding and then smiling.
“Well, that’s it. They’re as ready as they’re going to be,” Perkasa said to Ava.
The cars separated along the highway, the brothers heading towards the golf course, Perkasa driving the other Nissan to CitraGarden. There was hardly any traffic on the road, and as they entered the development there was no sign of life. The ride had been quiet, and that pleased Ava. She had worked with people who needed to talk incessantly in the hours leading up to a job, as a way to deal with their nerves. The only noise coming from Perkasa was a quiet humming as he accompanied music from a soft-rock radio station.
When they reached Cameron’s street, Ava felt a touch of concern. As they drove past his house, she looked anxiously at the driveway. The Porsche was still there, and she drew a calming breath. They drove to the end of the street, made a U-turn, and then parked the car pointed in the direction Cameron would be coming from. “Now the worst part — the waiting,” Perkasa said.
The first sign of dawn appeared on the horizon, the sun not yet visible but its advance light beginning to colour their surroundings. The houses on Cameron’s street were similarly if not identically constructed. Whatever real differences existed among them lay in the shades of pastel blue and pink and green the owners had chosen for their exterior walls.
Perkasa turned off the car engine and rolled down the windows. Ava could feel the heat start to encroach. In half an hour it would be like sitting in a steam room. She was about to ask him to turn on the air conditioning when she heard the faint voice of a muezzin.
“The call to salah, to fajr, the first prayer,” he said. “The neighbourhood will be coming to life in a few minutes.”
It took longer than a few minutes. In fact it was close to six o’clock, the sun now completely visible, the heat building, before there was any activity on the street. It looked as if the domestic staff were arriving. Twice Perkasa turned on the car and drove it to the end of the street, turned the corner, and idled there for a while so they wouldn’t be a constant presence near Cameron’s.
He was driving past the house, going back to their original watch location, when Cameron’s gate swung open. “Finally,” said Perkasa.
They parked and waited, both with their eyes locked on the gate. A short, dark man came out of the house and stood on the sidewalk. He looked up and down the street and then turned back towards the driveway. He reached for the gate and held it. The black Porsche backed out onto the street and stopped. The man went to the passenger-side window and said something to the driver. Then he waved and turned back towards the house, pulling the gate closed behind him.
Perkasa started the Nissan and reached for his cellphone. He didn’t begin to drive until the Porsche had cleared the corner at the end of the street. Then they followed, keeping it barely in view, confident about where it was headed. He called Waru as they left the development and trailed the Porsche onto the highway.
“We’ll need to call him again once Cameron exits,” he said.
The Porsche drove in the left-hand lane of the three-lane highway. Perkasa kept to the right one, making it impossible for Cameron to see them in his rear-view mirror. A sign for the road leading to Paradise Run came at them while Cameron was still in the left lane. The exit was on the right, and for a second Ava thought he was going to drive right past it, but at the last minute the Porsche careered across the highway and headed down the ramp.
“We’ve got him,” Perkasa said.
Not yet, Ava thought. It’s never that easy.
Perkasa talked to Waru again and then turned to Ava. “He says he’s seen only three cars since they’ve been there. There’s nothing visible in either direction right now.”
Ava looked behind the Nissan. The road ran straight and empty. Could they be so lucky?
Perkasa kept the Porsche in plain view now. Cameron was driving quickly, the car hugging the curves. When it reached the rise beyond which Waru waited, Perkasa gassed the Nissan. Ava counted. She got to ten before they crested the hill and saw the Porsche.
Waru had positioned his Nissan sideways across the right-hand lane. He was walking on the left side of the road towards the driver’s-side window of the Porsche, which was still closed. Perkasa stopped at the top of the rise, ready to move if needed.
“He’s carrying a radar gun,” Ava said, noticing the device in Waru’s right hand. “Nice touch.”
When Waru reached the Porsche, he looked in the window and then lightly rapped it. It slid down. Ava could see him speaking and shaking his head. Then he reached for the gun in the holster at his right hip.
“Move,” she said to Perkasa.
He drove t
he Nissan directly behind the Porsche to block any chance of retreat. The Targa’s door swung open just as they arrived. Ava lowered herself in her seat, not entirely trusting the tinted glass to do its job. “He’s out of the car,” Perkasa said.
She couldn’t help but look. Cameron was wearing tartan shorts, an untucked black golf shirt that hung loose around his belly, and a pair of cheap rubber flip-flops. He had his face close to Waru’s and he was yammering away. Ava couldn’t hear much of it, just enough to know that Cameron thought he was untouchable. The policeman remained calm until Cameron got too close, until his verbal abuse began to get shrill and he was showering Waru with a spray of spit. That’s when the policeman grabbed the Scot by both shoulders and spun him around. He tucked one hand into the waist of Cameron’s shorts, the other grabbed the collar of his shirt, and he slammed Cameron face down onto the hood of his car. The cuffs were on almost instantly.
Prayogo had left the other Nissan now, the roll of duct tape in his hand. When he reached the Porsche, Waru turned Cameron around and held him while his brother taped the banker’s eyes and mouth. The policeman quickly marched the Scot to the Nissan, its rear door already open. He bundled him inside, slammed the door, and then climbed into the driver’s seat. Prayogo was already at the wheel of the Porsche.
Waru turned the Nissan into the left lane and started up the hill. Prayogo followed. “Off we go,” Perkasa said.
Ava looked in the direction of the golf course. There was no one in sight. As they drove back over the hill, she saw one car approaching from a distance. It couldn’t have gone any better. “That was beautifully done,” she said.
“I told you they were good guys.”
They drove straight west, past the CitraLand exits, until the highway gave way to a two-lane road and countryside. The few houses they saw were set back from the road, most of them on stilts and with shutters rather than glass windows — no more than small square boxes, places to sleep and eat and stay dry in the rainy season. Waru turned off the paved road onto an unmarked dirt path that was full of potholes. The Nissans handled it easily, but she could see that the underside of the Porsche was taking a beating.
Waru’s house was a slightly larger version of the square boxes on stilts. It stood about twenty metres back from the road, the nearest neighbours about two hundred metres away in either direction. “This was a farm,” Perkasa said.
The lead Nissan parked in front of the house. Prayogo drove the Porsche to the rear. Waru waved at Perkasa to park alongside him and then walked towards the back of his vehicle.
“I’d like to see the house first,” Ava said quietly.
Perkasa spoke to Waru. He shrugged and led the way up six wooden steps to the front door. It was unlocked, and he opened it with one light twist of a knob. There were six rooms: three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living area. The living room had a wicker couch and chair with cushions that looked as if they had been bleached by the sun, a television, and a coffee table. The kitchen had a dark wooden table with six chairs.
“We’ll put him in the kitchen,” Ava said. “His wrists should be cuffed to the back of the chair and his ankles taped to the two front legs. Waru should move the table and the other chairs out of the way in case Cameron starts flailing about. I wouldn’t want him to do any damage to the furniture.” As Perkasa translated, Ava began to move the chairs to one side.
Prayogo had now joined them in the kitchen, carrying the picana and the transformer. “The transformer can go on the floor near the chair where we’ll seat Cameron,” she said.
The policeman and his brother left the house to get the Scot. Ava leaned back against the sink. “They don’t have to be here while I’m questioning him,” she said.
“I’ll give them the choice, if that’s okay.”
“Fine.”
She heard a noise from the front door and went to look. Cameron’s legs weren’t supporting him all that well, and the brothers were half carrying, half dragging him up the steps. He also seemed to be trying to talk through the tape. To Ava it sounded like he was saying, “I’ll pay, I’ll pay.” Yes, you will, she thought.
They sat him down roughly on a chair that was now situated by itself in the middle of the kitchen. As Waru adjusted the cuffs, Prayogo knelt and taped Cameron’s ankles. Ava expected him to strain, but he sat slumped, turning his head from side to side as if he was trying to sense where his abductors were. Whatever cockiness he possessed had disappeared.
“Leave him with me for a few minutes,” she said to Persaka.
Cameron’s body twitched and his neck stiffened. She knew he had heard her.
Perkasa spoke to the brothers, who nodded and turned to leave. “I’ll be outside when you need me,” he said to Ava. “The boys are going to drive over to Waru’s mother-in-law’s house. It’s only ten minutes away, so they can come back in a flash.”
She waited until the front door closed.
“Hi, Andy,” she said.
( 30 )
The house wasn’t air-conditioned, and although some of the windows were open there was hardly any air flow. Cameron was sweating badly. Ava didn’t know if it was because of fear or the heat. The sweat gathered at his hairline and on his brow and trickled around the tape on his eyes, coursing down his cheeks and settling around his collarbones. She looked down and saw moisture on his shins and the tops of his bare feet. She wondered if he had peed himself already, but there was no odour.
“Andy, this is Ava Lee, though I imagine you’ve figured that out already.”
He tried to speak but she reached out, grabbed his knee, and squeezed. “No, don’t say anything yet. You need to listen to me first.”
He nodded.
“Good. Now the first thing you need to understand is that this isn’t personal. I know that may be hard for you to believe, but it’s the truth,” she said as calmly, as softly as she could. “This is business, Andy. You are here because of the bank. I have clients in Canada, in Toronto, who lost more than thirty million dollars doing business with your bank branch there. So I’m here and you’re here because we need to talk about the bank and the branch and the way you conduct your affairs.
“That doesn’t mean that I’m not angry about what happened two nights ago, but you know what, Andy? I’m a big girl, and I’m prepared to put personal feelings aside as long as we can have an intelligent discussion about Bank Linno. Nod if you understand.”
He nodded, without conviction.
“Okay, that’s good. Now I’m going to start telling you about my clients and the fund they invested in, and the cretin who worked for your bank who made off with their money. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”
Cameron shook his head.
Ava moved away from him and began to walk in a wide circle around the chair. “The fund was called Emerald Lion and it was operated by a guy called Lam Van Dinh. Have you heard of it, or him?”
He shook his head again.
“Well, it wasn’t really a fund, was it. More like a bank account at Linno that was opened for Lam by Fred Purslow. You have heard of Purslow?”
There was slight hesitation and then a slight nod.
“The thing is, Purslow seems to have conned Lam into opening the account on the pretext that the money was going into a fund operated by your bank, a fund called Surabaya Fidelity Security. It paid a modest and steady rate of interest on the money until about six or seven months ago, when the payments stopped. Purslow seems to have left the bank and Toronto at the same time. Now, Lam was understandably upset and paid a visit to the branch, where he met with a man called Muljadi, who as far I know was the Canadian operations president, and another guy, named Rocca. They told Lam in reasonably quick order that they thought Purslow had scammed him and asked him to back off while the bank looked into it. They even paid him a month’s interest on the fund’s money to buy some time — as good as an admission of liability in my mind. What do you think of that? Is the bank liable?”
&nbs
p; Cameron shrugged.
“We can come back to that,” Ava said. “Let’s finish the story first. So a couple of weeks go by and Lam doesn’t hear from your guys. He’s about to take matters elsewhere when he is informed that Purslow and a friend of his have been killed in Costa Rica . . . rather nasty deaths at that. Panicked, Lam runs back to the bank and finds it closed. No one. Nothing. As he’s leaving the building, he’s picked up by a couple of thugs — hired by the bank, I’m presuming — who tell him that if he wants to end up like Purslow then he should keep pursuing the money. Lam is no hero, far from it. He leaves town too, although not to anywhere as exotic as Costa Rica.”
She paused and stood still behind Cameron. She saw him tense. “It’s only fair to tell you that I’ve made several assumptions about this mess. I believe, first of all, that it’s entirely possible Purslow orchestrated this fraud on his own and without the knowledge or consent of the bank. I believe that when he left the bank, he took the money with him, probably to Costa Rica. I believe that the bank found both him and the money, in no particular order, and had him killed. I believe that the bank then decided to treat the money as its own and to screw over Lam and my clients.”
Ava began circling Cameron. “Now, obviously I want the money returned. But before we get into the mechanics of how you’re going to make that happen, I want you to talk to me about Bank Linno. I’m curious — no, actually, more than curious — about how a backwater Indonesian bank managed to build such a large equity base in such a short period of time with a Scotsman running it. I’d like to know who owns the bank. I’d like to know why you opened a branch in Toronto, of all places, and how a bank from Surabaya thought it could compete and make money in New York and Rome and wherever else you are overseas.”
Cameron sat still. Ava knew she’d thrown a lot at him and it was time to back up. “Andy, I’m going to take the tape off your mouth. When I do, I’m going to start asking you specific questions and I expect you to start giving me specific answers. If it goes well, then you can take your Porsche and be on your way.” She reached from behind and ripped off the tape.
