The Princeling of Nanjing (29 page)

Lop rode with them from the hotel back to the house. He sat in the front, but his head was turned towards the back seat for the entire trip as Xu explained to him what he wanted him to do. Lop responded with an enthusiasm that, from anyone else, Ava would have considered over the top, but she was beginning to realize that this was his normal state.

“I’ll start making calls as soon as our defensive perimeter is set,” Lop said. “I know five or six senior officers who are fed up with this level of corruption. They’ll pass the word.”

“But make sure not to mention the Tsai family,” Xu said.

“I understand.”

“And what’s this about a defensive perimeter?” Ava asked.

“We’re going to have men posted around the broader neighbourhood. We don’t want to be caught off guard, and if there is any action, we want to be prepared for it,” Xu said.

“I see.”

“Don’t be alarmed. I’m not expecting them to do anything stupid, but it would be careless of us not to accept it as a possibility — however far-fetched.”

When they reached the alley, Ava saw that the fruit vendor was now accompanied by two other men. They sat on stools on either side of the cart. They didn’t look armed, but Ava assumed that weapons weren’t far away.

Lop got out of the car at the cart, and as the Mercedes crawled along the alley, Ava saw him talking to the men.

“I know he’s a bit manic,” Ava said, “but having him on our side does provide a sense of comfort.”

“I’ve been lucky to have him and Suen,” Xu said. “They’re both loyal to an almost irrational degree.”

“It takes a special kind of person to inspire that kind of loyalty.”

Xu glanced in her direction and smiled.

For once there was no sign of Auntie Grace when the car turned into the courtyard.

“Where’s Auntie?” Ava asked.

“This is her shopping day,” Xu said. “I’ll work from the kitchen until she comes back.”

“I’m going to my room.”

Ava closed the bedroom door and sat on the bed. The morning had rattled her and she had had to struggle to appear calm. There were just too many people involved and too many unknowns for her to feel that she had any kind of control. She took several deep breaths. What made the situation even more worrying was that the number of people was about to dramatically expand. What were the other options? None she could readily think of, and she didn’t have the time to ponder. She retrieved her phone and called May Ling.

Her friend answered at once. “Where are you and what’s going on? I’ve been worried,” May said.

“Are you still in Wuhan?”

“Yes.”

“Are you free to talk?”

“I’m alone in the office.”

“Good. I need some help. Do you have you time available in the next hour or two?”

“What’s going on?” May said, her voice rising.

“Things have been getting more complicated with the Tsai family.”

“How is that possible?”

Ava sighed and lay on the bed. “I should have listened to you. I should have stayed away from them. I think if I had, it’s quite possible that Xu and the Tsais would have worked out a compromise.”

“Why can’t they still do that?”

“I just left a meeting that Xu and I had with Tsai Men and his father.”

“The Governor?”

“Himself.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, and he is every bit as smart and paranoid and menacing as you said. I haven’t met many people who scare me, and he did.”

“Is that why they met with you, to frighten you?”

“No, the Governor wanted to tell me and Xu in person that he knew I was the one who was looking into his business affairs. He doesn’t have any real facts, of course, but he believes it all the same, and he wasn’t about to be persuaded otherwise. He made it clear that it has to stop at once or there will be consequences.”

May remained quiet.

“I’m waiting,” Ava said.

“For what?”

“For you to say, ‘I told you so.’”

“Just stop pestering the lion,” May said, ignoring Ava’s invitation. “If that’s what he wants, do it.”

“It’s too late.”

“Why?”

“The
Wall Street Tribune
is going to publish a story tonight that details the Tsai empire and says God knows what about how he built it. The
Economic Herald
won’t be far behind, except they’re going to highlight Dennis Calhoun and his corrupt partnership with the family. Tsai Lian is going to go absolutely nuts.”

“That prospect hasn’t bothered you up to now.”

“Yes, but I thought he wouldn’t be able to identify the source of the stories. Now I know he will. He may have no real proof, but that’s not going to matter. It will fall on me and Xu.”

“Can you get the papers to back off?”

“I’ve been the one urging them to go forward and providing them with nearly all of their information. And I’ve involved Brenda Burgess, Richard Bowlby, Vanessa Ogg, and a whole bunch of other people, including Vincent Yin, the MD at Mega Metals. I’ve actually convinced Yin to pack in his job and take off for England,” Ava said. “I can’t ask the papers not to run the stories without all those people finding out about it. It would look like I’d been using them for my own selfish purposes, and if the papers said no and ran the stories anyway, I’d look even worse.”

“This is complicated,” May said.

“Well, we have to come up with a plan, and that’s why I need your help.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Given that the stories are going to run regardless of what we do, our feeling is that we need to make sure they reach the widest and most influential audience possible. If we can create enough of a stink about the family and the whole issue of corruption at the most senior levels of government in China, we think we might be able to paralyze the Tsais for at least a while.”

“Not everyone reads English-language newspapers, and even if they do, they might discount what they read.”

“We want to try to make sure they do read the papers.”

“And you say you have a plan?”

“I’m at Xu’s house. He’s in another room making phone calls. His man Lop, the ex–Special Forces officer, has flown in from Hong Kong and is a few houses away. Both of them are making calls to every person of influence they know here and in other parts of China, particularly Beijing. They’re telling everyone that two prominent English-language newspapers are about to publish stories that name a senior Chinese government official as the most corrupt and wealthiest public servant in the world. They’re going to say they don’t know who’s going to be identified, but they thought they should give their friends some advance warning, just in case they might have some connection to any official they think could be a candidate.”

“That’s very clever,” May said with a chuckle.

“May!”

“No, I mean it. It is clever. I’m quite sure some of the people they call will think it could be them. I’m more sure that most of them can think of someone else who they’re connected to.”

“Our objective is to get them talking among themselves and desperate to read the newspapers.”

“You’re also going to cause a lot of people a lot of anxiety.”

“We’re more interested in getting them to focus on the Tsai family story when it breaks.”

“Oh, they will. Believe me, they will.”

“So, could you make some phone calls as well?”

“It will be a pleasure. There are more than a few of our friends and business acquaintances who I don’t mind making uncomfortable for a while.”

“Get back to me later in the day?”

“Of course.”

“I can hardly wait to put this behind me.”

“And Amanda and the girls can hardly wait to have you back in the loop again.”

“I feel bad that I’ve been so distracted.”

“There’s no reason to feel that way — and besides, it’s forced them to make their own decisions. I have to say they’ve been doing a very good job.”

“I love them all,” Ava said.

“I feel the same way. Now let me make some calls.”

Ava ended the call and checked the time again. It was almost six a.m. in England.
If Michael Dillman isn’t awake and out of bed, he should be
, she thought as she pressed his number. It rang five times and went to voicemail.

“This is Ava Lee. Please call me as soon as you can. It’s urgent,” she said.

She heard Xu’s voice through the door. The words were muffled, although she could make out “corrupt” more than once. His voice level was rising and falling. She guessed he was walking back and forth as he made his calls.

She checked the emails on her phone. There was a multitude from the girls and May, one was from Carrie Song, and the most recent was from Maria. She debated opening them and then decided against it. Her mind was too preoccupied. She reached into her suitcase and took out a clean T-shirt and her Adidas track pants. As she slipped the T-shirt over her head, the phone rang. She almost jumped at it.

“This is Michael Dillman.”

“Thanks for calling me back so promptly.”

“What’s so urgent?”

“Vincent Yin is on a plane headed to London. We’ve decided that it might be better for all concerned if you contact Dennis Calhoun right away.”

“Does that mean you’re prepared to let us publish when we’re ready?”

“It does, and in fact it would please us if you could publish today — I mean, today in your time zone.”

“I have to ask, what caused this change in attitude?”

“Vincent is safe now and that was our main worry. In hindsight, there is really no reason to wait until he lands.”

“I see. Well, I’ll have to talk to Tamara, but I can’t imagine she’ll object.”

“There are two other things you might want to mention to her.”

“I’m listening.”

“Vincent is travelling with a man named Suen, who works for a colleague of mine. You might want to arrange to meet the two of them at Heathrow. Vincent could probably use some public relations advice that Suen isn’t qualified to give. Since you’re breaking the story in the U.K., I thought you might want to have at least short-term control over the people that Vincent will be talking to there.”

“Will you send me their flight number?”

“I will as soon as I hang up, and I’ll tell my colleague to text Suen and let him know what’s going on.”

“What else?”

“The
Wall Street Tribune
is going to publish its story. By this evening in London, you should be able to see it online, and by tomorrow morning it will be in print. I thought you should know. I don’t want you to think that we’ve given preferential treatment to anyone. They aren’t going to highlight the Calhoun connection, but instead will focus on the general theme of corruption at the highest levels of government in China. It also appears that some American laws were broken as well as British ones. They’ve identified and will name at least one U.S. corporation that has bribed its way through the Tsai family into a very profitable business.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“I try.”

“Okay, I’ll call Tamara in a few minutes. I’m quite sure she’ll want us to go ahead at full speed. I have the entire story written, except for Calhoun’s comments,” he said. “And as a caveat, I do have to say that when the story is published might depend on what Dennis Calhoun has to say. We can’t assume he doesn’t have a reasonable explanation for what has transpired, and that will give us more work to do.”

“What kind of explanation could he have?”

“He might say that Vincent Yin concocted the entire scheme with the Tsai family.”

“Meaning that Calhoun didn’t understand a single word that was said in the meetings, and Yin interpreted everything to suit his own purposes?”

“Something like that.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“Of course I don’t, not for a second, and neither does Tamara, but our lawyer raised the possibility — however far-fetched — and we can’t ignore it. We do have to expect Calhoun to do some equivocating. That is just one example.”

“Who will be the person to contact Calhoun?”

“Me.”

“Good, and when will that be?”

“After I talk to Tamara. We have a list of questions we prepared yesterday. I’m ready to go.”

“You’re not mentioning Yin, are you?”

“Not up front. Our plan is to refer to ‘a reliable source.’ If Calhoun gets sticky, though, I won’t have any choice. Besides, Yin’s name is going to come out sooner or later.”

“I understand, and so does Vincent. I just think it would be nice to get him landed and in a hotel before that happens.”

“Given that you’ve given us exclusive access to him, I think you can accept that those would be our wishes as well.”

“Well, then, Michael, go to it, and good hunting. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume everything is going as planned.”

“I will phone to let you know when we intend to publish.”

Ava ended the call and sat still for a moment before flopping back onto the bed. Her conversation with Dillman had on the surface gone well enough, but all she could think of was his comment about the
Herald
’s lawyer. Calhoun was a prominent Conservative. Maybe the lawyer was a Tory supporter. Maybe he was looking for a way to muddy the waters. Maybe he was trying to find an out for Calhoun.

Stop fixating
, she told herself.
Stop being so damn negative
. They had facts and they had corroboration. Nothing was going to go wrong.

When Ava emerged from the bedroom, Auntie Grace was in the kitchen stirring something on the stove. There was no sign of Xu.

“Did you nap?” Auntie Grace asked.

“I think I must have. One minute my mind was doing somersaults and the next minute I nodded off. I can hardly believe it was possible after the good night’s sleep I had.”

“It’s good you can sleep. It helps deal with stress. Xu can’t do that.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s gone to talk to Lop, and then he has a meeting with one of the people he was talking to on the phone.”

“Did he say when he’d be back?”

“An hour or two, but that was over an hour ago, so he could be home anytime.”

Ava went to the kitchen cupboard and took out a cup. A jar of Nescafé instant coffee sat next to the hot water Thermos. She put two large teaspoons of coffee into the cup and filled it with water.

She sat at the kitchen table, holding the cup between her palms and wondering if Dillman had confronted Dennis Calhoun yet. The nap hadn’t helped her get rid of the feeling that Calhoun wasn’t going to be easy to deal with. She looked at her phone to see if she’d missed any calls while she slept. There were none, and she couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

“You look worried,” Auntie Grace said.

“I am. I hate it when I have to depend on other people.”

Auntie Grace started to speak, but Ava’s phone rang and both women were startled by it.

“Hello,” Ava said.

“Are you okay?” May said.

“Why?”

“You sound distant.”

“I just woke up from a nap.”

“Well, I have some news that might wake you up a bit more,” May said. “The Lane Crawford deal closed ten minutes ago. Three looks times four pieces. Hong Kong and the New Territories are the only exclusive markets. We had to give them those markets for a year but it was worth it. The girls and Clark are ecstatic.”

“That’s fantastic.”

“It sets us up for business in Asia, and when we’ve got that base established, then look out, world. Gillian and Chi-Tze are already talking about doing one of the fashion weeks next year, in New York, London, Milan, or Paris.”

“It sure beats doing business on Negros Island in the Philippines, or a hundred other backwaters I’ve worked.”

“Or in Wuhan, but don’t ever tell Changxing I said that.”

“Congratulate the girls for me.”

“Congratulate them yourself, once you dig yourself out of the hole the Tsai family has put you in,” May said.

“What hole? Have you heard something new?” Ava said.

“Well, that made you perk up.”

“It’s weighing on me, and as happy as I am about Lane Crawford, the Tsais are all I’m really thinking about right now.”

“No, I haven’t heard anything, but I made those phone calls you wanted me to make and I found the reaction fascinating,” May said. “No one, and I mean no one, discounted the idea that someone might be that corrupt. Some of them acted like they had nothing to worry about but were intensely curious all the same. Others were more than curious. I was bombarded with questions about which newspapers, what kind of timing, and what names I’d heard mentioned. I didn’t imagine that quite so many of them would feel they had something that large to hide.”

“So the pot has been well stirred?”

“Absolutely, and the people I called are connected. You can be sure they’re phoning their friends and contacts right now. This will spread. My only concern is that the Tsai family will get wind of it.”

“Xu expressed the same concern, but we’re in this too deep to back off,” Ava said.

“What kind of reaction did Xu and Lop get from the people they called?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t imagine them getting anything but the same.”

“If they did, then hopefully the stage is set to make life uncomfortable for the Tsais.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Thanks for making the calls, May, and for lifting my spirits. I’ll be in touch when I hear more.”

Ava checked the time. She still had hours to wait until the
Tribune
story broke, and maybe even longer before Dillman got back to her about Calhoun. She had time to kill, and her energy level was so high she knew that just sitting around wasn’t an option. She headed for the bedroom and took her running gear from the bag. When she walked back into the living room, Auntie Grace looked at her in surprise.

“I don’t think you should be straying too far from the house,” Auntie said.

“I’ll run in the alley. It’s long enough that I can work up a sweat.”

The men in the courtyard stood up when she emerged from the house. The gate was closed and they made no move to open it when Ava walked towards them.

“Open the gate, please,” she said. “I’m going to stay in the alley.”

They still seemed doubtful, and Ava began to get impatient.

“Don’t go past the fruit wagons,” one finally said.

“I promise.”

He swung the gate open and she stepped into the alley. It was quiet. The only sign of life was at the fruit carts at either end, each with two other men.

As she started to run towards one end, the men seemed to brace themselves as if they might have to intercept her. She waved at them when she drew near, stopped just short, turned, and sprinted towards the other end, where she did the same thing. By her fourth lap, they had resumed their normal position and were generally ignoring her.

She had no specific idea how long she ran, but she guessed that the alley was 300 metres long and she had done thirty laps, about nine kilometres. The sky was overcast, but it was warm and muggy and she very quickly worked up a sweat. By the time she finished, she was dripping, the sweat washing away some of the tension she’d been carrying.

There was no sign of Auntie Grace when Ava went back into the house. In the cool interior of the kitchen, she drank two large glasses of cold water and then wrapped a towel around her shoulders to absorb the sweat. She knew that it would take at least fifteen minutes for her to cool down sufficiently to be able to shower. She sat at the kitchen table and waited, her mind drawn to London and New York, to Sam Curry and Michael Dillman.

As Ava left the kitchen to go to the bathroom, Auntie Grace was coming out of her own bedroom. “It was my turn to nap,” she said.

“Did you hear from Xu?”

“Not yet, but that’s not unusual. He’s not a man who’s married to time when business is concerned.”

“I’m going to shower.”

“He could be back by the time you’re finished,” she said.

Ava adjusted the shower head to its most powerful setting, turned the water temperature as high as she could bear, and stepped into the stall. For ten minutes she let the water batter her, and as it did, her thoughts, for the first time that entire day, drifted away from the Tsai family. When she finished, she found that the combination of the run and the shower had actually relaxed her.

She took her time drying her hair and then muddled around with clothes before predictably putting on a T-shirt and her Adidas pants. She checked her phone and computer and saw nothing indicating that anything had changed. With a sigh, she wandered into the kitchen to make another coffee.

Auntie Grace was working at the sink, but stopped when she saw Ava. “He’s back,” she said. “He’s sitting by the fish pond.”

Ava walked into the courtyard with a mug of coffee in her hand. Xu was sitting in a wooden chair, his cigarette pack and lighter resting on a small table next to him. It was becoming a familiar scene to her.

“Come and sit,” he said, rising to unfold another chair that was leaning against a brick wall near the pond.

“How was your afternoon?” she asked.

“Less strenuous than yours, evidently. The men aren’t accustomed to seeing someone running up and down the alley.”

“I needed to work off some tension. I’m not good at waiting.”

“There are a lot of people in this city, in this province, and in Beijing who are doing some anxious waiting themselves right now.”

“Your phone calls went well?”

“It was almost ridiculously easy to get some of them wound up.”

“May had the same kind of success.”

“Lop too, but in his case the reaction was a bit different.”

“How so?”

“The people he spoke to weren’t that worried about themselves. They were keen, though, to get a name.”

“To go after?”

“You would like to think so, but Lop says that isn’t necessarily the case. If the person or persons named are in a position to benefit the military or are currently allies of the military, they might move to defend them rather than prosecute them.”

“Does he think that Tsai Lian has that kind of influence?”

“No, but that’s only a guess on his part.”

“Oh,” Ava said.

“There’s no reason to be disappointed,” Xu said. “We’ve all done what we can. We’ve supplied the ammunition — now it’s up to the newspapers to load the guns, and the people we’ve spoken to to fire them.”

“There has to be something else we can do,” Ava said.

Xu lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew the smoke in the direction of the gate. As he did, one of the guards took a step forward and pressed a bud into his ear. He listened intently for a few seconds and then trotted towards Ava and Xu.

“There are some unmarked military vehicles circling the neighbourhood,” he said.

“Close to us?” Xu said.

“Not yet.”

“Does Lop know?”

“He’s checking them out.”

“Does it appear they’re headed in any specific direction?”

“No, sir.”

“Keep me posted,” Xu said, and then turned to Ava. “This isn’t that unusual.”

“How do you know they’re military if they’re unmarked?”

“They drive ordinary Jeeps and Range Rovers and they don’t all wear uniforms, but they use a series of licence plates that is reserved for them.”

“That’s careless.”

“Not many people know.”

“How do you?”

“We’ve hired them from time to time.”

“Lop was a former colleague of theirs?”

“Once or twice removed, but they’re still part of the same band of brothers. That said, they don’t take orders from him anymore.”

“That isn’t comforting.”

“I’m not particularly worried.”

“Oh god, I just want —” Ava began, but was cut off by her phone.

“This is Michael Dillman,” the now familiar voice said.

“I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon,” she said.

“I thought you’d like to know that I had a talk with Dennis Calhoun, and that Tamara and our lawyer just got off the phone with his lawyer.”

“I see,” Ava said, not pleased with his neutral tone.

“It has been a most eventful couple of hours.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You sound almost alarmed,” Dillman said.

“I’ve been worried about your caveat. I kept thinking that Calhoun would throw smoke and mirrors at you and that your lawyer would buy in to some of it.”

“If I had given Calhoun a chance to dance around the subject, he might have. But I didn’t.”

“So it went well?” Ava said, rising from the chair.

“It went wonderfully well,” Dillman said.

Ava smiled, clenched a fist, and punched it in the air. Xu looked up at her, a grin now splitting his face.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

“I reached him at his home. He was happy enough to take my call, and when I said I wanted to talk about doing business in China, he was immediately garrulous. I let him run on for a bit and then mentioned that what I really wanted to discuss was Mega Metals’ connections to senior levels of the Jiangsu provincial government. He hemmed and hawed and made some general meaningless remark about how it was important for any business to maintain some kind of relationship with government authorities in China,” Dillman said. “That’s when I said I was referring to a relationship that appeared to be corrupt.”

“You were that direct?”

“Yes. Tamara saw no reason for us to be coy.”

“How did he react?”

“He said he had no idea what I was talking about, so I told him.”

“Specifically?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Our talk went straight downhill. I listened to several minutes of blustery denials mixed in with libel threats. When I didn’t back down, he hung up on me.”

“That’s it? He hung up on you?”

“Yes.”

“So where does that leave things?”

“Normally we would have waited and then gone back to give him another chance to respond, but he — or rather his lawyer — decided to get aggressive. The lawyer put in a call to us half an hour after I’d talked to Calhoun, and our lawyer and Tamara took it. Without even asking what information we had or how we came to have it, he went directly into attack mode. He threatened to sue the paper, the company that owns the paper, and every one of us individually. That was a huge mistake. Tamara responds to facts and reasoned logic. You don’t ever threaten or try to bully her. As soon as she hung up the phone, she said, ‘That story runs today.’”

“Today?”

“Front page, centre.”

“That’s just great.”

“Tamara is working with some other editors on the headline. They’re trying for something dramatic.”

“Please thank her for me.”

“I will.”

“Michael, one last thing. The
Tribune
story is going to break online before it appears in print. Is your paper going to use the same approach?”

“Indeed it is, and with any luck the story should be up in a few hours.”