The Water Rat of Wanchai (32 page)

They left Wickham’s Cay and drove into town. In daylight it was at least as pretty as it had been at night, clean and compact, with well-paved narrow streets with actual sidewalks and sections of picket fencing. The town was a mix of British colonial and Caribbean architecture, all on a scale that suited a territory of about fifty small islands and cays with a population of around twenty thousand. Davey kept up a laconic running commentary as they went. He pointed out the two-storey Legislative Council building, with its ground floor fronted by five arches and the second by a balcony that ran its length. “The court is on top,” he said.

Ava listened, none of it really registering. It was nice not to be in Georgetown, but that wasn’t going to help her with the bank.

Fyfe Street was in the middle of town, the bank housed in Simon House, a four-storey powder blue stucco commercial building. The street was predictably narrow, the sidewalk meagre. Davey drove the car onto the sidewalk and parked it so close to a wall that Ava doubted he could open his door. But then, he didn’t have to leave the car. She looked at her watch. It was five minutes to ten. “I have no idea how long this is going to take,” she said to Robbins.

“We’re not going anywhere,” he said.

The bank was only one of a large number of tenants in the building. On the outside wall, on both sides of a white double door with elaborate brass handles, were lists of the occupants. There were two signs in brass, Barrett’s and an insurance company. The insurer had the third floor to itself and Barrett’s had the fourth. The other businesses, about twenty of them, each had a white-painted wooden sign about the width of a sheet of paper. They all seemed to be involved in offshore registration, providing a legal address and a cubbyhole for mail for God knows how many firms.

Ava stepped through the door into a small lobby with corridors running off on either side. There was an open elevator that looked as if it had been built in the 1950s. She got in, hit the button for the fourth floor, and then waited for the door to close. As the elevator creaked its way upward she realized it wasn’t air-conditioned; she felt sweat beading on her forehead. She swore as she wiped at it, not wanting to look nervous.

The door opened onto a reception area that had two red leather couches along the wall to the left and a coffee table stacked with magazines. The wall on the right had pictures of London: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London. Between the walls there had to be ten metres of Persian carpet. Straight ahead, also about ten metres away, a young woman sat behind a massive mahogany desk that was bare except for a phone and a magazine she was leafing through. Behind her, a wood-panelled wall ran from floor to ceiling. The Barrett’s logo — cast in bronze — occupied its centre; it was at least a metre across and two metres high. Behind and to either side of the desk, two steel-plated doors, painted beige to blend with the walls, barred any further entrance into the bank’s premises.

There was no one else in the room. There wasn’t a sound save for the woman turning the page of her magazine.

It gives the right impression for a private bank
, Ava thought. Spacious, unpretentious, elegant in a subtle and solid kind of way, certainly quiet, and no hurly-burly, nothing screaming at you to take out a car loan or refinance your mortgage. It looked like the kind of place where you’d have to know someone before becoming a customer, the kind of place that knew how to keep secrets.

The woman looked up from her magazine and Ava saw that it was
People.
The Economist
would have been more appropriate, she thought. “Hello, my name is Ava Lee. I have an appointment with Mr. Bates.”

The woman smiled. “Mr. Bates is expecting you. Actually, you and a Mr. Seto.”

Not many drop-ins here
, Ava guessed. “Mr. Seto is indisposed. I’m here by myself.”

“I’ll let Mr. Bates know. I’ll be back in a minute.”

The woman left the desk and walked to the door on the left. She punched in a six-digit security code, turned, and disappeared.

Ava looked through the magazines on the coffee table and found an
Economist
as well as a week-old copy of the
Financial Times
. She was debating which one to read when the beige door opened and the woman reappeared. “Could you follow me, please,” she said.

Ava trailed her down a hallway lined with closed doors. At the end, standing in an open doorway, was a tall, slim young man who bore a remarkable resemblance to the actor Jude Law.
That can’t be Bates
, Ava thought. The man managing the bank’s interests in the world’s largest offshore tax haven had to be more senior, tried, tested. Ava had the feeling she was being sloughed off. A ripple of panic danced in her stomach.

“Hello, I’m Jeremy Bates. So pleased to meet you,” he said.

Ava took his extended hand, assessing his off-white monogrammed shirt, blue and yellow Ferragamo silk tie, slate grey light wool tailored slacks with their sharp, straight crease, and glistening black lace-up shoes
. Those shoes are handmade
, Ava thought,
and Bates is no working-class boy.

He was just over six feet, and as he looked down Ava saw that he was eyeing her just as closely. She gave him her shyest smile and said, “Thank you so much for seeing me.”

“I was expecting Mr. Seto as well,” he said, stepping aside and motioning for her to come into his office.

“He is terribly ill,” she said.

“We’ll sit at my conference table,” said Bates. “Nothing serious with him, I trust?”

“Food poisoning. We ate a hurried meal before getting on the plane yesterday and something did not sit right with him. He’s been either in his bed or in the bathroom since we arrived, and either running a fever or experiencing chills.”

“So he’s here in Road Town?”

“Oh, yes, just not mobile.”

She sat, her eyes wandering around the office. It was massive, as large as the reception area, designed to impress. More mahogany in the desk and credenza, another Persian rug spread over wooden floors. A high-backed, heavily padded green leather chair sat behind the desk, with two smaller ones in front of it. There were three picture windows on the back wall and the side walls were lined with bookcases filled with what looked like company minute books. Then her eye caught something a bit more modern. In the upper right-hand corner, where ceiling met wall, she saw a tiny camera. She had no doubt that every meeting in this room was recorded.

“My business card,” he said, passing it to her.

“Thank you,” she said, noting his title: DIRECTOR
,
PRIVATE
BANKING
,
BRITISH
VIRGIN
ISLANDS
.

“Now, I have tea, coffee, and water. Do you have a preference?”

“Oh, nothing, thank you,” she said, finding herself still taken aback by his youth and good looks. His hair was dark blond, short, receding at the temples. He had brilliant blue eyes set a bit far apart, and his nose was long and slender.

“Fine,” he said, pouring himself a glass of water. “Now tell me, Ms. Lee, in what capacity are you affiliated with Mr. Seto?”

She took her business card from the Chanel bag and held it at two corners as she presented it to Bates. “Our firm is the accountant of record for Dynamic Financial Services. Dynamic finances purchase orders and letters of credit and generally facilitates trade among Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America. One of Mr. Seto’s companies, Seafood Partners, has used Dynamic’s services extensively over the past six months and the principals have developed a close working relationship. About two months ago, Mr. Seto decided to take an equity position in a scallop and shrimp plant in Yantai, on the northern coast of the Yellow Sea. He used Dynamic to broker the deal, and now we’re getting ready to close.”

Bates looked at her business card and then back at Ava. She sat tall, Havergal style, her breasts thrust ever so slightly forward. “That all seems very interesting,” he said, words she knew meant nothing.

“Well, it’s never easy dealing with the Chinese,” she said. “Dynamic, though, has extensive experience in that area. They always try, for example, to negotiate terms that leave the investors with exit options in case of problems. Quite obviously, they have contacts inside China that make this possible, contacts they have nurtured over a great many years. The fees they charge for brokering contracts like this, for being the stable bridge between the two parties, are exceedingly reasonable given the level of protection they offer.”

He had a pen, a notepad, and a closed file in front of him. He didn’t write a single word as she spoke. “Our bank has a presence in Asia, of course, and I have heard how difficult it is to do business there,” he said.

“It can be incredibly frustrating,” Ava said. “We represented an American firm one time that was negotiating a contract in Shanghai. It dragged on and on for months, and every time they thought the deal was done, some new issue would emerge. Finally they thought everything had been put to bed and were told by the Chinese to bring their senior people to Shanghai for a signing ceremony. A week later their CEO flew into Hong Kong from New York to catch a flight to Shanghai. When he got to Hong Kong, he was met at the airport by his local staff. They had just received a fax from the Chinese company signed by someone none of them had met or even heard of. The fax advised them not to bother coming to Shanghai — the deal was dead. The Americans tried phoning, faxing, and emailing everyone they had met during the course of the previous months. No one would take their calls or respond to any of their communications.

“Dynamic made some phone calls for me and found out that the nephew of the Shanghai mayor had brought a German firm to the table the week before. All those months of work, all the complicated negotiations, all
the money expended — it all went down the drain on the
strength of a handshake between the nephew and
the Germans.”

“What a story,” Bates said. “You know, if you don’t mind me saying, you seem very young to have this level of experience and responsibility.”

“I was thinking exactly the same thing about you,” she said. “I was expecting to meet some old banker in a tweed suit.”

“A tweed suit wouldn’t do in this climate, and actually I rarely wear a jacket of any kind,” he said, smiling. “As for my age . . . well, Barrett’s is very aggressive when it comes to recruiting and very progressive in putting younger staff in positions that place demands on their learning curve. I’ve just turned thirty-eight and this is my second foreign posting. I was second-in-command of our Paris office before this.”

“I had put you as even younger.”

“Thank you, I guess, though that’s not always good in this business. I get clients coming in here who keep insisting that they want to talk to my boss.”

“I get the same thing,” Ava said, shaking her head. “I’m in my early thirties and still get treated as if I graduated from university last year.”

“I can’t say I’m completely surprised. I mean, you do look younger than thirty.”

“Chinese genes.”

“For someone who is Chinese, your English is remarkably good,” he said, and then caught himself. “I didn’t mean that to sound condescending.”

“I was raised and educated in Canada.”

“I love Canada,” he said, leaning towards her. “I have a brother living in Montreal and a sister in Vancouver.”

“I love it too, but for work purposes I didn’t have much choice but to go back to Hong Kong.”

“Now, Mr. Seto . . . He lives where exactly?”

“He has a residence in Seattle and another in Hong Kong, and of course he has a home in Guyana.”

“Yes, we’ve most often dealt with him from Guyana.”

Ava didn’t want to go much further down that path. She opened her Chanel purse. It was time to raise the ante. “Here is the banking information for Dynamic,” she said, sliding a sheet of paper to Bates. “You already have their name and address. These are the bank’s particulars, including the branch address and the IBN and SWIFT numbers. The account number is at the bottom.”

“Mr. Seto wrote that he wanted to send a wire.”

“Yes.”

“For how much?”

“One for five million, and a second wire for two million.”

“Two wires?”

“Yes, the two million is to be sent to the holding company of the scallop plant as a deposit. Here is their data,” Ava said, passing over Uncle’s banking information. “The five goes to Dynamic. They’ll hold it in escrow until the deal closes, and that hopefully will be within the next twenty-four hours.”

“Seven million total, then?”

Could that be his only question? He had no concerns about the separate wires? “Yes, seven million.”

He opened his file. She saw copies of the emails she had sent from Seto’s address on top. They looked bona fide, even to her. “There is sufficient money in the account,” he said.

“I assume you’ll prepare two wire transfer drafts for Jackson’s signature?”

He picked up the two pieces of paper she had given him and put them in his file folder. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll get them started right away.”

Ava hesitated. He hadn’t mentioned the passport requirement or the need to present other ID. She thought about letting it pass and then just as quickly decided not to. Bates might not be entirely up to date with the account safeguards, but someone would be sure to flag them. It was better for her to be proactive, to appear as transparent as possible. She needed all the trust she could generate.

“Excuse me, Mr. Bates, I don’t mean to slow things down, but Jackson did mention that the bank normally requires him to present his passport and other forms of ID, and to sign and date copies of them. I brought the originals with me just in case you needed them.” She reached into her purse and removed Seto’s American passport, Hong Kong ID card, driver’s licence, and credit cards. She spread them in front of Bates. “Take whatever you need.”

He nodded. “Yes, thanks for reminding me. Marilyn usually handles this kind of detail. I’ll take everything to her and she can copy whatever she wants. She’ll be preparing the wire transfer drafts as well.”