The Scottish Banker of Surabaya - By Ian Hamilton Page 0,43
you are staying.”
“Yes, Uncle, as soon as I know,” she said, wondering why he seemed so cautious. “I’ll probably make the booking tonight, and if I do I’ll forward you the details. In the meantime, could you email me the phone numbers and any other contact information you have on Chung?”
“Better to call him Perkasa. He does not know that I know his Chinese name.”
“Huh?”
“It is a little complicated to explain.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I will send you the information you want, as well as everything he told me about the bank and Cameron.”
Ava hung up and turned on her computer. Gail had already replied. The quickest route to Surabaya was through Hong Kong. She could take a morning flight there, have lunch with Uncle, and then catch a Cathay Pacific flight at three fifty-five that would get her into Surabaya at seven thirty-five.
Gail recommended the Majapahit Hotel, in the centre of the city. Built in 1910 and with only 143 rooms, it was smaller and older than most of the hotels Ava stayed at. But it was a five-star hotel, built by the same family that owned Raffles in Singapore. Better than Raffles evidently, Gail wrote.
Book the flight through Hong Kong for tomorrow, and the hotel, Ava wrote back. She picked up her cellphone and dialled Uncle’s number.
“I was sitting at the computer trying to send you that information,” he said.
“I hope you wiped the dust off it first,” she said.
“I use it more often now, not that I am any faster.”
“I’ve just booked my flight to Surabaya,” she said. “I’m coming through Hong Kong. I’ll land around ten thirty and don’t take off again until three thirty, so we might be able to squeeze in a lunch. And I’m staying at the Hotel Majapahit.”
“I will let Perkasa know,” Uncle said. “Are you sure you do not want him now?”
“No, let him stay in Jakarta. If I need him he’s only a few hours away,” Ava said. She didn’t like the thought of having someone hanging around. It added a pressure, however slight, that she didn’t need.
“All right.”
“And tomorrow you don’t have to come to the airport to collect me. Let’s have dim sum at Man Wah at the Mandarin. I’ll meet you there.”
“I will wait in the lobby.”
“Perfect. Till then,” she said, and ended the call.
She went to the computer again. Waiting for Uncle’s email to come through, she scrolled through the messages in her inbox. May Ling had written her nightly correspondence, and Ava read it with feelings that were more mixed than ever. May wrote that she was putting together a business plan she hoped would entice Ava to get on board. She was going to need more time to finish it, and it was the type of thing she wanted to discuss in person. Maybe when we’re together in Hong Kong for Amanda’s wedding, we could find the time, May wrote.
That’s fine with me, Ava replied, not at all surprised that May Ling had already been invited to the wedding. Amanda knew whose bread should be buttered first.
She was beginning to feel tired again, and she was considering turning off her cellphone and getting into bed when the phone rang. It was Johnny Yan.
“Hey, what do you have?” she said.
“And hello to you too.”
“Sorry, I don’t mean to be abrupt. I’m just tired.”
“No problem, I’m used to it,” Yan said with a laugh. “I spoke with Henry. He was really curious about why I was asking him about that bank.”
“Really? So he knows something about it?”
“Yeah, it turns out that he knows Dominic Rocca. They were in the Commonwealth internship program together and then they sort of kept in touch, even though Rocca went to one of the other Canadian banks before he surfaced at Bank Linno.”
“That’s convenient.”
“According to Henry, this bank had narrow interests. It was primarily a lender and it seemed to specialize in real estate — condos, shopping centres, smaller office complexes.”
“My man tells me he had an account there, so it had to offer other services,” Ava said.
“Yeah, but on a strictly limited basis, to priority customers.”
“So what did Rocca do at the bank?”
“Managed a lot of the real estate business, evidently. He bragged to Henry that in some years he put as much money into the Toronto market as some of the major banks.”
“Just Toronto?”
“Yeah, that was the strange part — just Toronto. In the city proper and just northwest of it, around Woodbridge, Vaughan, Kleinburg, Maple.”