The Scottish Banker of Surabaya - By Ian Hamilton Page 0,53

Suki not far from the hotel that we like.”

“Sounds fine.”

“How does that leave your day?” he asked.

Now where is this going? Ava thought. “Reasonably free.”

“Because Fay doesn’t have to work and she’s offered to take you sightseeing if you’re up to it.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“It isn’t like that at all. She’d love to do it.”

What else was there for her to do? Hang around the room and mope? “Then in that case I’m happy to accept her offer.”

“Wait a second,” Masterson said, his voice becoming muffled. “I just spoke with Fay. She’ll meet you in the hotel lobby at around ten.”

Ava checked her watch. It was just nine thirty. The Mastersons weren’t people for wasting time.

( 18 )

Ava hadn’t known what to expect in Fay Masterson, certainly not a near double to Amanda Yee. She was young, maybe in her mid-twenties, not quite five feet tall in her Puma runners, and rail-thin in a pair of tight jeans and a T-shirt with DIOR stitched in beadwork across the front. Her hair was cut into a bob, making her fine-featured face look slightly gaunt. Her dark brown eyes had thick lashes heavy with mascara, and her lips were generously glossed in bright red. She looked, Ava thought, at least partially Chinese.

Fay saw Ava first and waved to her as she came down the stairs. Masterson had obviously given his wife a description. The two women shook hands, gauging each other. Ava was in her training pants and a black T-shirt and wore no makeup. She must have passed initial inspection, because Fay gave her a quick, bright smile and said, “My car is outside.” Then she began to chat as if they were lifelong friends — another Amanda trait.

“Have you been to Surabaya before?” she asked as they walked out of the hotel.

“No.”

“Then forgive me for doing my tour-guide thing,” Fay said. “I took history in college and I’m proud of our city. It’s the second-largest city in Indonesia, with a metropolitan population that has to be six or seven million now, but it’s manageable, don’t you think? Not like Jakarta, with its horrible traffic and pollution. The name is more interesting too. Suro means ‘shark’ and baya means ‘crocodile.’ According to legend, the two animals battled here to see who would have dominance.”

“And who won?” Ava asked as they reached the car, an Audi TT.

“I have no idea,” Fay laughed.

“I have an Audi at home,” Ava said, lowering her head to climb into the sports car.

“What model?”

“An A6.”

“Ah,” Fay said, acknowledging a peer. “So today I thought we’d visit some museums, maybe lunch near Kalimas Harbour, and then go to the Arab quarter and see some of our beautiful mosques.”

“I’m completely in your hands.”

“About a month ago John had some visitors here from Boston and I took them on a tour. One of the sites was the Majapahit Hotel, but you don’t need to see that, do you.”

“It’s a great hotel.”

“Better than Raffles.”

“So everyone keeps telling me.”

Fay pulled away from the hotel and into light traffic. “The city was founded in the thirteenth century,” she said. “It was a sultanate originally, but then the Dutch came in the mid-1770s and stayed until the Japanese occupied it in 1942. Do you know much about colonial Asia?”

“My family is from Hong Kong.”

“There are big differences between the British and the Dutch. The British actually built institutions and infrastructure that were meant to last long after they were gone. The Dutch didn’t care about anything other than money. Everything they built in our country was designed for a single purpose: to maximize the outflow of goods and profits to Holland. I mean, when the British left India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, they also left behind legal, bureaucratic, and educational systems and some concept of parliamentary tradition. The Dutch were here for more than two hundred years and didn’t leave anything other than bad memories.”

Ava’s family had its own views on the British regime in Hong Kong, and they weren’t quite so rosy. She didn’t know enough about it, though, to start a debate. Instead she was struck by how much Fay reminded her of Amanda. “I’m sorry, I don’t meant to be rude, but I can’t help thinking that you have some Chinese blood in you,” she said.

“I do. My family has been in Java for more than three hundred years — the family name was Ho. There’s been a lot of intermarriage, but even until about fifty years ago Ho