“I don’t know yet,” Ava said. “Tell me, Song, how much noise does that truck make? I mean, if you have to spend a few minutes manoeuvring it into place?”
“It’s a truck,” Song said.
“And you’re outside in the middle of nowhere, with no other sounds,” Geng added.
“Shit,” Ava said. “Well, I’m going to have to think about this.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Song said. “I’ll do whatever you decide.”
“Thanks,” Ava said. “Now, do you want to go up to the peak?”
“I don’t need to. I’ve seen everything I need to see,” said Song.
“Okay, we’ll head back to Macau.”
She backed the car up the road to the main highway, her mind now on the gate. When she reached the junction, May tapped her on the arm and pointed towards the sea. “I could park a car there on the shoulder and then sit on the seawall. It would be a nice way to start the day.”
“All right, May, go rent a car.”
There was no more talk about the gate on the drive back to Macau, although Ava could hear the two men whispering in the back and see their hands moving to form various angles.
They dropped off Song and Geng at the truck, May telling them to be ready the next morning for a five-thirty departure. Then she added, “No drinking, no women, no gambling.”
Ava drove to the ferry terminal, where May could rent a car, and then headed for the Kingsway Hotel. As she pulled into valet parking, Carlo and his two friends were getting out of a taxi, their bags in hand. Ava joined them and they walked into the lobby together. Carlo had a phone pressed to his ear. Sonny, he mouthed.
Ava held out her hand and Carlo passed her the phone. “It’s Ava. Where are you?”
“On the ferry. Andy and his brother-in-law are with me.”
“I made all the arrangements for the SUV. All you have to do is show them a licence.”
“Thanks, and Carlo just told me that he and I are bunking together.”
“So you should be set.”
“We’re having dinner together — the guys.”
“I won’t join you.”
“Carlo said you wouldn’t.”
“I need head space. I can’t switch on and off as quickly as you can.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
No, I don’t, she thought. “So I’ll see you in the lobby at five,” she said.
“Five.”
She handed the phone back to Carlo, who promptly closed it.
“Have you been to the boat?” Ava asked.
“We just came from there.”
“And?”
“Perfect.”
( 26 )
Ava sat at the hotel room window, looking out over Macau. The sun had set an hour before, but she could hardly tell night from day as the neon signs and klieg lights of the hotels and casinos flooded every square inch of the territory. She could see all the way to Taipa, to the Cotai Strip, to the City of Dreams, its pod-like shopping complex glowing like a spaceship. It seemed a lifetime ago that she’d walked through its doors with Michael and Simon to meet Kao Lok and Wu. Now she’d be walking through another door to meet them again. Strangely, she had only the vaguest memory of their faces. Lok’s teeth were all that came sharply to mind when she thought about him. With Wu, it was the mole with its curly hairs.
May had called her when she checked into the hotel. Ava begged off dinner, explaining, as she had to Sonny, her need to be alone.
When she first got back to the room, she had sat at the small desk with her notebook open. She drew a diagram of the road, the courtyard, the gate, and then retraced the lines Song had marked in the sand. She had to make a decision, and the problem was that each of the options available to her carried its own set of risks. How to weigh them?
She started off by listing them and ended up with a multitude more, almost equally divided between the two. She thought of her breezy presentation to the men that morning, of her confidence about smashing through the gate. The one thing she had to have was certainty, she thought, certainty that the truck would bring down the gate and penetrate the courtyard.
Making a diagonal run from the side road to the gate would give them maximum power and speed and would be the most time-efficient. And Ava was worried about time. Every second after the moment when Lok, Wu, and their men knew they were under