Ava checked her watch. It was almost lunchtime and she was hungry. “Can you do dim sum?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I have a meeting at the bank in an hour. It’s supposedly to review the cash-flow projections for the noodle chain for the coming year, but I know they really want to grill me on Macau.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“Not this time — it might make them anxious. I’m trying to project a business-as-usual attitude.”
“That’s sensible,” she said.
Michael stood and looked down at her.
“I’m sorry if I was a bit aggressive,” she said.
“No, don’t be. We should have known better. Hopefully it’s salvageable.”
“The concept is sound,” she said with a shrug.
“Where are you staying?”
“The Mandarin Oriental in Central.”
“How about I pick you up at six for dinner?”
“Perfect.”
He walked her to the elevator, his face pinched and distracted again. “Are you thinking about the bank meeting?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then think positive. They don’t want to lose money. They want you to succeed almost as much as you do yourself. They won’t pull the plug until every last possible option has been exercised.”
The elevator door opened. “That’s what I keep telling myself,” he said.
Then start acting like it, she thought.
( 4 )
She stepped out of the building into a gorgeous day with hardly a cloud in the sky, a light breeze blowing in from the sea, and the temperature balmy. Hong Kong had, Ava believed, one of the worst climates in the world. The summers were long, hot, and unbearably sticky, and all of the hotels, shops, restaurants, and public places responded by jacking up their air conditioning to the max. Moving between indoors and outdoors, between those two extremes, had given Ava some of the worst colds of her life. The winters were long, dull, wet, and cold enough to put a permanent chill in your bones. The weeks that bridged those two seasons were the best time to be in Hong Kong, and Ava had lucked out on this trip.
She walked down the hill to her hotel, occasionally turning to face the sun. The previous two weeks had been spent in northern Europe, in a persistent damp drizzle. She was a fool for the sun.
She wanted to go for a run in Victoria Park, but she knew that at lunchtime she wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre along the packed jogging path, so she decided to eat first and run later. Dim sum on her own didn’t appeal to her. On the way to the hotel she stopped at a noodle shop and had a plate of lo mein with beef and XO sauce. She ate only half of it, just enough to take the edge off her appetite.
It was two o’clock when she stepped out of the MTR station at Causeway Bay and crossed the street into the park. The crowd had ebbed and she was able to run unimpeded. Normally she ran the inner jogging path, which was about seven hundred metres in circumference, but there were so few people in the park that the outer route was manageable. It measured just over a kilometre and she was able to work up a real sweat after eight laps.
As she ran, her mind turned over Michael’s problem. She knew that nothing would be accomplished until she had met with Ma Shing. On the surface it seemed straightforward. The contract and the addendum were clear, so unless there was something she hadn’t seen, it was going to come down to what kind of people Lok and Wu were. If they were serious businesspeople then a deal could get cut. If they weren’t, she’d have to figure out a way to get the money back that didn’t involve lawyers.
She had two worries. First, it was possible that Simon To had made a verbal commitment. Chinese businessmen took a handshake as seriously as, if not more seriously, than a contract. If To had been stupid enough to verbally commit to putting up more money, she would have to talk her way around that from a severely weakened position. Second, she didn’t know if Ma Shing actually had the funds to repay Michael and Simon. If they had put the money into the land purchase and they weren’t liquid, that could be a problem.
She rode the MTR back to her hotel in Central, sweating like mad in the subterranean