“I’ll talk to the woman,” Ava said.
“Yes, I think that might be best.”
“Thank you.”
He sighed. “We men pretend we control things.”
“Uncle, if you don’t want me to do this — ”
“No, you have assessed the situation properly. May Ling is the one who can be reasoned with. If there is any chance to renegotiate the agreement, then it has to be between you and her.”
“I’m going to call her now.”
“Let me know when she succumbs.”
(35)
Ava went to the window and looked out on Kensington Gardens. She thought of Wuhan, of the cranes that formed its skyline, of air so foul that streetlights filtered through construction debris. She thought of May Ling and Changxing sitting on the top floor of their eight-storey mansion with the entire world living below, looking up at them.
Westerners couldn’t understand power as it was exerted in China. As men like Changxing accumulated wealth and contacts and influence, they correspondingly became increasingly immune to the everyday nuisances of life, and from the laws and constraints that applied to most citizens. As long as they were careful not to flaunt their status, stayed within the broad guidelines of the law, and didn’t cause any public embarrassment or become a threat to their political and military allies, there was hardly anything they couldn’t do, and there was virtually no one who would risk raising a hand against them. It gave men such as Changxing an overblown sense of security, a sense of invulnerability to the vagaries of the outside world. It had taken an Englishman to prick the bubble he lived in, the bubble that Ava had been hired to patch. Now all she wanted to do was take that small tear and turn it into a gaping hole.
She picked up her phone.
“ Wei,” May Ling said.
“Auntie, it’s Ava.”
The line went silent. “I did not expect to hear from you so soon,” May Ling said finally.
“I spoke to Uncle.”
“What did he say?”
“Auntie, he said I should do what I think is right.”
“I’ve asked you not to call me Auntie.”
“I can’t call you anything else.”
“Why?”
“You know or you don’t know — what does it matter? The thing is, we need to renegotiate our agreement.”
“We finalized it with Uncle.”
“Auntie, the ground has shifted. This is now between you and me.”
“My husband — ”
“Fuck your husband.”
She could hear May Ling breathing deeply. “Shall I have Changxing call Uncle?” she asked coldly.
“Yes, do that, Auntie. Have the two men talk. And then say goodbye to your money and watch Wong Changxing become the biggest fool the new China has ever seen.”
The line was quiet. “Why are you doing this?” May Ling whispered.
“You lied to me.”
“And no one has done that to you before?”
“You took the lives of three innocent people.”
“I’ve explained that.”
“Auntie, your explanation does not excuse the fact that you betrayed me.”
“Don’t call me Auntie anymore,” May Ling snapped, and then went quiet, composing herself. “Tell me,” she said calmly, “what is it that you want?”
Ava looked up Church Street and thought she could see the barriers that surrounded the Hughes Art Gallery. “I want our fee to be its regular thirty percent.”
“Uncle and I agreed on twenty.”
“It’s now thirty, which is what it should have been in the first place.”
“And if I agree, are there more demands?”
“Yes.”
“So why should I agree?”
“Because the demands are joined. It isn’t one or the other.”
“What else do you want?”
“Glen Hughes lives. He lives for as long as his health allows. He lives, and all his family and his friends live. No one who is close to Glen Hughes has an accident.”
“If that isn’t possible?”
“Then, Auntie, from our side, three things happen. The money — all of it — disappears. More important, perhaps, is that the world will find out that Wong Changxing bought fifteen fake paintings and paid seventy-three million dollars for them in a pathetic attempt to be something he’s not. And finally I will somehow, in some way, link — at least in the public’s mind — the death of those three people to the two of you.”
“Does Uncle know what your position is?”
“Call him and ask.”
“I may.”
“Call him on another line. I’ll wait.”
May Ling paused. “Thirty percent?”
“And Glen Hughes lives.”
“I need to talk to Changxing — ”
“No, you don’t,” Ava snapped. “You and I alone will agree on how this business is to be concluded. The men may be told, but not consulted.”
“Or?”
“As I said, there will be no money and I will do everything I can to shame and humiliate your husband. Maybe no one in China will ever know what happened, but the rest of the world will. And I can guarantee that by the time I’m finished there will be so many rumours about the killings in Kensington that not a country in the world will give either of you a visa.”
May Ling went quiet. “Thirty percent,” she whispered, “and Hughes lives?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“And we get the seventy-three million?”
“No, I think by the time I’ve paid certain expenses, I’ll recover about sixty million. Subtracting our commission, that will leave you about forty million.”
“You would sacrifice twenty million in commission for Glen Hughes’ life?”
“And you would forgo forty million and risk your husband’s reputation, everything he’s built, for the life of a man you’ve never met?”
“I see the logic in your position,” May Ling said carefully. “But I don’t know if my husband will.”
Ava thought of Glen Hughes. He was already on his way to England to comfort his brother’s widow because of what he thought was a robbery gone wrong. “Tell Changxing that letting Hughes live is a greater and more prolonged torture. He’ll be a man living in perpetual terror, waiting for the gun that will take his life just as his brother’s was taken. In some ways, letting him live is a greater punishment than killing him.”
“There is a sense of justice in that.”
“Shall I tell Uncle?”
“Yes, you can tell him,” May Ling said. “I will make my husband understand.”
“I hope so, Auntie, because I am a vengeful woman.”
“That is another quality,” May Ling said softly, “that we seem to share.”
(36)
The first Air Canada flight out of Heathrow to Toronto was at eleven a.m. Ava was checked in by nine thirty and sitting in the lounge and online ten minutes later. There was an email message from Roxanne Rice, saying the two paintings had sold for eighty-four million. The money would be in the Liechtenstein account within forty-eight hours. The Wongs would net just over forty million after Harrington’s commissions and expenses, the five million each for Hughes and Rice, and the thirty percent she and Uncle had earned as their commission. Ava sent Roxanne her thanks and asked her to pass along best wishes to her husband. She then emailed her flight schedule to Maria, Mimi, and her mother and told them she would contact them when she reached her condo in Yorkville.
It was mid-evening in Hong Kong. Uncle should be at dinner, she thought. She had called him the night before to update him on her talk with May Ling Wong. He hadn’t been surprised by her apparent success but was now as anxious as she was to put this case behind them. She knew he would be pleased that the money would be available so quickly. His cellphone rang once and went directly to voicemail. That’s strange, she thought, and dialled his home number.
“ Wei,” he answered.
“You’re at home this time of night?” she said.
“My stomach keeps acting up. I went to see a doctor this afternoon and had acupuncture. Now I am drinking nothing but warm water and eating only congee for two days.”