The Red Pole of Macau (20 page)

May Ling had changed clothes and was now dressed in black slacks and a black raw linen blouse. Her mood was also different. She was quiet, almost withdrawn. After getting monosyllabic replies to some simple questions, Ava retreated into her own silence.

They were on the hydrofoil and halfway to Macau when May said, “I’m incredibly nervous.”

“Me too,” Ava said.

“You don’t look it.”

Ava gazed out the window at the churning sea. “Inside I’m doing flip-flops. I work hard at staying positive, but doubts always creep into my head. And the longer the wait, the more they occur to me.”

“And what can go wrong here?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Is that you being superstitious?”

“Maybe.”

May said, “When Song called me to say he’d arrived in Macau, this situation became very, very real to me. I mean, before that I understood what we were doing, but it was outside me. When I talked to Song, I thought, ‘We’re actually going to Macau, and we’re actually going through with this. I’ve brought a truck and a driver all the way from Wuhan to start what could be a mini war.’”

“We’re going to Macau to save a man’s life — that’s what you need to think,” Ava said. “It will be over soon enough.”

“What are your plans when we land?”

“I’ll pick up our SUV and then we’ll locate Song and drive to the house. You did tell him what is expected of him?”

“I did, in detail. His only worry was damaging the truck. Have you thought of that?”

“Of what?”

“The truck. What if it gets disabled?”

“We’ll leave it there. The driver can ride back with us. If the authorities get involved, you tell them it was a stolen vehicle. I’m sure the police in Wuhan will back you up.”

May Ling looked thoughtful and Ava knew she had something else to say, but both fell silent again.

This was Ava’s fourth trip to Macau in four days, and she wondered if the immigration officer would comment. He barely glanced at her passport as he waved her through. Ava led May towards the car rental area.

The company had put the two SUVs aside for her. She did the paperwork and left her credit card number for both. All Sonny had to do when he arrived was show his driver’s licence. As she turned to leave, May said, “I was thinking, maybe I should rent a car for myself.”

“Why do you need a car?”

“You were just going to leave me at the hotel?”

“That was the idea.”

“What about the second truck driver?”

And then Ava realized she hadn’t thought about their accommodation. “Geez, I forgot about that. We need to get them a room at the hotel.”

“I know them, and they won’t leave the truck. Besides, it has its own sleeping quarters.”

“Then surely he won’t mind being on his own for a few hours after we leave.”

“I was thinking that if I rented a car,” May said slowly, “he could drive me out to Coloane with you in the morning. I really don’t want to stay at the hotel by myself. I mean, I’ve come this far and I would like to see this through.”

“You aren’t seriously suggesting that you come to the house with us?”

May flicked her hand at Ava. “Of course not. I just want to be close at hand. When you were going over the map this morning, you pointed to where the main road meets the side road that leads to the house. We could park there at the intersection, act as lookouts. I mean, Ava, you wouldn’t want to be in the house and have someone unexpectedly drop in on you. Geng — that’s the other driver’s name — and I can watch the road and give you a warning if anyone turns up.”

She’s going to be pissed at me if I leave her at the hotel,
Ava thought. “Let’s decide after we go to Coloane. I want to make sure there’s a place to park the car without attracting unnecessary attention.”

“Fair enough,” May said, in a way that suggested she knew she had prevailed.

“Now call Song and find out exactly where he is.”

May phoned him as they walked to the SUV. “They’re at Fisherman’s Wharf. The truck is parked outside the Rocks Hotel and they’re inside having some lunch in the café.”

“Tell them we’ll be there in five minutes.”

Ava drove south, following the seacoast on her left. The road ran right onto the wharf, which was still a real working place. She passed about thirty fishing boats moored in the harbour, their nets and buoys and traps littering the area. The hotel was at the far end, a five-storey structure that looked a couple of hundred years old.

“There they are,” May said as they parked, pointing to two middle-aged men emerging from the hotel. Dressed in jeans and T-shirts that were stretched across their big bellies, they were alternately smoking and picking at their teeth.

The two women climbed out of the SUV. “Hi, I’m Ava,” she said, extending her hand as she walked towards them. The men didn’t look her in the eye, their handshakes tentative.

“I’m Geng,” one said. Song didn’t say a word.

“We’re going to drive to Coloane so you can see the job you have to do in the morning. We’ll take my SUV,” Ava said.

“Are you sure about Song?” Ava asked May as they walked to the car.

“They’re intimidated, that’s all. And a bit shy around the big boss and her friend.”

“I hope that doesn’t carry over into the way he drives.”

“It won’t, and by the way, there’s the truck.”

It was parked against the far wall of the hotel, the top of its red cab almost reaching the second-floor window. The front was flat and had a grille at the bottom topped by another grille with
Volvo
slashed diagonally across it. A sheet of red metal separated the upper grille from the window, which was topped by a metal awning. If there had been a driver inside the cab, Ava wasn’t sure she would have been able to see him. “What a monster. I’ve never seen anything that size,” Ava said.

“I think it should do the trick,” said May.

The two men hung back when they reached the car, unsure about which seats to take. “Sit in the back,” Ava said.

Ava took the Macau–Taipa Bridge out of the city to the causeway. The men were quiet. May tried to engage them in conversation, asking about the drive from Wuhan, and then gave up when all they seemed able to say was “No problem.”

“My God, this is really beautiful. Who would have thought this existed here,” May said when Ava reached southern Coloane and started the drive along the coastline, the sea shimmering to their right, the peak and the head of A-Ma looming on the left.

Ava drove past the turnoff to the house and stopped on the shoulder. She pointed back. “That’s the road we’re going to take,” she said. “It’s curvy for the first bit, but the last hundred metres are relatively straight. When we get to the end, you’ll see the house and the gate. The problem is, there’s two hundred metres of open space between the end of the road and the gate, so we can’t hang around too long. When we’re finished, we’ll climb the peak to visit A-Ma. From the top you can get another view.”

While Ava was speaking, May was looking around. “There seems to be all kinds of room to park a car and not attract attention. I mean, we could be here to watch the sun come up over the sea.”

“Seems to be,” Ava said.

She did a U-turn and drove down the side road. Both men in the back leaned forward. The route was more winding and narrow than she remembered.
Maybe it’s the difference between driving a Toyota and an SUV
, she thought. She couldn’t go more than thirty kilometres an hour, and she realized that the truck would have to drive even more slowly. When the road straightened to the right, she eased the car up to fifty but then had to brake when they neared the opening.

“I’m going to creep forward,” she said.

“Why don’t we get out and walk to the end,” May said. “We can hide behind those trees. No one should see us.”

“Great idea,” Ava said.

The four of them moved forward, hugging the treeline to the right. From their vantage point they could see three-quarters of the gate, its left side blanketed by the wall. They stood there for several minutes. Then Song said, “If I come down this road at any speed and then take the fastest direct run at the gate, I’m not going to be able to hit it dead-on. I’ll hit it at an angle, on the right side there, and there’s a chance the truck — the back end of it, anyway — will smash into the wall. Remember, this isn’t a family car that I can turn and spin any way I want. Once the truck is up to speed I don’t have much control.”

“You would still take down the gate, right?”

“I think so, but Madam Wong said the plan was for you to follow me in your cars.”

“Yes.”

“My fear is that the back end will hit the wall, and if it does, the truck could block the way into the house. You might not be able to drive through. Look,” he said, picking up a stick. In the sand he drew an outline of the wall and the gate and then dragged the stick to the point of impact. “See, if I hit it there, the right side of the truck hits the wall. When it does, it will bounce left, like that.”

Ava looked at his crude drawing. It made sense, and a feeling of apprehension crept into her belly as she tried to figure out the consequences.

“Song is right,” Geng said, looking at May. “The truck would hit the wall and end up wedged in the gate. You would probably have to leave it there, and that is a very expensive vehicle.”

“I don’t care about losing a truck,” May snapped. “All we care about right now is the gate.”

“Are you sure it would be wedged in?” Ava asked.

“It could jackknife, roll over, anything. I can’t be sure exactly how it would react, except that it probably wouldn’t be something you would want,” Song said.

“What would you suggest we do?”

“The best thing is for me to hit the gate flush in the middle, head-on.”

“How would you do that?”

He drew another line in the sand. “I would have to take a hard right from here and then manoeuvre my truck around until it was facing the gate.”

“How long would that take?”

“A couple of minutes.”

“But then you’re running at it from a standing start. What kind of speed can you generate?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“Then you need to guess.”

“Sixty kilometres an hour, maybe a bit more.”

“Is that fast enough to take the gate down cleanly?”

Song hesitated and looked at his driving partner. Geng nodded. “We think so,” Song said.

“What are you going to do?” May asked.

“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.”

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 attack was crucial. Every second Ava and the guys were outside the house gave those inside more opportunity to arm themselves and organize resistance.

But what if the truck hit the wall, as Song had projected, and flipped over? What if it blocked the gate, made it impassable for their SUVs — hell, made it impassable for them even on foot?

So, option two: Song takes his time, a couple of minutes, and lines up the truck properly to ram the centre of the gate. If the gate collapses when he hits it, there isn’t any barrier for the cars and they’re at the door within seconds.

Song had estimated he’d get up to sixty kilometres an hour and that velocity would be enough to get through the gate. But he hadn’t been sure, and neither had Geng. What if he couldn’t get up to sixty? What if he did and it wasn’t enough to do the job?

And then there was the noise issue. Just how loud was the truck going to be? While Song was moving it back and forth to get into position, would the people inside the house hear him? If they did, it would be a disaster. By the time they got into the house they’d run smack into seven or eight guns aimed at the door.

She’d called downstairs to the restaurant and ordered a plate of pad Thai and a bottle of sparkling water. She ate at the desk, her eyes flitting over the diagram, her lists, her comments. When she was done, she had moved to the window and had been there since, thinking and debating. There was nothing satisfying about coming to a decision between two evils.

It was nine o’clock when she finally stirred. She wasn’t tired but she knew she should try to sleep. She showered and changed into panties and a T-shirt. Then she emptied the rest of her bag and laid out on the sofa the clothes she’d be putting on in the morning. There was an alarm in the room. She set it for four thirty and then called downstairs for a wake-up call for the same time, though she knew she probably wouldn’t need either.

Ava had left her computer at the Mandarin, and her cellphone had been off since she’d got on the hydrofoil in Hong Kong. She turned it on and listened to messages from Uncle and Amanda. He was once more wishing her luck. She had arrived in Sha Tin and was walking to Jessie’s. They would both have to wait to hear from her.

She crawled into bed and pulled the covers right up to her chin.
I won’t sleep
, she thought, but she began to perform a bak mai
kata
, a standard series of exercises, in her mind. She did it in slow motion, trying to picture every little detail. She wasn’t halfway through before she drifted off.

Ava dreamt, as she often did, about her father. This was different, though, from the usual theme of missed airplanes, hotel rooms that couldn’t be located, cab drivers who never took her where she wanted to go. Her father was in a restaurant, sitting at a table with two strangers. He ignored her when she walked in. One of the men was holding a gun under the table against her father’s leg while the other was insulting him. Ava asked him to stop, and the man spat at her and cursed her. The gun went off; her father collapsed to the floor, holding his leg. Ava pulled a knife from her bag and was about to attack when her alarm went off and the phone rang.
What a way to start the day
, she thought.

She made an instant coffee and drank it so quickly it scalded her mouth. She made another and carried it to the bathroom. She washed, brushed her teeth, fastened her hair with the lucky ivory chignon pin, and put on her gold crucifix and Cartier Tank Française watch.

She dressed slowly, making sure there were no wrinkles in her socks and that her black T-shirt was tucked tightly into her black training pants. She tied her runners with a double knot. Then she turned towards the bed and eased onto her knees. With her hands pressed together in front of her face, she began to pray.

She prayed to Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and asked him to help her get through the day. She prayed for the safety of her men, that she would find Simon alive and well, and that no unnecessary harm would come to Lok’s men or his servants.

It was ten to five when she walked into the lobby. Everyone was already there. Carlo and Andy and their men were outside smoking; Sonny and May were standing together just inside the door. Ava gave a little wave and then went to the front desk. She checked out, signed all of the bills, and handed the girl her valet ticket.

“How did you sleep?” May asked when Ava joined them.

“Surprisingly well.”

“I don’t think I slept for more than half an hour at a time.”

May was wearing her black slacks and blouse from the day before. “You fit in quite nicely,” Ava said, pointing to the men, who were uniformly dressed in black. She hadn’t specified what they should wear; she imagined Carlo and Andy had made that decision. Sonny was wearing a dark blue mock-turtleneck shirt and black slacks. “We look like we’re going to a funeral.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” May said.

It took a full ten minutes to get the two SUVs and May’s rented Nissan to the front door. Ava put Carlo and his men in her car, leaving Sonny with Andy and his brother-in-law.

“We’re going to Fisherman’s Wharf. We’ll meet at Carlo’s cousin’s boat. May will get the truck and the driver, then off we go,” Ava said.

It was a relatively tight schedule, and Ava had planned it that way. There was nothing worse than waiting, and she didn’t want to give any of the men time to start thinking about what could go wrong. She’d done enough of that for all of them.

The wharf was a few minutes from the hotel, the boat moored near the entrance. Carlo directed her to it, and when she got near she saw a man sitting on a capstan.

“That’s him,” Carlo said.

The guns were stashed on the deck under a tarpaulin. Each man took his own, checking the firing action, the ammunition. Ava picked up her Kahr. It was an incredibly light gun, one of the most accurate she’d ever fired. “Put the ram in our car and distribute the handcuffs,” she told Carlo.

She heard the truck before she saw it: a low rumble, disquietingly powerful. Then it rolled into view, filling their line of vision. “Fuck me,” Andy’s brother-in-law said. “I’ve never seen a truck that size.”

Song looked down from the cab, his position so high that Ava couldn’t see his shoulders. She saw him stare at the guns and blink in surprise. They were well armed, she knew. Andy’s brother-in-law and one of Carlo’s men had Uzis. Carlo’s other guy wielded a Koch machine gun. Andy carried a Heckler. Sonny’s Cobray was a match for any of them. Only she and Carlo had pistols, but they were both semi-automatic and in tight quarters just as effective.

“Follow me,” she yelled at Song.

They clambered back into the cars. Getting their weapons into their hands had given the men a bit of a buzz.

“So where did you have dinner last night?” she asked Carlo as they pulled out of the wharf, Sonny behind her, May following him, the truck in the rear.

“We went into old Macau, to an animal restaurant.”

“What did you eat?”

“Bat and some raccoon,” he said, and turned to his friends. “What did you think of our meal last night?”

Ava smiled. It was her ploy to talk about anything other than the job, to calm the men’s nerves, distract them. Carlo had obviously picked up on it.

The men talked about the dinner and other memorable meals for the entire trip to Coloane. Ava was happy to listen to them.

It wasn’t quite six o’clock when they reached the highway that ran along the sea. Ava stopped short of the turnoff, parking on the shoulder. The others lined up behind her. She got out of the SUV and motioned for everyone else to do the same. Then she walked over to the seawall and sat down. They gathered around, waiting for Song to lower himself from the truck. “Don’t rush — we can’t afford to lose you,” she yelled at him.

When he joined them, she said, “This is Song, and you obviously know what he does. He came here with me yesterday and looked at the gate. He had some suggestions and I think I’m going to follow them, so we have some slight changes to our plans,” Ava said calmly. “Instead of making a direct diagonal run from the end of the side road to the gate, we’ve decided that Song will position the truck so that it can run straight through the gate. What that means for us is, instead of following him immediately across the courtyard,
we’re going to hang back until he’s ready to charge. Then we’ll tuck in behind and follow him down and in. After that, we follow the plan as we discussed in Hong Kong.”

She didn’t ask if there were any questions and she wasn’t interested in any comments. “Okay, back to the vehicles, and everyone get their balaclavas on.”

Ava walked with Song back to the truck. “Maximum speed, right?” she said.

“My foot will be on the floor.”

“And don’t take all day to get into position. That truck is so damn loud.”

“I figure I’ll drive straight right from the roadway, make a hard left, go down about twenty metres to straighten up, and then back up and I’m ready to go. I thought about it all last night.”

“How did you know I’d make that choice?”

“It’s the right one.”

Ava said, “Then why did it take me so long to get to it?”

“You don’t drive trucks for a living.”

“Song, once you’re through the gate and we’re past you and in the courtyard, I want you to leave. Turn the truck around and head back to Macau.”

“No, I can’t. I’ll go back out to the highway and wait with Geng and Madam Wong.”

She watched him climb the stairs back up to the truck’s cab, and knew there was no point in arguing. He wouldn’t leave May alone.

May had stood off to the side while Ava was talking to the others. Now she drew near. “I guess I’ll go sit on the wall.”

Ava checked her watch. Five minutes to dawn. The sun was already starting to tease its way above the horizon. She looked out to sea and then stepped back, startled, as a brilliant streak of green shot across the point where water met sky. “Good God, did you see that?”

“A green flash!” May said. “I’ve read about them, and I have a friend who lives in Borneo who goes down to the beach every night at sunset to try to see one. They are rare, really rare. That has to be a good omen, Ava.”

Ava felt the opposite, and she didn’t know why. “I’m going to have my cellphone on, May, but don’t call me unless it really is necessary. And don’t time us. I have no idea how long this will take. When it’s done, it’s done.”

“Good luck,” May said.