The Princeling of Nanjing (26 page)

Ava sat quietly at the boardroom table trying to gather her thoughts. She wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting there, but when the door opened she jumped, startled by the intrusion.

“Excuse me, but how much longer will you need the room?” Xing asked.

“Are you leaving?”

“Not until you do.”

She looked at her watch. “I have one more phone call to make.”

“We’ll wait.”

She picked up the mobile and weighed her options. There were a lot of balls in the air, more than she liked and more than she thought she could control. She shivered as a fleeting sense of anxiety attacked her, and then she dialled Xu’s number.

“Where are you?” Xu answered.

“Still at the building. I’ve just sent Suen back to Nanjing with Vincent Yin to collect his passport. Could you book them into a suite at the Peninsula tonight, and then put them both on the first flight from Shanghai to London?”

“So it went well with Yin?”

“It couldn’t have gone much better. That’s why we need to get him out of here.”

“But Suen has to go with him?”

“It’s a precaution.”

“I’ll get someone to look after the bookings right away.”

“Could you also give Suen a call and just remind him that we don’t want Yin out of his sight until they land in London?”

“Didn’t you tell him that already?”

“I did, but even though he does what I ask, I think it’s stronger when it comes from you.”

“I’ll tell him, though I don’t have to. He understands how things operate,” Xu said. “How much longer are you going to be there?”

“I’m ready to leave. How are things at the house?”

“So quiet it’s almost worrisome, but that’s just me taking my turn to be paranoid.”

“We’ll talk tonight,” Ava said. “I’ll tell you how the day went and what we can expect in the next day or two.”

“See you then.”

Ava sat back. Xu was calm and in control. Even his talk about paranoia was low-key and jokey. She found that her own emotions had ramped down, the anxiety gone. Uncle used to have the same effect on her. No matter what difficulty she was in, talking to him always grounded her. He made her feel that she was never alone, and the sense of security that knowledge generated was something she’d tried to carry over into the rest of her life. As long as she had friends like May, Amanda, Mimi, and Maria, there wasn’t much she couldn’t withstand. It was loneliness that made people weak and desperate. Strength came in numbers, and pain that could be shared was diluted and dulled.

She had started to rise from her seat when her cellphone rang.
Now what?
she thought.

“Is this Ava Lee?” a man’s voice said.

“Yes.”

“This is Sam Curry.”

She looked at her watch. “It’s the middle of the night in New York.”

“More like early in the morning, but either way I couldn’t sleep thinking about this story, and then I got your email. That did it as far as sleep was concerned,” Curry said. “When I opened the attachments and saw the correspondence between Patriot and Jiangsu, my first thought was that they couldn’t have been so stupid as to put that kind of understanding in writing.”

“I can’t speak for Patriot, but I know that the Tsai family is supremely confident. They probably didn’t care if someone saw their emails or not.”

“The Patriot people were probably a touch naive, or maybe just careless,” Curry said. “I spoke to several of their representatives yesterday and that’s how they came across.”

“You spoke about this, about their dealings with the Tsai family?” Ava asked, feeling a touch of panic.

“Only in the most general kind of way,” Curry said. “I told them I was doing an article on mid-sized American companies that were successful doing business in Asia. I told them they were one of ten or so success stories that we were looking at. I asked them what advice they could give to other companies.”

“And they said?”

“They stumbled a bit and then finally said it was all about finding the right partners.”

“Did they say who their partner is?”

“A Nanjing-based company called Mother of Pearl Investments that is run by a remarkably talented businesswoman named Wu Wai Wai.”

“But no mention that she’s a member of the Tsai family, the sister of the governor of Jiangsu?”

“No. I guess they didn’t think that was important,” Curry said.

“Such honesty,” Ava said and laughed.

Curry laughed in turn, and then said, “More seriously, the emails are terrific. They’re the icing on the cake. They confirm everything you told us and everything we’ve been able to find out from this end. Patriot’s investment in Jiangsu is on their books and the returns are highlighted in their quarterly financials and annual reports. There isn’t a lot they can deny.”

“Are you saying your story will focus on Patriot?”

“It will be the hook, but the overall focus is going to be on the Tsai family and the nature of doing business in China with the power elite. I loved the peasant-revolutionary-to-billionaire-politician line.”

“I wish I was always so clever,” Ava said.

“I’ve reworked your chart a bit, and I’d like you to review it and make sure it’s accurate.”

“You’ll send it to me?”

“Of course,” Curry said.

“I’ll tell you in advance that I’m going to add a company called Golden Tomorrow. It’s worth — according to the
Economic Herald
 — at least ten billion dollars. It’s a gold-trading outfit, and I suspect that’s where a lot of the Tsai family cash went.”

“It gets more interesting by the moment.”

“Or abhorrent, anyway. Can you hold off running your story until I approve the chart?”

“As long as you are expeditious.”

“I normally am.”

Curry went quiet for a second and then said, “Ms. Lee, my understanding is that the
Economic Herald
is going to run some variation of this story too.”

“Ideally, both papers will break their stories the same day.”

“We’re almost ready to go. Are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know, I don’t think it matters if one story breaks first. If both appear at the same time, one might detract from the other. Whichever one runs first is going to cause a stir. Then
boom
, a different kind of story is going to hit. I think that one-two punch will be more impactful.”

“What do you mean by ‘different kind of story’?”

Curry hesitated, and then said, “I hope I’m not breaching a confidence, but my friend Vanessa Ogg insinuated that the British paper would be focused on Dennis Calhoun and his Mega Metals business.”

“That’s true, and it was perfectly all right for Vanessa to tell you that.”

“Good. She’s been very professional and circumspect throughout.”

“Let’s just hope we can bring it all to a satisfactory conclusion.”

There was a pause, and then Curry said, “You have a rather distinctive accent. Canadian perhaps?”

“It is.”

“Do you live in Canada?”

“Most of the time.”

“Then I’m terribly curious to know what drew you to the Tsai family. They’re hardly known outside of China.”

“I have a client who became tired of being extorted by them. He asked me to find some ammunition he could use to fight back.”

“A Canadian client?”

“What does that matter?”

“It doesn’t, I guess,” he said. “He must be very pleased with what you’ve uncovered.”

“He seems to be.”

“How did you do it?” he asked abruptly.

“I was a forensic accountant for many years. I started with the information my client gave me and built structure around it. The only problem I had was that every time I unearthed one layer, there was another, or maybe two, underneath it.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“York University in Toronto and Babson College in Wellesley.”

“My mother went to Wellesley College.”

“Those girls were a bit too grand for us at Babson.”

“My mother was hardly grand. She was there on a scholarship — but that’s off the point,” he said. “Getting back to your information, some of it was highly detailed and confidential. I’m curious about how you got your hands on it.”

“Is this for publication?”

“Of course not. I know we’re off the record. I’m simply curious.”

“I traced bank records. The Tsais tried to get fancy. They funnelled money through a family holding company called AKG to another family company, Mother of Pearl. Mother of Pearl supposedly invested in Jiangsu Insurance. It was all Patriot Insurance money.”

“How did you get the bank records?”

“I paid for them.”

“How do you know they’re genuine?”

“I had a source inside one of the banks involved whom I trusted. The source accessed and printed the records. Any doubts I had about them being genuine disappeared as soon as I saw that everything we found on the public record matched what had been given to us.”

“It was a nice piece of work.”

“Thanks, and now could you answer a question for me?”

“I hope so.”

“I have concerns about the Tsai family being warned by one of their partners that an investigation is going on. Do you think Patriot might do that?”

“I would be very surprised. They seemed flattered rather than alarmed by our attention.”

“I was told you spoke to some other companies as well.”

“We used the same pretext and got the same kinds of answers.”

“That’s comforting to know,” Ava said.

“And I have another question for you. It’s one that my editors have been rather persistent about,” Curry said. “What do you have that ties Tsai Lian directly to any of these businesses?”

“Do they doubt for a second that he isn’t pulling all the strings?”

“No, they don’t, and I’m quite sure in Asian culture it is completely understood who is the mastermind, but here in the West — as you know — we don’t have your refined sense of family structure and loyalty. My editors would like to have something beyond supposition. The story is still going to run without it, but it would make it even stronger.”

“We have a video of Vincent Yin, the general manager of Mega Metals, explaining how Dennis Calhoun and Tsai Lian put their deal together.”

“Does it specifically implicate Lian?”

“It does.”

“Fantastic. Can we see it?”

“Under one condition.”

“Which is?”

“We’re concerned about Yin’s safety. The
Herald
has agreed not to approach Dennis Calhoun in the U.K. until Yin is out of China. That will take at least twenty-four hours. I would need the same assurances from you.”

“I can’t imagine we’d approach Calhoun in any event.”

“I still need your word.”

“You have it.”

“Then I’ll send you the video. And I might have something else you can use,” Ava said. “I personally met with Lau Ai, Tsai Lian’s daughter-in-law. We chatted a bit about him and I asked her about his roles as governor and senior member of the family. She said — and I’m quoting almost verbatim, I think — ‘My father-in-law is head of the family before he is governor of the province.’”

“I have no way of verifying if that quote is accurate.”

“I know that.”

“And I can’t use your name in reference to it?”

“No.”

“It’s quite self-serving, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I guess it is.”

“I may use it anyway. Anonymous sources are not totally frowned upon,” he said and then paused again. Ava thought she heard pages turning.

“Ms. Lee, we’ve been hearing about corruption in China for years. What makes this so special?”

You must know the answer to that or you wouldn’t be talking to me
, Ava thought, and then caught herself. He did deserve a serious answer.

“The size of it, for one thing, makes it stand out. We’re talking about at least ten billion dollars. That makes the Tsai family one of the wealthiest in Asia, and all of their money has been accumulated because of his public position, but of course completely out of public view and scrutiny.

“Then there’s the question of his stature. Tsai Lian is a true princeling. He is one of the chosen ones. It’s like being a Rockefeller or a Kennedy in the U.S., or anyone in the U.K. who is born into royalty. The chosen ones always look after each other. They understand their interdependence. They feel it is their right to have power and to get rich in the process, and by protecting their colleagues’ rights to do that, they’re protecting themselves. The Chinese government at the highest levels is filled with people like them.”

“So why will anyone in the government care about what the Tsai family has done?”

“As China expands its role in the world, even members of the elite have become sensitive to how they are perceived. It has become the case of a larger political issue overcoming some personal loyalties. Those loyalties are easier to maintain when things are kept under cover; when they hit the light of day, they can’t be ignored. And, hopefully, problems of this nature have to be acted upon if the government wants to maintain any semblance of being credible and respectable.

“But you can’t ignore the personal side of it entirely. As one of my friends said, even someone wealthy can be jealous of someone who has more wealth. My hope is that the scope of the Tsai family’s empire will anger some of his colleagues. They may think he’s gone too far with his greed. They may feel the need to rein him in and to send a message to others.”

“You should talk to my editor sometime when this is over,” Curry said. “He and you are on the same page.”

“My opinions are hardly original.”

“He actually wants to title our piece ‘The New Chinese Royalty.’”

“How perfect.”

“I think so too,” he said. “One last question. What do you think will actually happen to the Tsai family?”

“As a result of this information becoming public?”

“Yes.”

“At the end of the day, I expect it will come down to a combination of politics and personal animus,” Ava said. “If their elite colleagues feel threatened in any way or see some benefit to punishing the Tsai family, then they’ll do it. If the Tsai family has enough dirt on them to make them think twice about retribution, then they might wait and hope the scandal passes.”