The Wild Beasts of Wuhan (3 page)

As the film ended, the plane began its slow descent over the South China Sea to Chek Lap Kok, the man-made island where Hong Kong’s airport was located. It was an overcast day and Ava couldn’t see the water below until they cleared the cloud cover. By then they were nearing land, and the ocean traffic was thick with fishing boats heading in and out, sampans that doubled as homes for families and their import/export businesses, and hundreds of ocean freighters sitting patiently offshore, waiting to be towed into Hong Kong Harbour to load or unload the containers stacked three and four high on deck. Kwai Chung Container Terminal was the largest port in Asia, and one of the largest in the world.

Ava was fifteenth in line at Hong Kong Customs and Immigration, and she knew that meant she’d be cleared in fifteen minutes. One minute per arrival, that was the standard. Anyone who needed to be questioned was promptly shuffled off so the line wouldn’t be delayed.

On most of her trips to Hong Kong, Uncle met her in the Kit Kat Koffee House, a Chinese newspaper or the racing form open in front of him, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. This time she walked into the cavernous arrivals hall to see Sonny, Uncle’s driver and bodyguard, standing directly under a sign that read
MEETING PLACE
. She imagined he had been there for a while.

He was six foot two and weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds, with a layer of body fat that made him look a bit soft. Nothing could have been more deceptive. She had never seen anyone who could move more quickly or be as vicious as Sonny. Of all the men she had encountered he was one of the three whom she doubted she could best physically — the other two being Derek and Grandmaster Tang. Ava had once remarked to Uncle that Sonny seemed to lack imagination. Uncle said, “Imagination is the last thing you want in a man like Sonny. He is reliable and does exactly what he is told to do. That is all you should expect and ask for.”

Sonny wasn’t accustomed to seeing Ava without Uncle, and he smiled shyly when he caught sight of her. Ava blinked. Seeing Sonny smile was a rarity. His dark brown eyes were normally watchful, alert, full of menace, and his brow was locked in a permanent scowl. She nodded at him and then watched in surprise as he put his hands together in front of his chest, bowed his head, and moved his hands up and down. It was a sign of respect, a greeting to a superior. Ava felt a surge of pride, and then slightly embarrassed.

The Mercedes S-Class was parked directly outside the terminal in a no-parking zone. The only other vehicles there were police cars. Sonny waved at two policemen as Ava got into the car, and she heard him yell thanks to them for looking after it.

She sat in the back, in Uncle’s usual spot. “Where are we going?” Sonny asked.

“Ocean Terminal, Tsim Sha Tsui.”

Sonny’s phone rang just as they started across the Tsing
Ma Bridge, which linked Ma Wan Island to Tsing Yi, the northwest corner of urban Hong Kong. The bridge had been built to move cars and trains from the city to the airport. It was almost a kilometre and a half long, and double-decked. The top deck had six lanes for cars, while underneath were two sets of railway tracks. Ava looked down on Ma Wan Channel, which connected the South China Sea to Hong Kong’s harbour. It was a more than two-hundred-metre drop from the bridge to the water; the vessels that had looked so small from the plane didn’t look much bigger from the bridge.

Sonny listened to the phone for a moment and then passed it to her. She didn’t have to guess who was calling.

“How was your flight?”

“Good. I slept a lot, and then I watched Gong Li.” Ava doubted that Uncle knew who she was.

“We are leaving tonight at five thirty on Cathay. That will get us into Wuhan at seven thirty. Wong Changxing said there is some kind of formal dinner, so do not eat too much today.”

“Dinner?”

“It was already scheduled and we have been added to the guest list. I tried to beg off but I am finding he is a hard man to reason with.”

What wealthy Chinese isn’t?
she thought.

“I had also booked us into a hotel and he cancelled the reservations when he found out. We are going to be guests at his house.”

“Uncle, is that really a good —”

“I agreed,” he said, cutting short her protest. “It is a very large house — more than eighty rooms, I am told, more like a hotel. Besides, he said the reason for our visit is in the house.”

“Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”

“No.”

And you didn’t ask
, she thought, knowing that he respected the old-fashioned courtship that went with establishing new business. “What time do we need to leave for the airport?”

“I told Sonny to pick me up here at three. You can come earlier if you want.”

“Meet me for dim sum?”

“I have a meeting.”

“Okay, but I don’t need Sonny to wait for me while I shop. I’ll send him away. I’ll take a taxi to the airport when I’m done here.”

“If you prefer, I can meet you in the Wing business lounge.”

Hearing that name startled Ava. The last time she had been in the lounge, a former colleague of Uncle’s had informed him that a contract had been put out on Ava’s life. She was superstitious by nature. Still, it did remind her that the job had its peculiar challenges.

( 3 )

The Brooks Brothers store was on the third floor of the Ocean Terminal. It was early and the shop was quiet. Two salesgirls began to fuss over Ava the second she stepped inside. Over the past few years the level of service in Hong Kong stores had transformed remarkably. In the not-so-recent past it seemed that sales associates were hired for their ability to ignore customers, and they were sometimes surly when asked for help. The Hong Kong–based Giordano clothing chain had changed things by insisting that the staff smile and welcome people into their stores. The trend — and Ava thought Hong Kong had to be the trendiest city in the world — caught on, and now you couldn’t walk into a brand-name boutique without being smothered with attention.

Ava had been dressing in Brooks Brothers for years. The crisp, tailored look fit the image she wanted to project as an accountant, as a serious professional. At five foot three and a hundred and fifteen pounds, she was lean and toned, but her breasts were large for a Chinese woman — she was among the small percentage who didn’t need to wear a padded bra. Her legs and bum were muscular from years of running and practising bak mei. She was almost perfectly proportioned, something she was grateful for. She had a particular aversion — even admitting it was odd — to women with long waists.

Ava hated the idea of being thought of as a sex object. So while she was working she dressed as conservatively as she could. And when she wasn’t working, she wore Adidas training pants and Giordano T-shirts. Mimi often teased Ava, calling her preference for Brooks Brothers her “butch look.” But there was nothing remotely butch about Ava. When she put on a bit of makeup, let her black, silky hair hang loose or wore it swept up with one of her collection of clasps and hairpins, and slipped on a slim-fitting skirt with a pair of black leather Cole Haan heels, she turned heads — male and female.

There were four Brooks Brothers stores in Hong Kong, but Ava knew from previous trips that this one was the largest and had the best selection of women’s clothing. She bought three button-down, no-iron tailored shirts with modified Italian collars and French cuffs, in pink, black, and white with blue pinstripes. She also purchased two pairs of black slacks, one cotton, the other linen. The slacks came in three styles; she opted for the Lucia fit, a clean look without pleats or cuffs.

She was about to pay for the items when she spotted a pair of black alligator high heels. They were gorgeous: soft, supple, classic. Ava turned a shoe over to look at the price tag. They cost more than eight thousand Hong Kong dollars, over a thousand U.S.
What the hell
, she thought,
I’ll expense them
.

It was almost noon when she walked out of the Ocean Terminal with her Brooks Brothers bags and another from Cole Haan with a pair of black leather pumps. She had two more shops to visit, but they were on Hong Kong Island, directly across Victoria Harbour from where she stood in Kowloon.

Ava walked to the Tsim Sha Tsui terminal and boarded the Star Ferry. The passenger load was light and she was able to find a seat near the front. Kowloon was the primary entertainment and shopping district in the Territory, but Central District on Hong Kong Island was where its financial and business heart beat, and its skyline reflected that powerfully. Directly ahead of Ava was Hong Kong’s southern shoreline, a virtual wall of modern buildings and skyscrapers that ran for more than five kilometres. She could pick out the two International Commerce Centres, both over 450 metres high and among the ten tallest buildings in the world; the triangular peak of Central Plaza; the steel and glass angles of the Bank of China Tower; and The Center, sheathed entirely in steel and lit up at night in a varying spectrum of neon colours.

The two shops she wanted to visit were a stationery store a few blocks north of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, and the Shanghai Tang flagship store on Pedder Street, only a few hundred metres farther. But as she exited the ferry, she felt hunger pangs. The Mandarin Oriental had a wonderful dim sum restaurant, Man Wah, on its twenty-fifth and top floor. It wasn’t quite noon, so she decided to eat now and beat the lunchtime mob.

Man Wah was just getting busy and she managed to get a table near the back. Within ten minutes of her arrival there was a lineup out the door and down the hall. She ordered hot and sour soup, chicken feet, har gow, and baby bok choy in oyster sauce.

As she poured herself a cup of jasmine tea, Ava noticed out of the corner of her eye a man several tables away staring at her. When she looked up at him, he turned away. There were four men at the table, all in their thirties and dressed in expensive suits, two of them wearing designer glasses. The one who had been staring at her looked vaguely familiar.

Her soup arrived. She was picking up her spoon when she caught him staring at her again. For the next fifteen minutes they played what she thought was a ridiculous game of cat and mouse. She was about to walk over to his table when he stood up and walked towards her.

“You’re Ava, aren’t you?” he asked.

She looked up at him. “I may be.”

“I’m Michael.”

Ava looked into his face. It finally struck her. Beads of sweat began forming on her brow and her upper lip. She dabbed her forehead with her napkin as she tried to think of what to say.

“Dad called me this morning from the ship. He said you had left and were coming through Hong Kong to Hubei. I just never thought I’d see you here.”

“How did you know it was me?” she asked, still dazed.

“Pictures. I’ve seen many pictures of you and Marian. You have very particular looks.”

“Daddy has shown you pictures of us?”

“For years.”

“I never knew.”

“I’m the oldest son, so if anything happened to our father then I would become head of the family. He wants me to take that responsibility seriously, and that means acknowledging and accepting half-sisters and half-brothers and aunties.”

“He talks to you about us?”

“Has he never spoken to you about us?”

“Actually, he has. And to my mother. But he’s never shown me any pictures.”

“Well, here I am.”

Michael hovered by her table. He shared their father’s distinctive thick head of hair, which he wore slicked back. His face was lean and fine-boned, and his eyes were slightly rounder than Marcus’s — Jennie had told Ava once that Marcus’s first wife, Elizabeth, had some
gweilo
genes — but they had their father’s darkness, depth, and warmth. Michael wasn’t as tall as Marcus, but he had the same lean physique.

“You look so much like him that I want to cry,” Ava said. “It makes me jealous.”

He smiled, the same easy smile her father used to win her over. “You look like him as well. Have you never been told that?”

“Now and then, I guess.”

“And as for being jealous — well, my father thinks you can do no wrong.”

“Nonsense,” she said, blushing. “Michael, do you want to sit?”

“I can’t. I’m with three colleagues and we have to head back to the office,” he said. “But here, take my business card. My cellphone number and email address are on it. Call me the next time you’re in Hong Kong. We can have dinner or something. You can meet my girlfriend.”

“I’d like that, I think,” Ava said, pulling out her own card. “You can call me anytime too.”

As Ava watched Michael leave the restaurant, she noticed that he walked like her father too, erect, relaxed, confident. He turned at the door and waved to her.

Ava looked down at Michael’s business card before slipping it into her purse. Despite what she had said, she could never imagine actually calling him. It was one thing to know and accept her father’s other families; it was another to meet them.

Ava thought about her father. She knew that he talked about his various children with her mother all the time, and that Jennie Lee took almost as much pride in their accomplishments as she did in those of Ava and Marian. And lately Marcus had become more open with Ava, especially about her older half-brothers. On her last trip to Hong Kong he had spoken about them quite freely. She hadn’t liked it at first but gradually began to realize he was trying to bring his families closer together.
Is he feeling his mortality?
She pushed the thought aside. She couldn’t contemplate the passing of Marcus Lee.

Her phone rang. Ava saw it was an incoming Hong Kong number and for a second she thought it might be Michael. But when she answered she heard Sonny’s deep bass. “Uncle told me to call you,” he said, almost apologetically.

“I’m just finishing dim sum, and then I have two more shops to visit. Tell Uncle that I’m on schedule and that I’ll meet him at the airport.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a ride? It isn’t any bother.”

“I’m in Central now and I’d rather not feel pressured to finish my shopping. I’ll take a taxi.”