Read Online The Two Sisters of Borneo by Ian Hamilton - Free Book Online
Authors: Ian Hamilton
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these days was a bit old-fashioned, Ava knew, but she liked the idea of having someone to call, someone who actually cared if things went wrong. So she booked the first-class seat herself and copied Gail on the details.
Finding a hotel was a bit more of a challenge. Her hotel preferences were more eclectic than her airline choices, which were typically Asian-based carriers. She liked staying at the big five-star chains when she was in Asia; the Mandarin Oriental was her favourite, with the Peninsula and the Shangri-La not far behind. In North America and Europe she found the service in the larger hotels far too impersonal, so she typically opted for smaller, high-end boutique hotels in a central location. Searching online for hotels in Amsterdam, she found a room at the Dylan, a five-star hotel with only forty-one rooms and a Michelin-starred restaurant, situated on the Keizersgracht Canal, almost in the middle of the city.
The twelve-hour flight passed smoothly. Ava had two glasses of champagne when she boarded, downed two glasses of a French white burgundy with a dinner of Dover sole, and then fell asleep watching the Chinese film The Election . The film chronicled the election of a chairman of the triad societies. She had seen it before but it always fascinated her, if only because Uncle had been chairman for consecutive terms. The machinations, the betrayals, and the violence that accompanied the election were horrific. It was difficult for her to accept that Uncle might have been a guiding hand in such venal events, but she knew that Hong Kong triad films were only loosely based on reality. She nodded off before the final sudden, vicious encounter between the two protagonists.
When she woke, they were still three hours from Amsterdam. She did a bathroom run, ordered a coffee, and then opened the envelope that May had given her. It contained a large volume of paper but less hard information than Ava had expected. The partnership agreement was the biggest component: thirty pages of corporate boilerplate that said nothing more than what May Ling had already explained, although Ava did find it strange to see her name affixed as a director and executive vice-president of Borneo Fine Hardwoods and Furniture. She had been a partner with Uncle for ten years without any written agreement. She could remember only one handshake. There had certainly never been any titles.
The letter from May Ling’s lawyer was a simple one-page document attesting that the partnership agreement was a valid document and that Ava was fully empowered to act on any matter relating to the corporation and the bankruptcy proceedings. The bankruptcy notification itself was just that. It said, on the company’s own letterhead, that Timmerman BV had been appointed as trustee in bankruptcy to liquidate the assets of Janssen Volker NV. All secured and unsecured creditors were invited to a meeting that was scheduled for eleven a.m. the coming Tuesday at 113 Damstratt in the city of Amsterdam.
Attached to the notice were lists of creditors with the amounts they were owed. Only two were secured: a bank for a nominal amount and a company called Meijer Finance, which claimed 15 million euros as the debt owed. The list of unsecured creditors was longer: several trucking firms, a landlord, some warehouses, credit card companies, and, dwarfing them all, Borneo Fine Hardwoods and Furniture.
Ava had packed a black Moleskine notebook in her Chanel carry-on bag. She opened it now and wrote Borneo Furniture across the top of the first page. She had kept an individual notebook for every job she undertook for Uncle and herself. Her friends joked about her low-tech approach, but she had found that writing numbers, names, facts, questions, and theories by hand somehow enhanced her retention level and her analytical skills. And when a job was done, the notebook provided a permanent record. The notebooks for all of her jobs were stored in a safety deposit box in a bank
Finding a hotel was a bit more of a challenge. Her hotel preferences were more eclectic than her airline choices, which were typically Asian-based carriers. She liked staying at the big five-star chains when she was in Asia; the Mandarin Oriental was her favourite, with the Peninsula and the Shangri-La not far behind. In North America and Europe she found the service in the larger hotels far too impersonal, so she typically opted for smaller, high-end boutique hotels in a central location. Searching online for hotels in Amsterdam, she found a room at the Dylan, a five-star hotel with only forty-one rooms and a Michelin-starred restaurant, situated on the Keizersgracht Canal, almost in the middle of the city.
The twelve-hour flight passed smoothly. Ava had two glasses of champagne when she boarded, downed two glasses of a French white burgundy with a dinner of Dover sole, and then fell asleep watching the Chinese film The Election . The film chronicled the election of a chairman of the triad societies. She had seen it before but it always fascinated her, if only because Uncle had been chairman for consecutive terms. The machinations, the betrayals, and the violence that accompanied the election were horrific. It was difficult for her to accept that Uncle might have been a guiding hand in such venal events, but she knew that Hong Kong triad films were only loosely based on reality. She nodded off before the final sudden, vicious encounter between the two protagonists.
When she woke, they were still three hours from Amsterdam. She did a bathroom run, ordered a coffee, and then opened the envelope that May had given her. It contained a large volume of paper but less hard information than Ava had expected. The partnership agreement was the biggest component: thirty pages of corporate boilerplate that said nothing more than what May Ling had already explained, although Ava did find it strange to see her name affixed as a director and executive vice-president of Borneo Fine Hardwoods and Furniture. She had been a partner with Uncle for ten years without any written agreement. She could remember only one handshake. There had certainly never been any titles.
The letter from May Ling’s lawyer was a simple one-page document attesting that the partnership agreement was a valid document and that Ava was fully empowered to act on any matter relating to the corporation and the bankruptcy proceedings. The bankruptcy notification itself was just that. It said, on the company’s own letterhead, that Timmerman BV had been appointed as trustee in bankruptcy to liquidate the assets of Janssen Volker NV. All secured and unsecured creditors were invited to a meeting that was scheduled for eleven a.m. the coming Tuesday at 113 Damstratt in the city of Amsterdam.
Attached to the notice were lists of creditors with the amounts they were owed. Only two were secured: a bank for a nominal amount and a company called Meijer Finance, which claimed 15 million euros as the debt owed. The list of unsecured creditors was longer: several trucking firms, a landlord, some warehouses, credit card companies, and, dwarfing them all, Borneo Fine Hardwoods and Furniture.
Ava had packed a black Moleskine notebook in her Chanel carry-on bag. She opened it now and wrote Borneo Furniture across the top of the first page. She had kept an individual notebook for every job she undertook for Uncle and herself. Her friends joked about her low-tech approach, but she had found that writing numbers, names, facts, questions, and theories by hand somehow enhanced her retention level and her analytical skills. And when a job was done, the notebook provided a permanent record. The notebooks for all of her jobs were stored in a safety deposit box in a bank
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