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help.”
    “And I need to find George Antonelli, the Bangkok partner.”
    “Our friends in Bangkok have already been working on that. By the time you get there they should have all the information you need.”
    “I don’t think Antonelli has access to the money. From what I can gather, Seto has those controls.”
    “But Antonelli can give you access to Seto.”
    “Exactly.”
    They walked slowly back to the hotel together, his arm looped through hers. The Mercedes was parked near the hotel entrance. Sonny stood near the car’s front door, watching them as they approached. He opened the back door for Uncle and helped him into the car. Ava said goodbye and turned to walk into the Mandarin.
    “Call me after you meet with Cheng,” Uncle said to her back.

( 6 )
    AVA LOVED THE MANDARIN ORIENTAL HOTEL. THE very first in the chain had been built on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok in 1887. She had first discovered it when she was dating a banker and had travelled there with her for a four-day conference. They had splurged on their accommodations, booking the Somerset Maugham Suite in the Author’s Wing. After the banker left for her meetings in the mornings, Ava took the hotel’s private ferry across the river to its spa and indulged.
    Her afternoons had been split between the wing’s lounge, where she introduced herself to the works of Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene, and the restaurant terrace on the Chao Phraya. She was hardly a literary historian, but the fact that Conrad, Greene, Maugham, Noel Coward, and James Michener had all stayed and supposedly written there fascinated her. And the river was alluring in its own way. It was broad, brown, and sluggish, and as busy as a North American highway with ships, tugs, and barges working their way north from the Gulf of Thailand into the interior, while water taxis and ferries worked their way from east to west, dodging the bigger vessels as they went.
    Most evenings her friend had an official function to attend, so Ava ate at the hotel by herself. There was a Chinese restaurant — the China House — on the hotel property next to the main building. It served perhaps the best Chinese food she had ever eaten up till then: abalone that had been gently braised for twelve hours, stir-fried black chicken, soy-braised pomfret.
    The thing that had struck her most about the hotel was its level of service. It wasn’t just that it offered good service — that was routine for every five-star hotel in Asia — it was more that the staff seemed to anticipate everything she did or wanted to do. In the four days she had never pressed an elevator button. On her first day there she ordered ice at exactly four o’clock. The ice was there again the next day, the day after, and the day after that, always at exactly four o’clock. And every staff member in the hotel seemed to know her name.
    The only negative was the hotel’s location, which was outside the city core. If you wanted to go anywhere else in Bangkok, you had to contend with traffic that was perpetually paralyzed. The hotel wasn’t a place for someone who needed to get about quickly.
    The Mandarin in Hong Kong did not have a location problem. After a quick shower and a change into her business attire, Ava walked out the front door and got to the Star Ferry in ten minutes. After a five-minute wait she was crossing Victoria Harbour to her meeting with Henry Cheng in Kowloon.
    It was a pleasant day for Hong Kong, about room temperature, slightly overcast, with a light breeze. She sat at the back of the ferry, taking in the sun and looking at the skyline. There was nothing like it in the world — a solid wall of skyscrapers lining the harbour like some medieval fortress. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Central Plaza. Two international finance centres. The Hopewell Centre. The Bank of China building, designed by I. M. Pei. More than forty buildings over sixty-five storeys high. New York couldn’t even come close.
    The ferry