BLOOD RED SARI (28 page)

Shama shook her head again. ‘Advaita called and texted several people. Those of us associated with those NGOs, people who are trying to do some good here. Positive-thinkers. She told us you had concocted some wild story about NGOs being involved in illegal activities, being used to launder money from some kind of criminal activities …’

‘Not some kind,’ Nachiketa interrupted, waving the thick envelope. ‘Human Trafficking. Disguising it as legitimate businesses. Adoption. Orphanages. Child welfare. Charities. Schools for special children. It’s all here, in this package. This is the reason why these people are after me. Why Shonali was killed. Why my office was burnt down. They were after these documents, this package. But they didn’t get it. I still have the evidence. And that’s why I came to you, so you could read it and judge for yourself. If you don’t agree with the conclusions, fine, don’t print it. Don’t write a story. But at least look at the facts for yourself. I got a call from Kerala earlier, from this woman … she says her friend sent it and was probably killed because she found this stuff out. Lalima. You probably remember her from that seminar last year we went to together. Look at these documents. Show it to Tyron, to anyone else. See for yourself.’

Shama looked at Nachiketa for a long moment, then at the package in her hand. ‘I won’t even touch that garbage,’ she said. ‘Let alone read that pack of lies. You can take it with you when you leave. And you can do that right now. Please get out.’

She began to walk around Nachiketa, but Nachiketa reached out and caught hold of her hand – or tried to. It was impossible to actually get a grip with the bandage on. But she managed to sort of press her hand against Shama’s. She looked up at her. ‘I don’t understand. This doesn’t make any sense. Why are you angry? With me? What is it you think I did wrong here? Can’t you see that I’m the victim? That people are trying to kill me? I came to you for help, for god’s sake, Shams. Why are you behaving this way?’

Shama looked down at her and something changed in her face at that moment. Nachiketa saw it and latched onto it.

‘Please, Shams,’ she said. ‘For old times’ sake. Sisters forever, remember? Tell me what’s really going on here?’

Shama looked down at her sadly. ‘Addy contacted us and told us you would be coming around with a crazy story. She told us to watch out; that you would say exactly this kind of crap.’

Nachiketa stared up at Shama, speechless for an instant.

Shama turned and walked away, towards her office.

With an effort Nachiketa found her voice and gestured to Powar to wheel her. She called out to Shama, loud enough to attract the attention of Miss Finland and her disciples. ‘But you don’t understand. Addy’s dead. She was killed in the attack by that German gunman. She
died
trying to protect me.’

Shama turned and looked at Nachiketa with something bordering on outright pity. ‘Addy emailed me after you called. We’re on the same BB group, remember? So are you? She’s been contacting everyone in the media, warning us about you and your conspiracy theory. She said you would say something like that. That you would pretend she was dead and make up some bizarre story about Shonali being dead. Shonali backed her up too. They both felt you had taken the loss in court really hard and gone off the deep end. They said you need help and I agree. Look at your condition, Nachos. You need help. Medical help. Maybe even psychiatric help. Do yourself a favour. Check yourself into a good place. I’ll come visit you and hope you get better soon. Right now, I have a life to get back to and a business to run.’

She opened the glass door and went in, shutting the door behind her.

14.3

HE SLIPPED ON A
red silk robe with beautiful Chinese embroidery – a purple dragon running all the way around. He belted the sash loosely, his male package still making a bulge at the front because of how thin his body was overall and the way he stood, head leaning back and perpetually tilted a little. He stood looking out at the breathtaking view. Finally he turned and said, ‘What do you know about the way the capital markets function?’

She shrugged. ‘What everyone knows. People follow the progress of companies and buy or sell their shares to make a profit.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re thinking of equity markets. And individual investors. That’s for suckers. It’s the equivalent of pickpockets at bus stops and purse snatchers on bikes. I mean the real markets, the big bucks.’

‘Yeah. So?’

‘So it’s a game of kings. The big barons, feudal lords who already own the world, what do you call them here?’

Sheila frowned. ‘Thakurs?’

He gestured. ‘No, that’s Bengali. I mean the general word. They used the word in an RPG game I played.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Zamindars.’

‘Zamindars are land owners.’

‘Yup. These are the people who own the world. Institutional investors. Multinational corporations and conglomerates so massively tentacled and sprawled out, they encompass the global village, which means they provide succour to it and strangle it both at once.’

Sheila tried to follow his imaginative metaphors. Stanley Wu’s private obsession was CGI, computer graphic imagery. He owned a VFX studio based in Hong Kong, and apart from the work they did for movies, both Asian and Hollywood, they designed and developed games, their speciality being MMORPGs which, she had learnt during a night-long postcoital session, stood for ‘massively multiplayer online role playing games’,
World of Warcraft
being the most famous and successful one of that genre, and one that he was always trying to emulate. He played around with the designs himself and she had seen some of his stuff: it was pretty damn good. So when he gestured and waved his arms about like this, his penis flip-flopping unenthusiastically inside his gown like a disinterested participant, she understood that he was visualizing these things more extravagantly than she could ever imagine.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I get that, obviously. I know the big dudes own everything and run everything. So what does that have to do with anything?’

He looked at her, hands frozen in mid-gesture. He was still doing the octopus embracing the globe thing. ‘Everything. The rich want to get richer. That’s their own raison d’être. It’s what they do.’

‘So?’ she shrugged. ‘Get richer. The fuck do I care? I don’t even invest in the stock market.’

He lowered his hands, grinning. His hair was dishevelled just a little. It was too short to ever get really funky. She liked him this way – out of his immaculate suit, away from his celebrity guest parade, letting his hair down … as much as it could be let. He was almost human at such times. Not a man who had a stake in every major illegal operation run out of the subcontinent, with ties to the Triads, Yakuza, Jopok and every other Asian mafia in existence. Apart from his billion-dollar legitimate business interests, of course. Or was it the other way around? Was there a difference anymore?

‘So where do the rich get more money from?’ he asked.

‘Each other? Through competition? By outdoing each other at business or service or even just making money? Isn’t that the basis of capitalism, free enterprise?’

He shook his head. ‘That was true maybe a hundred years ago. When the capital markets really were used to raise capital for legitimate business and fuel growth. Back when the so-called “developed nations” were still growing, populations and consumer buying expanding. But all that changed once the First World markets peaked. Population went into negative growth. So did consumer spending. You name the sector, the industry, the business, the service, it’s all in a downward spiral.’ He used his finger to follow an invisible graph vector in the air, taking a gradual declining path that increased in the negative gradient of the Y-axis. ‘Fewer people means less spending, which means negative growth, and the basic rule of business is the same as nature: “Grow or Die”. The older industrialized countries went through a similar graph. The British Empire. Towards the end, they couldn’t consume as much as they were producing – as much as they
needed
to keep producing and selling in order to keep growing. So what did they do?’

She sat on a beautiful shaped thing that was either a futon or a very well-cushioned statuette. She almost leapt up again when it moved and adjusted its contours to her body posture, weight and angle of incline. Intelligent furniture, fuck. ‘They sold their shit to their colonies?’

‘Yes, and what substance did they use initially to trade and set up the distribution network for those sales?’

She shrugged. ‘You lost me there.’

‘Opium,’ he said, with a touch of sadness that he rarely displayed. ‘The drug they used to subjugate the most powerful nation in the world.’

‘China,’ she said. ‘Of course. They manufactured and distributed opium legally across the Cathay belt at the time. I read Amitav Ghosh’s trilogy.’

He spread his hands. ‘I read his bibliography, the list of books Ghosh took his information from. Half a dozen of them were written by my ancestors.’

Sheila kept silent. She knew better than to say or do anything when Wu spoke of his family. He continued on his own.

‘Did you know that opium was sold legally in India until 1947? It was only after we formed our own government and took charge that we outlawed the drug and its manufacture, sale and distribution. But the damage was done. The groundwork had been laid. Once they had created the distribution system and market with opium, they used the same system to market other, legitimate products. The British basically laid the railway tracks for the same drug distribution system that continues even today, now selling a hundred other substances in place of opium. Bastards built the Drug Railroad of the World.’

She ventured an aside. ‘And your family runs quite a few trains on that railroad.’

He turned and looked at her sharply. ‘You’re one to talk, Sheila Ray.’

She smiled. After a moment, he smiled back. That was another thing she liked about him: unlike the stereotypical movie cliché of powerful ganglords – especially Asian ganglords – Stanley Wu’s emotional intelligence quotient and self-esteem were high enough that he could take criticism and not have you double-tapped on the spot or taken out back and have the shit beaten out of you. At least that was true of her and of the few instances when she’d taken a potshot at him.

‘It’s true,’ he admitted. ‘The British started the fire, but we kept it burning. No denying that. But now it’s a different world, a different ball game. After the sub-prime-mortgage fallout and the crash, the big boys needed a new cash cow. Something they could milk for at least a few decades without the well running dry. Something big. Something that feeds a need that won’t go away anytime soon.’

‘Drugs,’ she suggested.

He waved that away, flapping his hand like a Tai Chi master. ‘Drugs are already in the mix. So are Ponzi schemes, legal as well as extra-legal. Counterfeiting. Arms dealing. Extortion. Identity theft. Prostitution. Money laundering. The small-time stuff like fraud, forgery, illegal immigration, larceny, murder-for-hire, armed robbery …’ he gestured. ‘All that small-time shit. But all that was already around and already pushed to the limit. There is only so much juice you can squeeze out of an old litchi.’

An attendant in a traditional Chinese Hanfu brought in a tray and handed Wu a tiny scroll of paper so discreetly that had Sheila even glanced away for a moment, she would have missed the exchange. She followed the attendant for just a second, the richly brocaded Hanfu catching her eye, and when she looked back at Stanley, the scroll had already been read and disposed, she didn’t know where. He gestured to the tray, but she shook her head, declining. He picked up a tiny bone china cup adorned with delicate artwork and sipped steaming hot jasmine tea as he talked.

‘There was only one business left that hadn’t been fully exploited yet and was still profitable enough to assure the zamindars of the free market the certainty of guaranteed profits for decades to come. Something big and widespread enough that it would always be in demand, and for which there would always be a plentiful supply. What was more, it was a self-replenishing supply.’

‘Self-replenishing?’ She frowned. ‘You mean, like cocaine?’

He wagged a finger slowly, holding the tea cup high in the other hand, at face height. ‘Cocaine needs to be grown in secret, processed in secret, packaged and distributed in secret. They needed something that could be supplied through legitimate channels, under protection of law, using borderline-legal methods. It would never go out of demand and keep rising in price, and they could control the supply and quality of it.’

Sheila shrugged, giving up. ‘Diamonds?’ It did sound a lot like the way the original cartel had built the diamond trade, exploiting native African labour and lack of legal sophistication to create a trillion-dollar empire through the use of legal technicalities and loopholes. ‘Blood diamonds?’

Stanley Wu smiled, the steam from the tea swirling around his high cheekbones and only slightly slanted eyes. She loved his eyes. They were dark, intense, trustworthy eyes, Chinese eyes. ‘People,’ he said simply. ‘Human trafficking, to use the correct term. Or to use an older unfashionable term, slave-trading.’