Fortune Read online

  Praise for Ian Hamilton and

  The Lost Decades of Uncle Chow Tung Series

  “I didn’t think anything could top Ian Hamilton’s Ava Lee novels for originality and style, but his backstory about the rise of Uncle Chow is even better . . . [Foresight] is one of his best.” — Globe and Mail

  “[Ian Hamilton is] a lively writer with an attentive eye for the details of complicated suspense.” — London Free Press

  “Hamilton does a masterly job capturing the sights, smells, and sounds of Hong Kong as he charts Chow’s struggle to survive.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “[Uncle’s] rise through the ranks of the Hong Kong Triads makes for fascinating reading … Those fresh to Hamilton’s work or simply looking for something familiar but different, meanwhile, will find much to like in the author’s new series.” — Quill & Quire

  “A welcome origin story about the man who helped shape Ava Lee.” — Booklist

  “A magnetic tale of intrigue among rivals and cohorts, the early ascent of ‘Uncle’ Chow Tung within the Hong Kong Triads is exhilarating and utterly convincing. This is the first in a spin-off series that you’ll want to keep spinning forever. Jump on at the start!” — John Farrow, bestselling author of the Émile Cinq-Mars series

  “Ian Hamilton’s knowledge of the Triads and their operations is fascinating — and slightly unsettling. He unwinds his tale of Uncle’s origins with such detail that readers will wonder how he grew so familiar without being a triad himself. A must-read for fans of the Ava Lee novels!” — John Lawrence Reynolds, Arthur Ellis Award–winning author of Beach Strip

  Praise for Ian Hamilton and the Ava Lee Series

  “The only thing scarier than being ripped off for a few million bucks is being the guy who took it and having Ava Lee on your tail. If Hamilton’s kick-ass accountant has your number, it’s up.”

  — Linwood Barclay

  “Whip smart, kick-butt heroine, mixed into a perfect combination of adventure and exotic location. Can’t wait to see where Ava is off to next.” — Taylor Stevens, author of the Vanessa Michael Munroe Series

  “A heck of a fun series, sharing Ian Fleming’s penchant for intrigue and affinity for the finer things in life and featuring Ava Lee — a remarkable hero, a twenty-first-century James Bond with real depth beneath her tough-as-nails exterior. Five stars and first class!”

  — Owen Laukkanen, author of The Professionals

  “Ava Lee, that wily, wonderful hunter of nasty business brutes, is back in her best adventure ever.” — Globe and Mail

  “Slick, fast-moving escapism reminiscent of Ian Fleming.” — Booklist

  “A hugely original creation.” — Irish Independent

  “Crackling with suspense, intrigue, and danger, your fingers will be smoking from turning these pages. Don’t ever, ever, mess with Ava Lee. She’s not your average accountant.” — Terry Fallis, author of The Best Laid Plans

  Fortune

  Also by Ian Hamilton

  The Ava Lee Series

  The Dragon Head of Hong Kong: The Ava Lee Prequel (ebook)

  The Water Rat of Wanchai

  The Disciple of Las Vegas

  The Wild Beasts of Wuhan

  The Red Pole of Macau

  The Scottish Banker of Surabaya

  The Two Sisters of Borneo

  The King of Shanghai

  The Princeling of Nanjing

  The Couturier of Milan

  The Imam of Tawi-Tawi

  The Goddess of Yantai

  The Mountain Master of Sha Tin

  The Diamond Queen of Singapore

  The Lost Decades of Uncle Chow Tung

  Fate

  Foresight

  Fortune

  THe Lost DecAdes of Uncle CHow Tung

  Ian Hamilton

  Copyright © 2021 Ian Hamilton

  Published in Canada in 2021 and the USA in 2021

  by House of Anansi Press Inc.

  www.houseofanansi.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  House of Anansi Press is a Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA by Benetech) publisher. The ebook version of this book meets stringent accessibility standards and is available to students and readers with print disabilities.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Fortune : the lost decades of Uncle Chow Tung / Ian Hamilton.

  Names: Hamilton, Ian, 1946– author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200273272 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200280740 | ISBN 9781487004026

  (softcover) | ISBN 9781487004033 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487004040 (Kindle)

  Classification: LCC PS8615.A4423 F67 2021 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  Book design: Alysia Shewchuk

  House of Anansi Press respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the Traditional Territory of many Nations, including the Anishinabeg, the Wendat, and the Haudenosaunee. It is also the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

  For Bruce Westwood,

  with sincere thanks for ten years of support.

  The Mountain Masters of Kowloon, Hong Kong Island, and the New Territories

  Kowloon

  Man

  Yin

  Zhao

  Weng

  Hong Kong Island

  Wanchai — Sammy Wing

  Happy Valley — Tse

  Causeway Bay — Feng

  Central East — Yeung

  Central West — Ling

  New Territories

  Tsuen Wan — Chow

  Sai Kung — Ng

  Mong Kok — Poon

  Sha Tin — He

  Mai Po — Tan

  Tai Po — Deng

  Yuen Long — Ching

  Sha Tau Kok — Lee

  Tai Wai — Wu Min

  Fanling — Uncle Chow Tung

  CHAPTER ONE

  Macau

  Tuesday, February 7, 1995

  Uncle Chow Tung sat in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel waiting for his friend Fong to arrive. It was nine o’clock in the evening. Uncle had arrived an hour earlier by jetfoil from Hong Kong to have dinner with Fong. He detested Macau and normally wouldn’t have travelled there for any reason. But he was there at Fong’s request, and given the nature of this particular invitation, Uncle couldn’t say no to a man he loved like a brother.

  Fong, a lifelong bachelor, had met a woman he was thinking of marrying. He had asked Uncle to have dinner with the two of them so he could give him a candid assessment of her. Uncle wasn’t sure what he would learn about Fanny Wang over a meal, but he had agreed to come. The dinner was scheduled for ten, the lateness of the hour necessitated by Fanny’s job as a mama-san, managing a group of sex workers based at the Lisboa Hotel. The nature of her job wouldn’t prejudice whatever opinion he might reach about her. Uncle viewed prostitution, properly conducted, as a victimless crime, and he had learned early in his life not to pass judgement on what people did to survive.

  Fong had arrived in Macau the day before, and Uncle was sure he had spent more time at the gaming tables than with Fanny. He was a compulsive gambler who had managed to convince himself there had to be a system that would beat the house
at the roulette wheel or baccarat table. Fong had tried many; they had all failed, but his conviction didn’t wane. He had agreed to meet Uncle in the lobby at nine, but he was obviously running late. Uncle imagined that, as always, Fong was trying to get that one last bet down — that one last bet that turned into twenty.

  As Uncle sat contemplating his friend’s weakness, he heard what sounded like a fight erupting at the hotel entrance. He stood up and walked in that direction. Whatever was going on had frightened the doorman, who, rather than intervening, was standing inside the lobby looking out through the revolving doors. Uncle went past him to the top of the steps that led into the hotel.

  Two groups of men were facing each other. A group of five had a dominant position on the steps and were yelling insults and pointing fingers at a row of four men in front of them. Uncle could see guns tucked into the back waistbands of pants for at least two of the five. The men standing in the row were heavily tattooed and were waving knives in the direction of the quintet. Triads, Uncle thought.

  “Hey, guys, what’s going on here? This isn’t the place to settle a dispute,” he said.

  One of the men on the steps turned to face him.

  “I know you. You’re Yin’s deputy Red Pole,” Uncle said.

  “And I know you.”

  “You’re a long way from Kowloon,” said Uncle.

  “We were sent here to help our brothers in Macau, members of Sun Yee On. These creeps have been poaching on their moneylending operations in the casinos.”

  Uncle knew a lot about Sun Yee On, including its more formal name, the New Righteousness and Peace Commercial and Industrial Guild. He had been approached years before by one of their senior people, and offered an opportunity to join the society and place his independent triad gang under its banner. At the time, Sun Yee On had more than fifty thousand members worldwide, but there were dozens of factions and subgroups within the organization. Men like Yin in Kowloon ran their gangs as they saw fit. Uncle was promised he could maintain his independence, but he still said no, just as he had said no to similar offers from 14K and Wo Shing Wo.

  “That may be true, but squabbling in public like this isn’t going to benefit anyone,” said Uncle.

  “We take our orders from Yin, and he said to keep these thieves out of the Hyatt’s casino. We’ll do whatever’s necessary to make sure they don’t get in.”

  The Hyatt fronted a main street, and Uncle saw that the dispute had attracted a crowd of curious onlookers. That wasn’t good. He walked down the steps, slipped between two of the Kowloon gangsters, and approached the row of men.

  “My name is Uncle. I’m the Mountain Master in Fanling. I’m here to meet a friend, nothing more. I think you should leave now and speak to your Mountain Master. Tell him I suggest he call Yin in Kowloon to settle this.”

  “He already knows these are Yin’s men.”

  “Then tell him again,” Uncle said. “Nothing positive is going to happen if you stay here.”

  The men looked at each other, and one said, “We should regroup. This isn’t going to work.” The others nodded and they started walking away from the hotel.

  Uncle waited until they had gone down a side street and were out of sight before turning to face the men from Kowloon. “Why don’t you vacate those steps now. You are blocking the entrance.”

  “We’ll move off to the sides, but we’re not leaving,” the deputy Red Pole said.

  “Whatever,” Uncle said, becoming impatient with their thick-headedness. He stepped forward, the men parted, and he climbed the stairs to re-enter the hotel. There was still no sign of Fong as he sat down once more in the lobby.

  He reached into the pocket of his black suit jacket and took out a racing form. Uncle’s only hobby was betting on horse races. Twice a week for nine months of the year he could indulge his passion at the Happy Valley and Sha Tin racetracks. Since Happy Valley held its races on Wednesday nights, that was now the focus of his attention. He had bought the form the day before and had already handicapped the races in a cursory fashion, but it was on Tuesday nights that he really went to work. With that objective, he opened the paper.

  For Uncle, handicapping horse races was an intellectual exercise that allowed him to escape the stresses that came with heading up a triad gang. The time he spent poring over the form comprised the only hours in the week when his mind wasn’t being bombarded by thoughts about the gang’s preservation and future. As usual, within a few minutes of opening the form he was immersed in the myriad factors he applied to decide a horse’s chances of winning.

  The race he was handicapping, though, presented a problem. As a rule, Uncle disliked backing favourites, and since fewer than 25 percent of favourites won at Happy Valley, he rarely bet on one at that track. But in this 1,200-metre race there was only one horse that stood out. In fact, Uncle couldn’t imagine him losing and guessed he’d go off at odds of three to five. Frustratingly, there was no clear second choice, only a handful of horses that, with a perfect trip and ride, might challenge him. “I might have to bet on him,” Uncle muttered as he drew a star next to the favourite.

  There were noises again from outside, and this time Uncle froze. No, they couldn’t have! he thought as he got to his feet and walked quickly to the entrance.

  He was sure he had heard a burst of gunshots, and prayed that he hadn’t. The doorman still hadn’t ventured outside; he seemed rooted to his spot by the doorway. Uncle pushed past him and walked outside into chaos, overlaid with screams from some of Yin’s triads and the frightened onlookers.

  The three men who had occupied the left side of the stairs were all bleeding, and one had tumbled onto the street and was lying flat on his face. One of the men on the right had also been hit. The deputy Red Pole didn’t appear to have been shot; he was kneeling next to the man on the street. Uncle went to him. “Is he badly hurt?” he asked.

  The deputy looked up, a mixture of rage and grief contorting his face. “I think he’s dead,” he said. “They came in a car — drove by slowly and shot at us through the open windows. The cowards didn’t have the balls to take us on man to man.”

  “Uncle!” a familiar voice called. Uncle looked up to see Fong coming towards him with a horrified expression on his face.

  “These men are from Yin’s gang. The shooters are local. The idiots decided to have it out in one of the most public places in Macau,” Uncle said angrily.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Fong said, his voice shaky.

  “What else has happened?”

  Fong pointed to an area partly hidden by the steps, where a group of people had congregated. “A woman and her daughter were shot,” said Fong. “It looks like the woman was hit in the arm, but the girl took a bullet to the chest. I don’t think she’s more than ten years old.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Uncle and Fong remained outside the Grand Hyatt behind quickly assembled police cordons, as ambulances took away the wounded triads and the girl. They had avoided any contact with the police, and so had Yin’s deputy Red Pole, who slipped away as soon as possible.

  “I know this is bad,” Fong said, “but I keep thanking god it didn’t happen in Hong Kong. We’d have the entire OCTB up our ass.”

  The Organized Crime and Triad Bureau was a division of the Royal Hong Kong Police established specifically to deal with triads. “It’s still bad. The Hong Kong newspapers will have this on every front page tomorrow, and it will be the lead on every TV and radio news program,” Uncle said. “Look over there. There are at least three television crews here now, and the cops are giving them full access. And things could get much worse if the girl dies.”

  “What were Yin’s men doing here in the first place?”

  “They said they were supporting a fellow Sun Yee On gang that’s in a dispute with an independent Macau gang over who controls moneylending in the casinos.”

  “They
had no business being here.”

  “Maybe not, but there is the Sun Yee On connection,” said Uncle.

  “I have never heard any of Yin’s guys make a big deal about being Sun Yee On.”

  “They don’t when things are going well. But the moment they have problems they can’t handle on their own, they turn to their brethren. We’re lucky that all our gangs in the Territories are independent. The ones on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon have complicated connections, which is why we need to keep this mess isolated here in Macau.”

  “Yin will retaliate,” Fong said with complete certainty.

  “I pray that he doesn’t, but it’s out of our hands. If he does, this could really get out of control. He isn’t normally a hothead, but these are stressful times and he might feel that he can’t afford to look weak.”

  “Will you talk to him?” Fong asked.

  “I’ll call him as soon as I get back to Fanling,” Uncle said, checking his watch. “I’m not staying for dinner. I’m going to catch the next jetfoil back to Hong Kong. That’s where I need to be tonight. You’ll have to explain that to Fanny.”

  “Don’t worry about her. She’ll be relieved. She was very nervous about meeting you,” said Fong. “Do you want me to come with you?”