by David Stone
The screen said only PRIVATE.
“Yes.”
“Kiki, this is Larissa.”
Larissa, Gospic’s stepdaughter, brutally disfigured during a rape by militia soldiers in Kosovo, survivor of endless surgical attempts to render her face and body more bearable to herself, and to others; she handled Gospic’s books and did all of his critical IT work as well. She was the only woman Gospic trusted and she did not like Kiki Lujac. Not one little bit.
Lujac, who found even the slightest physical defects shiveringly repulsive, avoided her rigorously. He had an oddly atavistic response to her ugliness. It made him afraid of her. He hoped one day Gospic would need to have her dead. He would do the work as a service to beauty. Oddly, she had a lovely voice, a velvety flow, like pouring cream.
“Larissa. Ma petit chou.”
“Where are you?”
“Just coming into Changi. Warm and sunny. A perfect day. How is it in Kotor?”
“It sucks. Do you have a pen?”
“I have a recorder in this phone. Go ahead.”
“The Intercontinental, 80 Middle Road, in the Colonial district. The Presidential Suite, right at the top. They’re registered as Micah Dalton and Mandy Pownall. Dalton is a currency manager and Pownall works in Mergers for the British bank Burke and Single. They’re based in London. Daddy thinks the bank is a cover for an Intelligence operation, but he can’t find out which one. My guess is the CIA. Only the CIA has that kind of money. They have tickets to a formal ball at Raffles for eight o’clock this evening, your time. Their passports are British, but Dalton is an American citizen. The Burke and Single website says he’s a graduate of VMI and Yale, has an M.B.A from the LSE. Likes to ride, and boxes at a private club in Knightsbridge. Extremely fit. Has a lot of visible scars on his upper torso, which he has attributed to a car crash back in the U.S. Has a reputation for being aggressive and has been known to hurt his opponents. He has title to a flat in Wilton Row, in Belgravia. No mortgage. Salary undisclosed. Very solvent. Solid account at the Bank of Scotland. Not a womanizer, or a creepy bisexual like you. None of your bad habits.”
“I consider myself an omnisexual, Cabbage. And you sound like you want to fuck him yourself.”
“Jealous?”
“Cabbage, sweetheart, the last time you had an orgasm with someone else in the room was when those Bosnians were passing you around the barracks like a spittoon. Let’s don’t get personal. You couldn’t handle it.”
A long silence while Larissa dealt with the comment; Lujac had a reputation for casual viciousness, but every now and then he could take your breath away with a barb dipped in something truly vitriolic. Lujac’s day was not now, but it was coming. Her father had made a promise.
“Yes,” she said, as if the blade had not gone deep, “I imagine you wish it had happened to you. Being a human spittoon is right up your back alley, so to speak. Dalton has no wife, no kids, no background other than the bio on the website. You can’t get a thing about him from any of the databases. His credentials check out, but nothing in between the LSE and coming to Burke five years ago. If he’s not a spook, I’m Angelina Jolie.”
“Great. Book me there as well.”
“Your own name?”
“No. Use the French one. Jules Duhamel. I like being Jules Duhamel. What about the woman?”
“Her background is county, as the English say. Father and mother were gentry, and she went to Cambridge for law. Again, nothing personal. Just her credentials and her position at Burke. If you’re contemplating a merger or an acquisition, she’s the one who vets the target.”
“Are they lovers?”
“I do research, Kiki. I don’t do psychic. Do you want pictures?”
“I can go to the website and download them. Can you get me into the ball?”
“You’ve never crashed a party? Improvise. Use your charm. They’ll pee themselves. Do you want any gear? Daddy’s man in Bari said you left it all on the Subito.”
Lujac was silent, thinking about Saskia’s last moments, about staring into her dying eyes. He wanted to be . . . close . . . for this one.
Blade close.
Penetration, he thought, is such a complex word. Like a geode. Crack it open and it reveals all kinds of inner beauty.
“Kiki?”
“No. No gear. Too dangerous in this part of the world. I have my cameras. I’ll say I’m scouting locations for a shoot. Matter of fact, I think I will. As for the rest of it, I can get everything I need in the hotel’s kitchen.”
15
The Intercontinental Hotel, Singapore
The Presidential Suite at the Intercontinental, as is only fitting, took up more room than a carrier’s flight deck. It was almost fatally tasteful, in an uncluttered, manly, British Raj sort of way, with lots of exotic woods and brass lamps and green glass walls; three large bedrooms, a formal dining room, a large study, a wall of seamless windows in the living room that laid all of Singapore and a slice of the Marina before the eye of the beholder like an offering. The suite had a resident butler, a genial, older Malay with a Virginia accent named Mr. Dill, who took no kind of offense when Mandy told him they must sadly forgo the pleasure of his services. He withdrew, with a vaguely hydraulic hiss, and closed the double doors behind him with a gentle thump. Mandy literally fell into the leather sofa in front of the window wall, landing with a sigh, a toss of her hair, and a flutter of linen skirts, kicking her Jimmy Choos off, one, then the other, flicking each across the room with her toe.
“God, this spy stuff is brutal.”
Dalton, standing in the middle of the entry foyer and contemplating an immediate bath followed by steak frites, smiled at the back of her neck.
“How did you get this past Antonia?”
Antonia was the accounts controller for London Station, a steely young black woman fresh out of Langley, whose gimlet eye, her red pen hovering like a lepidopterist’s needle, scanned the expense accounts of the resident agents and support staff, her lips tightening as she closed in on a puffed-up tab or a dubious chit and pinned it to the ledger.
“Not on the books, Micah. I paid for all this myself.”
“Mandy! You must be insane.”
“Not literally, Micah. Actually, we’re using your credit card.”
“Mine?”
“Well. You shouldn’t have left it in your flat.”
“That’s nuts. Nobody asked me for my card. And, anyway, there’s no way I had enough room for all of this!”
“No. Burke and Single paid you a quarterly bonus. We just popped it all into your platypus card. You’re simply loaded, dear boy.”
“How much do we have?”
Mandy told him. Dalton, shaking his head, left to find a bathroom. It took a while. It took longer to figure out the controls for the huge hammered-copper bowl that he eventually realized was a bathtub. A hazy hour or so later, he was floating in a sea of pinkish bubbles, half asleep, working his way through a short, sharp scotch, when Mandy breezed in through the open door, long, lean, and dangerously radiant in a swirly and vaguely translucent little sundress that looked to be made of pale green smoke.
“My God,” she said, leering at him. “You look like a lobster in a copper pot.”
“Why are you here, Mandy?”
“The car from the Home Ministry.”
“The car from the Home Ministry?”
“Is there an echo?”
“It cannot be three.”
“Alas.”
“Dammit! Goddam Singaporean bullshit.”
“It could be worse,” she said, picking a huge navy blue bathrobe off a brass hook by the shower stall. “We could be in Ottawa.”
She walked over to the side of the bowl, held up the robe.
“Come on, Micah. Once more into your breeches.”
“They can damn well wait,” he said, leaning back into the tub and sipping at the last of the scotch. “By the way, while we’re alone, remember I asked you about Fyke’s tag? Did you get
anything out of Langley?”
“Yes. I just did. They said the tag still had some power. The medics at Changi removed it and took it to the SID offices in the Home Ministry. That’s just across the Singapore River from our Embassy. Our people detected a very weak signal, amplified it, and managed to ID the tag.”
Dalton considered the story. It was barely plausible. Barely.
“Fascinating explanation. Do you believe it?”
“I’m inclined to. It’s far more plausible than the idea that we have a source inside the SID. I don’t think they’ve ever been penetrated. And now, Micah,” she said, lifting up the robe again, “we really have to go.”
“Turn around.”
“No. Ogling your body will be the one bright spot in this whole day.”
“I don’t want to inflame you. Unbridled lust is dangerous for you older women.”
“I’ll risk it. Arise.”
Dalton arose, dripping.
Mandy stepped back, her expression changing.
“God, Micah, you’re bleeding.”
Dalton looked down at his belly. A red tint was seeping through the fresh bandages around his torso.
“Christ,” he said, touching the wound. “That can’t be good.”
“You need to see a doctor. I’ll call Mr. Dill.”
Dalton shook his head.
“No. How do I explain a knife wound? I’m supposed to be a banker.”
“What about . . . that? That’s a lot of blood.”
Dalton looked down at the bandage again and then up at her.
“No,” she said, backing away. “I don’t do wounds.”
“Yes you do,” he said, stepping out of the bath and wrapping the robe around his body. “Call Mr. Dill and ask for some Krazy Glue.”
“Krazy . . . what do you want glue for?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
THE CAR WAS a Mercedes limo that had been militarized—hardened enough to take an RPG smack-dab in the chitlins and keep on trucking. Mandy and Dalton, now in a cream-colored Zegna suit over a shell pink shirt and a pale blue tie made of raw silk, sat in the darkest recesses of the back, while, in the front, far away, the driver, the same Mr. Frog Face—now identified as Sergeant Ong Bo—silent as a pall-bearer, hurtled south down North Bridge Street toward the Singapore River and the Parliament House on its far bank. North Bridge Street is to Singapore City as Sixth Avenue is to Midtown Manhattan. Mandy and Dalton watched as the car flickered from sunlight to shadow and back again as the canyons and towers of the central city loomed and receded.
“Changed a bit,” said Mandy, a little awed in spite of her dislike.
“Uncle Harry. He’s retired now, but he’s still the ‘Minister Mentor, ’ and he sits right beside Lee Hsien Loong, keeping a hand on the wheel. And nobody around here’s complaining. Lee took Singapore from a Third World cesspool to the gateway of the East. People are getting rich all over town, and that’s the way they like it.”
“Still a tyranny, isn’t it? Thank God for Stamford Raffles. He put the mark of England on this place. The only redeeming feature. Ever notice that every country that was ever colonized by England ended up an economic power and every country under Stalin was—still is—a dog’s brekkie?”
“You’d never know it by the way you Brits treated Raffles. He lost four kids to malaria and cholera, his entire collection of flora and fauna sank at sea, and he lost all his money in a bank collapse. The East India Company refused him a pension, and when he died the parish priest in your Old Blighty wouldn’t bury him because Raffles opposed slavery.”
Mandy gave him a look. Dalton shrugged it off.
“Lonely Planet,” he said. “Got it at Marco Polo. Somebody had to know something about the place.”
“Let’s review. I arrived here only a short time ago, barely three hours, and already I’m hot, I’m hungry, I think I’m getting a heat rash where no sensible girl wants a heat rash, I’m in an armored car with a driver who looks like he catches bugs with his tongue, I’m traveling with a gifted roué who for some demented reason has decided to become celibate now that I’ve finally got him alone, and we’re on our way to see a Home Ministry thug who will quite possibly toss us both in Changi Prison on a trumped-up charge. Am I in Hell? No? Much worse? Then I must be in Singapore.”
“You liked the hotel.”
“Which I may never see again.”
“You’re just cranky because I won’t boink you.”
“The day is young, Micah. Oh jolly. Here we are.”
The car slowed as it turned in to a large gated compound in front of a massive stone Victorian pile. A uniformed guard snapped to as Sergeant Ong Bo rolled up to the gatehouse. The guard leaned into the car to glower at Dalton and Mandy in the backseat and then waved them through to a graveled parking area at the side of the building. Ong leaped out and scrabbled around to open Mandy’s door. She gave him a look that should have burned off his eyebrows and managed not to enlighten him any further on the subject of female undergarments as she struggled out of the limo.
“I will take you to Minister Dak,” he said, scuttling across to the marble staircase that led up to a set of leaded-glass doors. They entered into a broad marbled foyer done in a chess-set pattern and padded up a curving flight of carved wooden stairs, smelling of lemon and linseed oil, Ong Bo’s ample butt remaining at eye level as they climbed. Then down a long, darkened hallway lined with closed office doors, treading on ancient wooden boards that creaked and groaned as they passed, and then delivered by Ong Bo, with a bow, to a stained-glass wall surrounding two massive wooden doors.
“When you are through with Minister Dak, if you are free to go, I will be happy to return you to your hotel or to take you anywhere in Singapore you would wish to go. And may I offer the English lady a small token of my extreme regret for the manner of your reception this morning?”
Mandy looked at him over the tops of her Prada glasses, fixing him in her vast database of unsavory minions encountered in the line of duty.
“Possibly,” she said. Ong Bo reached into the breast pocket of his suit and withdrew a small black lacquer box, intricately inlaid in threads of pure jade, tied with a scarlet ribbon. It looked ancient and outrageously valuable. Ong offered it to her, holding it in the open palms of his joined hands in the formal Eastern manner.
Mandy hesitated, and then, with as much grace as she could summon, accepted it. Her acceptance seemed to send a sensual ripple through his large, loose frame. Mandy did not open it, since gushing over whatever tawdry trinket it might contain was going to require more forced charm than she felt able to gather for the cause. She smiled thinly, dropped it into her little Kate Spade bag, snapped the catch shut.
Ong watched the ritual with a closed, passive regard, his eyes narrowed, then he bowed again, his face a little more stony, turned away and knocked twice on the frame. A voice from within, brusque and shrill, barked out a command in Mandarin. Ong opened the door and oiled himself to the side, bowing. The office was very large, very old, and almost empty, with white-painted walls over twelve feet high, ending in fine crown moldings. A large ceiling fan, made of false palm fronds, churned in the still, warm air. On one wall, an antique wooden station clock emitted a dry, clanking tick with metronomic regularity. A bank of leaded-glass windows, barred with wrought iron, coated with grime and dust, let a filtered, nineteenth-century light into the room and illuminated a large, threadbare Oriental carpet in tones of plum, gold, and faded blue. The carpet held a large, ornately carved colonial desk, behind which sat a middle-aged Chinese woman, wonderfully turned out in a crisp navy blue suit over blazing-white blouse. Her arms were resting on the top of her desk, seamed and bony hands neatly folded in the middle of the space, a desk which was completely empty except for a Lenovo laptop, an unopened copy of the Straits Times newspaper, and a cordless phone. Her expression was familiar to Dalton, although it took a moment to place her. The Chinese woman, asleep on the flight from Milan. He recalled his asse
ssment of her at the time:
An attenuated Chinese woman of indeterminate age, with dead-white skin and an expression of general ill will, who tossed and twitched and muttered in her sleep.
She rose, without smiling, and dismissed Sergeant Ong with a nod.
“Good afternoon. I am Minister Dak Chansong. Please, Mr. Dalton, Miss Pownall, come in.”
She indicated a pair of padded leather chairs that had been placed, just so, in front of her desk. Behind her, on the peeling plaster wall, was a large official portrait of Lee Kwan Yew, garishly framed in gilt, and another portrait, much more recent, of his son and heir, Lee Hsien Loong, framed in simple silver. She watched as they took their places, studying them both with that same air of general ill will that had marked her while she was sleeping, an expression that Dalton began to fear might be a mirror of her soul. She sat, offered neither water nor tea—a calculated insult—smoothed her stiff blue suit briefly, and reclined into her chair, still not smiling. Mandy and Dalton, fully aware of the Asian uses for silence, smiled back blandly and said . . . nothing at all. The station clock ticked leadenly, and the scent of Minister Dak’s perfume, something floral and bittersweet and expensive, drifted in the still, mote-filled glowing room.
“You recognize me, perhaps?”
“I do,” said Mandy, in the same cool tone. “You came in on our Thai Airways flight from Milan this morning. You sat alone in 5A, reading a copy of The Kite Runner. You appeared to be sleeping for the last few hours of the trip. When we landed, you got off before anyone else, although, on a second look, perhaps it was only made to appear random. We did not see you at Customs and Immigration, and you were nowhere around when we got out to the Arrivals concourse.”
Minister Dak unfolded and refolded her long hands. Her fingers, which looked like bone needles, were tipped in scarlet, and she had a large emerald-and-gold ring on the third finger of her right hand.
“Yes. I must apologize for the Malay. He has been corrected.”
“The Malay being the short man?” said Dalton.
“Yes. That is the man. Corporal Ahmed. I am sorry to take up your time, but the matter was urgent, and I needed to see you personally. I know how exhausted you must be. The flight from Milan is long.”
