Simon turned in his seat, facing her. “Okay, then. Tell me what happened.”
“I went to Tanjong market to meet Hadrian Lester—at his instruction. You showed up and stopped a man from trying to kill me.”
“Is that what happened?”
“You told me it did.”
“And it’s true. Every word. But I’m not sure the police will be so quick to believe you or me.”
“But the old man…the hawker…he’s dead.”
“And the poison that killed him was meant for you.”
“That can’t be…How?”
“Hadrian Lester set you up.”
“He’s the vice chairman of Harrington-Weiss.”
“And who are you investigating?”
The taxi arrived at the office tower. Police vehicles lined the curb, officers everywhere. The evacuated employees still milled about the plaza, not yet allowed to return to their offices.
“What’s going on?” asked London. “Why is everyone from the office outside? Look, there’s Mandy.” She opened the door, only for Simon to lean across her body and slam it closed.
“Bad idea,” he said. “We don’t know that the guy back there is the only one who wants to hurt you.”
London sank back in her seat. “This is a little much for me to take in. Who did you say you were?”
“My friend, Rafael de Bourbon is R,” said Simon. “He was killed in Bangkok two days ago by the same people who want you dead. Among them, Hadrian Lester. I was there. I witnessed his death. Go back to your offices and inside of ten minutes you’ll be speaking with the police, half an hour at the outside. Tell me something. Do you think a man like Hadrian Lester—rich, powerful, connected—has friends in the Singapore police department?” He waited until she said yes, however reluctantly. “Bet on it,” he went on. “I came here as quickly as I could to tell you face-to-face that you are in danger. I think I’ve been proven right on that count. It’s up to you. Trust me or trust Hadrian Lester.”
London considered this, then nodded. “All right, then. I think I understand.”
“Right now we need somewhere safe to stay for a while. Just a few hours while we figure things out.”
“My apartment.”
“Out of the question. We have to assume they have it under surveillance.”
“They?”
“Lester. The people he’s working with. The ones who sent a man to kill you.”
“We can go to my mother’s. She has a small home ten minutes from here.”
Simon shook his head. “We can’t bring her into this. Don’t you have a friend? Someone who’s not a relation.”
London considered this, then barked orders to the taxi driver. The car made a U-turn and headed south, toward the water. “I know just the place.”
“Where are we headed?” asked Simon.
“Sentosa Island. A friend’s apartment. It’s a security building. We’ll be safe there.”
Simon looked at the reporter. She stared back, arms crossed, eyes beseeching the world. Why is this happening to me?
And he hadn’t even told her about the cat yet.
The apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Blume took up one half of the forty-second floor of the Drake Court Luxury Condominiums on Sentosa Island. Three bedrooms, four baths, in three thousand square feet. A mogul’s palace by Asian living standards. And decorated like one. Ming vases, lacquered screens, marble floors, jade carvings.
Simon and London sat with Mandy Blume in the living room. A picture window offered a view of the Singapore Straits. Vessels of every size plied the water from shore to horizon. Tugs, freighters, motor yachts, cutting white swaths through the dark blue seas. But mostly there were the big boys. The Panamax-class container ships—nine hundred fifty feet long, piled to tipping with thousands of rectangular containers—and the supertankers, low and sleek, longer still, some reaching fifteen hundred feet, moored to offshore gas lines or heading to all points bearing cargos of Indonesian and Malaysian oil. It was a view into the bloodstream of international commerce.
The time was just past six in the evening. Mandy had arrived ten minutes after them, heeding London’s plea for a safe place to rest up. She gave them a second cup of tea and a third dram of Irish whiskey as Simon explained in a level of detail appreciated by the two journalists (both taking notes as he spoke) the events that had brought him from England to Thailand, and now to Singapore. He concentrated on what he considered the salient moments: the meeting at the Bangkok Remand Prison and Colonel’s Tan’s evident allegiance to a higher master, his retrieval of the flash drive secreted