The Drowning Game

1

Singapore

August 25, 6:00 p.m. SGT

Her entire life, Cassandra’s father had told her: Trust no one.

Yet here she was. A foreigner, an ang moh , her life in the hands of people she hardly knew.

Another lesson from her father that she’d ignored.

She moved with deliberate slowness through Singapore’s teeming streets, her skin damp in the ninety-degree heat as she drifted from one clump of tourists to another—their jostling, shouting, picture-taking enthusiasm providing cover. She’d set out from the offices of Ocean House hours ago on the route she’d planned last week—changing directions on a seeming whim, darting through traffic, ducking into couture shops and souvenir stores, pausing to light joss sticks at Buddhist and Hindu temples, her palms pressed together and her head bent in prayer. She descended into the bowels of the underground to hop on and off the metro. Virgil’s words came back to her: watch for repeat vehicles, familiar silhouettes, someone hiding their face behind a map .

A month earlier, she’d killed most of the apps on her phone. Anything that would allow the Chinese to piece together the life of the real Cassandra Brenner. There was no avoiding the city cameras; she could only hope her disguise and a lack of Chinese sleeper agents within Singapore’s Internal Security Department would protect her.

Spies would say she was running a surveillance detection route—an SDR. Cassandra understood the concept. A few years ago, one of their celebrity clients—a sheikh commissioning a three-hundred-foot luxury motor yacht—insisted she and Nadia learn how to avoid the paparazzi. He’d hired a former CIA case officer to teach the sisters how to conduct SDRs.

At the time it had seemed frivolous.

Not anymore.

She shifted her canvas tote to her left shoulder and the handle of her rolling suitcase to her right, then paused to retouch her lipstick, using a compact mirror to inspect the walkway behind her. Surely she was clear of all surveillance by now—“black” in spy lingo.

Unless she’d missed something. In the vibrant, restless, multiethnic throng swarming the city, failing to spot a tail was as easy as overlooking a spider lurking beneath the sheets.

Every spy is haunted, Virgil had said last night. By our mistakes. By the lives we hold. By the risks we take. It goes with the territory.

She’d shaken her head. I’m not a spy. I’m an amateur.

His dry laugh had sounded like fingers snapping. Cass, listen carefully. It’s critical that tomorrow you’re not made before you reach the hotel. Singapore is one of the most surveilled cities in the world. But it’s got nothing on Shanghai. Tomorrow is a test, but it’s still dangerous.

And here she was. She stopped at a corner, waiting for the light to change. Waiting for her sixth sense to offer up that prickle that said eyes were on her.

But her gut whispered that she was black. She crossed the street with the light, then paused in front of a restaurant to blot her face with a tissue, the paper coming away dark from sweat, the ruin of her makeup, and traces of adhesive. She was clear. She could hail a Grab taxi, be at the Marina Bay Sands resort in minutes. Wash up and order a drink.

God, she wanted a drink.

She checked the time—6:02 p.m. Right on schedule. She turned away from the heady scents of coconut curry and mango and her pretense of perusing a menu in the restaurant’s window and plunged into the crowds headed toward Merlion Park.

Her blouse clung to her back, her capris to her thighs. Her bare feet squelched in rubber sandals. An hour into her SDR, the heavens had unleashed the kind of storm—sudden, savage—typical for afternoons in the tropics. Rain had lashed the streets, the sidewalks, the cars, the parks, the trees, the people until the gutters turned into rivers and the sidewalks into a brilliant bloom of umbrellas. People went undeterred about their business, as used to the storms as the heat. Only the tourists cowered under awnings or cursed and ran.

The rain had vanished as suddenly as it came, leaving the early-evening pavement gleaming. The ungodly heat pressed back in.

She paused before another restaurant. A car slowed, pulled to the curb. She prepared to run as the back door opened, then relaxed as a trio of young Chinese women spilled out, giggling, gossiping, clicking selfies.

They disappeared into the restaurant.

She was clear.

She rubbed her heel where a blister had formed, then attached herself to a different group of tourists. The last residue of rain had evaporated into the laden air, and sounds and smells burst forth with refreshed enthusiasm. She noted the hiss of tires, the mechanical cheeps and chirps of crosswalks, the tramping of thousands of pairs of feet, feet that belonged to the financial district’s up-and-comers. The men wore conservative suits and ties. The women flashed an aviary of brilliantly colored skirts and dresses, blouses, and suits. The occasional whiff of perfume and cologne mingled with car exhaust and an intoxicating mix of aromas from the international lineup of eateries.

Moving faster now, she crossed through Merlion Park’s well-tended grass and past the white-blossomed frangipani trees onto the jetty. She stood overlooking Marina Bay, where the Singapore River spilled into the waters of the cove and from there to the sea.

Across the bay was her destination—the three immense towers of Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Beside her was the city’s iconic twenty-eight-foot-high fountain, the Merlion, boasting the head of a lion and the body of a fish. She turned around as if to take a selfie and observed the crowd, looking for faces she’d mentally categorized earlier. The Chinese man with the maroon leather briefcase and Yankees cap she’d noted outside the Takashimaya Shopping Centre. The Tamil woman in a Chanel suit and sneakers who’d boarded and exited the metro’s Downtown Line when she did.

She rotated in place but saw only new faces.

She dropped her phone in her bag and forced herself to amble as she headed out of the park toward the hotel, the sun now a fiery ball slotting light between the skyscrapers. In a few more minutes, it would be night.

Operation UNDERTOW had been thrilling at first. The secret meetings, the dead drops and brush passes, the need to run SDRs whenever she met her contact. A salve to what had proved to be an unsatisfying life as a yacht designer. An answer to the emptiness inside her.

The thrill had disappeared six months ago, when she found one of their security guards dead at the shipyard, his throat cut. Virgil had told her from the beginning that it wasn’t a game. The corpse had hammered it home. This was for keeps.

After finding the guard, she’d considered telling Virgil she was out. Everyone thought Cassandra Brenner was brave, mistaking bravado for courage. She was terrified.

Both she and her sister were hothouse orchids, able to flourish only in the rarefied environment of the yachting world in which they’d been raised. Voice and ballet lessons, cotillion, expensive private schools. But what remained in the void left by her former enthusiasm wasn’t only fear. There was also stubbornness. Cassandra Allegra Brenner never gave up on anyone.

Her stubbornness held her in place. That, and the op itself—the work she was doing was important. The money and the perks—the outrageously priced clothes, the unimaginably expensive condo in Tanglin, fancy dinners, and elite memberships—none of that hurt, either. It gave her a chance to taste the lives of her billionaire clients. Her salary as a designer was respectable. But she and her family didn’t live like their clientele.

She reached the waterfront promenade. Glass doors whooshed open. She stepped into the sublime atmosphere of Southeast Asia’s largest collection of luxury goods—The Shoppes—and ducked into a bathroom to begin her metamorphosis.

In the wheelchair-accessible stall, which gave her the privacy of its sink and mirror, she slipped out of her blouse and capris, the baseball cap, the oversize sunglasses. She washed her neck and breasts and underarms with wet paper towels, then removed the prosthetic nose and jaw and scrubbed away the adhesive. She folded the clothes, sandals, hat, and prosthetics and tucked them into an inside pocket of the suitcase.

She took out the night’s costume: an off-the-shoulder red sheath dress, satin heels, gold-and-ruby earrings, and a beaded purse. She applied fresh makeup in the mirror, twisted her hair into an updo, slapped a plaster on the blister, and emerged from the bathroom a different woman.

She checked her phone. Right on schedule. She strolled through the mall that lined the entryway to the hotel and paused in front of windows displaying Louis Vuitton bags and Lucchese loafers. She took her time, careful to appear like any other wealthy guest checking in for a pampered weekend in the city’s former British colonial district.

Her walk through the city had been a chance for Virgil to gauge her skill at evading a tail; the stroll through The Shoppes was meant to draw out the watchers.

The Marina Bay Sands was Singapore’s flashiest hotel—a casino-retail complex popular among luxury shoppers and the kind of gamblers who dropped $0,000 US on a single roll of the dice. Cassandra Brenner, yacht designer and executive vice president of the world-renowned Ocean House, was meant to appear wealthy and on the take. Where better than here?

She paused before a display of gold and gems and studied the crowd’s reflection in the glittering Cartier window, her gaze roving over the throngs streaming through the mall: Malay workers, Chinese locals, European tourists, American expats.

Men looked at her appreciatively, but their gazes didn’t linger. She watched for Virgil, but of course she wouldn’t see him.

I’m clear. I’m good.

Breathe.

Virgil wasn’t his real name. She’d chosen it for him, after the Roman poet who had served as Dante’s guide through hell in the fourteenth-century epic poem Inferno . The choice was deliberate. She loved her family; she’d never want any harm to come to them. But she understood the risks. If she and Virgil succeeded, the resulting firestorm could engulf the Brenners and their almost mythic past and burn it to the ground.

And yet this had to be done— needed to be done. Then Virgil would lead her out of hell and into a clean, bright future. She hoped her family would follow. Maybe they’d even forgive her.

She rode the elevator up Tower 2 with a pair of British businessmen who eyed her in the mirrors. She felt their gazes on her as the doors opened on the fortieth floor and she glided down the hall on her $,000 Christian Louboutin stilettos.

She glanced behind and watched until the elevator doors slid shut, leaving her alone in the long, hushed hallway.

They don’t know me. They’re no one.

She continued down the hall to her room and keyed herself in. Safely inside, she listened for the door to click shut. Then she kicked off the heels and leaned against a wall.

Breathe.

She dropped her purse on the couch. On the nearby table, Virgil had placed his usual bouquet of red gardenias next to a bottle of Hennessy X.O.

But one thing was missing.

The day’s first scratch of alarm spread a chill through her chest. Her gut, which had been quiet all afternoon, lit a flare. Noticeably absent from the grouping was their third safety signal after the gardenias and cognac—a red-and-gold letter opener.

She retrieved a knife from her purse and—gripping the hilt the way Virgil had shown her—inspected the rooms, opened closets, checked the balcony.

Nothing was out of place; no one else was here.

Breathe.

Maybe this was another test. In which case she should abort the mission immediately. Flee the room as if her life depended on it.

But with the flowers and cognac on the table as usual, perhaps Virgil only wanted to make sure she’d noticed the missing letter opener. He would grill her about it when he arrived. Scold her for staying.

Breathe.

More likely she’d simply missed a message, a change to their routine.

She returned the knife to her purse, but her hands kept shaking.

She’d been distracted lately, busy with the build of the spectacularly over-the-top superyacht Red Dragon , her largest creation to date and a crowning achievement for Ocean House. Their entrée into the Asian market. Only three months until launch. Only three months to hold tight to the secrets she’d accepted almost four years ago.

She waited until the shaking stopped, then uncapped the Hennessy and poured a finger into a tumbler. She crossed to the open balcony doors, glass in hand. Night had fallen, though darkness held no sway in this city. The breeze carried a lacing of brine and fish beneath the robust perfumes of frangipani and jasmine. Far below her balcony lay the gloriously lit Gardens by the Bay and the tranquil waters of the straits, where ships floated, candles on the dark sea. Farther out, the islands of Brani, Sentosa, and St. John looked like rumpled Oriental carpets lit by a thousand tiny flames.

Traffic murmured. Closer by, cicadas whirred, and a nightjar peeped its soft tiu tiu tiu . She relished the languid air on her bare arms and legs.

The cognac eased into her bloodstream, and finally, she relaxed.

The scene below ignited a quiet joy in her. Singapore held promise and mystery in its colonial homes, its perfumed gardens and dense jungles, its labyrinthine markets. The heat and humidity, the exoticism, the sheer energy of this tiny island in the South China Sea—it was literally and figuratively a world away from the shores of Seattle, where she’d grown up.

She’d been in Singapore for nearly five years with only occasional visits home. At first, she’d worried she wouldn’t find her footing. But the island had enfolded her in its diverse embrace. Singapura—the Lion City—had passed through the hands of Buddhists, Muslims, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Japanese, and finally the Singaporeans when the island became an independent state in 965.

Perhaps, when all this was over, she would move here permanently. Become an expat like the colonial British who, after years in the Lion City, found they had no desire for the cold and fog of their homeland.

Maybe, just maybe, she’d continue the work she’d begun with Virgil.

She straightened when the door opened behind her. She returned to the room, smoothed her dress, and tucked a strand of hair back into her chignon.

It will be okay. This is the right thing to do. It will be okay.

Nadia will understand. So will Dad.

Maman and Uncle Rob, of course, will never speak to me again.

She stepped back into the room.

A tall figure stood in the darkened entryway, a silhouette of shadow.

“Ha’eem ata levad hayom?” she asked in Hebrew. A standard precaution in case they were overheard. Are you alone today?

It was how they always began what Virgil called their first mad minute: identification in case one of them wore a disguise, followed by a review of any safety concerns and a confirmation of when and where their next meet would be. Because in this business, interruptions came without warning.

But tonight, Virgil—usually quick to respond—said nothing. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. Now she saw there were two men. One heavyset, the other lean.

The figures moved into the light.

Neither of them was the man she knew as Virgil.

Her insides turned to liquid.

“Miss Brenner,” said the lean man.

She hurled her glass at the figures, then lunged for her purse and the knife. But the men were fast. The heavy one shoved her to the floor. She cried out as her head struck the tile. The man bent, grabbed her wrists, and yanked her to her feet. He tossed her onto the bed, handcuffed her, and slapped tape over her mouth.

He leaned in. She glimpsed a tattoo of a tiger, its muscular body stretching down his neck, the tiger’s red eyes burning above a snarling mouth.

He grinned. The other man snapped something in Mandarin, and—reluctantly, it seemed—the heavier man moved away. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and walked out onto the balcony, as if he’d lost interest.

The lean man placed a small rolled cloth on the bed beside her. She watched as he unfurled the black fabric; she caught the glint of steel in the golden glow of the bedside table.

Her sob built behind the gag.

The man leaned over her. The light caught his spectacles, turning his eyes into bright hollows.

“Do not be alarmed, Miss Brenner,” he said. “The knives are here only as an inducement for your cooperation. We just need a little information. Then you will be free to go.”

She fought to hold the sob.

“If I take away the gag, do you promise not to scream?”

She nodded.

“If you scream, everything will end here. Do you understand?”

Another nod, more frantic.

He removed the tape from her mouth.

“Tell me about the boat,” he said. “About Red Dragon .”

She stared up at this stranger with his lean, handsome face and glacier smile, his eyes now glittering like black agates behind the lenses. He would be from the Guóānbù, she guessed. China’s foreign intelligence service. He would have come to Singapore to stop the CIA’s China Mission Center from acquiring RenAI: the artificial intelligence created by George Mèng.

Obtaining the AI from Mèng had been deemed critical for the security of the US. It was why Cassandra was involved. But UNDERTOW had another purpose, one she must never reveal.

No matter what men from the Guóānbù did to her.

“What do you want to know?” Her voice was a whisper, breathy and weak.

“Everything.” The man touched his fingers to her cheek. His surprising tenderness almost made her weep. “About your client, Mr. Mèng. And, of course, his yacht, Red Dragon . Everything. Do you understand?”

She nodded and closed her eyes and began the lie she and Virgil had created. The story they were to use if either of them was captured.

Lies mixed with truth. She hoped it was enough.