8
Aboard Red Dragon
August 26, 7:00 p.m. SGT (4:00 a.m. PDT)
Red Dragon ’s interior was as magnificent as her glorious hull and decks. Elegant, stylish, distinctive.
But it was also wrong in a way only a designer or architect would notice.
Until we’d walked into the master suite, I’d been impressed with the yacht, even as I worried about what remained to be done before she was ready for her sea trials. Cass had modified the boat from my original design, which I had created four and a half years earlier. This was normal—design changes inevitably occurred during a build due to architectural or safety issues and requests made by the owner.
But until now I hadn’t found fault with my sister’s work. The flow through the living and crew quarters was streamlined and inviting. The living areas were comfortable and spacious, a fusion of modern and classic, East and West, and the engineering rooms and bridge boasted the latest technology. The tender garage, which was outfitted with lockers and changing rooms, was ready for Red Dragon ’s vessels and toys. Mr. Mèng’s master stateroom offered privacy and luxury—he could go days without seeing anyone, even as he roamed his isolated corridors or sunbathed on his cloistered deck.
There was plenty that remained to be done. Openings for recently rerouted piping still awaited finishing work. In other places, bare metal remained to be cleaned and painted. On the exterior, the fairing and painting of the hull’s superstructure were complete, but some of the railing and portions of the deck had yet to be installed. Cassandra was following an outwardly chaotic system, which happened when there were delays in one area while something else surged ahead.
Cause for concern, but not alarm.
But in George Mèng’s circular, ten-thousand-square-foot stateroom, something was off.
I trailed behind Emily while she pointed out some of the suite’s notable features: an immense skylight surrounded by a gold mosaic dragon, a lighted niche containing a bronze replica of one of China’s terra-cotta warriors, a bowl-shaped copper bathtub sized for a crowd.
“Mr. Mèng wanted the best,” she said. “Your sister and I worked with—”
Abruptly she broke off and glanced at her phone.
“Forgive me,” she said with a small bow. “I must take this. I will just be a moment.”
After Emily left, I wandered around the suite in the nonslip canvas slippers that Emily and I had each donned before stepping onto the teak deck. I gaped at the display of opulence that only Mr. Mèng would ever enjoy. I wondered how it would be to live in such lonely splendor.
I stopped in the middle of the bedroom, which was centered on a king berth across from a Chinese brush painting of needle-thin pines, misted hills, and a single man, who trudged up a mountain path carrying on his back an immense load of firewood.
A metaphor for Mr. Mèng?
The wood tile mosaic of a dragon surrounded the berth itself. The dragon probably indicated protection, but it struck me as threatening.
I frowned and walked around the suite again—bedroom, bathroom, lounge and study area, a small spa and gym, an extendable balcony, cavernous wardrobes.
The dimensions didn’t add up. The room, though large, was too small to match the measurements designated for this space that I’d originally created and had seen in Cass’s electronic files.
Unease tiptoed down my spine.
The most logical explanation for the missing square footage was a hidden panic room—a concealed space where the owners and members of the crew could hide. These days panic rooms were an essential aspect of global yachting. If you planned to voyage through areas that harbored pirates—the Strait of Malacca, say, or off the eastern coast of Africa and up into the Arabian Sea—then a panic room gave you a safe place to wait out an attack until help arrived.
Panic rooms were typically located in the crew mess, where everything needed to support human life and to communicate with the outside world was already in place. And, in fact, there was a panic room on Red Dragon . It was near the crew’s mess, right where I’d placed it in my original design. I’d given the area a cursory glance as Emily and I walked by.
So where—and what—was the missing space?
I might not have known Cass as well as I’d thought. But I knew the twelve-square-foot discrepancy wasn’t due to a mistake.
My mind returned to the contents of her purse.
Plastic bag with 1.21 grams of unknown white powder
Plastic straw cut at an angle on each end
Drugs? I shook my head. The idea of smuggling made no sense. Not for a billionaire. And not for my sister. And not on a boat being built in Singapore, where dealing illegal drugs carried a mandatory death sentence.
I could not imagine anything that would make Cass that desperate. Not even the sinking bottom line of Ocean House.
And even if, by some unfathomable turn of events, it was true, there were plenty of places to hide illicit items on a yacht this size. The master stateroom wasn’t one of them.
I went out into the passageway to look for another door, perhaps a steward’s supply closet. Nothing. I returned to the room and made a final circuit. Probably the reason for the missing footage was benign. A second panic room with a concealed door. But I needed to know.
This was my ship now.
My thoughts scattered at the sound of Emily’s voice as she returned.
“It is magnificent, is it not?” she asked.
I faced her with the question on my lips. There’s missing space. Where is it?
But something in her dispassionate expression stopped me.
I didn’t know Tan Mei Ling a.k.a. Emily Tan. My sister had presumably trusted her. But since I could no longer talk to Cass, Emily would have to earn my confidence. There were other ways to figure out what was going on.
I’d work it out without her help.
Emily bade me good night when the driver dropped me at the hotel.
Raffles Singapore was an opulent colonial hotel first built by the British in the early 130s as a bungalow-style beach house and later converted to today’s luxury hotel. It was named after the English statesman Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, who took control of Singapore in 119. The hotel has served such notable guests as Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as well as Rudyard Kipling, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, Michael Jackson, Joseph Conrad, Pablo Neruda, Somerset Maugham, and my personal favorite—Charlie Chaplin.
It was also the original home of the famous cocktail the Singapore Sling, invented by a Raffles bartender in 1915.
But tonight the hotel’s grandeur and its history—both good and bad—were lost on me as I followed the bellhop past potted palms, bouquets of orchids, and the lobby’s ancient grandfather clock up to my room on the third floor.
Alone at last, I sat in front of the mirror and removed my makeup—stripping off the elegant, composed version of myself to reveal the grieving woman underneath. I took a shower, wrapped myself up in the hotel-provided robe, ordered a late dinner, and tried to appreciate the comfortable elegance of my room, with its four-poster bed and large seating area.
When the food arrived, I sat at the table in the window nook and picked at the chicken satay and cucumber-chili relish while I waited for the hands on the clock to reach ten o’clock, which would be 7:00 a.m. in Seattle.
The image of Cass on the morgue table battered me.
I pushed away the food and went to gaze out at the red-tiled courtyard, where tourists strolled the gardens—ghostly figures moving between the glow of lights and the tropical darkness.
Today had upended my once-solid sense that I knew Cass every bit as well as I knew myself.
The fact that she’d booked a room at the city’s most expensive hotel complex.
The fancy clothes and jewelry she’d died in.
The white powder in her purse; I couldn’t be coy with myself—it was almost certainly cocaine.
The horrifying possibility that she had taken her own life.
Or, worse, had gotten involved with the kind of men who would convince her to jump.
Or help her off the balcony.
I picked up my phone. Called home. When Isabeth picked up, I burst into tears.
“Maman,” I whispered. “Something terrible has happened.”