11
Elephant Room / Churchill Room—Tanglin Club
August 27, 7:00 p.m. SGT
The Elephant Room on Tanjong Pagar Road was a fusion of the old Singapore and the new—modern, brash, and bright, with British pub–style leather booths and a wall of whiskys that would rouse envy in any enthusiast.
I found the Ocean House staff upstairs at a corner booth near a window, some of them boisterous, some weepy. When they spotted me, they waved me over, making room at a table littered with half-empty glasses and the detritus of food. To a man—and woman—they were three sheets to the wind.
I didn’t waste any time trying to catch up.
I’m not much of a drinker. Dinners and parties with clients had taught me the art of the sip. Tonight, though, I went straight for the throat.
“Glenlivet single malt,” I said when the waitress came around. It was Guy’s anesthesia of choice. It might as well be mine.
I drank the first whisky in three burning swallows and ordered another.
The group raised their glasses. Nothing like a boss who is willing to get sloshed with the troops.
“To Red Dragon !” cried our electronics manager, Colin Chua.
We raised and clinked our glasses.
“To Red Dragon !” Colin shouted again.
“To Cassandra!” offered one of the women, a plumbing expert named Cheryl Vittachi.
The crowd sobered, and for a moment, a respectable silence reigned.
Then another man, Eddie Lim, shouted, “To Ocean House!”
“Ocean House,” I said, “always delivers.”
“To Nadia!” from all of them.
“They love you,” Andrew Declough rumbled. His high forehead shone with sweat in the ever-present humidity.
We clinked and tossed back our poison of choice.
An hour later Declough and my managers, stuffed with appetizers of coconut sambal and chicken curry, were beginning to sober up, or at least make a good run at it. They departed for the Tanjong Pagar MRT stop and then on to dinner with their families.
I remained at the table, ignoring my third whisky and watching the team through the window as they sauntered in a zigzag fashion down the sidewalk. They turned and waved. I waved back.
After they disappeared, my eyes went to my briefcase, which I’d leaned into a corner of the booth. Even out of sight, the envelope holding Cass’s final note seemed to burn within.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. Open the letter and have my worst fears confirmed? Or leave it untouched and keep the sliver of hope that she hadn’t died because she was too filled with despair to go on.
Was murder worse than suicide? Suicide worse than a crazy accident?
Did I want to know?
And with that, the woman who always had a plan suddenly didn’t.
I picked up the whisky, swirled the ice. Scattered about the table was an army of dead soldiers: beer and wine bottles mixed with empty glasses, the ice melting into amber-tinted sludge.
I had more than an hour until my dinner with the representative from the security firm, Connor McGrath. I should go back to my room. Make a schedule for tomorrow, which included visiting Cass’s condo, giving Inspector Lee my unvarnished thoughts concerning the end of the investigation, and, of course, diving into the hours and hours of work required to bring Red Dragon back on schedule. This last item was critical—once we’d completed the boat’s outfitting, Mr. Mèng’s financial officer would write Ocean House another check. Said check would be enough to give our bottom line some buoyancy.
But at the moment, I hadn’t the heart for it. I took a healthy swallow of the Glenlivet and opened my briefcase. My fingers found the smooth paper of the envelope and pulled it free. I tore open the sealed flap.
Inside was a photocopy of the front and back of the postcard. The front showed a temple, identified with English lettering as Thian Hock Keng in Singapore’s Chinatown.
On what would be the back of the postcard were lines of photocopied text in Cassandra’s unmistakable handwriting.
Dear Nadia,
If you are reading this, it means that I am in trouble. Dear sister, I didn’t want to cause you or our family worry. But I have been struggling for a long time. Know that what I did will ultimately be the right thing for everyone. And that I love you very much.
You will have decisions to make about Red Dragon. Remember, you can be both yin and yang. Bright and quiet. Your feet on the earth and head in the stars. Be wise, my darling sister. Be watchful. Remember what Guy used to tell us about trust? His favorite saying? And how we’d roll our eyes? Ha!
The only thing our parents got right is that family is the most important thing, and for that reason we owe ourselves the truth.
You are my own Mazu.
xoxo
Cass
I blinked through my tears, then read and reread the message. After the third reading, her words still didn’t make sense.
What truth was she talking about? And who or what was Mazu? I did a Google search. Mazu was a sea goddess.
A goddess. I dropped my phone on the table. Oh, Cass. What do I do with that?
I took a sip of the Glenlivet and pondered Guy’s favorite saying: Trust no one.
Cass was telling me to scrutinize everyone and everything. Be watchful, she’d written. Be wise. She must have feared or suspected someone. Yet she hadn’t felt she could simply pick up the phone and tell me.
My hands turned cold. I looked down to see them trembling and clasped my fingers together. My mind replayed the recent family meeting and Cass’s image on the video screen. Her uncharacteristic disinterest in the breakdown of Rambler . Her fancy nails. Why would Cass get a manicure before hurling herself out a window?
Tears flowed again, and I reached for a napkin.
Movement at a nearby table broke my miserable reverie.
Two men—one Caucasian, one Chinese—were seating themselves at another booth. They wore polo shirts and shorts and smelled of grass and sweat. The Caucasian was red across his nose and cheeks. They must have ordered downstairs, because soon after they sat, a waitress brought them beer and plates of satay.
I returned to Cassandra’s note. After a few more reads, I slipped it back in the envelope and into the briefcase. Then I stared out the window at the steady stream of pedestrian traffic.
After Cassandra would come our father’s death. Ultimately, presumably, it would be only me. How would I manage? And if I couldn’t, what would become of Ocean House?
A voice came at my elbow. “Anything else, miss?”
It was the waitress from downstairs. I shook my head and told her to close out the tab. She cleared the table and—at my request—removed the mostly untouched Glenlivet.
After she left, I downed a glass of water, hoping to dilute the whisky in my stomach. I glanced around. Noise filtered up from the floor below, but the upstairs had emptied out. The Caucasian man had already left, and only his Chinese friend remained.
Our gazes locked.
He was large, muscular, motionless—a slab of granite squeezed into the booth. The white polo shirt and shorts sat on him like a costume. A tattoo of a tiger rippled on the side of his neck, the beast extending from behind his left ear toward his shoulder, where it disappeared beneath his collar.
I blinked first. I returned my eyes to the window and the jangling, busy world outside. When I glanced over again, the man was tapping on his phone.
It could be that Tiger Man was a reporter looking for a scoop on Red Dragon . The details of Mèng’s ship were a legally bound secret—normal in the world of superyachts, where the wealthy want to keep the specifics of their assets private and the hoi polloi want the inside dirt. Maybe he’d been tipped off that members of our staff were gathering here.
But Cass’s warning to be watchful and Emily’s reaction to Charlie Han at the hawker center—along with her talk of wolf warriors and spies—had leached into me like a toxin.
I wasn’t merely sad now. I was frightened.
I checked the time. I was due to meet Connor McGrath in the Churchill Room at the Tanglin Club in twenty minutes. I glanced again at the man. He’d stashed his phone and now stared at me through narrowed eyes as if I were a problem he needed to solve.
I didn’t fancy having Tiger Man follow me, if that was his intent. I’d call a Grab car to get to Tanglin, but first I wanted to know if he really was a threat. I checked the map of my location for nearby restaurants, then talked loudly through a fake phone call as I gathered my belongings, pretending that my date was picking me up downstairs and we were walking to a nearby restaurant called Pasta Bar.
Still on the phone, I hurried past the man; I felt his eyes on me as if I carried a target on my back.
Downstairs, I ducked into an alcove and watched the room. Less than a minute later, Tiger Man appeared. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked up and down. He turned right, in the direction of Pasta Bar, and strode away.
Shaking, I waited inside until my Grab driver pulled up.
When I arrived at the Tanglin, the doorman at the top of the wide marble steps ushered me into the club’s elegant lobby and directed me across the expanse to the Churchill Room. Inside the restaurant, I gave my name to the hostess. While she checked her list, I scanned the room, which was raucous, crowded with post-workday Singaporeans—mostly ethnic Chinese and the occasional white face ruddy with sun or alcohol. Snatches of conversation filled the air, much of it a babble of Chinese dialects—Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese. From a nearby table, an American voice declaimed on Singapore’s recent purchase of F-35 jets.
“We need ’em to fight the Chinese,” he told his companions. “China’s military has doubled the number of cruise and ballistic missiles it’s got. Been building up their navy. The South China Sea is where the next war is going to start. Not Russia. Not Korea. Not Ukraine. You ask me, it’ll be in the Philippine Sea. With a nice side dump on Taiwan.”
“How delightful, Bill,” a woman commented in a dry voice. “A little preview of how we’re all going to get blown to bits. Where’s the waiter? I need another drink.”
“Good thing no one asked him,” someone else said. Laughter followed.
I turned away. Cass was our Asia expert, but I knew enough to realize that the man spoke the truth, however much his dinner mates didn’t want to hear it. The geopolitics of America’s relationship with China danced along an ever-shifting wall; someday the wall seemed likely to collapse.
The Churchill Room consisted of old-world-style dark wood trim, high ceilings, brass accents, and plush carpeting. It had once been prized by the British as a home away from home—thus the name, which was bestowed on the bar in 1957, long after the Japanese were routed at the end of the war and the Brits had reestablished themselves. Twenty years ago, according to what Cass had told me, the place had still been a white holdout. Now the club was almost exclusively Han Chinese. I was conscious of being an outsider.
The hostess smiled at me. “This way, ma’am.”
As we crossed the room, I spotted a man I recognized from a photo in Cass’s files as Connor McGrath. He stood when he saw me.
McGrath was about my age—early thirties. He had thick brown hair cut short, gray eyes, an angular jaw and narrow nose, and the lean, sculpted build of a runner. He wore pressed gray slacks and a white shirt that he’d unbuttoned at the collar. The folded-back cuffs revealed tanned forearms, with a Bremont diving watch on his left wrist and a leather-and-silver bracelet on his right.
The intended message, I supposed, was professional and successful but still hip. He stepped around the table as I approached, and we shook hands. His grip was firm. No wedding ring. Neatly trimmed nails, light calluses, maybe from taking up tennis or racquetball.
Observations like these were a habit drilled into Ocean House employees: note the details. It was as automatic to me as breathing.
“Connor McGrath,” he said.
“Nadia Brenner.”
“I am so sorry to hear about Cass.” His voice was deep, with a faint rasp.
I held my poise as he pulled out my chair. “Thank you.”
A waiter approached and we ordered drinks. A beer for McGrath, club soda for me.
“Cass talked a lot about you,” he said as he resumed his seat.
I glanced away and blinked. “Don’t believe half of it.”
His laugh was soft. “She adored you. Among your many virtues, she said you were the most honest person she knew.”
It seemed an odd observation to make, but I went along. “I’m a devotee of Thomas Jefferson. He wrote that honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Not that he himself was always honest.”
“And you want to be wise.”
I met his gaze. “There are worse things to aspire to.”
“Certainly. Plus, to paraphrase another wise American and professional liar, if you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember your lies.”
Surprised, I laughed. “Mark Twain! Well, there’s an advantage. I’ve never tripped over my own words.”
A waiter brought our drinks and took our order—a starter of Wagyu beef tataki to share. When we were alone again, Connor rested his elbows on the table, hands fisted beneath his chin, while around us the international babel surged and retreated in waves.
“Forgive me for getting right to the point,” he said. “But what is going to happen now?”
“I’ll remain in Singapore and take over the build. And don’t apologize, Mr. McGrath. It’s why we’re here.”
“Connor, please.” He adjusted the flatware in front of him. “It’s more than business to me. George Mèng is a longtime friend—we were in a PhD program together at MIT, and we’ve stayed in touch. Red Dragon is important to him.”
I could have commented that every wealthy man’s yacht was important to him. But Connor’s jaw had tightened. Beneath his friendly words, another note sounded. A thread I could hear but not understand. Maybe it was nothing more than concern.
“You don’t want him to be disappointed,” I ventured.
Connor relinquished the flatware. “George inspires loyalty. You’ll learn that when you meet him.”
There was something disarming about Connor, and I found myself wanting to smile back. But we weren’t through the bad news. “I assume you know that Red Dragon is behind schedule. Mr. Mèng must be upset over the delays.”
We fell silent while the server deposited our tataki and glided away.
“Actually, no,” Connor said. “George has requested additional security, and many of the delays come from my department. A piece of software he requested was still in beta. And there have been equipment holdups.”
I kept my poise as I dished a slice of tataki onto my plate. But my brain lit up with the oddity of Connor’s words. There was nothing in Cass’s notes to indicate Red Dragon ’s security was the reason for the slipped schedule.
And Emily had said the delays were Cass’s fault.
“Why don’t my build supervisor and chief of staff know about this?”
“Mr. Mèng prefers to keep the additional security measures confidential, at least as much as possible. Cass was willing to cover for us.”
I sliced into the tender tataki. “And you would like me to do the same. Is that why you asked about my penchant for honesty?”
“You’re an astute woman.”
“Facts without the flattery is fine, Connor.” But I smiled even as my mind conjured up the mysterious black space in the master stateroom and unease coiled like a wire in my stomach. Briefly I considered asking Connor about the missing space.
Trust no one.
I held my silence.
Connor said, “What else can I tell you?”
I dropped my napkin in my lap. “Why the need for extra security? It’s almost as if Mr. Mèng is expecting a war, not the potential for pirates.” I was thinking of wolf warriors and citizen spies. Was Mr. Mèng keeping his security measures hidden from his own government?
“It’s personal for him. A few years back, when he was a guest on a friend’s yacht, George was abducted at gunpoint and held captive with a demanded ransom of three million US. The kidnappers were a hacking group who held George for twenty-four hours before the Chinese Communist Party managed a rescue. None of the kidnappers survived.”
“The CCP killed them?”
“Execution-style.”
I pushed away the image Connor’s words conjured. “What makes Mr. Mèng so important to the CCP?”
“George is president and CEO of RenAI—China’s leading AI research firm—and their most talented specialist. Breakthroughs in AI come from having a sufficiency of three things: data, computing power, and talent. China has the data and is improving on tech, but they’re hurting for skilled AI people. Losing George would take away their greatest asset just as his research is approaching a breakthrough.”
I should know this. But none of it had been in Cass’s files on Mèng. Which was another odd discrepancy. Knowing everything about the client was key to designing the perfect boat.
“Who were these hackers?”
“A small-time group out of Belarus. Most of those interested in George’s AI work are rogue states and terrorist groups hoping to engineer biological weapons or create automated weapons systems. It’s an AI arms race, and whoever gets the biggest, baddest AI first will have a shot at ruling the world.”
He finished his beer. Instantly the waiter appeared at our table. Connor asked if I wanted anything else to eat. But my stomach roiled. When I demurred, he suggested brandies. I nodded and the waiter vanished.
“Thanks for filling me in,” I said. “Shall we get down to the details?”
For the next hour, over snifters of Hennessy, we reviewed Connor’s plans to protect Red Dragon , should the need arise. The list of protective features included security film on the bridge and stateroom windows, strobe lights, and near-military-grade lasers for blinding attackers. Barbed wire could be rolled out as necessary. And the swim platform—called a beach club on a yacht—could be raised quickly using a hydraulic arm. This would prevent easy boarding.
“Of course,” Connor said, “my men and I will be on guard with weapons visible. I’ve learned a show of arms is the greatest deterrent to would-be boarders.”
“And what happens to these guns when we’re in port, Connor? Most countries won’t allow them. We could be arrested on the spot.”
“We’ll off-load to one of the tenders if necessary. And there are other arrangements I can make. We will be clear in the eyes of the authorities, I promise.”
“And in my eyes?”
“You might have to follow your sister’s lead and trust me.”
I thought of the warning in Cass’s letter. Be watchful. Trust no one. “I don’t want to go to prison.”
“Nor do I.”
I frowned at him. His gray gaze held steady. Finally, I said, “We’ll call it a détente for now. I need to get Red Dragon back on schedule.”
“There won’t be any more delays from NeXt Level Security.”
“Can I have that in writing?”
He laughed. “It will be in your inbox first thing.”
Outside the restaurant, Connor opened the door to the Grab car I’d ordered.
“I look forward to working together, Nadia.”
We shook hands again. I reminded myself that Cass had recruited NeXt Level Security and vetted Connor—the founder and CEO. Connor McGrath had to be on the up-and-up.
He closed the car door behind me, and I watched him stride away into the purple dusk. I knew his company had a healthy bottom line, but outside of that, I’d been able to find little about them. Connor himself remained a riddle.
Maybe that was how the heads of security companies liked it. But despite Connor’s friendliness and ease, I sensed I was still on the outside struggling to understand details contained in shadows.
Everything about Red Dragon was turning into an enigma.
And at the middle of all of it was my dead and possibly murdered sister.