18
Little India
August 28, 11:30 a.m. SGT
The woman was right—the guard at the booth was friendly, but I could get nothing from him about who had visited Cass. Maybe Inspector Lee had enjoyed better luck. If he’d even asked during his quickly curtailed investigation.
Han had indicated that the Chinese Communist Party might be putting pressure on Singaporean officials to cover up Cass’s death. Was that really possible? Had Lee intended to tell me things that would undermine his own government?
I walked out of the gated community and stood on Ardmore Road in the shade of a pair of palms gyrating in the breeze and watched steam lift from the road. All around, birds sang and called, a liquid counterpart to the purr of passing Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Going into the office was next on my agenda, and I decided it would do me good to walk to the metro station, even in the heat. Even with Dai Shujun and the Second Department presumably on my tail. Last night’s impromptu swim and run had proved that I’d fallen out of shape.
As I reached into my wallet for the EZ-Link card, my hand brushed against a business card. I pulled it out.
D R . S AYURI S ARAVANAN
P ROFESSIONAL V EDIC A STROLOGER
B ABOO L ANE , L ITTLE I NDIA
The astrologer. With everything else, I’d almost forgotten. Emily had suggested that the visits were due to Mr. Mèng’s superstitious desire for a safe voyage. And that the change in Cassandra coincided with her visits there.
I found Dr. Saravanan on a social media app and dialed his number. A warm male voice answered. I explained that I was Cassandra Brenner’s sister and that I needed to meet with him.
If Cassandra’s name meant anything to him, he gave no indication. “My fee is seventy Singapore dollars cash for a reading. I’ll send you the information. Do you use WhatsApp?”
The messaging service. “I do.” And if the man wanted to give me a reading, whatever that entailed, I wasn’t going to argue. Maybe he would tell me my future. Hopefully I had one.
“I will send my address to you,” he said. “Be here in two hours. I close after that.”
He disconnected. I opened WhatsApp. A few seconds later I received an address on Baboo Lane—the same one that appeared on the business card.
Google Maps showed me I could walk to the Newton metro station and catch the Downtown Line to Little India. I saw no sign of Tiger Man—Dai Shujun—or anyone else who appeared to take note of me. And I was only a few hours into Charlie Han’s promised forty-eight before the Second Department came after me.
But did I really want to trust Han’s word?
Given everything that had happened during my short time in Singapore, I decided to take a roundabout path. Run an SDR the way Cass and I had been trained. If I were being tailed, maybe this would shake the cockroaches out of the walls.
I turned off location tracking on my phone and switched it to airplane mode, then pulled on my sunglasses and started out, feigning nonchalance.
Inside me, the deer crouched, shaking.
Terrified.
Dr. Sayuri Saravanan’s office turned out to be his top-floor flat in a government-built apartment building. When I arrived, hot and sweaty from running an SDR, the front door was propped open, letting in the light breeze. I glanced through the screen. A man in his fifties stood in the kitchen, lighting a cigarette. He was short and lean and dark skinned, dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants.
“Come in,” he said when he saw me.
Inside, I tugged off my sneakers. I followed the astrologer through the small, drab living room and into the kitchen. He gestured for me to sit at the laminate-topped table. There were no velvet curtains, no Tarot cards, no crystal ball. Just a man with a keen gaze and a pyramid of packs of Pall Mall cigarettes large enough to stock the local market.
He peered at me, then smiled. “So. You are Cassandra’s sister. I was saddened to learn from Mr. Mèng of her death. She spoke often of you.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, Dr. Saravanan. But why did she come to you? Cass was ...”
“A skeptic?” The smile held. “She was worried. Sometimes scared. She didn’t understand that life on the path of the Tao is difficult. Each of us must learn to accept the river’s flow. Fighting it only brings misery. Now”—he propped his cigarette in a ceramic bowl and held out his hands—“which is your dominant hand?”
“I’m not here for a reading, Dr. Saravanan. I want to talk about Cass. What was she scared of? Why did she come to you?”
“Allow yourself to be in the river, Nadia.” His voice was gentle. “The answers to your questions and Cassandra’s fears lie inside you. We will get to one through the other.”
I bit down on my impatience. “I’m right-handed.”
He picked up his cigarette and watched me through a haze of smoke. “Place your right hand on the table, palm up.”
Reluctantly, I did as he ordered.
He again propped his cigarette in the bowl and picked up my right hand, cupping it in his left.
“You care a great deal about your family.”
“Dr. Saravanan—”
“It is good and right for a daughter to love her parents. Her uncle. But this love can become a prison if the fledgling doesn’t leave the nest when the time has come.”
My hand twitched in his grasp.
“Of more concern are the bad men who pursue you,” he said. “I see two life lines, Nadia Brenner. Both spring from a choice in your life. One path allows a long life. The other ... the other gives you very little time.”
That’s ridiculous, I wanted to say. But no words came out.
“We must try to understand this,” he said. “In order for you to make the right choice.”
“Wouldn’t the right choice be the one that keeps me alive?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. There are times when doing the right thing is dangerous. This is something Cassandra knew.”
A bloom of heat spread through my chest, a burn of anguish. “What do you mean? What right thing?”
Before Saravanan could speak, a sound near the front door made me cry out.
“Hush, hush,” the astrologist said. “It is only my beautiful Abyssinian. You see?”
An immense tawny-colored cat with oversize ears was struggling to push her way through a cat door cut into the screen. It was a battle—the cat was fine boned but muscular, too large for the door. She forced her way inside, rattling the door in its frame, and gave me a baleful stare before stalking off down the hallway.
I gave a weak laugh. “You need a bigger door.”
“That is what everyone thinks. But the struggle is what makes her strong. Now, please, feel safe here. Cassandra did.”
“You just told me that I might die soon. How can I feel safe anywhere?”
He finished his cigarette, contemplating me through the smoke, then returned to studying my palm. A sudden wind rattled the screens on the window and front door, followed by a burst of rain pounding the roof.
“Both paths have costs,” he said. “The question we must consider is this: Which costs are you willing to pay? You’ve read about our merlion? The lion appeared before Prince Sang Nila Utama after he sacrificed his crown to save his ship and crew.”
“I’ve heard the story.”
Saravanan’s expression was grave. “The crown is a symbol. Of a prince’s right to rule. Of his place in society. And, in the case of Prince Sang Nila Utama, of the price he was willing to pay to save his men.”
He released me. He sat back in his chair and shook out another smoke from the nearest pack of Pall Malls.
“You don’t believe, but I can read the truth in your palm, Nadia Brenner. I can read that your life is in danger. And also your soul. But I know other things, too. Things I don’t need your palm to understand.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Like what?”
“By now I suspect you’ve been approached by a man calling himself Charlie Han. He no doubt told you many lies. He would have told you that George Mèng is a bad man who convinced your sister to do bad things.”
A shiver walked my spine. I realized I was “it” in a game of blindman’s buff. “How do you know about Charlie Han?”
“From Cassandra.”
“She knew him?”
“Not his name. Not the particulars of his mission. She was only aware that someone watched her.”
“But you know his name.”
“I learned it yesterday.”
“From whom?”
“From your security chief, Connor McGrath.”
The small room became smaller, as if the walls were squeezing in. I stood. “Connor knew about Han and didn’t warn me?”
The Abyssinian cat appeared in the living room and regarded me with the eyes of a sphinx.
“Nadia. Please sit.”
The world was spinning. “How do you know Connor? What’s your interest in Red Dragon ?”
“I shared my interest in the boat’s fate with Connor. Just as I shared it with Cassandra. I am on your side.”
Suddenly I couldn’t listen to anything more. I couldn’t process Saravanan’s words. I knew only that I needed to get away.
“Stop.” I pushed past the table and stumbled toward the door.
“Where will you go?” Saravanan asked me. “Connor and I can help you.”
“Stay away from me.”
A figure appeared in the doorway. I staggered back as a man jerked the door open. Tall and rough looking, his jeans ripped and oily, his gray hoodie stained and spotted with rain. Sunglasses concealed his eyes. Unkempt blond hair stuck out in spikes; his matted beard gleamed with moisture.
He came inside and shut both the screen and door behind him, turning the lock.