by Kevin Kwan
A young maid rushed up to Astrid and said, “Ma’am, please, breakfast,” gesturing toward the dining room. There she found a rather excessive spread laid out for her on the round glass table: pitchers of coffee, tea, and orange juice were accompanied by poached eggs and thick-cut bacon on a warming plate, scrambled eggs with Cumberland sausages, toasted English muffins, French toast, sliced mango with Greek yogurt, three types of breakfast cereals, silver-dollar pancakes with strawberries and Chantilly cream, fried crullers with fish congee. Another maid stood at attention behind Astrid, waiting to pounce forward and serve. Ah Chee came into the dining room and said, “We didn’t know what you would want for breakfast, so the cook made a few options. Eat, eat. And then the car is waiting to take you to Charlieboy’s office down the hill.”
Astrid grabbed the bowl of yogurt and said, “This is all I need,” much to Ah Chee’s dismay. She went back to the bedroom and put on an ink-blue Rick Owens top over a pair of white jeans. After brushing her hair quickly, she decided to wear it in a low ponytail—something she never did—and rummaging through Charlie’s bathroom drawers, she found a pair of Cutler and Gross horn sunglasses that fit her. This was as incognito as she was going to get. As she left the bedroom, one of the maids sprinted to the entrance foyer and summoned the elevator, while another held it open until Astrid was ready to enter. Astrid was mildly amused by how even an act as simple as exiting the flat was handled with such military urgency by these skittish girls. It was so different from the gracious, easygoing servants she had grown up with.
In the lobby, a chauffeur in a crisp black uniform with gold buttons bowed at Astrid. “Where’s Mr. Wu’s office?” Astrid asked.
“Wuthering Towers, on Chater Road.” He gestured toward the forest-green Bentley parked outside, but Astrid said, “Thanks, but I think I’ll walk,” remembering the building well. It was the same place Charlie always had to go to pick up envelopes stuffed with cash from his father’s secretary whenever they came to Hong Kong on weekend shopping binges. Before the chauffeur could protest, Astrid walked across the plaza to the Mid-Levels’ escalator, strolling purposefully along the moving platform as it snaked its way down the hilly urban terrain.
At the base of the escalator on Queen Street, Astrid took a deep breath and plunged into the fast-moving river of pedestrians. There was something about Hong Kong’s central district during the day, a special frenetic energy from the hustling and bustling crowd that always gave Astrid an intoxicating rush. Bankers in smart pinstripes walked shoulder to shoulder with dusty day laborers and teenagers in school uniforms, while chicly outfitted corporate women in don’t-mess-with-me heels melded seamlessly with wizened old amahs and half-clothed street beggars.
Astrid turned left onto Pedder Street and entered the Landmark shopping mall. The first thing she saw was a long line of people. What was happening? Oh, it was just the usual queue of Mainland Chinese shoppers outside the Gucci store, anxiously awaiting their turn to go inside and get their fix. Astrid expertly negotiated her way through the network of pedestrian bridges and passageways that connected the Landmark to neighboring buildings—up the escalator to the mezzanine level of the Mandarin Oriental, through the shopping arcade at Alexandra House, down the short flight of steps by Cova Caffé, and here she was in the gleaming lobby of Wuthering Towers.
The reception counter appeared to have been sculpted from one massive block of malachite, and as Astrid approached, a man with an earpiece in a dark suit intercepted her and said discreetly, “Mrs. Teo, I’m with Mr. Wu. Please come with me.” He waved her through the security checkpoint and into an express elevator that zipped straight up to the fifty-fifth floor. The elevator doors opened onto a serene, windowless room with alabaster-white walls inlaid with hairline circular patterns and a silvery blue sofa. The man ushered Astrid wordlessly past the three executive secretaries who sat at adjoining tables and through a pair of imposing etched-bronze doors.
Astrid found herself in Charlie’s atrium-like office, which had a soaring pyramid-shaped glass ceiling and a bank of flat-screen televisions along one entire wall that silently flickered financial news channels from New York, London, Shanghai, and Dubai. A very tan Chinese man in a black suit and wire-frame glasses was seated on a nearby sofa.
“You almost gave my driver a panic attack,” Charlie said, getting up from his desk.
Astrid smiled. “You need to cut your staff some slack, Charlie. They live in complete terror of you.”
“Actually, they live in complete terror of my wife,” Charlie responded with a grin. He gestured to the man seated on the black sofa. “This is Mr. Lui, who has already managed to find your husband by using the cell number you gave me last night.”
Mr. Lui nodded at Astrid and began speaking in that distinctive, clipped, British-accented English that was so common in Hong Kong. “Every iPhone has a GPS locator, which makes it possible for us to track the owner very easily,” Mr. Lui explained. “Your husband has been at an apartment in Mong Kok since last night.”
Mr. Lui presented Astrid with his thin laptop computer, where a sequence of images awaited: Michael exiting the flat, Michael exiting the elevator, Michael clutching a bundle of plastic bags on the street. The last picture, taken from a high angle, showed a woman opening the door of the flat to let Michael in. Astrid’s stomach tightened into a knot. Here was the other woman. She scrutinized the picture for a long while, staring at the barefooted woman dressed in denim shorts and a skimpy tank top.
“Can we enlarge the picture?” Astrid asked. As Mr. Lui zoomed in on the blurry, pixilated face, Astrid suddenly sat back on the sofa. “There’s something very familiar about that woman,” she said, her pulse quickening.
“Who is she?” Charlie asked.
“I’m not sure, but I know I’ve seen her somewhere before,” Astrid said, closing her eyes and pressing her fingers to her forehead. Then it hit her. Her throat seemed to close up, and she couldn’t speak.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asked, seeing the look on Astrid’s face.
“I’m okay, I think. I believe this girl was at my wedding. I think there’s a picture of her in a group photo from one of my albums.”
“Your wedding?” Charlie said in shock. Turning to Mr. Lui, he demanded, “What do you have on her?”
“Nothing on her yet. The flat’s registered owner is Mr. Thomas Ng,” the private investigator replied.
“Doesn’t ring any bells,” Astrid said numbly.
“We’re still assembling a dossier,” Mr. Lui said. An instant message flashed on his phone, and he reported, “The woman just left the flat with a young boy, approximately four years old.”
Astrid’s heart sank. “Have you been able to find out anything about the boy?”
“We have not. We did not know there was a boy inside the flat with them until this moment.”
“So the woman has left with the boy and my husband is alone now?”
“Yes. We don’t think anyone else is in the apartment.”
“You don’t think? Can you be sure there isn’t someone else in there? Can’t you use some sort of thermal sensor?” Charlie asked.
Mr. Lui gave a little snort. “Hiyah, this isn’t the CIA. Of course, we can always escalate and bring in specialists if you wish, but for domestics such as these, we don’t usually—”
“I want to see my husband,” Astrid said matter-of-factly. “Can you take me to him now?”
“Ms. Teo, in these situations, we really don’t advise—” the man delicately began.
“I don’t care. I need to see him face-to-face,” Astrid insisted.
A few minutes later, Astrid sat quietly in the back of the Mercedes with tinted windows while Mr. Lui rode in the front passenger seat, frantically barking orders in Cantonese to the team assembled around 64 Pak Tin Street. Charlie wanted to come along, but Astrid had insisted on going alone. “Don’t worry, Charlie—nothing’s going to happen. I’m just going to have a talk with Michael.” Now her mind was r
eeling, and she was getting more and more antsy as the car inched through lunchtime traffic in Tsim Sha Tsui.
She just didn’t know what to think anymore. Who exactly was this girl? It looked like the affair must have been going on since before their wedding, but then why had Michael married her? It clearly wasn’t for money—her husband had always been so rabidly insistent about not wanting to benefit from her family’s wealth. He had readily signed the hundred-and-fifty-page prenuptial agreement without so much as a blink, as well as the postnuptial her family’s lawyers had insisted on after Cassian was born. Her money, and Cassian’s money, was more secure than the Bank of China’s. So what was it that motivated Michael to have a wife in Singapore, and a mistress in Hong Kong?
Astrid looked out her car window and noticed a Rolls-Royce Phantom next to her. Enthroned in the backseat was a couple, probably in their early thirties, dressed to the nines. The woman had short, smartly coiffed hair and was immaculately made up and dressed in a purple blouse with an enormous diamond-and-emerald floral brooch pinned to her right shoulder. The man at her side was sporting a florid Versace silk bomber jacket and Latin dictator–style dark sunglasses. Anywhere else in the world, this couple would have looked completely absurd—they were at least three decades too young to be chauffeured around so ostentatiously. But this was Hong Kong, and somehow it worked here. Astrid wondered where they came from, and where they were going. Probably off to lunch at the club. What secrets did they keep from each other? Did the husband have a mistress? Did the wife have a lover? Were there any children? Were they happy? The woman sat perfectly still, staring dead ahead, while the man slouched slightly away from her, reading the business section of the South China Morning Post. The traffic began to move again, and suddenly they were in Mong Kok, with its dense, hulking sixties apartment blocks crowding out the sunlight.
Before she knew it, Astrid was being led out of the car, flanked by four security men in dark suits. She looked around nervously as they escorted her to an old block of flats and into a small fluorescent-lit elevator with avocado-green walls. On the tenth floor, they emerged into an open-air hallway that skirted along an inner courtyard where lines of laundry hung from every available window. They walked past apartments with plastic slippers and shoes by the doorways, and soon they were in front of the metal-grille door of flat 10-07B.
The tallest man rang the doorbell once, and a moment later, Astrid could hear a few latches being undone. The door opened, and there he was. Her husband, standing right in front of her.
Michael glanced at the security detail surrounding Astrid and shook his head in disgust. “Let me guess, your father hired these goons to track me down.”
13
Cameron Highlands
MALAYSIA
Nick borrowed his father’s 1963 Jaguar E-Type roadster from the garage at Tyersall Park, and he and Rachel headed onto the Pan Island Expressway, bound for the bridge that linked Singapore to the Malay Peninsula. From Johor Bahru, they drove up the Utara-Selatan Highway, detouring to the seaside town of Malacca so that Nick could show Rachel the distinctive crimson-hued façade of Christ Church, built by the Dutch when the town was part of their colonial empire, and the charmingly ornate Peranakan row houses along Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock.
Afterward, they stayed on the old road that skirted along the Negeri Sembilan coast for a while. With the top down and the warm ocean breeze on her face, Rachel began to feel more relaxed than she had since arriving in Asia. The trauma of the past few days was dissipating, and at last it felt like they were truly on holiday together. She loved the wildness of these back roads, the rustic seaside hamlets that seemed untouched by time, the way Nick looked with day-old stubble and the wind whipping through his hair. A few miles north of Port Dickson, Nick turned down a dirt road thick with tropical vegetation, and as Rachel looked inland, she could glimpse miles and miles of uniformly planted trees.
“What are those perfect rows of trees?” Rachel asked.
“Rubber—we’re surrounded by rubber plantations,” Nick explained. They pulled up to a spot right by the beach, got out of the car, took off their sandals, and strolled onto the hot sand. A few Malay families were scattered about the beach having lunch, the ladies’ colorful head scarves flapping in the wind as they bustled around canteens of food and children who were more interested in frolicking in the surf. It was a cloudy day, and the sea was a mottled tapestry of deep green with patches of azure where the clouds broke.
A Malay woman and her son came toward them, hauling a big blue-and-white Styrofoam cooler. Nick began talking animatedly with the woman, buying two bundles from her Igloo before bending down and asking the boy a question. The boy nodded eagerly and ran off, while Nick found a shady spot underneath the low-hanging branches of a mangrove tree.
He handed Rachel a still-warm banana-leaf packet tied with string. “Try Malaysia’s most popular dish—nasi lemak,” he said. Rachel undid the string and the glossy banana leaf unfolded to reveal a neatly composed mound of rice surrounded by sliced cucumbers, tiny fried anchovies, roasted peanuts, and a hard-boiled egg.
“Pass me a fork,” Rachel said.
“There’s no fork. You get to go native on this—use your fingers!” Nick grinned.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope, that’s the traditional way. Malays believe the food actually tastes better when you eat with your hands. They only use the right hand to eat, of course. The left hand is used for purposes better left unmentioned.”
“But I haven’t washed my hands, Nick. I don’t think I can eat like this,” Rachel said, sounding a little alarmed.
“Come on, Miss OCD. Tough it out,” Nick teased. He scooped some of the rice into his fingers and began eating the nasi lemak with gusto.
Rachel gingerly scooped some of the rice into her mouth, instantly breaking into a smile. “Mmmm … it’s coconut rice!”
“Yes, but you haven’t even gotten to the good part yet. Dig a little deeper!”
Rachel dug into her rice and discovered a curry sauce oozing out from the middle along with big chunks of chicken. “Oh my God,” she said. “Does it taste this good because of all the different flavors or because we’re sitting on this gorgeous beach eating it?”
“Oh, I think it’s your hands. Your grotty hands are giving the food all the added flavor,” Nick said.
“I’m about to slap you with my grotty curry hands!” Rachel scowled at him. Just as she was finishing her last bite, the little boy from earlier ran up with two clear-plastic drinking bags filled with rough chunks of ice and freshly squeezed sugarcane juice. Nick took the drinks from the boy and handed him a ten-dollar bill. “Kamu anak yang baik,”* he said, patting the boy on the shoulder. The boy’s eyes widened in delight. He tucked the money into the elastic band of his soccer shorts and scrambled off to tell his mother about his windfall.
“You never cease to amaze me, Nicholas Young. Why didn’t I know you spoke Malay?” Rachel said.
“Only a few rudimentary words—enough to order food,” Nick replied modestly.
“That conversation you had earlier didn’t sound rudimentary to me,” Rachel countered, sipping the icy sweet sugarcane through a thin pink straw tucked into the corner of the plastic bag.
“Trust me, I’m sure that lady was cringing at my grammar.” Nick shrugged.
“You’re doing it again, Nick,” Rachel said.
“Doing what?
“You’re doing that annoying self-deprecating thing.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
Rachel sighed in exasperation. “You say you don’t speak Malay when I hear you yapping away. You say, ‘Oh, this old house,’ when we’re in a friggin’ palace. You downplay everything, Nick!”
“I don’t even realize when I’m doing it,” Nick said.
“Why? I mean, you downplay things to the point that your parents don’t even have a clue how well you’re doing in New York.”
“It’s jus
t the way I was brought up, I guess.”
“Do you think it’s because your family is so wealthy and you had to overcompensate by being super-modest?” Rachel suggested.
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that. I was just trained to speak precisely and never to be boastful. Also, we’re not that wealthy.”
“Well then, what are you exactly? Are you guys worth hundreds of millions or billions?”
Nick’s face began to redden, but Rachel wouldn’t let up.
“I know it makes you uncomfortable, Nick, but that’s why I’m prodding you. You’re telling me one thing, but then I hear other people speaking as if the entire economy of Asia revolves around your family, and you’re, like, the heir to the throne. I’m an economist, for crying out loud, and if I’m going to be accused of being a gold digger, I’d like to know what I’m supposedly digging for,” Rachel said bluntly.
Nick fidgeted with the remnant of his banana leaf nervously. Since he was old enough to remember, it had been ingrained into him that any talk of the family wealth was off-limits. But it was only fair that Rachel know what she was getting herself into, especially if he was (very shortly) going to ask her to accept the canary diamond ring hidden in the lower right pocket of his cargo shorts.
“I know this may sound silly, but the truth is I really don’t know how rich my family is,” Nick began tentatively. “Now, my parents live very well, mostly due to the legacy my mum received from her parents. And I have a private income that’s not too shabby, mainly from stocks left to me by my grandfather. But we don’t have the kind of money that Colin’s or Astrid’s family does, not even close.”