The Orpheus Deception

by David Stone

  Bittagar himself was sitting in an old wicker peacock chair in the bow of the barge, wrapped in a plaid sheet, wearing a pair of Ray-Ban glasses, holding an old Royal Navy cutlass in his withered hands. Even from this distance, Tarc could make out Bittagar’s gap-toothed leer. Gango lifted a radio handset to his mouth and thumbed the button. A handset crackled in Majiic’s tunic pocket. He picked it out and handed it to Tarc.

  “You surrender boat,” Gango was saying, his voice a thin crackle, his Bugis-accented English almost indecipherable. “We give you safe passage.”

  “Honest?” said Tarc. There was a silence while Gango worked out the reply.

  “Yes. Honest. We not hurt the boat. Only take for the struggle.”

  Tarc flicked the handset off.

  “Vigo, take the wheel. Have the deckhands stand by the spring lines with boarding axes. Tell the engineer to get us ready.”

  “What are you going to do, Emil? Run them down?”

  Tarc didn’t reply directly. He lifted the radio.

  “Gango, you cannot take the boat without damaging it. Then where will you be? Back at the beginning.”

  “You no go either way. You dead. We have boat. We build again.”

  “And do what with it? You don’t know how to sail her.”

  “We have buyer,” said Gango, his voice becoming plaintive, a wheedling tone entering, like a trader in a bazaar, buttery and persuasive. “Pay much more than you. Is business only. No make die for only business. Come on buayo. No be lai dat. No be kiasu. No be kenna ketok we no greedy take always more better more better take. Kiasu no be lai dat.”

  “What’s under the tarp, Gango?”

  Gango, a tiny figure in the distance, shouted something to the men around the tarp. With a kind of matador’s flourish, the men slid the tarp off the thing on the deck. It was an antiaircraft gun, World War II vintage, Japanese, two gleaming ten-foot barrels on a circular track.

  The man behind the weapon worked away at two heavy wheels, and the gun swiveled on the carriage, leveling slowly until both long barrels were aimed directly at the bridge. Even from two hundred yards, it was possible to see the black holes of the muzzles. Bittagar’s yellowed fangs showed in the hard light, and he raised the cutlass, the blade glinting.

  “Very pretty, Gango,” said Tarc. “Bittagar’s secret weapon.”

  “Yes. Pretty too much. You a bit the ah beng boy, you ang mor— you the red-haired monkey, kambing. You come down now. Bittagar says you help us take boat to new buyer, we give you some money back. Only fair.”

  “Very decent of him. Give us a minute.”

  He thumbed off the set. Majiic, at the wheel, was staring back at him.

  “You go along with that, they’ll eat us alive.”

  “I told you, Vigo. You’re a worrier. Check the radar, will you?”

  “The radar?”

  “Yes. See if there’s weather.”

  Majiic looked down at the radar screen. It was clear.

  No. It wasn’t clear.

  There was a single red blob, about a thousand yards out. Bearing 290.

  “Boats!” said Majiic. “There are boats out there?”

  “No boats,” said Tarc, smiling. “Listen.”

  Majiic listened. The wind off the sea; the new red, white, and blue flag, ripping and popping in a rising wind; the jungle, churning softly; the mutter of the engines deep in the hull; the waves, curling along her hull.

  “Nothing. What am I . . .”

  Then, in the distance, faint, but growing, a rhythmic drumming sound. Growing stronger and deeper, closing fast.

  “What is it?”

  “Company,” said Tarc.

  “Is it a chopper?”

  “No. Look at the radar. It’s coming in way too fast for that.”

  “What is it? Is it trouble?”

  “Oh yes. It is definitely trouble.”

  “For who?”

  “Watch this,” said Tarc. “You’re gonna love it.”

  17

  The Home Ministry, Singapore

  Mandy and Dalton sat in those two leather chairs in Minister Dak’s office for one hour and thirteen minutes, giving every impression of seasoned English patience in the face of stolid Asiatic stupidity. Dalton had managed to stretch the time out between panic attacks about Cora Vasari to almost six minutes, and now was trying very hard not to let himself get angry enough to kill whomever walked back in through those two wooden doors. Mandy had placed a palm over the place in her forearm that held the microsurette and was silently counting her pulse while she watched the sunlight change and soften as it poured in through the minister’s decoratively barred windows. She was thinking, off and on, of Porter Naumann and the many ways in which he had been like and unlike Micah Dalton.

  Two brothers with different mothers but the same father, she had once thought. Porter she had loved, in the wary, provisional way that smart women love the married men who come into their beds. Mandy liked men, liked their passion and sensuality, but for Dalton she had always felt something much more enigmatic—not love; not even, like, always—but a strong desire to be in his presence, to see him move, to understand his mind. In spite of this, Mandy was too much a loving heart to take any kind of comfort from what had happened, what might have happened, to Cora Vasari in Florence.

  Dalton had a ferocious attraction to her, strong enough to risk his life to see her one last time. It was not likely to be love yet—lasting love is hardly ever born out of a terrible shared crisis—but, if it turned out to be as near to love as made no nevermind, then Mandy would yield the game.

  Whatever happened, she had liked what little she knew of the woman and wished her to be alive, and, if wounded, to recover without lasting hurt. As for the men behind what had happened to her, all they had left of their futures was the time it would take for Dalton to find them. If any of them were still alive when he found them. Because what she had seen of Brancati and Galan had convinced her that they were quite lethal on their own. So, either way, through the Italians or through Dalton, they had their doom coming.

  That is, supposing she and Dalton got out of the Home Ministry in anything other than a SID transport van. If that looked like it was about to happen—and it had happened to an MI6 woman Mandy had known—then she was taking her own way out, on her own terms, and they could dress her remains in the latest Versace frock and prop her up in the Arcade at Raffles. The surette under her palm was in no way visible, but it was a present comfort and a certain help.

  Unlike God, who, bitter experience had shown her, was, when your need was dire, nowhere to be found. He’d show up later, though, after the blood had been mopped up and all the tables righted, like a whiskey priest, mumbling vapid pieties and eyeing the Laphroaig.

  There came the sounds of heavy boots on boards and muffled voices outside the door. The latch turned and clicked, and the double doors swung wide open, admitting a tall, heavy-shouldered Chinese man in his mid-forties, wearing a bespoke suit in charcoal gray over a dove gray shirt, without a tie. He looked like a man who had arrived in a rush, dressing on the way. He had a broad, blunt face, marked by deep lines around small, cold black eyes. His ochre-tinted face looked weathered by storms and hard living, an aspect weakened by pouty full lips the color of plums and an underslung jaw. He moved well, however, and with authority, paying no attention at all to Minister Dak, who tripped along in his wake with her eyes primly to the floor.

  Dalton was on his feet, facing them, before they had covered six feet, and there must have been something in Dalton’s look that the man instinctively recognized because he came to an abrupt halt a few feet out of Dalton’s reach, turned his body slightly to the right, and lifted both hands up in the beginning of a karate stance. He seemed to realize what he had done at once and dropped his hands again to his side, stiffening, and offering a wary head bob for a bow.

  “Mr. Dalton, Miss Pownall. I am Chong Kew Sak. I am the Home Secretary.”

  He did not have to g
ive his former title. He had been the chief of the SID, and the Head Monitor of Changi Prison’s Cluster C, until seven days ago. Whatever happened to prisoners in Cluster C happened because he wanted it to happen. Dalton, still on his feet, his hands at his side, tried to put a civilian expression on his hard, tight face and failed. Chong stayed where he was but seemed ready to step back if he had to.

  “You’re the Home Secretary?”

  “Yes.”

  “The guest of honor at the HSBC dinner this evening?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “The dinner to which we have been formally invited?”

  “Yes, but that is beside the—”

  “Are you aware of what has passed in this room?”

  “Minister Dak told me that certain contraband may have—”

  Dalton stepped in closer.

  Chong gave ground and then stiffened again.

  “Do you know who we are?”

  A flicker in his eyes, a slight glance to the left and then back.

  “You are representatives of the English bank, Burke and Single.”

  “Here for a commercial conference? Visas in order? All papers vetted? Invited by the finance ministry of Singapore?”

  Chong opened his mouth and then shut it again.

  “Then perhaps you can tell me why have we been treated like criminals?”

  Chong found his footing, moved back in.

  “I don’t understand. There has been no mistake. Minister Dak has”—here he looked at Minister Dak, fixing her like a bug, and then back to Dalton—“has reason to suspect . . . You must sit back down, sir.”

  “We’ve sat long enough. I’ve had all of the local hospitality I can stand. Your minister here has gone to a great deal of trouble to get some sort of leverage on us and there’s only one reason I can think of that explains it.”

  Chong’s face did not change in any obvious way, but the muscles in his jaw and cheeks were now tightening imperceptibly.

  He’s preparing a lie, thought Mandy.

  “You will not sit, Mr. Dalton? Please?”

  “I will not sit, sir. You’re holding a British national. You know him as Brendan Fitch. You have been interrogating him. By you, I mean the SID.”

  “I know nothing of the SID, Mr. Dalton. And what does a British banker care about some English drunkard in a Singapore jail?”

  “I’m going to get right to the point here because neither Miss Pownall nor I wants to spend any more time in Singapore than we bloody well have to. The man you call a drunkard is an English citizen. I have been asked—and I suspect that you may already be aware of this—I have been asked by Her Majesty’s Government, while we are in Singapore, to open an informal discussion to secure his release. Since we are now in the august presence of the Home Secretary, and the Home Ministry is in charge of prisons, it seems to me that we can cut through a lot of smoke by talking this thing out right here. If you want it to happen, we can be on the next flight out of here, with Brendan Fitch.”

  “We have held many unsavory British nationals in Changi over the years, Mr. Dalton. It has rarely elicited the personal attention of Queen Elizabeth. Is there some aspect of Mr. Fitch’s background that draws to us the compliment of her illustrious regard?”

  “I suspect that you already know what his background is.”

  Chong’s face registered fleeting surprise. This admission was not in Cather’s plan. But Cather’s plan was blown the minute somebody in the cyberworld attracted the attention of the Singapore security people to a pair of ordinary English bankers flying in for a black-tie bun-fight. Mandy should not have accepted Sergeant Ong’s gift. Incredibly, she had. They had something on her now, and Chong would have no qualms about using it. It had been done many times before, by every Intelligence agency in the world. But Dalton had his full attention now.

  “I see. Perhaps we do,” said Chong, feeling his way. “It is true that we have discovered that Fitch was a false identity, if that is your point, Mr. Dalton. Mr. Fitch’s real name is Raymond Paget Fyke. He is a former member of the English Special Air Services. He has been, for some years, a contract agent in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency. This, I think, may explain the elevated attention of your noble Queen, since Britain is now a staunch ally of the United States.”

  “Fyke’s grown chatty, has he?”

  “He has become more cooperative of late. As a result, the circumstances of his incarceration have improved. He is being well treated.”

  “I would like to see him.”

  “Sadly, he is indisposed. He is in the infirmary at Changi.”

  “Fell down a flight of stairs? Caught a googly playing cricket?”

  Chong’s eyes narrowed with a kind of grim amusement.

  “Indeed.”

  “Excellent. We have arrived at the heart of the matter. You admit you are aware of who this man actually is?”

  “It’s not a question of admitting. The man is a spy. I have—”

  “You know his real identity. You admit this. Therefore, if you have fully satisfied yourself that his identity is Raymond Fyke, an English national, you are now in violation of your own leader’s direct orders.”

  This seemed to rattle Chong.

  “In what manner . . . ?”

  “Your revered Minister Mentor instituted the New Cooperative Policy on Intelligence Sharing shortly after the attacks of September eleven. I imagine someone along the way has mentioned this policy to you?”

  Chong, like most Singaporeans, didn’t enjoy sarcasm.

  “This bears no relevance to—”

  “Forgive me. I’m informed by the American liaison in London that Mr. Fyke has been the subject of a DSDNI order filed on the twenty-third of November 2002. The Americans inform us that this order—”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Dalton. What is this DSDNI order?”

  “It means Detain, Sequester, Do Not Interrogate, Mr. Secretary. Apparently, your own SID people acknowledged receipt of this order the next day, after it was forwarded to all friendly Intelligence agencies through Interpol. That acknowledgment is on file at Interpol and in Langley. Cooperation with exactly these types of orders was mandated by Mr. Lee Kwan Yew’s New Policy on Intelligence Sharing. That policy is still in force, is it not?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Chong was not enjoying this experience. Mandy, watching it, felt her heart begin to lighten. The power had shifted. Dalton was running the room. She could see Minister Dak’s face from where she was standing. Although her face was a mask of humble discretion, a pinkish glow of satisfaction was coloring her throat and cheeks. Mandy thought the best thing Dak could do now was to silently withdraw before Chong realized she was still there, watching Dalton rip him apart. Dak seemed to be of the same mind, because, in a moment, bowing to hide the slightest of smiles, she glided soundlessly out of the room.

  “So, we arrive at the logical inference from these facts, which is that at some point in the past few days, when you realized you were aggressively interrogating a man who was the subject of an order that required you, under Mr. Lee’s direct orders, to immediately inform the United States Ambassador to Singapore of the fact, you chose to ignore the order.”

  “These are not matters that I, as Home Secretary, will discuss with a mere civilian, certainly not with one who has offered no diplomatic credentials. And I will not be subjected to an impertinent harangue by anyone, no matter for whom he pretends to speak. Minister Dak has made some very serious allegations against your assistant—”

  Here he turned and found to his surprise that Minister Dak had, on little cat’s feet, made a clean getaway. Angry now, he glanced at Mandy, and she saw something worse than brutality in his face; she saw carnal appreciation. “And the cylinder that was discovered in her possession has been sent to our laboratory for analysis. Should—”

  “Should you work that vein a second longer, I’ll see to it that the U.S. Ambassador here lodges a formal protest with the Prime Minister for your
failure to report the unlawful detention—and, I suspect, the sustained torture—of a person under an American DSDNI order. As the former head of the SID and the man who until last week ran Cluster C at Changi Prison . . . that means you personally get to stand up in front of Lee Hsien Loong and explain to him exactly why you have your American allies royally pissed off at you after only seven days at your new post. How’s that work for you?”

  “You are—”

  “I am tired, Mr. Secretary. My partner, not my assistant, and I have traveled several thousand miles to improve commercial relations with your nation, and, I admit, to be informal emissaries on a mission of mercy. We have been, since the moment we arrived in Singapore, the subject of insupportable affronts. Affronts to representatives of the world’s foremost banking community at a time, I must tell you, when Singapore is reeling from the collapse of its dot-com ambitions and looking at the rise of a formidable economic power only a few hundred miles to the north. Your government cannot afford to indulge incompetent ministers and, I assure you, if presented with a complete narrative of these events by an angry representative of the United States, will take action to correct them. So here’s what I propose. We’re taking a cab back to the Intercontinental, where we will refresh ourselves. We must sadly decline the invitation of the HSBC to attend the reception this evening, but we may—I repeat, we may— not inform the bank of the true reasons for our absence, which is our dismay at the way we have been treated by certain officials of the host government.”

  That one hit home. Chong looked a little green around the edges.

  “There, at the Intercontinental, we will await your decision concerning our request to have our compatriot, Mr. Fyke, released without further delay—alive, well—into our custody. Miss Pownall, gather yourself. We’re leaving. Mr. Chong, I will not say good day to you.”