“I’ve never been.”
“Wonderful country, don’t get me wrong. Lovely people. Beautiful beaches. Fascinating history. ‘Land of Smiles.’ And the king will tan your hide if you say otherwise.” Sterling laughed, a riotous thunderclap. “In name, Thailand is still a monarchy. The Thais love their king. Not allowed to say a bad thing about him. Something called lèse-majesté. Few years back, an Australian newshound sent his friends a pic he’d gotten ahold of showing the king cavorting in a swimming pool with a karaoke girl, both of them naked, of course. Having a frolic. Pic was twenty years old. No big deal. That’s what the Aussie thought. Twenty-four hours later, he found himself on an airplane, declared persona non grata. Never allowed to return. He got off easy. King sent his wife to an ‘attitude adjustment’ camp for two years. Kids, too.”
“Sounds harsh.”
“The king is still new to the throne. He’s a fighter pilot. Smart as a whip but has a bit of an inferiority complex. His father was the most popular monarch in the country’s history. On the throne for seventy years. New one needs to make his mark.”
“But does he have real power?”
“To an extent. By law, the country is a parliamentary democracy with a constitution and everything. Problem is they keep electing one party more corrupt than the next. Every ten years the military stages a coup to set things right. Of course, they’re as bent as the day is long, too. Somehow the whole thing works. Country’s prosperous. Bangkok’s a boomtown. Two million residents when I first visited in ’75. Nearly eleven million today and growing like gangbusters. But nothing, I repeat, nothing, gets done without a tip of your hat and a wave of your hand. Grease makes the wheels go round.”
“Money.”
“Graft, honest or otherwise. There isn’t anything that can’t be bought…including, apparently, the freedom of your friend, Rafael de Bourbon. I made some calls after we spoke last night. I still have friends over there.”
“And?”
“Den of vipers.”
“Pardon me?”
“That’s what you’re stepping into. I don’t know what your chum did, whether it really was blackmail, extortion, or corporate theft, but he’s managed to make a lot of people upset. Word to the wise. Do not mess with Colonel Tan.”
“I looked him up. Career army. Paratrooper. Served as defense attaché to the Thai embassy in Rome and Istanbul. Currently, head of the Royal Thai Police.”
“You’re not going to find what you need to know about Albert Tan on the Internet. Tan is the ultimate inside man. Married to the daughter of the biggest sugar baron in the country. Worth billions. Brother’s head of the ruling party. More billions. Cousin owns Mekong Distillery, largest spirits producer in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. Lots more billions. Pounds, not baht. Tan is the man you go to when you want to get things done at the highest level. Whatever De Bourbon did, it must be bloody important if Tan himself flew to Ko Phi Phi to make the arrest.”
Simon took this in. “My friend worked for a company named PetroSaud. You can guess by the name it’s in the oil business, representing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Offices in Geneva, Singapore, and Jeddah. But, Ben, why did the Thai police arrest him for stealing information from a Saudi company?”
“Simple. On behalf of one of the countries where the company has offices.”
“Long arms,” said Simon.
“With very sharp claws,” said Ben Sterling. “Careful, Simon. Den of vipers.”
A waiter arrived with their curries.
“Ah,” said Sterling as his plate was set before him. “Heaven.”
Chapter 13
London
It was more than an hour’s drive west to Southall. Simon passed the gurdwara temple and turned onto a quiet side street. By a miracle, he located a vacant space that was almost legal. He entered a gate at number 34 Carrington Mews and continued to the back of the house, where he knocked at the rear door. He was never sure why Dr. Vikram Singh insisted he go to the back. He’d been doing business with the electrical engineer for years, and frankly, he was beginning to have a complex about it.
A tall young man wearing a Caltech hoodie answered the door. “Hey.”
“Is that you, Arjit?”
“Back early for summer holiday.”
“You grew a foot.”
“Two inches. I’m officially six feet tall. Dad thinks I’m taking steroids.”
“To get taller?”
“Otherwise he can’t explain it. He’s five eight. Mom’s barely five feet. He said there were stories about a distant uncle who was over six feet tall. Supposedly, he was some kind of tiger hunter. Stupid family lore. He looks at me like I’m not his son. He’s weirding me out, Simon. Talk to him.”
“Will do,” said Simon. “What are you studying out there in California?”
“Quantum mechanics.”
“So you do like cars after all? If you need a summer job, let me know.”
“Quantum mechanics has nothing to do with automobiles,” said a distraught Arjit.
“That right? My bad.” Simon made a face. “Do they still say that? Anyway, from now on I’m going to call you ‘Tiger.’”
“I don’t have to play golf, do I?”
“Just keep studying. You’ll make more than the other Tiger ever will. Maybe you can solve the Higgs boson quandary. Win a Fields Medal. That would be something.” Simon pointed a finger at Arjit “Tiger” Singh, as if to say he wasn’t as dumb as he looked. “Tiger” was not amused.
“Dad’s in his lab. He’s been up all night. He’s not happy about it.”
“Some things never change.”
“Knock, knock,” said Simon, rapping on the wall as he descended the stairs to Vikram Singh’s basement lab. “Anyone home?”
Vikram Singh stood at his waist-high worktable, a halogen lamp attached to his forehead, its beam directed at a small, shiny object in his hands. A Sikh, he wore a flaming orange turban and kept his long salt-and-pepper beard tied neatly under his chin. His eyes darted to Simon, then returned to his work. “Sit. Silence. Patience.”
Simon dropped into a chair in the corner. Vikram Singh had every right to be angry. It seemed that every time Simon needed his services, it was on a rush-delivery basis. Simon would feel the same way if a client demanded he renovate a car faster than he would like or was capable. Hurrying was not only an inconvenience; it threatened one’s reputation for quality.
Simon eyed the various and sundry items scattered across the table, mostly metallic black boxes with nobs and toggles that he identified as StingRays, devices designed to mimic cellphone transmission towers and capture cellular communications. Either with a warrant or without.
A graduate of the Indian Institutes of Technology, India’s most prestigious academy of higher education, Vikram Singh had immigrated to the United Kingdom with a PhD in electrical engineering at the age of twenty-two and went straight to work for MI5, known colloquially as “Box,” Britain’s domestic security service, where he spent twenty years using his skills to outfit officers for undercover work. Seeing greener pastures in the private sector, he left to offer his services to a higher paying clientele. The spotless BMW 750iL saloon parked in front of his home testified to the wisdom of his decision. His son, Arjit, only fifteen, attended Caltech. His daughter, Vandita, was reportedly even sharper, the subject of a recent article in The Times after she aced five O-level examinations at the age of eleven.
“Still there?” asked Vikram Singh.
“Sitting and silent. Definitely not patient.”
Singh extinguished the halogen beam and removed the lamp from his head. “I have good news and bad news.”
“Good news first,” said Simon.
“Against all odds, I’ve managed to fulfill your requests.”
“That is good news.”
“You may stand now.” Singh circled the table and slid a rectangular tray toward Simon. The tray was bare except for two pea-sized pods the color of flesh and a black
square-shaped strip of metal. “Try one. Goes in the ear. Your choice. Right or left.”
Simon placed one of the pods in his ear.
“Make sure it is on.”
Several months earlier Singh had built Simon a device capable of detecting the presence of a digital camera. The first time he used it, Simon had forgotten to turn it on, to near disastrous effect.
“My iPods turn on automatically,” he said.
“Do I look like Tim Cook?”
Simon plucked the pod from his ear and flicked a pale nub on one side. A green light appeared and he replaced it.
“Hello, hello,” said Singh.
“Hello, hello,” said a voice in Simon’s ear. It was a female voice with a seductive English accent.
“I think I’d rather have HAL,” said Simon.
“Over Helen Mirren?”
“That’s Helen Mirren?”
“A voice print compilation.”
“Never mind. I’ll take Helen Mirren.”
Singh walked to the far side of the room and spoke a few words in his native Punjabi.
As he spoke, the woman’s voice translated the words into English. “Smart man, Riske. I’d take her over HAL any day. Did you know that HAL is a play on IBM? The letters H, A, L are each one earlier in the alphabet than IBM. Kubrick was quite a clever fellow.” Singh then asked in English: “Get that?”
“I didn’t know you were a film buff.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Yes,” said Simon.
“This device is capable of simultaneously translating most Indo-Asian languages, including Thai, Isan, and Khmer, into English. A Bluetooth transmitter inside the pod sends the audio to software housed on a cellphone, or if the cellphone is unavailable, via a booster to the cloud, provided you are within five kilometers of a transmission tower.”
Simon picked up the square-shaped black slab. “The booster?”
“It can run for three hours on a full charge. Not enough, I know, but you wanted something concealable.”
“It’ll do.” Den of vipers. Even before meeting with Ben Sterling, Simon suspected he might be walking into a loaded environment. Dickie Blackmon’s business dealings didn’t inspire confidence in his partners, no matter where in the world they were. “And the other part of my order?”
Singh picked up a signet ring from the tray and flipped it to Simon. “The ring contains a miniature parabolic antenna capable of picking up voices up to fifty meters away. I programmed a frequency differentiation algorithm that allows you to select the voices you wish to listen to. There’s a small button on the underside of the ring. Each time you press it, it will cycle through the voice patterns the antenna is picking up.”
Simon slipped the ring on his third finger and aimed it at the ceiling. Immediately, he heard Arjit telling his sister Taylor Swift was awful and demanding that she shut the door to her room. “Works through walls?”
“Intermittently. This is an old house with wooden floors. You’ll have less luck with concrete. None with steel.”
“Nifty. Is there a way to program more languages?”
“The fewer we upload the better the result. Second-generation software. Bugs galore. Besides, the number of dialects in that part of the world makes precision impossible. No one speaks textbook Thai. Remember that if Miss Mirren misspeaks herself now and again.”
“Why do you know so much about Thailand?”
“My cousin owns a tailoring shop in Bangkok. His name is Bobby Gulati. The store is called Raja’s. Look him up if you need a new suit.”
“This isn’t that kind of a trip.” Simon slipped the ring off his finger and replaced it on the tray. “You were saying something about ‘bad news.’”
“While small in size, these toys were quite expensive to procure and program at such short notice.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Simon.
Vikram Singh said a figure in Punjabi. Helen Mirren spoke the sum in Simon’s ear. “Bastard,” he muttered.
Singh smiled archly. “Someone’s got to pay for Arjit’s education. University in the States is damned expensive. Oh, and one more thing.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Cash only.”
Chapter 14
Singapore
Years of daily practice in hopes of one day walking onto a stage in Vienna or Berlin or New York and sitting down at a concert Steinway, nodding to the conductor, her posture immaculate, slowly raising her hands above the ivory keys, had made London Li a creature of habit. She rose every morning at 5:30, made herself a cup of coffee, drank exactly half, laced up her running shoes, fed her cat, and left her apartment on Fort Road for a jog around Katong Park—2.3 miles, 4,700 steps, give or take. After her run, meditation, a shower, and only then, breakfast. Two pieces of dry toast, a banana, and the second half of her coffee.
She adhered to the schedule every day of the year. Rain or shine. Sick or well. On the road or at home. No excuses.
But not today.
This morning London rose earlier than usual, at five a.m. on the dot. Still in her pajamas (Hello Kitty—yes, she was a fan), she went straight to her desk, sat down, and opened her laptop. No run. No meditation. No shower.
Something better.
A story.
An email was open on the screen.
High-ranking executives at the Geneva-based advisory firm PetroSaud conspired with managers of an Asian sovereign wealth fund to defraud investors of billions of dollars. Instead of placing the fund’s assets in listed investments, PetroSaud funneled billions to accounts in offshore banks controlled by the fund’s managers (including government ministers) while charging excessive commissions.
Signed,
R
“R,” her unreliable man of mystery, last reported MIA.
Why had he missed their meeting? A change of heart? An unseen inconvenience? Or something else? Something sinister.
Attached to his email were three files.
The first was a copy of a bank transfer to PetroSaud’s account at one of the big Swiss banks in the amount of seven hundred million dollars. The sender’s name was partially blacked out, or redacted. Only the words “D. _____, Director of Investment Corporation of _____” were visible. In the section marked “Comments,” it read, “Purchase of Parcel 254A-D, Ras-al-Aliya, Saudi Arabia, Royal Saudi Oil Authority. Oil and Mineral Rights Exclusive.”
The second file showed the copy of another bank transfer, this one from the same PetroSaud account at the big Swiss bank, also in the amount of seven hundred million dollars, made that same day to a numbered account at the Bank of Liechtenstein.
The third file was a copy of the account documents for said numbered account at the Bank of Liechtenstein naming the account holder as the Private International Investment Holdings Corp., domiciled in the Netherlands Antilles and listing among its directors “____, director of the Investment Corporation of ____” and “____, finance minister of _____.” The missing words or names, again, redacted.
London didn’t need a road map. The money transferred to PetroSaud from the Investment Corporation of [country unknown] had not been used to purchase the oil lease in Saudi Arabia but instead had been sent to an account controlled by the person or persons who ran the Investment Corporation of [country unknown], one of whom was also the finance minister of that country.
As R had stated in his letter, executives at PetroSaud had worked with the managers of a sovereign wealth fund to defraud it of seven hundred million dollars.
London printed the files and laid them on her desk. Her head began to throb, demanding its daily dose of caffeine. She rose and walked to the kitchen—ten steps—and put a pod in her Keurig. Her apartment was small, but it was her own. Nine hundred square feet. One bedroom, one and a half baths, the “half” so tiny it made a coffin feel spacious, and an alcove she used as an office. The price was two million Singapore dollars. She would be paying off her mortgage until her grandchildren graduated from hi
gh school. On the plus side, she did have a view of the sea, if, that is, she walked to the far end of her terrace, stood on her tiptoes, and craned her neck.
The FT had suffered the same fate as newspapers everywhere. Readership had declined drastically over the past ten years. Bankruptcy was knocking at the door. To stay alive, management was making a push into the digital arena, publishing an online lifestyle magazine, producing short films, and posting stories on social media outlets the world over. Anything to generate revenue.
London’s style of investigative reporting was perilously out of date. She took too much time to produce a story, filled in too many rows on her expense reports. Often months passed without a byline. Her publisher had grown tired of paying her while he waited.
She’d had offers to work in television, but that was even worse. Quicker turnarounds, less fact-checking, and one producer’s advice to keep the top three buttons of her shirt undone and get a spray tan. And, oh, she might want to consider a push-up bra…
Last week her publisher had drawn a line in the sand. A story—and a good one, at that—or she was out. One more Fleet Street casualty. It was with a fervor born of survival that she attacked the story of R’s anonymous leak.
London drank her coffee, then returned to her desk. Her cat, Freddy—for Frédéric Chopin—rubbed himself against her leg, and she placed him on her lap, stroking his back as she reread the printouts. It was like a game. R had given her a few clues to get started, not many, but with her expertise, enough to deduce who he was talking about. She just had to dig.
She logged on to the FT’s proprietary database and searched for a list of Asian sovereign wealth funds. There were twelve funds with assets over five billion dollars, the biggest owned by Japan, with a value over one trillion dollars. She ruled out Japan. Too many eyes. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Similarly, she ruled out China. This was the work of a smaller fund, one overseen by a precious few. A monarchy, maybe. Probably not a liberal democracy. Then again…
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