we were going to call her again.”
Quinn spent several minutes working out his reply. When he was done, he entered it on the website, and clicked the button to post it.
Haven’t tried where you went yet. I’ve only been to Nicaragua, but your trip sounded great. Will spend time tonight on Internet checking it out. Have some vacation time next month but have no firm plans yet. Same old story, no time to plan anything!
Yeah. Poor old me. HAHAHA.
But sounds like you had a good time. Sailing, partying. What could be better? Sing me up!! Do you have recommendations for hotels in Cozumel? Also would be interested in other insights. Am always up for a good time.
Thanks!
“Sing me up?” Orlando asked “Typo,” Quinn said with a shrug. “Happens all the time.” “Weak.”
The real message read:
am in sing a poor same time tonight
The cab from the Pan Pacific dropped Quinn and Nate on the north side of the Singapore River along Clarke Quay. Their destination was still another quarter mile up the river, but taking the sidewalk that lined the shore would be an easy and inconspicuous way to get there. Plenty of tourists used the walkway. Who would notice two more?
Clarke Quay had once been the place merchants would bring their ships in and sell their goods directly to the shop-houses that lined the river. But that was another century, long removed from the present. Now business was conducted at the huge port a few miles away on ships that would fill the river side-to-side and then some. Ships that were stuffed with cargo emptied by giant cranes instead of the shop owners’ sons, and transported in quantities the merchants of the 1800s could never imagine.
The shop-houses were rows of two-story buildings pressed up against each other, following the edge of the river. Shop on bottom, home on top. Many were gone now, lost in a wave of rejuvenation and renewal that seemed to be a constant state on the island. But several remained.
No longer the businesses of old, though. They had been turned into clubs and restaurants, some even extending to the outside, providing dining on the wide path that had been built up many feet above the river water. These reclaimed buildings had been painted in bright colors—blue, pink, yellow, green, orange—as if the brightest would attract the most customers.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Nate said.
Quinn looked back, then followed his apprentice’s gaze toward one of the buildings. In bright orange letters above the entrance was a sign that read
“One of the great American exports,” Quinn said.
Nate smiled. “Maybe we can stop in for a drink later.”
“Not likely.”
Precise, man-made walls of stone lined both sides of the Singapore River, guiding it in the direction man wanted it to go. The path along the top curved gently with the dictated contour of the waterway. It was kind of a metaphor for Singapore itself—clean, man-manipulated, and tightly controlled.
As they moved west out of Clarke Quay and into Robertson Quay, the shops were replaced by apartments. Nice ones, Quinn noted. Not like some of the government flats they’d passed on their taxi ride into the city. Those had looked like they’d been stuffed full of people. He’d been in buildings like them before on one of his previous trips. Extended families crammed into two-room apartments sometimes not big enough for even one person.
Quinn had also been in buildings like those they were walking by now. Large apartments. Two, maybe even three bedrooms, and none with the feeling that the walls were pushing in on you. Families lived here, too, but seldom more than parents and one or two children. And often they were occupied by only a single person. These were the flats favored by the large ex-pat community. Brits, Aussies, Japanese, Americans, Canadians.
They were the people recruited by the large corporations to come and provide their expertise and to help spur on the continual Singaporean growth. Quinn had known people who’d lived in the area, but was unsure if they were here any longer.
“We’re getting close, aren’t we?” Nate asked.
Quinn nodded. “Just like we talked about.”
“No problem.”
The plan was to just do a walk-by, then circle around and return back to Clarke Quay.
They passed a footbridge, its structural design again more than merely utilitarian. Large, curving pipes created the illusion of an oversized cage surrounding the bridge. It was painted in bright colors, like something out of a child’s imagination.
But it wasn’t the bridge that caught Quinn’s attention. It was the building ahead and to his right.
“There it is,” he said.
He pulled a slender box out of his pocket. It looked liked a reduced version of a late-twentieth-century pager. It was a cell phone tracker. Orlando had programmed it earlier to home in on the module Markoff had been pointing them toward. The data on the display indicated they were getting very close.
He slipped the device back in his pocket, then pulled out his phone and switched it to digital camera mode. “Let me take a picture of you.”
Nate took several steps ahead. “Where do you want me?”
“Lean against the railing. I want to get the river in the shot,” Quinn said in a normal tone, smiling like a good tourist. “It’ll be nice. You can show your girlfriend when we get home.”
